Not much crafting going on around here

We are still decorating. This is a long story and I shall not bore you with details. In a nutshell: We started pulling off the wallpaper in our dining room in March. Then my husband broke his foot really badly, was home in a cast for 6 weeks and all work stopped. When we did finally resume we decided to have the wall plastered, so we had to wait for that to cure, then we went on holiday .... blah blah blah.

We are now finally in the full swing of decorating, but the house is a tip ... really, it's a tip. According to my husband any decorating also requires the heating system to be upgraded, floorboards to be fixed, pipes to solder, all light fittings and switches to be changed, new door handles ... you name it. (He even bought special plastic paint so that we could spray the alarm box white again as it wasn't looking fresh enough for him). I have spoken about decorating before when we were doing my craft room and if you remember I mentioned how my hubby also does everything by the book, thus involving lots of prep work, primers, sanding etc. A very lengthy and time consuming business. In short, this is why my already lack of crafting time has been turned into almost non existant crafting time.

This is what I am doing.

My dining room and entrance has been stripped bare and painted (I am still painting the entrance, dining is now done - thank goodness). We are getting a new wooden floor (woohoo - I have nagged for that for years), new door handles, new lights, freshly plastered and painted walls ... just all nice and new. I would be more excited if it wasn't for all of the hard work.

Then I was asked by a friend if I would make her some cards for a few special birthdays. I need to watch more Oprah and work on my boundaries as I just cannot say no, and my response was "of course I can" even though I knew it would be push to fit in with my schedule at the moment.

To be honest I don't like making commissioned cards as I don't always think that what I like is what other people like and I don't want to disappoint them (the old people pleaser in me coming out). She looked through some of my previous cards and chose two designs that she liked, so these cards are very similar to ones I have done before, but I will still share them with you.

I love this design, it is the same as a card I made for my friend Kelly for her 40th, but this time I used the dress instead of a cake. Love how this turned out.

I coloured the dress (a Hero Arts stamp) with my markers and made the little wire hanger.

Then there was this one, I had a pretty specific brief with this regarding colours, text etc., so did what I thought my friend would like.

And lastly one for her mum. This is not my style at all, but as I was making it for an elderly lady I kept it a bit more traditional. Hopefully she liked it.