HAPPY NEW YEAR To You ALL!

Seems like ages since I've last posted anything in here, but life and its convoluted 'surprises' didn't allow me to pursue my hobby in the last 2 weeks, or to enjoy visiting your blogs.

Right before Christmas, on the night of December 23rd, my Mum died.

She has been in the hospital for four days after having a stroke (on Dec. 19th) and her health got worse and worse, with numerous complications. It looked like her poor frail feeble body gave up on her. :(
Some of you know that in September she had cancer surgery, had most of the big tumour removed, together with her right eye and also had 2 skin grafts to cover the "hole".
We had to wait for three months to finally get the biopsy result and we were about to see the oncologist for prescribing a possible treatment. But three days after we've had those, she had the stroke and it was just too much for her body.

Anyway....

I just wanted to let you all know why I've been AWOL and to excuse myself for not commenting or emailing/replying much (if at all).

Also, I wanted to wish you all

A VERY Happy New Year, with good health, peace of mind, fantastic great moments with your dear ones and lots and lots of good luck.

Big hugs,

Mada

JCBC #11 - Sketch by Gry-Heidi... and other cards too

The way it looks lately, I can only deal with this blogging stuff once a week, on Saturday or Sunday. I hate that but have no other real option for now.

The new challenge for the coming week on Just Christmas and Birthday Cards (or JCBC as I like to call it) is to make one or two cards following Gry-Heidi's sketch which, as usual, you'll get to see tomorrow when the new challenge will be posted.

In the meantime, try to decipher what the sketch looks like by looking at my two cards. LOL

Christmas Card

Stamps: Basic Grey [for the background] and Anita's [Santa Clause]
Some heat embossing on the tag, glitter glue, peel offs, ribbon and two zooms


and Birthday Card

Stamps: Whiff of Joy
Papers are free downloads, flowers, gems, peel offs and ribbon are from stash.
The ribbon says "Happy Birthday!" in Romanian. :)

Both images were coloured with a technique I've never tried before, using regular (non-watercolour) pencils (Caran d'Ache) and baby oil.

I LOVE it and will use it all the time from now on. :)

I am aware that many of you have heard about it and are using it, but I first saw this technique explained on my friend Tracey's blog.

-------------------------------------

Here are a few other cards I made over the weekend:

A small thank you card using an awesome Spiral Whisper stamp designed by our talented Chris


A Christmas card with Herb (Whiff of Joy stamp) and a sentiment I've fallen in love with, from Anita's Christmas Classics stamps set


Another Christmas card, this time with my very favourite angel - Charlotte from Whiff of Joy

As mentioned above, all images were coloured with pencils + baby oil. All the cards smell very nice, believe me. :-D

Well, now I have to return to my other cards that need to be made. I still have 7-8 Christmas cards to make real quick, for "local" people. The "international" ones have been taken care of. Yay!

Thank you for passing by, hope you all had a great weekend.

Challenge #10 -- Just Christmas and Birthday Cards

For this week the sketch we had to follow was made by my talented co-worker Kristin. :) I loved the sketch - very versatile and easy to follow. Thanks Kristin!

This is the sketch:

And here are my two cards:

Birthday Card
(the one you can see on the JCBC blog)


The green background paper is made by me in Paint Shop Pro
The image is a stampprint I received from dear Karin.
Some peel offs, flowers, punched mini hearts and that's about all.

Christmas Card


I stamped the cardstock with snowflakes, bordered it with peel offs, added 3 stripes of Dovecraft DP then the stamped and gold embossed reindeer on showflake paper from Tracey's Blue Christmas Poinsettia Pack.
The stamps I used - Anita's Christmas Classics - and the white poinsettia flowers are a recent gift from my dearest friend Sue.

Hope you'll drop by our blog this week, we will have an EXTRA Challenge on Wednesday and the main prize for that one will be a lovely stamp from Spiral Whisper.

Thank you for being here! :)