Question about copics

This is just a quick post tonight as Barry is still ill and I don't feel too well myself now, but I am going to make a few cards tonight when all the kids are in bed so will post them on here when I'm finished them.
I just wanted to ask you all about copics.
I want to get some but can't really afford the sketch ones at the moment so thought I would just get some of the ciao ones for now. I only want to get a few to try and saw some on ebay today, they were selling 5 markers plus a fineliner for £10 plus postage and I thought I might get some of them but ended up not ordering them because I didn't know what colours to get! They have a pack of skin tones which I do need, and they also had grey tones, brights, pastels and a hues pack. I'm not sure which colours I would use most so if anyone has any suggestions or advice I would be very gratefull. Also if you know anywhere else that sells them at a reasonable price, (remember I am in the UK though) that would be great too :)

I bought some Marvys month or so ago and I do like them better than other markers I have used but after looking at other peoples cards that have been done using copics, I really want some.
I really blame Rach for this new obsession I have with copics lol, I visit her blog every day and I am always amazed at how brilliant her colouring looks. If you haven't seen any of her work, you really have to go check out her blog, she has so much inspiration on there.

Well so much for the short post lol.

Speak to you all again soon

Lora

I'm sorry I haven't announced the winner yet. Barry (my partner) has been really ill today and I have had to run around after the kids and him on my own so haven't had a chance to get on the computer.

I still can't get my camera to charge so i took some quick photos with my phone to give you an idea of what the winner of my blog candy will get.

And because I have kept you all waiting to tell you who the winner is, I have also added a few more things from my stash. It's not much but a little extra just because I'm nice like that lol.

I know its quite hard to see in this photo and you will have to ignore all the junk around me and also my daughters ribenna juice which is not included lol. There is, some hand stamped images of some of my fav stamps, a collection of tags and embelishment which all have a travel theme (I think), some tiny die cut envelopes, a couple of little pink bows with heart charms on them and some bark flowers.

So the whole lot together looks like this except the card on the side which you can have if you really want it!

And the winner of my very first candy is ..............FAYE! congratulations faye please send me your snail mail address and I will get this lot out to you asap.

I put everyone's names into the box and got my 3 year old Daughter Chiara to pick a name and she picked Faye. Then she wanted to choose again and again lol. she picked 5 more times just for fun and Fayes name came up 3 more times so there was no mistaking who the winner should be!!

Thanks you everyone for joining in and showing me your support, I really do appreciate it.

Hugs
Lora

Candy update and challenge card

I just popped on to tell everyone what goodies I will be giving away and noticed that my counter has reached 100 already WOW thanks everyone I didn't expect to reach it in a day!
I know I said I would pick a winner as soon as I reached 100 but as it is past midnight I will leave it till tomorrow afternoon before I pick a winner.
Although I have had 51 visitors today there is only a few comments so if anyone hasn't left a comment you still have time to. I will include any comments left up untill tomorrow afternoon in the draw.

This is a card I made for the papertake weekly challenge.
My daughters both love this little girl and I think she's really cute too.
The papers used were from Laura Ashley, I coloured the image with Marvy markers and used some glossy accents on the splashes of water (love that stuff). To finish it off I inked the edges of some plain wooden buttons with blue ink.


Now for the candy! I am sorry to say that I can't take a photo of the goodies because I can't get my camera to charge :( so I will just have to write it down instead. so here goes: most are from craft essentials cardology range.
10 metres of green sparkly fancy yarn (craft essentials)
3 lengths of assorted green and yellow ribbons
pack of metallic plum accent beads
pack of glitter sparkles (bright ideas)
12 tags and approx 20 vellum corner squares with silver embossed houses (all store bought and from cardology range)
heart spangles (craft essentials)
pack of red flower gems
tube of star sequins
3 metres of ribbon from the new say it with a.... smirk range from Dovecraft
and finally a say it with smirk stamp from Dovecraft
All in a lovely box decorated by me :)

Sorry this has been a long post but just wanted to tell you in as much detail as I could because I dont have a picture.

Thanks for taking the time to read this novel and remember to check back tomorrow to see who has won.

Hugs
Lora

BLOG CANDY!!

I was going to leave this untill tomorrow before posting but since Meda's card had put me in a real good mood I thought I would do it today.

