Choo Choo!!

I've never made one of these cards before - it is a complete kit and from Paper Creator. I won a challenge recently and could spend £3 which might not sound a lot, but it bought me two kits!! Its an easel plateau card and is really easy to make including adding the decoupage elements.

The train and carriage slots into two slits made on the base and the back bit is the easel. Its really very 3d and it also comes with its own envelope to make!

I've made it for a little boy who has just turned one and Jacob picked the template!

I'd like to enter it into the following challenges:

Unstampabelles: Wheels
Creative Craft World: For A Child
The Craft Garden: Bold, Bright and Loud (colour picture inspiration)
Fuzzy Wuzzy: Animals and Shaped Cards

• Card kit: Paper Creator
  

Thank You

To the bloke on the 8:49 train to Manchester Victoria this morning.

Thank you for peppering your outburst at being asked to get off the train for fare dodging with the f-word. I am now able to converse with frequent insertions of the word, substituted for normal everyday un-offensive words. This has no doubt extended my vocabulary some what.

Thank you for setting my day up so well and for making me feel so threatened and scared whilst pressed against the window seat so that the guards and Transport Police could remove you from the train toilet.

Even my ipod shuffle with Prince's Let's Go Crazy guitar riff could not drown out your pathetic shouting and ranting that you had to run across the station as your 8:47 train from Preston to Manchester Airport was delayed due to a landslide at Lancaster which meant that you could not buy a ticket.

But still, you insisted that you were at platform 6 in plenty of time to catch the 8:47 and the inconvenience was that you had to run across to platform 2 for the 8:49 hence why you did not buy a ticket.

Get up earlier and get to the station on time and buy a ticket like everyone else.

Get a grip of yourself and do not rant and rave, swearing and striking the train conductor.

Just think about how you made me and all the other passengers feel this morning. It's a Monday for goodness sake - if a Monday is pants then the rest of the week follows suit. So thanks again.

PS The station staff were fab and so professional - thank you Virgin Trains!

Train and Colours

The Digitial Ink challenge this week is a colour combination:

I've used a lovely Crafty Downloads image which I resized to fit my card. The blue backing paper is a digital download from A Work In Progress but I can't remember which collection, and the stripy one was a magazine freebie. And I've had that one ages too so can't remember where it is from - sorry!

I've coloured the image with felt tips plus a bit of white gel pen highlighting because the colours of the backing papers are so strong, I thought that watercolour pencils would be a little insipid. I've inked the edges of the papers with some really quite faded black ink which I refuse to throw away as I've found that by dropping a little coca cola on the pad it revives it enormously! The red grosgrain ribbon is from my stash.

I've had a real busy weekend this week. For a change. Hope to be able to show you some of the highlights of it some point over the next few days. Which, incidentally, is also going to be a busy one and I'm out nearly every night this week.....!

• Backing papers: Dark blue freebie from A Work In Progress, stripy one from a magazine
• Image: Crafty Downloads coloured with felt tips
• Ribbon: From my stash
  

Our Easter Weekend

Well, we had a busy busy Easter weekend! And here are just some of the picture of the places we visited! No pictures from Friday and Saturday as we went to see Monsters v Aliens (I saw most of it as Jacob needed the loo every 5 mins almost!) and then they went to a Birthday party on Saturday, so these photos are from Easter Sunday and Monday.

We joined English Heritage (used Tesco clubcard vouchers) recently so decided to make use of the membership. We visited Carlise Castle as there was also an Easter Fairy Hunt (yeah, we found them all and some chocolate for a reward!) We also had an hours tour of part of the castle and the dungeons which was really interesting and the guide was dressed in costume and involved the boys in the explanation of what everything was for.

This photo shows the inner gateway to the castle and is reported to be haunted by a lady looking for her baby (the baby has been heard to cry). And its really freezing standing in it!The boys, however, were more interested in the canons and if they still worked, and did they kill people? Jacob had gone to the loo (again) when I took this photo of Samuel.

Then we went to a broken castle (as the boys called it) in Penrith - Brougham Castle. You could actually climb the very twisty and narrow staircase to the top for the views - we got half way up and turned round!

Even though it was a part ruin, there was still quite a lot to see and the boys did a lot of running around. Just look how blue the sky was!

And this is the view from the bridge, looking over the river back at the castle.

Then on Monday we went to Keighley and bought a Family Day Rover ticket so we could go up and down the line (Keighley to Oxenhope) as many times as we wanted on the diesel and steam trains plus free entry into the three museums.

Here are the boys at Keighley before we started our adventures!

We stopped one station down the line at Ingrow West where there are two museums. We had a wonderful impromptu guided tour at the larger of the two museums and we got so engrossed in it (and the boys playing at train drivers) that we almost missed the train to Keighley - we really had to run to catch it!

We had another museum to visit - the Engine Shed where there was an Easter Egg hunt and some amusements for the kids. And this is the view of the steam train leaving Oxenhope to take us back to Keighley.

So all in all, it was two grand days out!

Friday the 13th!

Not got anything particularly crafty to say today, so I thought I'd point out the obvious and let you know that it is Friday The 13th!!

So far, nothing bad has befallen me - usual issues with public transport (trains) in trying to get back to work and all the trains I could catch being delayed or deciding not to stop when I want to get off, and buying a hot chocolate and burning my mouth and tongue on it........

Just a normal Friday for me then!!

Oh, and the little baby girl (see this post to see what I'm talking about) arrived in the early hours of this morning!! More on Lilly when I've completed her card!

Subsequent note: Just realised that this is post 66!!!! At least its not 666!