MATLOCK STRIKES AGAIN

Hi Everyone

Happy Friday!

Sorry for the drought on my blog .. .. .. it has been super busy here.  Lots of commissions and wedding work to complete .. .. and alongside the craftiness the London Kids are here for a few days.

It hasn't been all work though.

We have been having a great time.  Far too many meals out (not that they have finished yet) and even a  late night BBQ in the garden.  Happy times.

Yesterday we spent the day in Matlock .. .. where you may remember last time I went I bought that huge reel of cotton ribbon.

Well this time I found this little beauty:

and I have been spending some time today hoovering out the cobwebs from the little shelves and starting to fill it up.  But the slots are a little too deep so I am cutting rectangles of polystyrene for putting to the back of the shelves.  What a mess polystyrene makes!!  It is all over my kitchen worktop and floor LOL!! I wonder how factories manage to cut it without making so much mess.

I am going to have to label the side of all the inks next with the help of the download from here.  

Currently my distress ink pads sit in a plastic box inside a drawer and I end up rummaging through all of them to try and find the colour I am looking for.  So when I saw this storage unit straight away I thought of my ink pads.

I will let you have another peep once my mission is complete.

But for now I need to take the London Kids to see what my Mum has been up to since they last saw her.  They go home tomorrow :-( but we have one last special meal together tonight .. .. to celebrate the rather large birthday I had earlier this year and their wedding anniversary tomorrow.

So crafting and my blog may be back to normal soon.

Enjoy your day.

Love Jules xx

WHITE CARD WEDNESDAY, ON A THURSDAY

Hi Everyone

Happy Thursday .. .. I hope you have had a good day.

Mine has been nice and productive .. .. but still not productive enough .. .. the crafty list is still a little long with plenty more to do by Sunday evening!  Eeekkk!!

But I was determined to finish a White Card Wednesday creation that I was hoping to have posted to my blog yesterday .. .. so here it is now .. .. a whole day late!

My white card Wednesday makes involve me using nothing but white card, which I always find very challenging and a little out of my comfort zone.  But here we go anyway:

This used:

Images:  Mama Elephant Clear Stamps: Bountiful Blessings (for the base layer)

and Docrafts A5 Clear Stamp Set:  Meadow 

Sentiment:  Card-io Sentiments Collection

Scrapberry's Stencil:  Hearts (laid over a square of card covered with Worn Lipstick Distress Ink and dabbed with a wet tissue to lift some of the colour)

Distress Ink Pads:  Crushed Olive and Worn Lipstick

First Edition Die Set:  Butterflies

My Trusty Sewing Machine

Ribbon and Pearls from my crafty stash box

So that is me for today.  A Wednesday card on a Thursday .. .. just to confuse the world!  LOL!!

Love how the texture on the white card has created the lines on the main image.

Catch you again soon.

Love Jules xx

TEENY, TINY TUESDAY

Hi Everyone

Happy Tuesday!

It feels so good to be back in blogland after having had a short break to fulfill my wedding work commitments .. .. .. certainly when you have been making multiples of the same items for a wedding, sitting down to make a "singleton" feels very strange and quite a treat.  

Don't get me wrong though.  I love my wedding work very, very much.  I know it isn't something everyone would enjoy but I certainly do.  I think it is something to do with all the lovely ribbons and sparkly embellishments .. .. and meeting all of those lovely "happy couples" .. .. who I try to make even happier!.

Working on the repetitive elements also gives me the chance to learn lots of new techniques because I will often have YouTube playing in the background whilst I am working away, and I end up with a long list of things I want to try when time will allow it.  Not that today's creation features anything off my "one day I want to try" list!

So here is my teeny tiny, 3.5" creation for this week:

This used:

Image and Sentiment:  JustRite Clear Stamp Set "Doodled Birds"

ProMarkers

My Trusty Sewing Machine

We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board

and that is all!

I hope you have all had a good day .. .. and as the sentiment says "It is so nice knowing you are there".  

Thank you for continuing to call by and see what I am up to .. .. even though I can be rather unpredictable at times!

Love Jules xx

MONDAY'S MALE

Hi Everyone

I hope you have had a good Monday!

Life is getting back to "sort of normal" here .. .. just for a little while!

My big wedding order was collected yesterday and I am now trying to catch up with everything else that has backed up in the meantime.

Lots of general cards needed here so I decided to grab a Penny Black stamp that is quite new to my collection and colour it up. A great image that I love colouring .. .. and it works for men, women and children just depending on the papers you put alongside.

