My 30:th birthday cards

Thought I would showcase all the beautiful cards I get for my birthday on this post. If you have sent me a card - check back here as I will edit this post with new pics. I will also add a link in the sidebar so you can find this post easier and enjoy the cards I get.

I'm so happy for all the nice comments and birthday wishes I get from you. As I said before - I don't have much contact with my family and don't have any friends in the town I live in. I always imagined getting a surprise party with lots of friends on my 30:th b-day...It's a little sad so I'm very greatful for all of you, even if I don't "know" you.

I've been thinking about how to celebrate my day. Originally me and my fiancée were supposed to go to Thailand and dive, just like we did on his 30:th b-day, but since I've been ill I don't dare to go anywhere yet. I haven't had a totally painfree day yet and don't want to sit on a plane for 10 hours. It's quite boring to have your b-day in march since it's so darn cold here. Other things I've been thinking about is to go on some kind of spa treatment nearby or check in to a hotel or about getting make-up and hair done, but it all seems quite boring. Especially if I compare to how we celebrated my fiancées b-day. He had his b-day in august and we went to Malta. It all begin in spring when I surprised him with a plan where we both took a diving certificate. We did it all spring and summer and when we finally got it we went to Malta for 2 weeks. They have some amazing diving and on the day of his b-day we went diving 30 meters under water. The guide and I applauded under water as the depth meter turned exactly 30! It was such a brilliant way to spend it and it makes me so sad that I can't have something spectacular just like that. If we went somewhere (as I love to travel) I wouldn't feel so alone either I think. I'm so mad at this illness, but at the same time I'm thankful that I will get fully recovered. We have already decided that we will celebrate big when I turn 30,5 on september 13:th. I've always wanted to have my b-day in september as I love the beginning of autumn.

If you have any suggestions on how to celebrate - let me know.
I've been looking a bit on the net, but all they suggest is to celebrate with family and friends...
I'm thinking about doing a movie-marathon and see 2-3 movies after eachother. I really want to see the new Alice in wonderland. It just doesn't seem spectacular enough. I want to have a good story to tell when I'm old of how I celebrated my 30:th b-day (concidering my 20:th wasn't anything  special)

Ok, enough of my sobstory, here are the cards.

First card I got is from Esther in Netherlands. Love the colourcombo of this card and glitter. It's very "me". The butterflies are so beautiful and I love the blings on the text. Gorgeous Esther, thank you so much!

Next card on the list is from Linda in the UK. She also enclosed a lily of the valley stamp that is sooo cute! Thank you LInda. I love your colouring and choice of colours.

 

 

This one is from Lynn in the US. Love the dekadent look of it and glitter! Don't you just love glitter?

This card is from Maria in Norway. I really like the dryembossed and inked sentiment. The flower really makes the card stand out.

The inside is just as nice as the outside:

Third card came all the way from Australia. There were some really cute kangaroo postage stamps on the envelope. I've always wanted to go to Australia, it's my dreamplace no1. Maybe for my 40:th b-day? Love how different this card is. The sentiment is on vellum, the butterfly is embossed as is the background card. Just brilliant.

 

There was also a little giftie in there:

A card from Yara in the US. We belong to the same house mouse yahoo group and have "known" eachother for years. I think I'm on some kind of birthday list of hers because every now and then I get a card out of the blue. Love the colours and the embossed panel. Think I have to "lift" (aka steal, lol) this layout. Really like how it's put together from different panels.

This one is from my friend Sharon. I'm sooo glad I bought this stamp and it arrived a week earlier, otherwise I would've been so jealous. I just love this stamp! Don't know how to use it, but I already have bought a frog-die and saved some ribbon with frogfeet on it. I love her fab colouring and the colourchoice. I never would've thought to mix lime with brown, but it looks so good, don't you think? Oh, the inside says:"then hop on over to this side of 29!" I thought it was so sweet since I've been feeling a bit old *blush* The inside is fab decorated too in the same style.

