May tea party time with Country View Crafts

Good morning and happy May to you. It is time for our latest challenge over at Country View and Miriam, as our hostess this month, decided that we could all do with some virtual party spirit during Lockdown so our theme is "Tea party".

This can be either birthday themed or tea themed. 

One lucky randomly selected entry will receive a £20 gift code to spent on the website. 

All the details can be found here;

My little grandson was 3 on 21 April and I made him a robot card for his birthday. He loved it so I thought I would use the same Visible Image stamp set to make my "birthday party" card for this challenge.

The set is such a great one available here called Robot Data

I also used the short circuit stencil to make an inky background with these distress inks

 I used my 3D Tim embossing folder on silver card.

I cut around some of the cogs  to create an opening.

 I stamped the baby robot as my focal, having stamped, coloured him with pencils and cut him out.
I also die cut some cogs in bright colours as his balloons as every robot needs a cog balloon to take to a party don't they.

Then it was time to put together my robot birthday party card. Little Beep the robot is all ready to go to the birthday party now!

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Addicted to stamps and More 2/3 make your mark

Simon says stamp Wednesday  Anything goes

Crafty Creations 2/3 anything goes
Through the craft room door 2/2 anything goes

I hope I may have inspired you to join in with our May "Tea party" challenge. You can use any stamps/products, the choice is yours.

You can enter our challenge as many times as you like and combine with other challenges. There is also a £20 crafting voucher up for grabs to the lucky randomly selected winner to spend over on the Country View Crafts on line store. Remember that for orders over £7.50 UK postage and packing from CVC  is absolutely FREE! Once again all the details for the May challenge can be found here.

I am back on the 13 May with my 2nd "tea party" project..this time it is another birthday party but a very different one to my robot one.

Stay safe,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Daisy believes in unicorns

We had a wonderful day yesterday celebrating my darling Daisy's 5th birthday. Her theme for her party was rainbow unicorns as she is unicorn mad. If I could find a real one I know she would love one for a pet. When I planned her card I knew just the stamp to use....the wonderful Visible Image unicorn from the believe in unicorns set

Today is also my Design Team inspiration for Visible Image and our challenge theme for November is "Make it sparkle" so this was a perfect to use for Daisy's card. There is nothing a 5 year old girl loves more than sparkle and glitter. 

I first white embossed the unicorn onto watercolour card.

 To go along with her rainbow unicorn party theme I decided to use all the colours of the rainbow to make the background.

I chose 7 from my Distress inks and starting at the top and working clockwise I blended them onto the card.

 

I cut out some clouds and added the number 5 from the White Rabbbit Wonderland set 

 These numbers are a perfect size for birthday cards.

I also used the Happy Birthday sentiment from the Go to words set.

I then die cut a swirling star background around the unicorn. 

I matted this onto pink glitter card. Believe me every 5 year old girl like lots of glitter

Here is my finished card.

with a couple of close ups;

and one last shot

I would like to enter it into the following challenges;

Pixie's snippits playground #339 the snippets from the stars dies make amazing embellies!
Simon says stamp Monday make your own background
Craft stamper take it make it 1/3 November
As you like it 1/3 monochrome or rainbow colours My favourite is using a rainbow of colours, especially when it's for a very special little girl's birthday.
Fashionable stamping 1/3 resist it
Not just cards 1/3 anything goes
Addicted to stamps 1/3 anything goes


I also made her a quick tag for her present too; this photo does not do justice to the black sparkly embossing powder I used, it really glints.

All the Visible Image links can be found here;

Visible Image group page on Facebook. Our friendly Group is here ...it would be lovely to see you. You can add work to the new challenge album where one randomly chosen winner each month wins a £40 coupon to spend on the website.

The main Visible Image Facebook page is here; there are weekly stamp giveaways...open world wide.

And the shop web site is here; where all their gorgeous stamps and stencils can be purchased. 

Remember to add your "sparkle projects" to the FB album here The challenge

ends on 30  November. It will be great to see them all and you might even be the randomly selected winner of a £40 voucher to spend on the website...now that would be like Christmas coming early wouldn't it!

Thanks for stopping by today, if I'm honest I don't think it's just Daisy who believes in unicorns, you can count me in too......how about you 😂? I made her a unicorn birthday cake too, here's a sneak peek, I will share it all in the week when I have sorted out my photos.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

A jungle of a birthday

Today is my darling granddaughter, Daisy Jane's 2nd birthday. I cannot believe where those 2 years have gone. Just 2 years ago a tiny perfect baby came into the world and today she is a walking, talking loving little girl. I hope one day Daisy will be able to come back and read my blog and that I have kept many of these special memories safe for her in Jane's Journal.

Thank you for all the birthday wishes you sent and I have promised today to give the grand reveal of this year's birthday cake, the photos are further down. First though I thought I would share a little of my cake making past.

