Fall Pearl Painting - Squirrel & Fox Set

 Hello crafting friends.  Since I enjoyed the pearl painting suncatchers, I decided to try out the canvas pearl painting option, and it was just as fun  :-)

I think they're both super cute but I must admit that I'm disappointed with the colours of the beads, especially the ones for the Squirrel.  I purchased these as a set, thinking that their colours would match, but as you can see, the pumpkins on the Fox look much better than the ones on the Squirrel canvas.  I'm also disappointed at the colours the manufacturer chose for the Squirrel.  It doesn't really stand out, does it?

As I mentioned before, I'm going thru a learning curve of what brands I like and the ones I don't.  I love the design of these two, but not so much the colours of pearls they sent with them.  Since by next week, the Halloween decorations will go up, I'm going to leave these up on my wall for now, and maybe next year, I will try something different.

You're probably wondering what happened to my card making ~ I'm still making cards but I'm having fun on these new hobbies of mine too :-)

Thanks for stopping by.  I'll chat to you again soon and share a new project.

Hugs,

Book Nook ~ Magic Station

 As I mentioned before, hubby is retired now and this is a hobby that we enjoy doing together. With him being a Mechanical Engineer, it helps a lot when we have gears, motors, lights and sound boxes to put together to make things move and play :-)

This book nook came out beautifully and was easy-ish to put together.  Not quite happy with just how it would light up, hubby decided that it would be so much better to add the Hedwig melody to it since there is a sign that says 9 3/4 station :-)  So after a little investigation, he got a sound module, recorded the song and voila, now it lights up and plays the song and it is absolutely stunning!

Another addition to this book nook that hubby made was to replaced the 2 x AA battery pack with a USB connection, and it is now connected to a power bank, which helps with the hassle of having to replace batteries frequently :-)

We are busy with another book nook which will be a piece of Halloween home décor, rather than a normal book nook.  I will come back and share it with you once it's made.  This one is proving to be a little more difficult - lots of tiny pieces and the quality of the materials are not as good, but that is one of the problems we've encountered so far.  Different brands equals different quality of materials and ease of it all coming together nicely.  We are both very persistent, so it will get done :-)

This is all I have to share for today.  I hope you had fun visiting.

Hugs,

Another New To Me Hobby :-)

 Hello crafting friends.  I know that Diamond Painting has been around for a few years now, but I just did not think that I had the patience required to spend hours placing little gems in a row to create a picture.  Having said that, I have seen some AMAZING art work done by some of you that I absolutely WOW about, but I always thought that it wasn't for me. Well, I saw these Halloween decorations on Amazon, and having just the right place in the house for them, I thought I would give it a try.  They will go perfectly with the rest of my Halloween decor which I put out on the very first day of October 👻🎃

I loved working on them!!!  Now, bear in mind that they are not an entire row by row canvas, just a few gems to fill in an image.  Honestly, I still don't think I would enjoy doing a large canvas, but with these much smaller ones, I'm having fun.  These are 10" x 10" acrylic suncatchers.  I'm having so much, that I ordered a few Christmas "Pearl Painting" ones.  I've completed one and I can honestly say that it was as much fun as these ones. I will share them once I'm finished "painting" them.

As I mentioned above, these are actually suncatchers, but I have the 2" slatted blinds on all the windows in my home.  These blinds diminish the suncatcher effect as you get dark stripes, across the picture, 2" apart from each other.  I think that hanging them up on my light painted wall makes them pop beautifully. The colour of my wall is actually somewhere between the top pic and the two bottom ones.  Not sure why taking a pic of both changed the wall colour.

Well, friends, that is all I have to share with you today.  I hope you enjoyed your visit and will come back soon.

Crafty hugs,

Crafty Gals Corner #280 ~ Anything Goes w/twist - Fall Foliage

     Hello crafting friends and welcome to our monthly challenge

 at Crafty Gals Corner! 

 

  In just a couple of weeks or so, Fall officially begins, so with that in mind, here is the theme for our challenge this month.

~ Anything Goes w/optional twist - Fall Foliage ~

Sometimes, I gather bits and pieces that are laying around on my desk and put them together to make a card.  This is such a card.  The problem with this is that I have no clue where the stitching pattern came from.  I also don't remember from which cutting sheet, this fox layered image came from.  So I apologise in advance, but I don't have too many details to give you on this card.

On the inside, I stamped the greeting using the Thankful for You stamp set from Cardz TV.  I added a couple of little Fall leaves to both sides of the sentiment for a little interest.  I punched these out using a punch from Recollections.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  We would love to see you play along with us.   You have until noon, CST, on 13 October 2026, to link your project to

our challenge.

Hugs,

Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round ~ R, S is for ...

  Hello and welcome to this month's challenge at Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round.

Our challenge this month is R, S is for ...

R is for ... Reindeer, Rudolph, Ribbons

S is for ... Santa, Snowman, Stocking

I made two cards for this challenge.

Card no. 1 ~ R is for Robins

The card base is a file from Silhouette that I resized in order to fit the Robins image.  For the decorations on the sides, I used the Christmas Holly Punch die from Marianne Design, and the Holly Leaves & Pine Branches die set from Lea'bilities.

This sweet image is from Hunkydory's Little Book of Robins

On the inside I stamped the sentiment using the Christmas Greetings stamp set from Great Impression Stamps, and added a few leaves and berries that were left over from the front of the card. 

Card no. 2 ~ S is for Stocking 

The front of the card was created by merging a few Silhouette files together to get the look I wanted.

To make the pop up on the inside, I used the Stocking Pop-up from Karen Burniston.

