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Hello Everyone. Hope you enjoyed the Christmas Holiday and are ready for the New Year celebration. Preshea and Lydia have been waiting for the return of the master for over a year and they are shocked to see his face half covered with a metal mask and his beautiful hands inside unsightly white mittens. He says they must never ask what happened whilst he was away or enquire about the contents of the coffin shaped box on the back of the steam wagon. He promises to tell them some of his adventures later when he is rested. For those of you who never saw Preshea and Lydia before I made them back in November but I have just  finished the Master so that I could add them to Amy's 72 hours party at The Crafty Book Nerd The story will continue when I make more characters. Happy 2013 to Everyone Love Chrissie xx

A very Happy Christmas and a Happy and Healthy 2013 to all my blogging friends. It is wonderful to have got to know so many of you as friends and I always look forward to reading your comments and visiting your blogs. Hope we continue to get to know each other even better as time goes by. Love Chrissie xx At Out of a Hat this week and next we are doing birthstone colours. I made mine for Janet as we two are still making swaps from things that Janet sent-this is the last one so I have used all that she sent now. This challenge will last 2 weeks as we are all having a rest for Christmas. Janet's birthday is in November so the stone is Topaz. There are various shades of Topaz but I used the colour that is on the chart at the Hatters. The board I used is 4x4 inches and was one of the things that Janet sent. I added a bit of lace and coloured that with distressed ink-in fact I covered almost everything in distressed ink. I found several topaz coloured jewels in my bits and bobs box and

Hello Everyone. Hope you are about ready for the big day-only a few more days to go now. Welcome to my new followers and a big thank you to everyone who leaves a comment it is always so encouraging. At Fun with ATCS you can choose a song to make your ATC. I chose Dolly Parton's Love is Like a Butterfly  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0pkn9evgKs I distressed the white background lightly with a few colours of DI Then I stamped on LOVE from a set of stamps by Chocolate Baroque. The butterflies are also part of the same stamp set. Love Chrissie xx

Hello everyone I hope you are having a good day. For those who asked how the film, The Hobbit, went for us--it didn't. Our cinema is only a small one and they had been sent the super duper 3D version of the film and their equipment didn't show the film properly so the ticket lady advised us not to bother paying our money for the tickets. Oh well we will wait for the DVD. Not sure I could have sat still for 3 hours anyway. At Show Us Your Twinchies the subject is Let It Snow. Hopefully it won't snow but it always looks nice on Christmas Cards. I used a small part of an old Christmas card for the backing and a lovely little snow man I bought in a patchwork shop when we were on holiday. To this I add the text and some 'diamonds' Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone--I hope your Christmas Preparations are going well. Ours must be as we are taking today off and going to see the Hobbit in 3D. Well I will be seeing it in 3D but Vic can't see well through one eye so he will have to just see what he can. :( He is the Hobbit fan so he will enjoy it anyway. This time The Craft-room Challenge  is to make a Tag so I have made mine to give as a Christmas/New Year greeting to one of our neighbours. This is a tag within a tag really-outside inside Have a wonderful Christmas everyone at the Craft Room and thank you for the great challenges Love Chrissie xx

Hi All--how are you today? I hope you are well and have had a nice crafting week. Sorry to say that Florence has left Out of a Hat as she wants do other things. We have Florence to thank for getting the four 'Hatters' together in the first place. I have enjoyed seeing what she made each week and learning various techniques from her. Good Luck Florence in all that you do. Chrissie xxx At Out of a Hat Creations this week the subject is Winter-hopefully this will get it out of the way quickly and we can think about Spring. I am still using things that Janet sent to me and we are swapping this project as we did the last one. This came about because Sandra and Florence were taking time out so Janet sent things for us to make the projects then swap them. It is such a great idea and I am sure we will do it again--thanks Janet  I painted the circles Black though they don't show up too well on the photograph. They have been distressed with gold. The images are some I found online

Hello everyone hope your day is going well. At Anything but a card  you can create something using the theme light or to celebrate the season. I will be using this as a table decoration at Christmas and it sure celebrates light as well so should qualify for the challenge. I took pictures of it outside and then in the dark when I had lit the candle. This is just so simple and after it has been used for the table I can just use everything as it was before. I started out with a very nice dish that is pearlised and raised the candle up on a piece of metal I found in the shed. Then I raided my odds and ends box that has lots of bits of old jewels and beads in it. These I arrange around the candle to catch the light. with the candle lit in the dark-looks better in real life but difficult to photograph. outside showing the jewels outside showing the dish The gold beads are on some long pins with a jewel on the top. That's it really-easy peasy. Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone-hope your day is going well. We have thick frost here and it is very cold but The sun is trying to come out so all is well. Always easier to craft with sunlight I think. At Addicted to Stamps and More  this time it is the Bingo Challenge so lots to choose from to make your project and ,as always, terrific samples as inspiration. The red is the rectangle, the flowers and the swirls. The free is the Love stamp and the paper I made in PSP to match the rest of the card and did rosettes from it from it as well.. Love Chrissie xx