Both of my children have very fond memories of their own childhood birthday parties when I would always made them a cake. We were having a reminisce and my son particularly remembered his Noddy cake when he was 4 (he's now 26).....he had me making a car with Noddy in and all the little skittles too...I have shared this photo before but for my newer readers this is that cake circa 1993. I made everything out of fondant icing other than the bell, the steering wheel, the skittle arms and the windshield.

Noddy Circa 1993

We always had a theme each year so it was no surprise that my own daughter wanted a theme for Daisy's party. She chose Zoo/jungle animals as Daisy just adores animals. She also adores the DVD and books called 64 Zoo Lane. I even managed to get the author to sign some books to Daisy last year. My daughter found this fun party ware, which is very "64 Zoo Lane" style, and this is what I based my cake design on.

Over the last month I have been working on making the fondant icing animals. I use shop bought fondant icing, some is pre coloured some I colour with pastes. I just make these by hand.
Hello Mr Giraffe..................

Here are the basic shapes. I made several frog heads as I was not quite sure which I preferred! A couple were too alien for my liking.

 Of course these needed eyes...I made lots of these....

I gradually added the details...spots, horns, mane etc

 until these happy souls appeared.

Some of the leaves I hand cut for others I used a new set of leaf cutters. This is a great set as they are double edge, serrated or plain.

and yes my little crocodile came into being as well as palm trees and snakes. I cut into the sides of the leaves with a knife to make them look more "jungley" (I know that not a word but you know what I mean!)

Then on Friday after work I spent 5 hours putting everything together...I only took 1 under construction photo as I could not keep stopping and taking photos plus my  hands were covered in icing.
The base cake is my usual all in one simple Victoria sponge with raspberry conserve and buttercream inside. I use an 8" round tin,

I covered it with a thin layer of shop bought white fondant icing for the base.
Below is the sneek peek I shared on Monday. I decided to put my round cake onto a 12" square board so that I could create a jungle scene. I made a sky at the top and a river and water fall flowing onto the cake board. I stuck fondant "rocks" around the edge and "floated" Mr Croc in the water. In the finished photos you will see how I added movment to the water, this was just the start!

OK so here is the big reveal.

The light on Saturday was poor so my camera struggled. Here is Mr Purple Elly and his frog friend and there's a snake in the leaves sleeping.

Mr Giraffe

You can see below how I added a feeling of movement to the water fall and river just by using my modelling tools. 

Some of the details around the edge of the cake..palm tree and coconuts and some sneaky eyes peeping out from the undergrowth ;0)

A happy snake ;0)

The birthday candle holders, 2 of course. These are also made of fondant icing. The candles are of course real!

And some clouds in the sunny sky. I added a wash of coloured royal icing around the corners of the board to give some extra texture. I took some time deliberating where to add Daisy's name and eventually decided to write Daisy's name on one of the clouds. I think this worked well. I often add sentiments on my card on my cloud dies so this was an idea from my cardmaking.

So here is the cake all in place at the party

and the table with my daughter's brilliant cupcakes

She found these fun rice paper cake toppers which matched the party ware.

A fun time was had by all.

Including me and my darling girlie

and of course the party girl who was fascinated when the candles were lit and we all sang happy birthday to her. 

She was helped to blow out the candles by her Mummy and Daddy

and she even helped Mummy and Daddy cut the cake and make a wish.........

What fun family times, we are so blessed.

Happy Birthday darling Daisy, enjoy your special day and your trip  to the zoo with Mummy and Daddy. 

There are a couple of challenges I can enter my cake into so I would like to enter it into;

Pixie's snippets Playground week #202 I have used a lot of snippets of fondant icing for Daisy's cake!

Country View The colour blue I have used the colour blue in my river, waterfall and sky!

 I also have a challenge card of course today and yes it had to be Daisy's birthday card. One of her favourite creatures in the world is our Billy, the cat. I have a wonderful Lily of the Valley stamp which I thought looks like Daisy with our Billy.  I coloured it up with Promarkers and made a special easel card for her.

 I even managed to sneak in my Tim Holtz bird and branch die....I am sure Tim would be shocked to see it used here but I think it works really well. The backing papers are Wild Rose Studio.

Below is the inside, I used my pretty floral embossing folder.

and a side view

I would like to enter my card (my cake challenges are above) into these fun challenges;

NoorUK anything goes
Ribbon Girl any thing goes card
Pile it on leaves
We love to create # 23 anything creative/mixed media
Simon Says Stamp Monday N is for.....November birthday, Nature and Number (2) on my card
Try it on Tuesday create a scene
Crafting for all seasons embossing
Creative Inspirations anything goes
Inspiration Journal mission embossoble

Thanks for visiting me here today. Now that all birthday cakes and cards are are made I will be full steam ahead getting Christmas prepared...there are cards and of course my crackers to make too.......and just 44 days left til the big day ;0)

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x