Love to travel

Okay, so another orange card on the way, when i dont really like orange too much!!
I made this card for Yvonne's guest challenge this week. I had these wonderful 'Artemio' clear stamps bought from Belgium a few months back. This challenge by Yvonne to use postage stamps was perfect moment to put these to good use. The stamps in the card are used on a magazine to create faux-stamps!
I used the sketch i recently saw at Ujjwal's blog for The prickly pear challenge, hope i have done some justice to the sketch! I am otherwise generally hopeless when it comes to sketches!

The idea for this card came when my husband booked a vacation for both of us to Edinburgh next week.Needless to say,I Love to travel. Thanks to my darling husband I am a well traveled person, Scotland will be my 11th-visited-country so far (that count includes India though :D).

I once dreamed to be visiting 30 countries and atleast 5 continents before i die.. Looks like i need to upgrade my dream! I have already visited 3 continents so far and its pretty long life i have ahead! :)

Here's another view of the card, taken at a tilted angle so you can see the 'heart' before '2' and the dull gold rings below in its true colour. Btw, do you notice the background for this card? I used a Sizzix texture plate to stamp the background & I absolutely love the effect.

Supplies -
Tim Holtz walnut stain ink, Artemio Postal Mini Clear Stamp Set, Inkadinkado Inchie stamp set, Jef Circle punch & Echo park collection - walk in the park Alpha sheet.

you make my life Bright

 I rarely make cards now, no one (locally) to send them to!! :(  I made this for my husband dear -

 

Details of the gorgeous flower -

I have cased Priya's Card in this one.. The moment i saw this card on Priya's blog, I fell in love with this Bargello technique of patterned papers!! I have used up all those old Itsy-Bitsy thin patterned paper sheets that were left.. Having been exposed to better papers, I dont feel the need to use them often..

I'm also entering this one for Using-Scraps challenge at her blog..

Supplies - 
Alphas from Echo Park - A walk in the park collection. Dark green paper from Papermania chistmas capsule. Multiple thin sheets from itsy bitsy for the background. Flower from Khushboo :) Green leaves & twine from stash

how do you keep up..

..with details of all the challenges going around?

I decided to take part in challenges this week, and went through ICR, CraftyJC, Kavitha's, Yvonne's & Priya's Challenges.. And when i sat down to make something,  I totally forgot what was i supposed to make for each one!! LOL..If you have any idea on how to keep up with all the challenges floating around, please share!

Btw, do you know, pregnancy make you forget things and makes you a little more lost!!  Thats a fact though no one knows the reason.. If you don't believe me, check this & this.. Yay!! Now, I have something to put the blame on :) Even though i have tendency to feel lost, pregnant or not!

One amazing thing happened yesterday early morning; I was laying on my back, with my hands on the tummy and i felt a soft thump on my palm!! And along with this thump i felt something inside my tummy.. A feeling i was experiencing since 2 previous days and which had me pretty convinced I have got some bad digestion problem and probably some *gas* (very very common in pregnancy).. All this while my little and tiny baby was kicking me hard to let me know he's there!! I am grinning from ear to ear now!

So ever since the 'realization' dawned on me, I have all my concentration towards the tummy.. Baby kicks a LOT, though the movement is so slight that i really have to be concentrating on my tummy to feel something! My darling hubby can't yet feel the kicks when he puts his hands on my tummy..
And I have been trying a lot of things that makes my baby kick more.. Friends told me various things that worked for them like, eating sweets, putting a slight pressure with hand on the tummy, hubby talking in the room worked for them! For me, turning the music ON works, specially the foot tapping numbers! I believe I have a dancing star on the way!!! Tejal coined that term for my baby.. lol.. 


And well, if you know some place in London to do craft shopping do let me know! I only know hobbycraft, which is damn expensive, prices are more than what it costs in India to get things shipped!!! :D Online stores here offer better rates, but i would rather see some stuff before buying.. tools etc are okay to order online, but i tend to like to see things like paper, ribbons, embellies etc. before buying them

Love is...

Well, I have been away since a while now.. I'm having constant Backaches :( Courtesy my little baby!! Recently went to the mid pregnancy ultrasound scan and i could see my hyper-active baby, kicking n waving to me :D Its such an awesome experience! I'm waiting to feel the baby kick from inside my tummy.. :D

Anyways, so in the whole last three weeks, I have been making & completing this card  for Craftyjc challenge #10 - Simplicity.

