The card took me forever to put together! One of those ones that just didn’t want to work for me, but here it is.

I also used this fabulous Whiff of Joy Romantic Swirls die. Once I cut out the cardstock I ran it through my Big Shot with a dotty embossing folder.

This photo is rather blurry, but you can see where I used the clear atyou Spica pen on his love hearts.

I have to admit to being pretty pleased with myself as I normally can’t sew a straight line on fabric. My machine normally only sews through paper!

Well as that’s my favourite magazine and I don’t submit to anyone else then I may as well show the full set here.

All stamps by Kraftin’ Kimmie. Coloured with Copics and then the images were masked, sponged and overstamped. Tutorial on masking here.

But I’m back with two cards to share.

I’ve actually done a small tutorial on these cards on the Zest Blog - you can check it out tomorrow. But for now I am going to enter these cards in the Kraftin’ Kimmie challenge which is no ribbon, fibres, string etc. It was quite hard not to wrap the cards with ribbon and tie a bow!

I did finish off this card last weekend and I did a tutorial on the masked background which is up at the Zest Blog, if you are interested.

I’m pretty pleased with how it’s all turned out. The daggy bit in the top right corner is a spot to be cleaned up for future compost bins. See the rogue snail already making it’s way up the garden bed on the right? He didn’t last long!

So I have a lot of card sharing to catch up on!

First is Charlotte, and I guess she looks how I feel at the moment! Rather frazzled.

Stamps: Kraftin’ Kimmie Charlotte
Ink: Copic markers, Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper: Xpress Graphx Blender Card, Bazzill, Pink Paislee Sweetness 6×6
Embellishments: Pearls, button, seam binding, DMC thread
Punch: Martha Stewart Pinking Scallop Edger, Martha Stewart Deep Edge Floral

Then there is my monthly Arch page for swapping. Excuse the bad, bad photo, but it was taken late at night.

The blue background was painted with Lumieres. The brown paper was stamped with a text stamp and then sprayed with Shimmerz. The roses were all made with different colours of seam binding.

We had planted tomatoes, snap peas and watermelon. The tomatoes were fabulous and we had a bumper crop. I think we planted the snap peas a little late so they flowered while they were too small. We ended up with three large watermelons – they were in the bed on the right. We won’t plant watermelons again – far too much water was used for just three melons.

This year we have worked quite hard and changed the vegetable patch to this:

We’ve yet to build the second bed which will go next to this one, and we also have a few wine barrels to go in – if we can find some to buy. We have six cubic metres of compost soil arriving today to fill them. My back is already aching at the thought! But at least with raised beds like this there will be no bending to weed, and no access for Naughty Ears. I’m rather looking forward to the planting stage – hopefully on Sunday.

Here we go – chewing weeds that were supposed to be in the compost pile:

Imagine a yell from inside – “George!”.
Oops, I’ve been busted. There’s those ‘naughty ears’.