Christmas is on its way

On Friday I met my dear Mum in London for our annual Christmas trip to Harrods. We have been going every year for over 20 years. Over the years the Christmas department has changed and indeed shrunk but we still love to go. The windows always look spectacular

I'll share some more photos soon, and which ornament I added to my collection this year.

I'm sharing for my Monday DT make for Visible Image and as we are fast approaching the time to finish getting our Christmas cards made today's make is one using 3 sets from their fab Christmas collection. We have an "add some sparkle" challenge over on the Facebook page so I thought I would go to town with the sparkle today.

I used the smaller angel and the star from the angels  stamp set

together with the snowflakes from

Snow is falling

and the peace sentiment and star from the peace, hope and love set 

I went for a relatively simple design on plain black card stock as I think these gorgeous images just speak for themselves. I used silver ink first to stamp the snowflakes. When dry I white embossed the stars. Afterwards I used some ultra sparkly WOW gold glitter embossing powder to really make the angel stand out.

I also white embossed the peace sentiment.

Here is my finished card

I would like to enter it into the following challenges;

CRAFT 1/3 Christmas
Cute card Thursday 1/3 stars
Simon says stamp Monday all that glitters is gold
Stamping sensations 1/3 Getting ready for Christmas
Christmas at sweet stampin 1/3 anything goes
Crafty Hazlenut's Christmas challenge 1/3 #412 anything goes
Sweet stampin 1/3 anything that shines
Fussy and fancy 1/3 anything goes
Crafty catz 1/3 anything goes
Artistic inspirations 1/3 anything goes
Winter wonderland what do you like to do at Christmas?....me, reflect on the year and hope that hope that the snow falls!

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!

I hope that all your Christmas preparations are going to plan...there are only 36 days to go...are you ready 😂🎅😄?
Thanks for stopping by today and for the kind comments you take the time to leave me, especially at this very busy time of year.

Back soon

Bye for now,

Jane x

A rainbow reminder

Hello, here we are at Friday already, here in the south of England we have enjoyed some more lovely weather.

 We are also now half way through our November theme and sketch challenge over at Stamplorationsand today I am back with a second DT card for some more inspiration. The theme is stamps and rainbows.

and there is a really great sketch to go with it.

There is a little gallery of new DT work which Shery has put into a post which can be seen here

Please check out all the rules over at the main blog post here. In brief you need to use stamping on your projects. You don't have to use STAMPlorations stamps to enter but of course we love it if you do! You can link up 6 times with new blog posts and you need to add our logo to your post. You can go with the theme, the sketch or both, the choice is yours.

I chose to work with both the sketch and theme. 

I used the pot of flowers and one of the sentiments  from the lovely Fluttery stamp set

I kept with the rainbow theme and made my background with a rainbow of Brushos and Infusions.

I stamped the pot and coloured it with watercolour pens, adding some silver sparkle pen too.

This is my card

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

As you like it 2/3 monochrome or rainbow colours My favourite is using a rainbow of colours

Not just cards 2/3 anything goes

Addicted to stamps 2/3 anything goes

Crafting from the heart 2/3 anything goes
A bit more time to craft 1/3 anything goes

Remember that you can also get 20% off all the products on the website if you use my code STAMPGIRLJANE ......now there's an offer your can't refuse.
The sketch is a very simple one and lovely to work with. We hope to see lots of you joining in the month, you can go with the theme or sketch or both. Here is the link again .

PS...................There is also a great autumn hop going on as well, hosted by some of my STAMP teamies, open worldwide ................until 30 Nov. You could win some fab prizes!
here are those details

Thanks for stopping by,

Back soon,

Bye for now.

Jane x

A magical rainbow unicorn birthday

The sunshine has returned again after some very heavy rain at the weekend. The ponds are full and looking beautiful.

We are told that the temperature might reach 16c today...how very pleasant.
Yes my sweet little granddaughter Daisy Jane turned 5 on Sunday and as promised I am back with some more photos of her cake. She is unicorn mad and her request this year was for a "rainbow unicorn theme". 

 I confess that this cake turned out to be a real labour of love and a lot more involved than I thought! Daisy's requests were that there should be the rainbow theme, her name must be there and the number 5. The issue I had was that to get the unicorn features in the correct proportions the cake needed to be tall and that meant baking 2 cakes. Now I have been a cake maker and decorator for nearly 37 years but I have never made a 2 tier cake. The Internet is such an amazing source of information and I quickly realised that even though the cakes would just stack and be under 1 piece of icing, they still needed some engineering support in the form of dowelling.

So this is what I did;
I had to create a central support and needed a thin cake board for the top tier (which would be invisible) and then the usual drum at the bottom.

 I also added 3 dowels into the bottom cake and stacked them up.

I had made fondant icing rainbow cloud candle holders...5 of course.

Over the weeks I had also been making flowers and leaves out of petal fondant and painting them up with metallics. I also made ears, eyes and a gold horn, all from fondant icing.

So here is the finished cake, I have photographed it from several angles as it is so hard to show it in its entirety.

and yes I found a place to put a number 5 and a rainbow ribbon made a great base edging.

Her party was a soft play session at a leisure centre and was followed by a family tea party at home.

My daughter made rainbow cupcakes for the children to take home from the afternoon party and Daisy was able to blow her candles out twice... once with her friends

and then again at home with the family in the evening, just before bedtime. Within half an hour of this photo the unicorn was all gone, magically disappearing into all our tummies 😄

I think her little face speaks volumes .

What was also magical was that at lunchtime on her birthday as we were all getting packed up to go out to her party a rainbow appeared in the sky...what a blessing on my sweet girlie.

So it's a cake wrap for another year.

I wonder what her request will be for next year?
My card challenge card today is a very CAS one.....and has the perfect image..yes cake. It's a digi image from Lili of the Valley with a stamped tag. Yes we certainly did celebrate on Sunday.
It's up for sale at Dotty's now.

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

Not just cards 2/3 anything goes
Crafting from the heart 1/3 anything goes
Die cuttin divas 1/3 birthdays my dies are spellbinders and Memory box stitched rectangle.

Thanks for getting all the way to the end of this post and for stopping by today.

Back soon,

Bye for now,.

Jane x