I have decided to give away some blog candy when I reach 100 visitors :)

I don't have a lot of followers or visitors so I was thinking what I could do to get more people coming to my blog as I plan to keep my new years resolution I made and post every day from now on with a new card or project, but I figured the best way is to get help from the lovely people who do visit my blog :)

I am in the process of altering a small box and thought it would be nice to give it away as blog candy, full with goodies of course. I will post more details in the next day or so telling you exactly what will be in the box.

All you need to do for a chance to win is leave me a comment telling me what you would like to see on my blog in the future (projects, links to other sites, more candy etc) and/or what you would like to see for blog candy in the future, then leave a link to this post on your blog and I will come visit you :) or if you don't have a blog just tell a friend about my blog.

The sooner I reach 100 hits the quicker I can choose a winner so tell your friends about me!

As soon as I reach 100, I will pick a winner by random.

Good luck!



Hugs

Lora x

My card from Meda

I got a lovely surprise in the mail today. The card I won on Meda's blog came and it is even prettier in real life. I also got some handmade flowers like the one on the card and it was all in a lovely co-ordinating box. I just love this card and it's really put me in a great mood today :D :D Thanks Meda!

The card was made using a cuttlebug. Meda painted over the blue cardstock with white acrylic paint then sanded it (I think) to reveal the blue underneath.
Meda please let me know if I am wrong :)
I can never get the cardstock with a different coloured inside here so I think I will give this a try. Just need to get some acrylic paint first.....

Thank you Meda xx

My creative head is back on!!

I finally made a card today without it taking me 3 hours to think about what I was going to do!! Well 2 actually. This is the first time in ages I have had an idea for a card without having to go on the internet or look through magazines for inspiration, and now I have loads of ideas for other things I want to do, so loads of card making over the next few days I think.

I made these cards with some of the things I got from Mary who was my secret santa in December.

The first one was made with one of the stamps she gave me, which I love! and with papers I have had for forever but never knew what to do with them. This was way out of my comfort zone and I am not very keen on the papers but made myself a challenge to use them up and this was the outcome.

The 2nd card I used the heart vellum which I also got from Mary :) and a stamped image that someone sent me (I think it's so cute). This is the first card I made with my cuttlebug too.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks for stopping by today

Hugs Lora

blog candy!

My 2nd post of the day!

Just to let you know about the candy up for grabs over at crafts by kim. you have a chance to win all this lot in the pic above just by leaving a comment telling Kim what your favourite cutter/trimmer is and why and then put a link on your blog to her post.

Check it out here http://craftsbykim.blogspot.com/2009/01/who-wants-valentine-candy.html

good luck everyone

I've had a makeover

Well I haven't had a makeover but my blog has. I didn't actually pick this background to start with but the one I picked didn't show any of the sides and I ended up with a plain brown page!! I am rubbish at doing things like that so need to find someone who can change the layout for me so I can have 3 sections as you cant see the side patterns on this background either :( but for now it will just have to do. If anyone can help me I will be your bestest friend :D :D

I started to go through my craft stash last night to try and create some kind of order but I kept finding things I forgot I had and got nowhere with the cleaning :(

I really need to find a storage solution that keeps all my stuff neat and tidy but also where I can find things easily. At the moment everything is kept in plastic boxes stacked on top of one another and it is so hard to find things. I dont have a craft room or even a craft "space" so I have to take everything out then put it all back when I'm done. Which believe me is a BIG pain.

Anyway I think this post has been long enough

so I will leave you with a house mouse card that I made a while ago just for fun.

Hope you are all having a lovely stamping or cratfy day. Thanks for stopping by today.

Hugs Lora

I've been really busy this week entering competitions on peoples blogs.

I have never really bothered much with challenges and competitions except the odd one now and again because I never win anything but since winning the other day I have changed my way of thinking. If I never try then I will never win right?

So I have entered a few with great blog candy like the spellbinders competitions and a few on other blogs but I entered one yesterday which I really have my fingers crossed to win.

Someone i know from one of the groups (Leena aka Snoopy) I am in told me about the giveaway at scrapgirl. Her Daughters friend Brittni has been in hospital for the last 2 months as she has ulcerative colitis and still has more operations to go through. She is only 16 and has went through so much.

So.... a few of us have entered over on scrapgirl to see if we can win the candy for her. She loves monkeys and the prize is some sock monkey paper, some monkey images and some other cool stuff that she would love.

If anyone reading this hasn't entered check it out here http://imcarrid.blogspot.com/2009/01/blog-candy.html If anyone is lucky enough to win, please please please consider donating for Brittni. :) You can contact me if you don't know Snoopy and I will passon your details :)

Thanks for stopping by today

hugs
Lora

I won!!

