Eek-a-boo!

Hello!

Welcome to the World Cardmaking Day bloghop over at Make The Day Special!

We thought we couldn't let such an auspicious 'world day' go past without marking it somehow now,could we?  ;-)

You should have got here from Make The Day Special blog,your next port of call is posted below,along with details of a super prize you can win!

So,my card today celebrates the coming of my favorite seasons-Autumn. 

I used the super cute pumpkins from the Paper Smooches Spookalicious set (currently on special offer over at Make The Day Special) to create a pumpkin patch,coloured with Prisma pencils. The leaves are from the Paper Smooches too-I hunted through ALL my dies for the perfect pumpkin style leaf,and what do you know? The Reflections Leaf set works perfectly! :-) I finished the card off with some faux stitching and a 'fake' piece of washi embossed with my Paper Smooches sentiment and voila! A cute 'welcome autumn' type card-just perfect to hand out to someone on World Card Day. I am entering this card into the Paper Smooches SPARKS challenge,and the challenge this week is Anything Goes-whoot whoot!!! Always fun to through constraint to the wind when these pop up,eh?

Right,on with the hop-the girls have got some fantastic cards to show you! Next on your list is:
Jenny 

Kate

Lydia

Tara

We have a fantastic little prize for you-all you need to do is make a card in the next 48 hours and link it onto the Make The Day Special blog to win the adorable Critters Down Under set from Lawn Fawn

Whoop whoop! How cute is this set?! (I have found its an invaluable set for those tricky boy cards!)

Have fun hopping!
Lou

Circle Journal Blast off!

Hello!

A while ago I was invited to take part in a small Circle Journal group on FaceBook. This,bizarrely, is my first ever swap here in England,lol. We could choose our theme and size and any rules we wanted to encourage,and initially I chose Altered Birds for my theme,as I love these and it gives quite a wide margin on what can be done. Unfortunately the making of the journal took place exactly when I took over Make The Day Special,so I got off to a veeeeery slow start,plus at that time,my eldest daughter was having a tough time on chemo,so I had to put a halt on a few extra curricular activities. When I tried to make the covers,I was struggling so much to get inspiration that in the end I thought  'You know what,life's too short to be doing something you don't enjoy-I am doing this bad boy on something I really love and makes me happy! Something I am always inspired to craft on;Halloween. (and Autumn,if one of the ladies doesn't celebrate Halloween).' Thus,the new improved CJ was born! I lobbed 3 inches off the covers to make them 6x6" and gathered some bits and bobs together for my theme; 

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I made a flower using my favorite technique that I used for the Shabby Chic Swap,with a Halloween bottle top that I got in a Swap last year for the center,and I FINALLY tucked in to my stupidly hard to get over here Ravenhead Manor paper and embellishments that was so kindly sent to me in a RAK (You know who you are,and I still love you madly for that ;-) ) Slowly a front cover emerged. I got the sewing machine down and covered the covers in old black silk (there is a LOT of machine work on this journal! lol It is more fabric than paper )

The inside cover and next page:

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My double page effort: (I wanted a sort of creepy vintage childhood diary feel to these-pinned insects,moths in jars,old hairclips,precious personal ephemera.)

 I tried to replicate the hair clip from the photo,but with an old feel. Like it had been in there for a while-precious,documented,kept.

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And the sign in pages at the back:

 And the back cover:

It has now been sent off to catch up with the others :-) I cant wait to get it back in a year and see what everyone has done :-D