This one is from Irina in Russia. It got to me in time Irina. That was fast! Love the cheery colour and the different size of her card. I also love how she used mulberry paper for the background. It really looks like a bouquet in wrapping paper seen from above, don't you agree? The flowers are made in 3D, some stand out more than others. Fab card, although I can't read what it says. I will figure it out although I'm a bit rusty. Just learned the russian alphabet on my own.

Last card - a very surprising one - is from another woman I know from one of my house mouse yahoo groups. I must be on her birthday list as I have not been active on that list for years. Just love the bright cheery colours. You can really see how the mice are basking in the sun. Love the usage of stickers. I have way too many that I never use as I'm sure you have to.

This one is from Andrea in Germany. She also included a magnolia stamp that I've been wanting to have, but was too cheap to buy, lol. Thank you so much Andrea! Love the colours on this card and the beads on a string are brilliant! Love the little embossed hearts too.

Next, a card from Linda, Sweden. I love that it looks like the kitty is holding the same flower she has put in the right lower corner. Almost like a real memorbilia. Fab colouring too. Love the ribbons and flowers.

Last but not least - the card that dropped in today was from Elsina in Israel.I really like the motif and the smaller sized card. Fab colours too. Did you notice that the girl's dress is the same pattern (but smaller) than the background paper? Just gorgeous.

Last a card I got last week or even earlier, but it hid on the side of my bookshelf. Naughty naughty. I got some great images with it too. It's from Monika in Germany. I love the elegant look of this and the style of the saying. A bit of bling doesn't hurt ;)

Thanks a lot ladies. I'm really happy for the cards. It brightens my day to get up and see envelopes on the floor in the hallway (we get our mail through a slot in the door)

Cultivate love

 

Here is my last card for the wedding card contest over at caardvarks. I really liked the idea of a weddingcard with a strong colour like fushia. It's a little different from all the white/cream/pastel colours. I wish I had more time to play around with this. 

The stamp I used I won in a candy and it had a wonderful matching saying "cultivate love". I wanted to incorporate it somehow in the card, but it didn't fit. So I thought I'd put the saying on the inside. I also added a brad from a wedding set - a little heart. I think this one is one of my fav of the weddingcards.

Not too bad of a photo either concidering it's in the middle of the night and photographed with a flash.

Wedding card bonanza

Today I'm inviting you to take a look at a bunch of weddingcards I've made. I meant to wish you a happy Valentine's yesterday, but my poor computer got a virus :( Hopefully it's fixable. Right now I can't access any photos, print any texts or check my candycalendar. Good thing we have a laptop my fiancée borrowed from work so I can have some contact with the world.

Yesterday I worked the whole night on weddingcards. Caardvarks are having a contest where the winning weddingcard will get published in CARDS magazine. I would love to get that opportunity!

I have made many cards because I had sooo many ideas. I photographed them just before the daylight went away. Still have a couple of ideas, but we'll see if I will make more. Those pics won't get as good. I don't have access to my photoediting program due to the virus, so I haven't been able to crop the pics or do anything fancy with them.

Here are a couple of my cards:

The first one fits a sketch over at papertake weekly.

With or without the text "tying the knot". I had to handwrite it...

I used a stamp from sweet pea stamps and turned it into a weddingstamp. She is coloured with grey to add shades and silver glitter. In her hair she has a charm and a piece of mesh (looking like a vail) peeps from behind the image.

A simple yet elegant card. Different glitter put on the embossed parts.

A little different weddingcard. Handmade cutout bird with stamped flying birds on it. A tail made out of a feather and a vail out of mesh behind its head. A pearlbrad by the tail and for an eye.With or without text.       

Hope you enjoyed them. Now I'll be putting cardmaking a little bit to the side and start sewing, knitting and making jewelry again. I just finished a pair of earrings and a necklace yesterday so those pics will come soon.

Moving magic

A quick post today since it's already very late here.

I've been playing with "moving" as a theme from the floral fantasies blog. It was open to interpretation and I thought this card was very clever for the challenge at hand. They have a lot of prizes so naturally I had to join :) The sponsor for all prizes is Sir Stampalot who are celebrating their move to a spacious new shop in Peterborough.