Hello All--Nice sunny day here though very cold so will need to get wrapped up to go for a walk. Hope your day goes well. At Fun with ATCS you can use embossing of any kind so I used a folder and powder on mine though it doesn't show up too well on the photograph. I stamped the text and hearts stamp and then embossed it with Heat it Up-red tinsel. It looks quite nice but doesn't show up too well on the photograph. Then I distressed the background and used Cosmic shimmer mist for a bit of extra effect. The letters are from an old peel off--no 'es' left unfortunately but at least I am using all the peel-offs up which was a goal for me. Still many to go yet :( The last thing I did was to run the ATC through the Cuttlebug in an embossing folder. Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone--hope you are well and happy. It is a cold and frosty morning here so a nice day for a brisk walk along the seafront me thinks. No not that type of recipe--thank goodness cause I don't do cooking lol. At Artful Times  Neet has posted a list of things and you can make anything you like that includes them.  This is what I made with a stamp that was a freebie from 'Cardmaking in easy steps' magazine. There were 12 images and I like most of them. It was a while ago and I am not sure I have seen one of the magazines since then. I used an old ink pad for the background and just sort of splodge it across the tag as it was ready for the bin really. I don't like to waste anything! I wasn't sure what the strange round thing was as I found loads of them in various colours when we were away on holiday. Vic says they are caps cases for guns -children's ones I hope. I think all the recipe elements are there and I enjoyed making the tag. Love Chrissie xx

Hello everyone--hope you had a nice weekend. At Addicted to Stamps and more  this week it is time to get out your markers once again. This time I have stamped onto photo paper and used some felt tips--I saw this on Florence's sample. Thanks for the tip Florence. The stamp is one from Crafty Individuals and I just used simple layering of papers and card for the background. Love Chrissie xx

Hello Everyone--hope you are well and happy and enjoying your crafting. First snow here this week but it has gone now so maybe that is it for this year--she says hopefully :-) I thought I would show you this lovely piece of Christmas Art that I won in Cindy's last draw. She always has a monthly Give Away and all you have to do to be in with a chance to win is to leave a comment on the Art Draw post--there is a link to that when you click on the picture of her latest offering on the right hand side. Do go and visit Plant's List  which is Cindy's blog home. You could be the next winner. This is the very beautiful garland that I received with a matching card. Thank you so much Cindy for your generosity and the wonders that you show on your blog. You bring joy and happiness for sure. Love Chrissie xx

Hello everyone and welcome to my new followers-hope you have had a happy and healthy week and enjoyed your crafting. Must say I panicked a bit when I saw this challenge come Out of the Hat  I had never made one before and wasn't even sure what it involved. As I was going to be swapping mine with another of the Mad Hatters I needed to think how to use some of things she had sent for us both to have the same things to use on a few of the following challenges. We could use them on any of the next three challenges-then swap our makes. Thank you Janet for the idea and the great items you sent. Janet sent the easel and canvas and the square shape that I used for the top of the shrine. She had also sent me the Hatter stamped image a while ago so I used that as well. It is by IndigoBlu-Alice 1. The wooden embellishments are from Crafty Emblies I also made a box shrine but it was such a venture into the unknown and I am not really pleased with it. I painted the outside of the box red then

On a roll--must be the cold weather keeping me busy. Nice to join in at Willow Sketchie Challenge again. I do love the digi images and the way you can get them instantly by download. The beautiful little bird I just downloaded from Willow Designs and I used the already coloured version as I wouldn't have been able to make it look as good--I will be trying to colour the plain version though. Here is my version of the sketch though I did add a few flowers to fill the red gap as it looked a bit bare without them. The panel with the image has a lift up front This is what I wrote underneath/

Hope your day is going well everyone. It is very cold here so after doing a bit of shopping I think crafting is definitely the way to go. At Show us your Twinchies this time we are asked to make a twinchie using traditional Christmas colours. So many colours are used on cards these days but the green, red and gold always makes me think of Christmas. Here is mine-a decoupaged poinsettia and some fine gold peel-off strip around the edge of the card. I made it from this ribbon I have had for years and used for a few things. First I backed a bit of it with card and cut out the poinsietta shape and some leaves then I kept juggling various bits of the image to make it fit the twinchie as the ribbon was too wide. Love Chrissie xx