Monday 28 March 2011

Sketch N Stash DT Card - Challenge #58

Hi everyone, I'm back for the latest Sketch N Stash challenge which features a sketch from our lovely Vicky.
We have 2 sponsors again this fortnight, our regular sponsor Simon Says Stamp who are offering a $15 voucher as their prize
 and Meljen's Designs who are giving away 4 digi images of the winner's choice
I've chosen one of Meljen's digis as the main feature on my card, I think this sweet little blue bird of happiness is so cute and just perfect for a notelet to a friend.

Card Details:
* Image - Meljen Designs 'Bird's Little Letter'
* Sentiment - Pink Petticoat 'Girly Curly'
* Colouring medium - Promarkers
* Papers - Papermania 'Blueberry Hill'
* Everything else from my stash

I hope you can join in this fortnight and don't forget to pop by the challenge blog for some gorgeous inspiration from the other DT girlies and also to find out who won our last challenge and who this fortnight's Top 3 are.

Monday 14 March 2011

Sketch N Stash DT Card - Challenge #57

Hi everyone, well here we are again for this fortnight's Sketch n Stash challenge!
The sketch was designed by our lovely Sue and this fortnight we're being sponsored by Whimsy Stamps who are offering a $15 voucher to the winner of this challenge.
I've used one of Katie's lovely images but Whimsy also host digi images by Chrissy and Meljen as well as their own designs.
I really fell for this adorable 'Furry Friends' image, although I don't think I've done it justice here. I've decided I'm not very good at colouring animals, think I need to find a tutorial somewhere to show me how.

Card Details:
* Image - Whimsy Stamps 'Furry Friends'
* Colouring medium - Promarkers
* Papers - Papermania 'Spring Life'
* Sentiment - Pink Petticoat 'Girly Curly' sentiments
* Everything else from my stash

Don't forget to pop over to the challenge blog to check out the other DT cards and also see who was lucky enough to win last fortnight's prize from Pink Gem. I do hope you'll manage to join in the fun with us again this time.

Saturday 5 March 2011

Here I am again!

Hi everyone, I'm back with another card today, well fancy that!
This little cutie is one of a new batch of 'Teddy Bos' that recently pleaded with me to buy them. As if Teddy Bea isn't adorable enough on her own, just look at that little puppy she's cuddling (oh how I wish I could colour animals decently!)
I happened to have a quick peek at my bloglist this morning and caught sight of this week's Teddy Bo challenge, and... well, I thought it would be rude not to join in. I found a few other challenges that I think this card fits too.

Teddy Bo - Duck Egg Blue and Brown
Charisma Cardz - Four Legged Friends
Try it on Tuesday - Inspired by a song (Puppy Love)
Passion for Promarkers - Sugar Rush

I used a mixture of coloured pencils with Sansador for blending and Promarkers to colour this image. The sentiments are digis from Crafty Sentiments, the circle sentiment frame is my new Marianne die, this is the first time I've used one of their dies and it was so difficult trying to get it out that it made me curse!

Card Details:
* Image - Teddy Bea 'Puppy Love'
* Sentiment - Crafty Sentiments Designs 'Birthday Celebrations'
* Colouring medium - Coloured pencils and Promarkers
* Punch - MS Doily Lace
* Mats - Nestabilities and Marianne 'Circles'
* Everything else from my stash

On the moving front, the property should go onto the internet on Monday and into our local paper for the first time next Friday.
I've submitted some bits and pieces to a specialised auction house and we have a general auction house to go to next week with more stuff. We're planning on doing a boot sale with everything that's left after that and hopefully by then we should have got rid of all the things we stashed in the loft five years ago!

I'm hoping to do some blog hopping and commenting tomorrow to catch up with my favourite blogs, so you may hear from me again then.


Wednesday 2 March 2011

Meeting myself coming back!!......

Hi everyone, now, you may think this a strange title, but trust me when I say this is exactly the state of mind I'm in at present, so this post is to apologise for not being around recently and to explain why.
Get yourselves settled with a mug of coffee 'cos it's gonna be a long one!

Our problem started because we are one of the millions of couples 'lucky' enough to have been conned years ago, into taking out a low cost endowment mortgage that is now not going to repay our mortgage, add to this that we are both retired now and on a limited income.
Rewind about 5 years when we decided that we could not face having a huge mortgage shortfall once we were in our 60s, so we sold our lovely house and moved into a mid terraced new build. This meant we could repay our mortgage, move to this convenient little house and have no further worries. Yeah, right!
Having tried to squeeze all of the stash from our various hobbies into the new house (DH has even more stuff than I do!) we realised that we needed a bigger property, DH is also finding the stairs becoming more of a concern due to his ongoing health problems, so what we really need then is a bungalow.
Now, our part of Hampshire is beautiful and we love it, but it's definitely NOT the bungalow capital of the UK, nor is it renowned for it's reasonably priced housing, so after happily living here for the last thirty odd years we are about to move to Norfolk.
We have spent the last couple of weeks sorting out the house, emptying the loft, packing all our hobbies into boxes and hiring a storage container to put them in. Yesterday we signed with our local estate agents, so our house will be 'on the market' by the weekend, I've booked a week in Norfolk house-hunting for later this month and as soon as we sell and find somewhere to buy, we'll be off.
We're also leaving both our sons here. DH doesn't mind that (I think it's a man thing!) but I do, I'll miss them so much. I'll also miss our town, we've lived here since moving from London nearly 40 years ago when we got married.
So if you don't see me about much you know why and I apologise now to all the people who's blogs I usually visit. I'll keep you up to date with what's happening and my DT posts are scheduled for a while so you'll occasionally see things here.
I look forward to catching up with you all when I get settled, until then take care and wish me luck!