I made the card using sweetpea stamps only.It might not look that spectacular at first glance, but the fun part is that you move the tab up or down on the left so that the frame reveals different messages...

 

  

I wrote the word "magic" above the image with black glitterglue.  My b-day is not far away and I've wished for a daylight lightbulb, so hopefully soon I'll have my own lighttent and will be able to take good photos at all times instead of having to upload better pics the day after. Takes up more time that I could be spending crafting ;)

I've also been trying to finish a bag I started about a year ago. I couldn't figure out how to sew together the edges and last week I finally remembered to take it to my sewing supply store. They are always so helpful and she helped me with the one edge I was almost finished with, it only needed a few more stitches. I was very hopeful when starting on the other one...aaaarrrghhhhh!!!! Same darn thing. Here's how it looks:

The good side, almost perfect, just a tiiiiny hole which I don't care about at this point)

The other side which drives me nuts. Soon there will be no fabric left from all the sewing back and forth and unravelling.

Why does it do that!? It drives me nuts since I can't even figure out what's wrong.Any ideas?

Magnolia love

Hi and welcome back to my blog. I'm so happy about the nice comments you leave me.
With this card I think I'm going to break my personal record of how many challenges I enter. I usually think it's better to make a card for a couple of challenges, but sometimes it's fun to see how many you can combine. I coul've even added more stuff to join in more, but I thought the card was done like this.

I've used my wonderful new Magnolia I got this friday. I'm not an impulse-shopper, but when I saw this stamp I just had to have it! I love the details. She is such a delight to colour. I'm adding some images of her in my candy so don't forget to enter! She's called ladybug Tilda, but I think she suits perfectly for Valentine's. I also picked up the beautiful paper that has hearts on it (doesn't show that well here).
I  masked her with a scrolly heart from Penny Black. The text is computergenerated and the heart and keyhole are a qk die.

Ok, so on to the challenges I'm entering with this card:

ABC - new stash
By the cute and girly - love
Challenge up your life  - Valentine's incl.hearts
Charisma cardz  - I love you
C.R.A.F.T - Valentine's or love
Crafty calendar - love and friendship
Crazy for challenges - be my Valentine
Creative card crew - Valentine's
Cute card thursday - spots and dots
Double dutch  - be my Valentine
Fussy and fancy  - hearts
Lili of the valley  - valentine's
Magnolia stamp lovers  - buttons or bows or both
Paper play challenges  - love notes
Penny's paper  - Valentine's/love
Pile it on - to the one you love
Raise the bar  - heart to heart
Roses on paper - a sketch
Simon says stamp - photo inspiration, a red rose
Stamp somethings  - love somethings
Stampin for the weekend  - love is in the air
Stamptacular - love is in the air
Stamp with fun - hearts
Tanda stamps  - for a loved one
The pink elephant  - mushy gushy Valentine

Phew, now I just need hop over to all the blogs and sign up :D

Promarkers: ivory, blush, primrose, pastel yellow, pastel pink, pale pink, cocktail pink, antique pink, cardinal red, burgundy.
Papers: making memories
Others: qk die, cuttlebug embossing folder

February customer challenge

I'm back to my DT position at sweet pea stamps and I'd like to let you know about a challenge we have now on the blog.. You need to make an ATC (artist trading card) - (size approx 2 1/2" x 3 1/2")

DETAILS:

*Use only Sweet Pea Stamp(s)
*Can only use 3 colors.
*Can use any embellishments you choose.

Due: Must post to your website anytime during the week of February 7th then post to Mister Linky on our blog.

We will use the Random Generator to pick a winner on Feb 14th. The winner will be posted on our website and will win a $5 gift voucher to use towards Sweet Pea Stamps. The winner can also cut and paste the "I was challenged, and won!" badge, to their blog.

Here are two I made during the Christmas holidays.Don't forget to enter my candy where I'm giving away afull sheet of sweet pea stamps!

Hold fast to dreams...