It's very cute.  As you open and close the card, the stocking stuffers pop in and out of the stocking 😊

I made a panel for the back and used the Christmas Greetings stamp set from Great Impression Stamps.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  Now it's your turn to make a Christmas project and join in the fun.  You have till the end of the month to link your project to our blog at  Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round.

Single Rose Sympathy Card

 Hello everyone.  I have another sympathy card to share with you today.

These are the materials I used to create this card:

Card base - card kit from The Netherlands

Rose - Cutting Sheet by Nel Van Veen 

Butterflies - Marth Stewart Punch

Greeting - Mini Messages Stamps by CardzTV

Greeting mats - StampinUp! punches

Inside Sentiment - computer generated

Thank you so much for stopping by today.  I hope to see you again next time.

Hugs,

Crafty Gals Corner #279 ~ Anything Goes w/twist - Summer Vibes

    Hello crafting friends and welcome to our monthly challenge

 at Crafty Gals Corner! I hope you're all enjoying the end of your Summer!

  The theme for our challenge this month is

~ Anything Goes w/optional twist - Summer Vibes ~

It was my daughter's birthday last week and since she loves everything to do with the sea, I created this easel card for her.

When closed for mailing, this card measures 5.5" x 5.5".  There is a little bulk to it with the sea shells but since I hand delivered it, it was not a problem.  If I had planned on mailing it, I would have used sea shell dies instead of using the real small shells.

These are the crafty supplies I used to make this card:

Marianne Design - Sea Shells Stitching Border

DMC Embroidery Floss - various colours used (3 strands)

Cottage Cutz - Sand Dollar

Memory Box - Seahorses

Sue Wilson - Aquatic Plants

Joy! Crafts - Bille's Coral

Cardz TV - Mini Messages

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  We would love to see you play along with us.   You have until noon, CST, on 8 September 2026, to link your project to

our challenge.

Hugs,

Oval Slatted Birthday Card

Hello everyone and welcome back.  While cleaning up some craft supplies, I found this pretty paper from Marianne Designs called Country Flowers.

After rummaging through my dies, I thought this Slatted & Eclipse Oval die from Divinity Designs would work well and so I went to work.

I never get tired of this slatted look.  It's so subtle but makes a pretty paper really stand out. 

I normally cut out the slatted shape 3 times using thick cardstock.  Then I adhere each layer to each other using liquid glue.  I find that these 3 layers plus the pretty paper layer gives it enough height without adding too much bulk.  This is especially important when you mail cards overseas. Anything thicker than 1/4" requires additional postage.

On the inside, I used the following products:

Stampabilities - Elegant Happy Birthday

VersaFine Clair Inks - Shady Lane

eK punches - photo corners

And that was a quick and easy birthday card done. It doesn't show on the pic, but I did add a couple of small lilac butterflies to the inside just to add a little more interest and to match the front of the card.  

See you again soon.

Hugs,

 

New to me Hobby

 Hello everyone.  I have not made cards in a bit and that is because I'm having so much fun with book nooks.  I'm totally hooked on building these things.  I find it so fun and relaxing.  Such a feeling of accomplishment watching it grow as you put all the pieces together.

Pics don't do it justice.  There are so many intricate details that you just can't see from the photo.  This is the first one I ever build, but I'm on my third one already and loving it. This one is called Romantic Venice by Rolife. I'll take pics of the others and share them with you in another post.  One is for Christmas and the other for Halloween.

Interesting story - my son's girlfriend was the first one to build one of these.  My daughter and I loved it but I thought, at the time, that the pieces were just too tiny I would not have the patience to build one.  Well, my daughter got herself one and got hooked.  After seeing all her pretty ones, she's built over 10 of them, I thought I would try my hand at it and so I got one for my birthday, which was back in March. It took me this long to give it a try and I have to admit that I'm having loads of fun!!!  My son's girlfriend, the one who started it all, built one and thought "never again" 😂  She build hers but didn't really enjoy it.  Isn't it funny how things work out?

Let me know in a comment below whether you have tried to build one of these and how you feel about it :-)

Cheers for now.

Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round ~ P, Q is for ...

 Hello and welcome to this month's challenge at Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round.

Our challenge this month is G, H is for ...

P is for ... Pinecone, Presents, Peppermint

Q is for ... Quilt (sorry, I could not find anymore for Q but look below at my second card😀)

Card no. 1 - P is for Penguins

I love the idea of these cuties having a snowball fight. What a fun way to spend time at Christmas!

I used the following to create this scene:

Festive Friends Delightful Die Cuts Pad - Hunkydory - penguins, igloo, snowballs

Winter Wonderland Paper Pad - The Paper Studio - snowflake background

Silhouette - snowy tree, snow banks

I created the Merry Christmas greeting die cut using the Silhouette.

Snowflakes are from the same die cuts pad as the rest of the images.

* * *

Card no. 2 - Q is a for Quaint Village

It's hard to find a Christmas word beginning with the letter "Q", so this might be a bit of a stretch, but what do you all think?  It works, right?  It reminds me of all those quaint little villages you see on Christmas movies. The various layers of this card base were pulled from various designs from different Silhouette files.

The village is from Hearty Crafts 3D Toppers - Winter Villages collection.

The trees were cut using a die from Cottage Cutz called Fir Trees.

On this card, I used the 2mm foam squares, from Hunkydory, to adhered each layer to each other.  It looks beautiful, but it does add quite a bit of bulk to the card. I will either hand deliver it or mail it locally.

The Merry Christmas greeting was cut using the Silhouette. The tree was cut with the same die I used to cut the trees for the front of the card.  I used a white Gelly Roll pen to add the "snow".

Thanks so much for stopping by.  Now it's your turn to make a Christmas project,  and to come play along with us.  You have till the end of the month to link your project to our blog at  Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round.

Hugs,