Mr & Mrs Wedding Card

 Here's a card made for an order for an upcoming August wedding. No colourscheme to work from so I went for simple, smart colours that gave the card a classy look. It's quite a chunky, weighted card so hopefully it shall make a nice keepsake for the couple.

I got to try out my newly obtained, retired Mr & Mrs Stampin' Up stamp (thanks Paula for sourcing it for me). After a few stamps in different colours I ventured into heat embossing the Mr & Mrs and I'm quite pleased with how it came out in the silver.    The flowers are layered with a white polka dot flower behind a black polka dot flower and a clear gem brad to hold them together. The black card is very glittery and compliments the glimmer of the silver card body.After tidying up my study for decorating recently I came across this pale grey ribbon with the silver thread which turned out to blend with the rest of the card perfectly, didn't want to overload it with too much glitter and sparkle.
The customer was very happy with the card so lets the couple will be too.     

Wedding Card For Teachers

 This wedding card was an order from a regular customer, a lady who regularly gives me challenge cards to make..this card was cetainly no exception...

The couple are getting married today (19th July 2014) and they are both teachers, one teaches P.E and the other teaches science.

So the challenge was to include the following in the design:

• Their names- Ben & Alex
• Science theme
• P.E theme
• The wedding date
• Something wedding based

 This is what I came up with after many weeks of sketching and resketching ideas....

Late one night a brain wave came to me to try and make their names using elements from the periodic table to add the science to the card..this worked perfectly till the ex of Alex...so I made a new element that follows on from the last in the real periodic table to cover it. 

 

The sport theme came into the card in the form of a cricket bat, which I added the wedding date to.. I then figured I could make the name elements look like an equation where the date on the bat was the solution.

I then added the wedding element to the card using my favourite heart embossing plate, To Have and To Hold ribbon and hearts to represent the bride and groom.

Hopefully the couple like it as much as the lady who ordered it from me did...roll on the next design challenge!

Protein Baking

Recently we have been trying to really kickstart a healthier eating plan in our house.... so we have invested in the Protein Pow(d)er cookbooks and been trying out some of her website recipes too.

The first recipe I had to try was Powtella...the healthy protein bersion of Nutella, who doesn't love Nutella?! The link to the recipe is here.

A couple of days later Anna posted and idea of how to use leftover Powtella for something even better.... Dark chocolate protein truffles...another thing that I had to try immediately, had just about enough Powtella left to make 7 little truffles. The recipe is here.

Anybody else find cookies to be a major downfall in their healthy eating attempts? We certainly do in our house so finding a recipe for protein, low sugar cookies was perfect for us and they taste amazing. Chocloate and peanutbutter protein cookies are to die for and so tasty you don't even realise they are so much healthier than 'normal' cookies. Will definitely make more of these! The recipe can be found here.

Anyone that knows me knows I'ma  total coffee addict so the recipe for Coffee & Whey protein bars was just too good to pass up on...and with no baking and very little effort required to make these bars they were perfect as a quick make when I didn't have a great deal of time but felt the urge to make something. The recipe can be found here.

Totally in love with Anna's recipes and we both loved the items I've made so far... will be trying many more of them in the coming months and hopefully making our eating habits just that little bit healthier!

Blended Bloom and Blendabilities

Just got my hands on some of the new Stampin Up kit for 2014... I've started with the new Blended Bloom Stamp and 2 sets of Blendabilities.

After a quick lesson in how to use Blendabilities (thanks Paula) I had a go at whipping up a sympathy card for a friend who lost a dear family member recently. I even learnt that clear buttons can be coloured in using Blendabilities too!

I've used:

• Blended Bloom stamp
• Daffodil Delight Blendabilities
• Summer Starfruit cardstock
• Summer Starfruit ribbon
• Love & Sympathy sentiment
• Memento Tuxedo Black ink pad
• Decorative Label punch

 Then I moved on to a birthday card for another friend, much easier to make.

 For this card I tried out my new Cherry Cobbler Blendabilities... I can see this Blended Bloom getting used quite a bit for a while longer now, especially if you see how many cards using it I've pinned on Pinterest. My Stampin Up Inspiration board is here.

I'm impressed with the new Blendabilities but you do have to let them dry before you get the full effect of how they are going to come out. I was a bit put off when I put the darker colours on as I never thought they wouldm blend or look half decent with the really light pen in the kit....I have been proven wrong and now I think I need more sets of these in the other colours too!