So here we go:

This used:

Image:  Penny Black "2358J" A Song For You

Sentiment:  Computer Generated using font "Mr Sirloin"

Backing Papers:  Craft Sensations:  Mix & Match "All Time Favourites"

Die-Namics Die Set:  Blueprints12

Josy Rose:  Nail Heads

Music Note Punch .. .. very old and with no name on it

Fiskars Hand Punch "Star"

ProMarkers

My Trusty Sewing Machine

Enjoy what is left of the evening and hopefully I will be back very soon!!!!

Love Jules xx

WHAT A SLACK BLOGGER!

Hi Everyone

Happy Tuesday and happy August!

Apologies for being so quiet on my blog .. .. .. I could say that life has been getting in the way of making an appearance .. .. but that would be a fib.

It is actually weddings that have been keeping me away.

I have had a lovely bride on my books since March 2014 and it has been such a pleasure to work for her.  Her wedding is nearly here .. .. after all this time .. .. and she is making the two hour round trip to collect everything at the weekend.  All I can say is that it is a good job she has access to a van.  No way would everything fit into a car!!  

I can't believe our journey is nearly over :-(  We have worked on everything from "save the dates" to "thank you" cards .. .. and everything you can think of that goes in-between. 

So I have been super busy doing all the last  minute work for her .. .. which will finish tomorrow with the sticking down of the table plan.  Something I always have to have complete silence for .. .. and of course my tongue sticking out in concentration LOL!!

But at the same time I have also been completing other orders and making samples for new happy couples that are coming onto the scene.  Busy times!!!

No inking up my stamps and grabbing my ProMarkers .. .. except to produce this teeny tiny Tuesday make .. .. which has taken ages to make because it has been done in stages over several days. Who would have thought that a 3.5" square card could take so long to complete?

But never mind .. .. at least I have something I can share:

This used:

Image:  Hobby Art Stamps "CS125D" Peonies (I love peonies though you don't see many with sparkly edges do you?)

Sentiment and Backing Paper:  Pink Petticoat (sadly no longer trading)

Distress Ink Pad:  Worn Lipstick

ProMarkers

Glossy Accents

Quickie Glue Pen and Crystal Glamour Dust

My Trusty Sewing Machine

We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board

and that is all.

I would like to say that I will see you again soon .. .. but instead I think I had better just say "I'll see you when I do" as there is still lots I need to be cracking on with .. .. and we won't even mention Christmas!!!  That stock box is looking decidedly lacking!!

Love Jules xx

WELL I WAS ON TRACK!

Hi Everyone

Happy Friday .. .. ahead of hopefully a happy weekend for everyone!

Well after my ambitious post of Wednesday where I proclaimed to the world that I was "back on track" .. .. well I was .. .. but it only lasted for a day LOL!!

How quickly things can change.  A couple of emails, a meeting with a bride, and a new wedding enquiry and suddenly everything goes off at a tangent.

I did work on a quick "Thursday's Child" card and once it was finished I decided I would also turn it into a sketch for my little sketch library.  Can you believe it has taken me longer to produce the sketch than it did to make the card!!  I had to give up on Thursday because the task was using up too much time (and hurting my head and testing my patience in the process).

Why?  It looks far simpler than a lot of the others!

Well it took me ages and ages to work out how to have just two rounded corners on the top panel.  I could have four straight away .. .. no problem.  But not two!  If I had let everything go off the edge of the base on the left it would have been easy too.  But that wasn't what I wanted .. .. and I hate things to get the better of me.

Eventually I managed it .. .. .. but already I have forgotten what I did!!  Clearly I need to repeat the process around 100 times in the hope it will become second nature LOL!!!

I am determined to master the Craft Artist 2 Professional programme, because it is so very, very useful.  But not being particularly computer savvy doesn't help!!

Anyway, after all that here is my card .. .. hope it was worth the wait:

This used:

Image:  Digistamp Boutique "Funtime Dan" Set 2

Sentiment: Computer Generated using font "Calibri"

Backing Papers:  Pink Petticoat .. sadly no longer trading but I am still loving the papers very much

ProMarkers

X-Cut Corner Rounding Punch

Josy Rose:  Nail Heads

My Trusty Sewing Machine

Wink of Stella on the little fish and frog .. .. but you can't really see it in the pictures

and here is the patience testing new sketch which was added to the library today:

Tee hee!!!  Not much to it really is there!

Anyway if you feel the urge to use it .. .. or any of the others in my little collection please feel free to do so.  They are all on the tab at the top of my blog.

