Gruffies & Guests Challenge reminder

Hi All

Here's a mid-way reminder for the first Gruffies & Guests Challenge - Anything Goes!  Please pop in and join in the fun HERE - lots of DT member projects to inspire, you so get crafting!

There is a prize of a £10 voucher from our sponsor - 

Here's my first project as a Design Team member for Team B, a mini recipe book, hope you like it and it gives plenty of inspiration.

I won't be doing such big projects every month, but I've wanted to make a mini recipe book for a while and thought it would be lovely to use the cute images from House Mouse, Gruffies & Happy Hoppers.  What do you think?  Any feedback would be fab.

There are some great entries so far in the challenge, thanks to everyone for joining in and good luck xx

Feeling Old

I'm sitting in my Craft room feeling old this afternoon :(  just finished making my youngest son Adam's 21st birthday card!  Where has the time gone?  My eldest son Craig will be 24 this year!!

I struggled with what to put on the card, men are so much harder to make cards for aren't they? Well, I came up with this...

...I'm quite pleased with it.  What do you think?  Hopefully he will like it too.

Adam's birthday is on Tuesday so we're going out for a Chinese meal (just four of us) and then going out for a family meal on Saturday (10 of us) so I think the diet will have to wait until next week :)

Thanks for stopping by...Anne-Marie x

Gruffies

Well...I've been having a play with my new Gruffies & Happy Hoppers cd rom, getting a bit of practice in for my DT Project for the new Gruffies & Guests Challenge Blog which went live this morning, please pop in and join in the fun.

Here are a couple of cards I have made...what do you think?

My DT project is in hand, and won't go 'live' until Saturday, 18th January as I'm in Team B.  But you don't have to wait until then, Team A's fantastic projects are already live, so please have a look and gain inspiration on using these fab images to make your own projects and enter them into the challenge.  There is a £10 voucher to be won from our Sponsor 

Hope to see your lovely creations soon, and Good Luck in the Challenge :) xx

Happy New Year

I'd like to wish you all a very Happy New Year, my very best wishes for a happy, healthy and fabulously crafty 2014!!

I've started off my crafty new year by making some cupcakes this morning to take to my parents as we were invited for lunch.  Went down a treat and everyone enjoyed them. 

Although did have a mishap on the way out, the front door was open and because it was windy it blew the living room door into my arm and knocked the container the cakes were in so half of them fell over and the icing was smudged, but never mind they were still enjoyed :)  They looked like this before the mishap...

They all have pink butter cream,  half have been sprayed with silver shimmer spray and half with gold shimmer spray.

Will be back in my craft room tomorrow as I have a few cards to make.

But for now I'm going to chill in my pjs on the sofa and watch the soaps.

Thanks for popping in.  Bye for now, Love & Best Wishes Anne-Marie xx

Christmas cards all made...phew!

Well that's the last three Christmas cards made...now I can breathe!  Lost count of how many I've made, but I've really enjoyed making them.

Just an engagement card for my son &  his fiancee, and birthday card for a work colleague to make tomorrow.

Christmas presents all bought and most of them wrapped so I'm very nearly ready for Christmas...yay! :)  Just the house to clean now :(

Day off work tomorrow to finish off bits and bobs, back at work on Monday, then off until 6th January 2014!  Soooooooo looking forward to the break.

Hope you are all ready for Christmas.  

Thanks for popping in

Anne-Marie xx

Exciting News!!!

I am so chuffed to announce that I have been asked to be a design team member for...

As I have not been part of a design team before this is a very exciting first for me.  I am so looking forward to producing themed projects that inspire others using Gruffies, House Mouse & Happy Hoppers designs.

There will be a monthly challenge, the first challenge will start on 4th January 2014 with the theme 'Anything Goes', please click HERE to go to Gruffies & Guests Challenge Blog.  

The sponsor for January's challenge is 

Now let's all have fun with these gorgeous designs :)

Thanks for popping by xx

Presents for under the Tree

For the last two weeks I've been shaking a 2 litre jar full of vodka, lemon zest, water & caster sugar, every day...today at last I've been able to decant into little bottles and dress them up ready to put under the Christmas tree in the office for the girlies...hope they like the result.  I managed to save a shot glass full to try myself :)

I made all the 'Limoncello' tags and name tags using my bigshot and a small tag die that was free on a magazine (3 different sizes).  I have used that die to make all the tags for my Christmas presents too...great free item!  And the little santa hats were from Poundland :)

Thanks for stopping by xx

Gruffies & Guests New Challenge Blog & DT Call

I'm entering the new Gruffies & Guests New Challenge Blog & DT call (details of which can be found HERE )...here are a few of my House Mouse cards that I've made over the past 10 months.  