It was hard to not go overboard with embellishments & PPs for this one..  For the first time ever I have doodled an image & hand-wrote something on front side of the card! I dont really like to see my handwriting. But it was getting difficult to get the mesg printed here, plus none of the alphas i have were matching with the theme! :D
The image is colored with watercolor pencils! 

Getting Nostalgic

Getting nostalgic, not about India though :D My darling husband is in Berlin for 2 days on a short business trip. Which makes me remember all those lovely moments we spent there. Berlin was the first European city I visited with him, about 3 years ago.. I remember being charmed by the European architecture, ornamentation on walls, the history of Germany and the lovely street performances. I Loved being in Germany, and Germans are the most communicative species when it comes to no-common-language discussion!! I was amazed by the amount of effort put in by most people to understand me and answer my query, mostly by gesturing and moving their fingers, even though i would end up not-understanding-a-single-thing.. :)

The first thing i remember about Being in Germany was its Weather.. My husband was there a week before me, n told me not to pack too heavy woolens, since i was going only for about 10-12 days. And well, what would i know of the unpredictable weather.. When i reached Berling, Weather was slightly cooler than expected and the next day, there was chilled winds blowing and continue to blow till the end of my trip.. I wore (my hubby's) body warmers underneath my jeans & tops!

And believe me, its not a good thing to have ALL your pics clicked in only a couple of woolen tops.. And to make things worse, one of them was white and I was not carrying scarf/muffler to match the other one.. aaarghh... I still cringe at the memory of those chilled winds blowing on my neck!! I always HAVE to wear a muffler/scraf, even in Delhi winters.. My white top looked like it has seen the worst of dust storm when it came back to Delhi :D

Some clicks from around Berlin -

My favourite of all places - This chain link is Huge! & its built in between very busy road.

The first fountain i saw in Europe! I was smitten by the detailed designs.. sadly, i dont give a deep look into fountains i now see across every place in Europe.. 

I loved this style of gates :D 

Old vs New :)

The remains of Berlin Wall.. Some part of it still kept as a memorial.. 

A distinctive marker runs through all roads, marking the place where Berlin wall used to lie.. 

A very Beautiful Church - 

 The Guardian Angel of Berlin :) Goldelse -  

And this is the place i spent most time in when my husband was away in office.. There's a HUGE craft store called Idee in the basement that you'll literally go mad inside! 

And the most exciting part, the street performances! Fairly common sight in rest of Europe, not seen anything like this in London though.. 

Sorry for the pic heavy post! 

My first Easel Card

So finally i did complete the ICR challenge #11 to create an easel card & use a basic shape. Here's my entry -

I have used only Rectangle as the basic shape.. Wanted the card to look simple :) I made this for a very close friends new born baby boy. Din want blue at all! :D The baby & the bear are done using 3D technique.. The multiple pictures come from the same book i used a few months back from Brussels..

Some more details of the card -

And every time i see this card or a baby pic or babies in prams in the market, i wonder whether i'll have a boy or a girl myself :D :D I wish for a girl, though everyone around is having gut-feeling about a boy! Surprisingly, i dream of boys as well!

On another wonderful note, my stuff from India arrived yesterday.. Have unpacked most stuff, but still need time to put everything in place.. My new cabin (my hubby calls it that ways) is overflowing with boxes filled with ribbons & papers & embellies..Can't wait to unpack it all! Plus, I realised, its been 3.5 weeks since i am in London and i have not seen a single tourist place! That also means, i dont have any picture to show around.. Been busy in shopping on weekends. It takes a lot of effort to set up a new house..

True Love

My first card after along while! & my first one from London n my new craft room too!  :) This one's for Piali's Challenge on Yvonne's blog.. Challenge was to do block stamping using an acrylic block! 

Here's my entry - 

I ended up inking too much i guess, cos now when i look back at Piali's work & other entries, my work seems a little blotchy! :D But i anyways love this card.. 

Luckily,all the new purchases i did in last month from India did not went into the Cargo! (My lucky mistake is what i call it!), so i had this big Acrylic block & 3 new distress inks. And the only stamps i have are background stamps from Ujjwal & a labels stamp set from Karuna! :D The label & flower vines comes from the label set! 

And I learned about colouring white ribbon using stamp pads from Priya's blog recently. The link for the tutorial is here.