Although it is 1.20 am right now, I was just away to switch off my computer and go to bed but something told me to check my emails first. And I am so glad i did, because I had one telling me that i had a comment on my blog, so I went to check it out and guess what...... I won Meda's blog candy (or royal chocolate as she calls it lol)! I really can not believe it because I have never won any blog candy or anything else for that matter.
The winner gets one of the cards she has on her blog (check them out, they are made with the cuttlebug) and also some of the flowers she made the cards with :D

Well I better be getting off to bed now so I can get up for the kids school in the morning!

hugs
Lora

I am a cuttlebug addict!!

Yes it's true. i have only had my cuttlebug for 5 days and I am already addicted!

I must admit though, i haven't made a card with anything I have embossed yet. Instead I have a stack of card and papers that I have embossed waiting to be used lol. But all that is gonna change because I plan to join in the cuttlebug challenges so that's an excuse for me to use it even more;) and it just so happens that Meda (someone I know from a yahoo group) has just announced that she will be on the design team for the cuttlebug challenge WELL DONE MEDA!!!

If you don't know her, you just have to check out her blog http://www.handmadebymeda.blogspot.com/ because her work is amazing and she can paint too!

My card today is one I made for a challenge last week. My 5 yr old Daughter Rhianna helped make it and I let her pick most of the papers for it. The paper in the left corner is a handmade paper I got in a bargain pack, as is the stripey paper. The gold embossed is a freebie from a magazine (which I really do like for a change!) and the white is some that a freind (Karen) from another group embossed for me before I had the cuttebug, but I used it on the debossed side because the other side didn't go. I finished it off with some papers cut into hearts and some ribbon, gems and a tag embelishment which says S.W.A.L.K from my stash. I'm not sure if I like this card (probably because I don't do valntines cards, either that or just because it's rubbish lol) but my daughter does so thats good enough for me :D

Thanks for stopping by today

Hugs Lora

My crafty surprise!

Yesterday I went to my local paper mill with my b/friend and my youngest daughter while my other 2 children were at school. I only went for some card and paper because they do fill a box for £5 and you can mix and match any of their colours or finishes. So we were having a look around (well actually my 3 yr old daughter was pulling me around and telling me what I should buy. Every time I go there I always drop hints when we pass the die cutting machines but I know every time that I will never get one as we don't have the money at the moment :( well a girl can dream can't she? So anyway my daughter takes me over to all the embelishments and insists that she needs a pack of purple mixed embelishments with buttons, sparkly hearts etc, so after me telling her no for who knows how many times, she went off to ask her Daddy, who by this time was at the till waiting to pay for my card and stuff. Anyway to cut a long story short, he had only just gone and bought me a cuttlebug!!! How excited was I!! I had absolutly no idea he was going to get me one so it was a huge surprise. He also told me to go look at the embossing folders and choose which ones I wanted, but they only had christmas ones in stock, so I didn't get any :( but I did get a die and 4 small embossing folders with the machine so at least I can use them just now :)
He's in my "good books" now for a long time I think lol. But seriously he really is just the best :D :D
Now I'm off to do some creating!

blog candy giveaway

I was just looking at some of my favourite blogs and papercrafts*by rach has a fantastic oppurtunity to win some great candy. All you have to do is go to Rachels blog and leave a comment on the appropriate post and then put a link back to her post in your blog, easy at that. Among all the lovely goodies there ae 2 sugar Nellie stamps, loads of brads, eyelets, and stickles to name a few!! So what you waiting for? Get yourself over there before Saturday the 1oth at 9pm (my time) to be in with a chance of winning.
Heres the link you need.
http://papercraftsbyrach.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-year-blog-candy.html
Wishing everyone good luck, especially myself as I could really be done with some new stamps lol.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Happy New Year!

I didn't do anything for new year this year, or for the last 10 years for that matter!!

But, I did make a new years resolution which is to stamp more, learn new techniques in cardmaking and to remember to post on my blog more often!

I haven't posted on here for a long time. I have no idea why because I am on my computer every day, but I am going to try harder this year to keep it updated and post more pics of my cards and other projects.

So today I thought I would show you a pic of a card I made for my step-sister who had a baby girl called Skye on the 30th of November. I haven't been to see her yet as they live 60 miles away :( but hopefully we will get up there to see them soon :)

Let me know what you think because I'm sure nobody ever comes on here :(