My Little Boy Turns Two!!!!

Last week my gorgeous little boy turned two!!!! I'm sure it was only yesterday that he was this big:

 

It's unbelievable how quickly those two years have flown by and hard to imagine how life was before he arrived in this world. He brings me more joy than I could ever have imagined and truly is the light of my life.

So to celebrate Elliot's 2nd birthday we had a party in the park for his closest little friends. It was so much fun!!! I made the invites and party bags for his very cute party guests. Elliot has been absolutely in love with dogs for quite a while now and likes to be a dog at least once or twice a day- so I decided that little dog invitations would be perfect. I got the template for these adorable little dogs from a swap I received at the Perth Regionals from Pat Carr (who makes amazing punch art creations). The colour scheme came from the really cute Celebrations DSP. To make the invites that more snazzy the little dog's nose and the number 2 were made shiny with Crystal Effects. 

Each of the little kiddy winks who came to Elliot's party got a party bag to take home. Again I used the gorgeous Celebrations DSP for the colour scheme and to add some extra colour and cuteness to the bags. Each bag had a different band of the paper and was individualised with a shiny, Crystal Effect'd first initial of their name. I did take photos of all the bags together before the party but somehow they disappeared from my camera (BOO HOO!!!) so I only have these bags from two little people who couldn't make it (both with "M" names as it turns out).

 

   

To go inside the goody bags I made these super cute crayon boxes. I got the idea from Lisa Jansen's  gorgeous colouring card swap that she made for Convention this year. They turned out so fantastic- I love them- so worth the effort!!! The bags also had some stickers, a cute little Postman Pat badge (that Mum got in England as a charity fundraiser) and a little cellophane bag wrapped in ribbon with yummy chocolate buttons inside. Really lovely!

We had such a fun and special day...........here is a photo of the birthday boy himself with his doggy birthday cakes made by his very clever Nanny.

 

Happy Birthday my darling boy xxx

Thanks for popping by for a look. See you soon with some more creations.

Hip-Hippo-Thankyou!!! JAI Challenge 37

Happy Sunday............


I have to tell you I have completely and totally fallen in love with creating again!!! I don't know what happened there for a while but I just felt that I was creating because I HAD to (for orders, stamp club, etc) not because I WANTED to. But something amazing happened for no reason at all and I am back doing what I love most because I truly want to. It's fantastic!!!


The joy that comes with loving stamping again is that ideas just bounce into my head without really having to think about them. And that is exactly what happened with this card for this week's Just Add Ink  challenge. The girls have set a colour challenge this week and when I first looked at them I thought "Whoa!!!" but that quickly turned into "Wow Fun Colours!!!". Here they are:

This is actually the first time EVER that I have used Always Artichoke and I would never have thought of putting it with the other colours. This is the fun (and just a little bit cute!) card I came up with using these fun colours:

Project Redipe

Stamp Sets:     Pun Fun; Short and Sweet

Inks:               Rose Red; Pumpkin Pie; Old Olive; Always Artichoke; StazOn Black

Card/Paper:    Rose Red; Always Artichoke; Pumpkin Pie; Old Olive; Watercolour Paper

Accessories:    Circle Scissors Plus; Big Shot; Polka Dot Embossing Folder; Trio Flower Punch (retired); Word Window Punch; Scallop Oval Punch (for the cute little tab around the sentiment); Designer Buttons (Brights); Adhesive Pearls; Rose Red Double Stitched Grosgrain Ribbon; Aqua Painter

Now this little hippo with her balloon is meant for a birthday card of course but I happened to need a thank you card so I changed her cute little balloon into a cute little button flower. I don't actually own the Scallop Circle Die for the Big Shot so I traced my Rose Red Scallop from a Carousel Note (retired) in my stash- not bad hey?!?!? I've been practicing, what I like to call, my Teneale Williams' bows and I think they are starting to look quite snazzy- what do you think????

Well that's enough from me for now. My parents arrive home from England today- Yippee- Elliot and I are both so excited to have them back. I'm also in the middle of making some goodies for the little guy's 2nd birthday party on Wednesday. I promise to come back and share them soon.

Have a lovely day.

Inkspirations Guest Designer- That's Me!!!

What a wonderful surprise it was last Friday when my card was announced the winner of the Inkspirations challenge.........very exciting!!! And what made it more exciting was the opportunity to be the Guest Designer for this week's challenge.
Makeesha has set this colour challenge for this week:

I have to admit I really struggled for a while with these colours. The bold navy and red are two colours that I would not normally think of putting together. Then I couldn't get the idea of flowers out of my head.......no matter how hard I tried. So here is my flowery card using the challenge colours:

Project Recipe

Stamp Sets:   Vintage Vogue; Flower Fancy; Curly Cute

Inks:             Not Quite Navy; Kiwi Kiss (retired); Riding Hood Red

Card/Paper:  Not Quite Navy; Very Vanilla; Kiwi Kiss (retired); Bella Bleu DSP (retired); Watercolour Paper

Accessories:  Circle Scissors Plus; Scallop Oval Punch; Corner Rounder Punch; Stampin Pastels; Kiwi Kiss/Very Vanilla Satin Ribbon (retired)

I'm actually really, really happy with how it has turned out. To get the muted effect of the Not Quite Navy flourishes on the circle I firstly slightly dampened some watercolour paper  and then stamped off the image twice before stamping on the circle. The scallop around the edge of the circle is created using the scallop oval punch. The little tab for the sentiment is made using the scallop oval punch and cutting off the top and bottom, an idea I got from Lisa Jansen. I was so excited to get the chance to use the truly gorgeous (and now retired) Kiwi Kiss and Very Vanilla satin ribbon again.


Thank you Makeesha for choosing my card as the winner and for the opportunity to guest design this week. Have loved every second xxx


Will be back later to show you Elliot's super cute 2nd birthday party invites that I have been working on this week.