I am also linking up to the Digistamp Boutique Competition for July as I have used one of their scrummy images.

Enjoy the rest of today .. .. and your weekend.

Not sure if I will be making an appearance on my blog over the next couple of days.  It looks like a weekend of wedding samples and wedding work for me!!! Woo hoo!!!

Love Jules xx

BACK ON TRACK

Hi Everyone

Happy Wednesday!

Well it has been a super manic week with a few late night/early morning sessions needed to catch up with all those crafty missions .. ..  but I have kept my head down and got on with everything and am now happy to be finally back on track.

The impact of Mr Heart's jury service and annual leave is now behind me!!  Phew!!

So hopefully that means my blog will be back to normal soon too!

I thought I would wake it up after its week of slumber by sharing some of the commissions I was fortunate to be blessed with for Issue 155 of Quick Cards Made Easy magazine which should have hit the shops now.

My first share shows a couple of cards that were part of a set of

 Resist Embossing Technique makes.  

I love the heart one very much .. .. can't think why!  LOL!!  That lacy stamp is just gorgeous!!

then next is a card from a collection of

 Cutaway Technique makes

and I will finish with a card from a 

Stamp With Us! Commission 

which uses images from my favourite stamp makers of all time .. .. Penny Black! 

The stamps were a little different to my usual cute little Penny Black mice and hedgies but they are equally cute and just as enjoyable to colour!!

and that is me for today!

Hopefully tomorrow is going to see me back to my weekly themes and I will have a Thursday's Child card to share.

Have a lovely evening.  Hopefully it will be a little cooler and more comfortable than last night.  The heavens have opened here and the thunder storms are just starting too, so fingers crossed everywhere will be a much fresher place soon!

Love Jules xx

WHITE CARD WEDNESDAY

Hi Everyone

Happy Wednesday!

I hope you are all having a good week.  Once again mine is flying by in the blink of an eye!!

Teeny, tiny Tuesday never materialised .. .. but I have raided that huge pile of white card off-cuts to create this:

This used:

Image:  Hero Arts/Sizzix Stamp and Die Set "657776" Floral
Image: Stampin' Up "Gorgeous Grunge"
Sentiment:  Digistamp Boutique "Sentiment Bundle - Everyday"
Crafters Companion Diesire Dies "Scalloped Tags"
MFT Die Set:  Blueprints 14
Distress Ink Pads:  Peacock Feathers, Shabby Shutters, Wild Honey, Spiced Marmalade, Barn Door and Black Soot
Ribbon, Cord, Charm and Pearls from my crafty stash box

The focal point of this card is actually the tag inspiration for the Tag You're It! Challenge this week.

This is the inspiration for using as a starting point:

Isn't it just gorgeous!  I took my inspiration from the beautiful colour palette, the painted background and fab layout.  

I am also going to run over to enter my creation into Pixie's Snippets Playground Challenge as everything I have used (apart from the card base) was created from off-cuts of white card.

So that is me for today.

Hopefully catch you again soon.

Love Jules xx

MONDAY'S MALE

Hi Everyone

Happy Monday!

Sorry about the "no show" over the weekend .. .. but I did warn you I might not be around.

Saturday was a fun day of decorating at Mum's . .. and we even ventured into paint mixing LOL!! The colour Mum had chosen from a huge colour chart was a very pale lilac to tone in with the new aubergine curtains she had already bought.   We painted the ceiling and all the walls white to begin with to cover the yellow that was on the walls and then once dry started to do the walls again in the pale lilac .. .. but it was nothing like the colour chart or the label on the tin .. .. so we mixed it with the left over white emulsion and she now has her own designer paint colour.  There might be a bit of touching up needed but we broke the back of most of it.

Anyway, round to my share for today:

This used:

Image:  Woodware Clear Magic "JGS389" Sneakers

Sentiment and some of the papers:  Pink Petticoat (sadly no longer trading)

Dotted Backing Paper:  First Edition Papers "J'Adore

ProMarkers

and that is all!

Must fly now .. .. mountains of work to get through this week.

Mr Heart has been on two weeks jury service and one weeks annual leave .. .. and those three weeks have caused total chaos in the old House of Hearts.  My routine was completely shot as the jury service involved me needing to drop him off and pick him up at bus stops so he could commute in. Of course all during peak times which I am certainly not used to sitting around in anymore!! I lost loads of production time every day.  Not good!!

Never mind.  I will just have to try and make up for lost time where I can. 

I'll catch you again soon, hopefully.