...for if dreams die, life is like a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

I'm very proud to show you my first altered project! I'm so ridculously proud of it. Mostly because I manged to silence that little voice in my head (coming from my mum) asking "what's it for?" and just going all out! It inspires me and makes me happy. Maybe that's what it's for? I've never tried it before so I never realized that could be the answer.

I started by having my new Whiff of joy stamp Willow catching leaves and a clear stamp set from Hero arts. Somewhere in my mind I put those two stamps together. I initially wanted to make a card, but it would be quite big so I decided to alter something. Luckyly I came across this box at a sale for $1. It has a clear sheet window that came off (probably why it was on sale). It suited me perfectly. I started by painting the whole box in brown shades with golden smears here and there (only shows on the back) I glued on a sheet of paper from old world stack from Die cuts with a view. I bought it years ago. It was sooo expensive so I've just used two sheets so far, lol. I added silky ribbons to the front edges with a buckle on the brown ribbon and lace around the sides.
Willow is coloured with my promarkers and I used different versamarks to colour in the birds before I embossed them with clear EP. All the flowers and cut outs are from a paperpack I bought a while ago. It's from Webster's pages called magical wishes & a sweet life.. Box measures around 18x20cm (7x8").

I made one of my custom made birds by cutting it with a qk die and embossing it with a CB embossing folder.Then I added "tailfeathers" by cutting up a flower and using three petals that I distressed and edged with red ink. I computergenerated the saying to fit one of my cuttlebug labels. The flowers are different prima with different pearls and blings added to the middle.

I added a metalcharm to the upper flower. It was silver in the beginning, but I alcohol inked it with "espresso" and "butterscotch" to make it suit the project better. Thought I was very clever with that. I remembered Tim (Holtz) saying you could colour anything in in the shade you want. I did the same with some of the middle pearls. They were very yellow golden from the start. I also added a decoration to the left flower and something else to the right. Can you spot the purple shrink plastic butterfly?

 

I'm entering this project to a Swedish challenge blog called handarbeta scrap that wanted you to alter something.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my project as much as I did making it. I'm definately putting this up somewhere in my corner.

You are so deer to me

Whaaa, I only have 10 min left before the challenge closes so this will be a quick post.

I made this card for the sugar bowl blog. They had a sketch and "lace" as their challenge. I couldn't find any lace that matched so I made a lacey border instead.

I will edit this post and add better photos tomorrow. Now it's 1am here and I need to go to sleep.
Hugs to you all.

PS. I love how the card turned out. I just whipped it up in an hour. Pink is just so easy to work with! I had planned to use this stamp and qk die as soon as I saw them. Took me several months to get them, but now I finally have them!

Promarkers: putty, tan, blush, vanilla, umber, baby pink, cocktail pink, dusky rose, lavender, slate, blender.

Happy birthday Tina

I'm very happy to be showing you a b-day card I made for a woman named Tina that I shared room with at the hospital. I used my new stamp from Whiff of joy that I think is sooo cute! I just love the content look st his face. The bright colours and glittery papers wrap it up.

He is coloured with promarkers. Did you notice the shade he casts under him on the gifts? I'm quite proud of that colouring. I feel like I'm getting better and better at that :)

 

I used a sketch from Lili of the valley. The sketch was absolutely brilliant but I thought I was too late to enter. Then I noticed it ends tomorrow, so I just made it! I'm also entering this card for the promarker challenge that had "all creatures big and small" as their theme. Cute card thursday had "blooming gorgeous" and dutch dare cardchallenges had "summer in winter". Pile it on also wanted summery colours and one stop craft challenge wanted something personal. ABC challenge had N for new this week and I have new papers, stamp and flowers.

I also found a bunch of new challenge blogs to add to my long list. Here are a few that my card fit:

belli challenge - RIBBONS (I've had this ribbon for ages and never found anything to use it with)

Crafty creations  - WINGS (the little dragonflies)

Your next stamp - ANYTHING THAT SPARKLES (Wish you could see these beautiful glitter papers)

Hope you enjoyed my card. Now I'm off to make another one. I also need to get strted on my DT card for sweet pea stamps. I got january off due to me being sick, but now I'm back, so you'll be seeing at least one sweet pea card/week. See you soon ;)

Promarkers: tan, putty, walnut, cinnamon, pear green, moss, sunflower, ginger, honeycomb, amber, pumpkin, orange, blender
Papers: SEI
Stamp: Whiff of joy

Big 30:th birthday celebration candy!

