Made 4 tags for monthly swaps this week

It a bit of a week, on Tuesday teatime our irgin tivo crashed, along with their internet and our landline phone. Most houses in our road were reconnected in 2 hours, but 2 houses weren't and one of them was ours! We were finally reconnected on Friday lunchtime, butonly after the 2 Virgin tecvh guys came back 3 times.

One bonus to not having any internet, meant that instead of chatting to my dear friends on DC, which I really missed, it gave me the excuse to craft whilst watching DVDs we had had for ages and never got round to watching, my favourite was 'Atonement', but I also loved the cartoon 'All dogs go to Heaven' (our daughter is called Anner-Marie, like the girl in the story, and she had the film on video as a child and then bought it on DVD for her daughter, and mum!)

I belong to a monthly tag swap on the scrapbooking forum on DC, but had had no mojo and some poor health recently so had got behind.

August's theme was magical, we make a tag for our swap partner and the host.
This first tag is the tag I made for Kelly

It features, a ready-made tag, fairy pyramage, holographic peel-off butterflies and Papermania adhesive gems, and finished off with pale blue satin ribbon.

My 2nd tag was made for June our host this month

I coloured a donated stamped fairy image with promarkers. The tag is made from white hammered card, I stamped a frame acrylic stamp with clear embossing powder and brushed over it with Perfect Pearls 'Blue Patina', the first time I've used Perfect Pearls, saw the technique when Chloe was demonstrating on her Ideal World craft show last month. I used 3D sticky pads to attach the fairy to the tag and finished it with blue fibres.

September's theme is 'Back to school', which had me stumped, then I found some pyramage of a teacher. This tag is for June, my 1st partner for September. I aim to make my 2nd partner and the host tag for September next week.

This is a very simple tag, just using pyramage and red satin ribbon.

In December we are going to make 11 Christmas tags, one for each partner we have swapped with all year, so to save postage I made June's Christmas tag.

I used a donated Penny Black Christmas mouse (adore this image) and coloured it delicately with promarkers, I embellished the image with Papermania adhesive gems and layered it onto pearl card then made the tag from Kanban 'Blue Christmas Paisley' card, I finished the tag with with pale blue fibres.

we are away all weekend visiting our son Dan and his partner who live in Bristol and are in their final year of their law degrees, so will try and leapblog a bit Saturday morning, before we go, but then will try and catch up on Monday, have a wonderful crafty weekend everyone, and thankyou for any comments, your comments are so encouraging and each one is so appreciated, Fi xx

Been a bit of a month!! and first attempts using promarkers

As many of my friends already know on Wednesday 29th August I had a mild TIA (mini stroke) won't bore you with details, but got wonderful hubby and great support from family, friends and neighbours, excellent paramedics, fab new GP and superb pain consultant and slowly taking it a day at a time, I will recover. Still waiting for ressults of CT scan ths week from my ENT consultant. For now Carrie is living with her dad and other grandma as I'm not well enough to have her home yet.

Been left quite weak but hubby Andy and my mum gave me craft stash funds, so I bought tons of craft mags with fab cover gifts and also subscribed to Quick cards, purely because the subscription gift was 20 promarkers, which I've wanted for ages but couldn't afford til now. the other night, when unable to sleep, coloured my very first topper with promarkers and today made it into a quick card for a dear friend Sylvia on Do Crafts.

 Blogger won't let me upload the card, but this donated PB hedgie image was my 1st attempt at promarker colouring a topper, enjoyed it and it relaxed me, tho know I've a LONG way to go and so much to learn and more promarkers to add to my collection of around 30 so far!

I also received some die-cut embossed images from another DC friend and coloured 2 of them in this afternoon, making one into Andy's anniversary card, sorry don't know brand of stamps.(poor quality of images is down to scanner, and marks are on scanner, not toppers. Andy accidentally left our camera in our car and took it to work today, thats my excuse).

top image hasn't been made into a card yet, bottom image 'together forever' has been made into my anniversary card to Andy for our 28th wedding anniversary on 22nd September,when our daughter has booked a restaurant for 9 of us to go out and celebrate his 52nd birthday and its a double celebration as we got married on his 24th birthday! I've coloured the topper as close to our hair colours and the clothes in our fave colours too.

Promarker colours used:
Satin
Dusky Pink
Blush
Coral
Cinnamon
Cocoa
Pastel blue
Duck Egg
Amethyst
Aubergine
Poppy.

As Andy doesn't like anything too fancy I just added distress inks and put the topper on a pre-printed card

Tim Holtz distress inks used:
Shabby shutters
Tattered Rose

Happy anniversary and birthday Andy for this Saturday, you are my rock and so good to me, love you more each day and hope we have many more happy healthy years together, no matter what life throws at us!!
Fi xxx