Ali's card making blog

Have been busy with the Christmas cards, done about 10 now and as I need to do in the region of 30-35 then I think I am on track! Hubby very kindly brought me a present of several rubber stamps from the car boot sale the other weekend. This is one of them, he chose rather well didn't he?! The background is my first attempt with Cosmic Shimmer, am rather pleased with the result. I stamped the image and embossed with black embossing powder. The purple panel is embossed with a Cuttlebug folder and the wire has been in my stash for yonks and haven't really used it very much! The gold stars were made with some gold leaf I got recently, am having fun playing with it. I am going to enter this card into the following challenges: The Corrosive Challenge blog - clean up the dust (on account of the wire) and The Crafty Pad - embossing Off to Barcelona tomorrow till Tuesday, yippee :-)

This is a great idea over at the Cowgirls Sunday Stamp'en challenge blog this week. Basically you make a Christmas card for a soldier to send to a loved one (no glitter as could cause safety problems - felt a bit weird making a Chrimbo card with no glitter, but I am pleased with the result!) So here is my card for the challenge which I am going to send off to the soldiers. It seems to be (I think) a US address to send it to so will check the postage at the post office (well, will get hubby to when he is sending off parcels from his ebay empire!) The card was made with a cute Penny Black stamp (coloured with promarkers) which I got as part of a set with a magazine subscription recently and some cuttlebug embossed paper. I am also going to enter the card into the following challenges: Totally Gorjuss - Wild thing (the hedgehog) Cupcake sketch challenge 2 Sisters - Christmas (also collecting cards for the soldiers, contains full explanation of the no glitter rule also!) Sarah Hu

Hello fellow WOYWWER's! (Pop over to Julia's blog at the Stamping Ground if you have no idea what I am on about! Click on the WOYWW badge in my sidebar and it will take you there). Apols for my absence last week, it is all a bit hectic here at the moment...I am currently busy applying for jobs where I work as we are being restructured so my job as it is now won't exist anymore. Thankfully the process will be completed in a couple of weeks so that particular stress will be over. I've managed to get a bit of crafting done though, mainly spurred on by my mammoth haul from the Great Northern Papercraft Extravaganza at the weekend! I just had to get playing with all the glittery sparkly stuff I had bought so I've made a start on my Christmas cards. I'm thinking the purple glitter on the black background is perhaps a little bit dark though?! Will have to brighten this one with some gems I think and maybe just use the lighter glitter for the next one. There is b

And here is a very cute digi image, again unfortunately can't recall where I got it from, I really am going to have to start cataloguing them properly ha ha! I had originally started with a sketch (from spoonfull of sugar) but it kind of went a bit awry! Also, the colour scheme was originally going to be purple, brown and cream for another challenge, until I realised this was the for the penny black challenge and this definitely wasn't a penny black image, oops! Anyway, thanks to those two blogs for the initial inspiration, I am now going to enter this into the following challenges: Something cute at stamp something and Anything goes at Cowgirl's sunday stamp challenge

I came across the Postpals website via Daring Craftmakers blog and thought it was a fab idea! You basically make a card (or send a letter, or even a gift, whatever you want really) to a poorly child on the website. So here is my first stab at making a card to send via the website. I decided I preferred my 'For you' stamp as opposed to thinking of you. Daring Craftmakers are also offering a prize from the Ribbon Girl for this little bit of giving challenge. I hope this post inspires others to make and send a card also, there are some truly inspirational stories on the postpals site.

Yes, I know, we say it every week!! And it's 1st September (and looks like summer is finally starting, ha ha). I've just had a lovely weekend off with hubby and managed to get a fair bit of card making in too. And, drum roll... I found my Christmas rubber stamps from last year!! They were in the cupboard under the stairs (see the photo of what I had to rummage through to find them!) obvious place for them really! I know they don't look like very much (it was only my first Christmas as a cardmaker last year) but it was the sentiment ones I wanted to find mainly. So my room looks a total tip today (well yesterday afternoon) after the cardmaking marathon (OK I only made about 8 or 9 but that is a marathon for me!) I've been doing cards for the hubby's anniversary and grannies birthdays (see my previous post) but have also managed to find time to do some for the for sale box at work and also a couple of christmas cards. (And I didn't even use the stamps, so m