These images are printed from the Project Book & cd rom Volume One

 Birthday card for a friend who likes to be pampered

 Birthday card for a friend who enjoys a gin or two!

 Mother's Day card for my mum who loves knitting

General cards for friends and family

And lastly two Christmas cards made using Wishes for Christmas decoupage images

Hope you like them.

Thanks for visiting x

Christening

I was asked by a friend at work to make a Christening card, which I did on Sunday ready for the Christening this Sunday.  She came to me today and said the vicar had rang at the last minute to change the church as the original one was being done up and wouldn't be ready in time.  Why would this be a problem you ask?  I'd put the name of the church on the card!!  Luckily I could alter it.  And here it is...

What do you think about the black & white photo rather than colour?  I made one in the same colour scheme for my niece's Christening in September...

I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks for visiting...take care...A-M xx

WINNER...This has cheered me up!

I've won again...WOW!

Docrafts Blog - Card Makers Challenge Winner

A winner has been chosen for the Anything Goes Card Makers Challenge we ran on 31st Oct.

Thank you to everyone who entered. There was such a great variety of cards. CONGRATULATIONS ANNE-MARIE! Please email us your address to tv@docrafts.com and we will send your prize!

Loved using the little holly punch :) and thought it looked very effective, obviously other people liked it too.  Thank you so much x

Craft Fair

Firstly I'd like to apologise for not replying to messages...they've only popped up tonight!  Don't know where they've been hiding...confused.com!

I've not updated my blog for a while as I've been coming home from work, eating dinner and spending the rest of the evening in my craft room busily crafting away for a special day yesterday.

I would like to share my first experience as a stallholder at a Craft Fair yesterday.  My friend Tracey Cotton and I decided to have a go and made a large stash of goodies to sell at a craft fair at a local hotel, Riverside Hotel.  We were a little nervous, but very excited!

Here's our table all set up and ready to go...

If anyone is doing a craft fair in the next few weeks I found that these sold really well, children loved them :)

After speaking to other crafters who've had stalls and not sold many things we were nervous that it wouldn't go well for us either.  We were worried that our prices might be too high and people would complain, but no-one questioned our prices so we must have got it right...We came home with over £100 between us, which I thought was quite good for our first time, so well chuffed :)  And we really enjoyed it so hoping to do more fairs next year!

Good Luck to anyone that is doing a Craft Fair in the run up to Christmas xx

NEC Goodies

I had a fantastic time yesterday at the Hobbycrafts and Crafts for Christmas show at the NEC.  Came home with lots of lovely goodies...

4 lots of wool (2 scarves knitted already)

I bought all the usual bits n bobs, gems, glue, paper flowers, ribbons etc.  But decided to try out something new so this morning I've given my new items a go.  I've used an Imagination Crafts stencil template and Sparkle Medium, seemed pretty easy to use and now it's dry I'm hoping to turn them into Christmas cards.

I absolutely love House-Mouse by Joanna Sheen so was really excited to find some Wishes for Christmas decoupage sheets.  A lovely and very talented lady by the name of Sharon King got me excited about House Mouse, and her beautiful cards give me lots of inspiration.  Here's the first of my House Mouse Christmas cards (they take a while as have to cut out the images but worth it).

Now must get back to making the sparkle cards.

Bye for now xx

Going to try entering some Challenges...wish me luck!

Thought I'd try this one for the Crafting Musketeers Pretty Pastels Challenge

I'm a Winner!

After another stressful day at work this has really cheered me up 

CRAFT, CHAT, SHARE AND CARE page...

The well deserved winner of the AUTUMN IS COMING competition is

TADAAA

Well done Anne-Marie Thorley.

Please inbox me with your address hunni so I can your prize off to you. XX

Thank you so much xx

Well what a day!! :(

Had a lovely week off work last week doing what I love doing...CRAFTING!

But had to go back to work today...wish I hadn't bothered!  Just got the feeling I was being dumped on again, happens quite a lot unfortunately.  On the upside it's only going to be a four day working week as will be going to the NEC Craft Show on Friday...whoooohooo :) can't wait, I'll be like a kid in a sweet shop!

So anyway to relieve the stresses of the day I've hand knitted another ribbon scarf edged with lace, here it is...

...and it only took 1 hour to knit.  What do you think?

Hope you're all having a good evening, and thanks for popping by xx

Knitting or Crochet?

I've been playing...making phone socks...but can't decide whether the knitted version or crochet version of an owl one is the best. The first two are knitted and the third is crochet. I would love it if you could give me feedback.

I am making a stash of goodies for a Christmas Fair in a couple of weeks, sharing a table with a friend.  I've already hand knitted a few scarves and of course made lots of cards (which you can see on my facebook page).

Any feedback that you can give will be very much appreciated.

Anne-Marie x