Not sure what is happening with my blog today ... ... pictures and spacing are all over the place and no matter what I do nothing will change .. .. so I am leaving it well alone for now and will see if will right itself later.

Love Jules xx

FEMININE FRIDAY

Hi Everyone

Happy Friday .. .. ahead of a happy weekend.

I hope you have all had a good day.

I will tell you more about mine later .. .. but for now here is my feminine Friday make for this week using Sketch Thirty One which was added to my little sketch library yesterday.

This used:

Image:  Penny Black "3823H" Delights
Sentiment:  Lili of the Valley Sentiment Tag
Backing Papers:  A magazine freebie from yonks ago (I am determine to use up all of my pads that have next to no paper left in them!).
Spellbinders:  Classic Circle and Scalloped Circle
ProMarkers
Josy Rose:  Nail Heads
Chalk
My Trusty Sewing Machine
Ribbon from my crafty stash box
and Sketch Thirty One from my little sketch library .. .. though to be honest it was hardly worth me adding four squares underneath the image because I just about covered them all up LOL!!!

So what have I been up to?  Well Mr Heart whisked me off to the Peak District yesterday for a last minute night away.  We didn't leave until lunchtime and were back again this afternoon .. .. but we crammed lots in.

On the way we passed through Matlock  .. ..  not somewhere I have ever spent any time even though it is only about an hours drive away .. .. and we passed some fabulous shops .. .. lots of them selling up-cycled furniture and hand crafted items.  So on the way back we decided to stop off and have a quick look at them .. .. foolishly thinking we would fit them all into the 40 minutes we were allowed to park in the street.  I spent the whole time in just one shop and was in heaven!

So many fabulous items that would be brilliant for my happy couples and for display purposes at wedding fayres .. .. ..

. .. .. and if you ever thought you had a big spool of ribbon .. ..

how about this one which I bought home .. .. 

Approximately 9.5 inches high and 8 inches across and full of cotton ribbon tightly wound onto a very small centre.  I am going to have such fun with this .. .. and the empty spool when I have used it all.

Not all brides are what I would describe as "Princess Brides" wanting satin ribbon and sparkle .. .. this is going to work brilliantly alongside my rustic makes .. .. I can't wait to dye it, stamp on it and even use it "just as it is".  Lots of plans in my head.

I could have had 4 of these beauties .. .. and they were all slightly different, but this was my favourite .. .. even though it was the smallest spool LOL!!

Looking forward to going back to Matlock now to investigate all the shops I didn't manage to visit.

Not sure if I will manage to post over the weekend .. .. I am doing some decorating with my lovely Sister for our Mum and am not sure how long it is going to take.

Hope you all have a good weekend and I'll catch you when I do.

Love Jules xx

NEW SKETCH

Hi Everyone

Happy Thursday!

Sorry, but there is no time for making cards to share today .. .. but I do have a new sketch which I have added to the library today.

Hopefully there will be time for me to have a play with it tomorrow.  We will have to wait and see.

So here we go with Sketch Thirty One

If you like the look of it, and fancy a play with it, then please feel free to use it .. .. along with any of the others in my collection.  You will find them on the tab at the top of my blog.

Enjoy today and I'll hopefully see you again tomorrow.

Love Jules xx

WHITE CARD WEDNESDAY

Hi Everyone

Wednesday already!!!  

I hope this week has been a good one for you .. .. and if not that next week will be a million times better.

Here I am with my white card Wednesday make.  This week I have managed to use up three more pieces from the white card mountain!  Woo hoo!

I am still struggling with this theme but am loath to admit defeat just yet, because everyone seems to like them.  So I have tried to analyse why I always doubt the final results and have decided that it is because I am responsible for the whole creation .. .. whereas when I use backing papers most of the work has been done for me .. .. so more reasons to doubt what I am producing I suppose.

Anyway, here is what I have come up with this week as I dragged myself through the pain barrier:

This used:

Image and Sentiment:  Woodware Clear Stamps "Bubble Bloom Felicity"

Distress Inks:  Shabby Shutters and Picked Raspberry

Gold Embossing Powder

Woodware Tag Punch

Clear Wink of Stella Pen

My Trusty Sewing Machine

Ribbon, Gold Cord and Puffy Sticker from my crafty stash box

and that is me for today.  Short and sweet as I need to get back to that wedding work!

Never a dull moment here in the old House of Hearts.

Oh .. .. and Mr Heart got the rhubarb all planted in the lovely raised bed.  If only all the garden had the lovely manure and topsoil that the rhubarb has been treated to.  Much of our garden is like clay!! It just remains to be seen who gets to eat the most rhubarb .. .. us or the slugs that we seem to be overly blessed with this year!!!  Yuk!!!