CANDY IS NOW CLOSED! 
CHECK THIS POST FOR WINNERS

I'm so happy because I have FINALLY photographed all candy I've put together for you. It was freezing being on the balcony photographing, but so worth it. I've been wanting to do a candy since summer and now it's finally here! I'm having it mainly to celebrate my 30:th birthday on march 13:th. Have you noticed the fancy border and text I've added to the right corner? I'm so proud I managed to figure it out, lol. Here are some details of the candy:

Ok, so hopefully now you are very tempted and eager to find out how to join. First of all there will be three winners splitting the goodies listed above:

1. This prize below will go to one of my 58 followers I have so far. I want to show you how much I apreciate you for reading my ramblings and for signing up. Still not sure why you did it, but I'm greatful :D It consists of some papers, a clearstamp, flowers, decorations, some images and a handmade crocheted brooch I made the other day that has a charm that says "made with love". Just a little token to show my apreciation. I just learned how to make crocheted flowers and this was my first one. I'm so proud! Hopefully you'll find it useful.

2. This candy below will go to one of you that send me a birthday card. I don't have much contact with my family and don't have any friends in the town I live, it's just me and my sweetheart. Even though we have fun and celebrate it feels a little sad during my b-days. I would love to have a surprise party filled with people that love me and I love back. I'm not very good at making friends though so I'm hoping my blogfriends will want to celebrate me.
If you want to send me a card e-mail me (address found under my profile in the sidebar) and I will send you my snail addy. I don't want to post it here. Write "b-day candy" in the subject line to make it easier for me to sort. If you have a blog mail me the address too so I know who you are. That way I have better control of who gets my address.
The candy consists of some doublesided papers, images, a HÄnglar stamp, flowers and decorations.

3. And finally the big candy for everyone that spread the word and become a follower. Candy consists of:
*papers
*stamped images from companies like Whiff of joy, sweet pea stamps, magnolia,penny black,house mouse hÄnglar&stÄnglar etc.
*stickers
*brads
*flowers
*buttons, beads, postage stamps
*all sorts of cut-outs
*fibers
*stampsheet plate #16 from sweet pea stamps

Ok, so here are the rules:

A: Prize1 is only for my 58 followers so far.
B: If you want a chance on prize 2 you need to send me a b-day card (to Sweden). E-mail me and I will send you my snail addy. E-mail me when you have sent your card so I know to expect it. It takes about 1 week for letters to get to Sweden from the US and about 3 days from Europe.You don't need to add any comment here (unless you also want to join prize 3 of course) I will draw a name among the cards sent in. If winner lives in Sweden, Norway or Finland I will give them another candy and draw another winner. This is because I want the hÄngel stamp go to someone who can't buy it themself from the hÄnglar shop. If you've found this candy close to closing date and you still want to send me a card, it's ok. Just e-mail me saying it will be late. I trust you send it.
C: Prize 3 is for everone in blogland. You need to sign up as follower, spread the word that it's my 30:th b-day by grabbing the image below and putting it in your sidebar (or/and posting about it). And if you could leave a comment telling me how I could improve my blog, what's good, what you would like to see more of (eg. more pics, tutorials, more detailed description etc.) Add your name to mr linky (hopefully it works) I  will be checking to make it fair to everyone. Only one entry per person please. I will ship internationally.Candy ends on my b-day march 13:th 23.59 (11.59pm my time - see clock in my sidebar) and I will annonce the winner shortly after that. I won't contact the winner, so you have to get back to me. The winner will need to get back to me within 3 days or I'll draw a new winner.

EDIT: I'm leaving the candy open for a couple of extra days - until sunday march 21:st. Candy B is closed though.

Clear as mud hopefully :D Let me know if it's not. Now let the spreading begin ;)
HERE you can see the cards I've gotten so far.