I was having a frustrating day crafting. I’ve been fighting with doing a slider card – like the ‘Octopi my heart’ card from a previous blog posting, and then trying some layered stamping. I couldn’t get anything right. For the slider card I was having trouble getting my bee (die cut shape from a stamp set) to slide around the hive. I tried a number of things to get it to slide – embossing buddy powder, original slider element from MFT, a penny – just wasn’t having any of it.

I moved onto a truck I stamped and cut out, from Stampin Up Tasty Trucks, same thing. truck too big, penny too small, wouldn’t move smoothly. Still sitting on my craft table – at least I didn’t bin it!

So, I moved onto to layered stamping ‘cos I thought I’d cracked the code previously – rubbish. Nothing matched. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Blinking heck was I getting frustrated……….! That almost went into the bin – but I counted to 30 (it took that long to calm down), placed it carefully on my craft table, went to make a cup of coffee, then returned to my craft room.

To cheer myself up, and to get back on the horse – as it were – I turned to my current favourite stamp set. I was sure it would cure my blues, my frustration, and my (almost) tears……and…..it did! Yay!

This stamp set is so easy to work with, items come together quickly, and I made a few variations. I mixed and matched colours from the range I have. Used patterned papers, though sparingly, and just stamped, die cut, stuck things down to my hearts content.

The two backgrounds are from a couple of stamps from Catherine Pooler. I love the candy stripe, and using my Misti, and Catherine’s gorgeous/superb/marvellous inks, it only took a couple of inking and stamping episodes for a perfectly stamped background.

The die cut on the birthday wishes card is one of Tim Holtz steel rule label dies, which I cut in half. I liked the look of the label, but it was too big, so I thought in half it matched the size of the lady well.

I am ending my day so much more happier and in a much better place than 3-4 hours earlier.

No challenges entered this time – just pure fun (in the end, anyway)