Ideas everywhere

On Monday I had to take my daughter to buy school shoes (at the last minute of course, as you do). My husband broke his foot a few weeks ago so walking around the shops is not really his thing at the moment. This meant of course that the girls and I could linger and browse to our hearts content on the way to Clarks.

As requested by Hailey we spent a fair amount of time in Next. I so love the little people clothes at Next. So many cute ideas, colours and inspiration for cards and layouts.

Wouldn't these flip flops make a really fab card - imagine little paper pieced shoes.

 ... or these. That vibrant green with the pink stripey shoe.

... and these cute little girls - they are adorable. Love those colours - little white faces girls on a Kraft coloured card blank, the pink cat, pink hair and the grey spotted bandana in the hair. I need a stamp set like this.

Spiffy Scooters

.... and my mission is nearly complete. I have bought four of Kim's stamp sets and last night I finally cracked open Spiffy Scooters. Three sets down and one to go.

I have to admit, I went through my stash the other day and wondered why I keep on buying more stamps. There is enough there to last me forever and it is impossible to use up all the cards I make. So what do I do with them?

Doing mag work is also a dilemma as I often buy sets for a specific project, only to use them once and then never again. So, I have decided there will be no more buying and putting in the drawer for later use, if I buy something it has to get used or I am not allowed to get any more. It is sad when you have to treat yourself like a child isn't it.

I am also LOVING this months PTI release, and my hubby is off to the States again in May, so if I want any of those I am going to have to get stamping!

That is why I was up at 1 o'clock yesterday morning wrestling with this card.

I really wanted a crisp white background, but once I had put the scooter on it there was just too much white. By then I had already stamped the sentiment and drawn the frame so I was going to have to commit. I had to sort out that chunk of white space in the left top corner and also balance out the red from the flames. Using the clouds in the stamp set was not going to work, too much white, so I drew a sun and coloured it in.

Then the sun looked TOO red to me, so I stamped it with the SU fine flourish background in white, just to tone it down a bit. I added a red seat and a red flag (originally brown seat and green flag) to offset all the red from the sun. I changed my mind a lot with this card, getting the balance right was tricky, but in the end I kinda like it.

Boob tubes

No bats today ... I think we will give the bats a rest and move onto boob tubes. This set is ... forgive the retro lingo .... groovy!

A perfect birthday card for dad using the old 70's television complete with a set of wire bunny ears. I also used the PTI newsprint background - such a fabulous and versatile background, one of my new favourites I think.

Still not bored with the twine either, I am just wrapping everything in the stuff - just as well too as I bought so much I can wrap forever and still not run out.

The punched heart is Stampin' Up! and the sentiment is computer generated, plain old Arial, with the "dad" stamped from the boob tubes set using SU Cherry Cobbler.

More bats

Having a bat stamp means that at some point I am going to have to go with the daft old bat sentiment. My mum teaches fitness classes for senior citizens (and I guess she is not a spring chicken herself either ... even though she acts like a teenager most of the time) and they are all a bunch of nutters.

She has the greatest sense of humour and I just know she will love a card like this to give to her friends.

I computer generated the title and printed it straight onto the card blank. The border is a Kelly Panacci border stamped with VersaMark and of course more of that luscious twine. I also decided to give one bat a little text background so masked off the eyes and then stamped it with a PTI text stamp.

That is all then from this daft old bat!

Batty ...

I got my twine, I got my Paper Smooches Stamps and I made this:

One stamp in the set used, several more to go ... but the night is young :)

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