Love Jules xx

TEENY, TINY TUESDAY

Hi Everyone

Happy Tuesday!

I hope your week got off to a good start.

Quite pleased with what I have achieved so far with mine (not something you will hear me say very often LOL!!).  But there is still a lot to get through.

I am here with my Teeny, Tiny make for this week .. .. and for anyone new to my blog these little cards measure a whole 3.5 inches square .. .. in real life they are probably smaller than the image on your screen.

So here is this week's offering:

This used:

Image:  Penny Black "4304H" Polka-Dot Sprig

Sentiment:  Wow! Embossing Powders "Stamp Set 41"  Just Saying

Backing Papers:  Docrafts Forever Friends "Kraft Notes"

Tim Holtz Distress Markers:  Shabby Shutters, Twisted Citron, Spun Sugar and Worn Lipstick

Clear Embossing Powder

Spellbinders Nestabilities:  Classic Square

Go Kreate:  Scalloped Squares

My Trusty Sewing Machine

We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board

and that is as good as it gets for today!

Sunshine but with dark heavy clouds outside my window today .. .. it doesn't look very promising.

Mr Heart is on annual leave this week and is supposed to be creating a raised bed in the garden to give us a patch for growing rhubarb.  Something to do with his favourite pudding in all the world being rhubarb crumble me thinks?!?!?

He made the frame yesterday so we are one step nearer.

Just realised my card looks like shades of rhubarb colours LOL!!

Wishing everyone a good day and thanks for calling by.

Love Jules xx

MONDAY''S MALE

Hi Everyone

Happy Monday!

Bright sunshine and clear blue skies here (at the moment)!  Let's hope it lasts.

Nice and early with my Monday's Male card today .. .. because it was made last week.  Oh to be this ahead of my blog posts every day.

So here we go:

This used:

Craftwork Cards:  "The Potting Shed" for the image, papers and sentiment

Josy Rose:  Nail Heads

My trusty sewing machine

and that is it!!  

I really enjoyed making this card.  I love the soft colours of the collection very much and this layout gave me chance to have a really good "sewing fix" which I have been missing whilst tying all of those lovely wedding ribbons!

Catch you again tomorrow (hopefully) with a Teeny, Tiny Tuesday offering.

Have a good start to a sparkly brand new week!

Love Jules xx

SUNDAY SNIPPETS AND A BLAST FROM THE PAST

Hi Everyone

Happy Sunday!

I hope you are having a lovely weekend.  A mixed bag of weather here with rain storms one  minute then beautiful blue skies and sunshine the next!!

As you will have no doubt guessed from my rather sparse posting this week wedding fever has hit the House of Hearts!  

Invitation samples, place names, order of service booklets, table plans are all taking over every spare inch of space!!

But Sunday wouldn't be Sunday without trying to use up some snippets to take a creation over to Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Recently I spent a while crafting a card to give away with a gift, wrapped my present and sadly didn't have a tag to attach.  So I made a very basic one very quickly but wasn't super impressed with myself!  That then got me thinking to when I first started my blog back in March 2009 and a lovely challenge I used to enter called "Tag You're It" and every Friday the challenge changed to a new theme.  But sadly the challenge closed and I really missed taking part.  I loved working on such a small space .. .. which is probably why I enjoy making my teeny, tiny Tuesday cards so much. I would probably freak out if I was faced with a huge 8" x 8" card blank.

For some reason I decided to do an internet search and guess what!  I found a challenge called "Tag You're It" .. now whether the previous challenge hosts started the challenge again or whether it is a brand new host I don't know .. .. but I was super excited and pleased to see them.  What a great way to be able to use up some of those snippets and have a decent tag to put on a gift or even a card front.

In the olden days I used a glamorous assistant to help display my tags so I blew the dust off him and am pleased to re-introduce to you .. .. Ted the Tag Assistant

The idea behind the tag challenge is to be inspired by a guest designer and make a creation based  on their tag.

This was the inspiration for the current challenge:

My inspiration came from the layout of the strawberry design in the middle and the circular sentiment tag.  No strawberries for me though .. .. just flowers .. .. and the swirls of the strawberry plant were mimicked with the green twine. 

As always on a Sunday I am lazy and don't list my ingredients but if you wish to know what any of the materials I used are, then just ask.

So that is me for today.  Off to link up and then back to my lovely wedding work.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Love Jules xx