Wow! That is lovely!

This lovely painted rock is the work of FT member Funnytrivianna, who has become a friend, and who presented me with this as a gift today. The gold glitter paint with which the rock was covered before she did the portrait of my girl, using toothpicks, doesn't show up as well as it does in person. The detail is incredible and I love my present!

I will repeat what I said on Facebook - what a lovely gift - unique and very special.

I love hand-crafted gifts! I am good with things like sewing but I suck at drawing and painting. Wish I had her talent!

It really is a beautiful gift!

That is superb.

It is my daughter's (coolcat90) 25th birthday today. She is a belly-dancer and when I found this belly dancer stamp in a craft shop I couldn't resist. It's taken me several days to make this card. I had to do it in stages, a little each night and allowing for "drying" time overnight. I had to stamp the image, wait for it to dry, colour it (with Copic markers), wait for it to dry, paint with glitter glue, wait for it to dry...then I beaded along the hip-line, and assembled it this morning. I did it in purple as that is her favourite colour.

Oh Carol, how she must have loved that. I agree, anything made for you , with the personal touch and showing how talented people are is worth everything. Certainly a keeper.

I have not been here before today and I just want to say how really talented you all are. I am really gobsmacked actually, it is incredible art.

I'be not been about much over the last few months, and missed these posts.

Love Precious' personalised "paperweight" And Sue, your beading is fabulous as always.

MG that card was a lot of work, and it shows, but what a result! Fantastic!

That is beautiful Carole, a work of love.

People who think that making cards is a case of slapping a few its on a card are so wrong, well most of the time. I know from personal experience that a card can take many hours to complete.

Loving all the craft! Mum's been very busy crafting Christmas cards and home decor the last couple of months, we find the Spellbinder a Godsend

Aaah but have you found a good system for storing your dies??? What a headache that can be

I haven't even started Christmas-card-making yet, but might see tomorrow if I can come up with an idea or two.

I just keep mine in a box, for lack of a better system. I have seen one storage system that consists of magnetic pages in a file, so you just stick the dies onto the magnetic pages and then you can flip through it like a book, seeing all the dies in a glance. The only drawback I could detect was it's very heavy. Am still deciding whether or not that system would work for me.

It's the system that I use, indeed, it's the system that I made for myself. Must take a photo for here to show you. Two A4 magnetic sheets to a folder, four folders in total (for now), and it's pretty good, no rummaging around to find the one you need. I'm happy with it.

Ohhhh, die storage. I looooove dies and storage.
I keep mine on magnetic sheets too and in a box from Close to My Heart. We had a contractor who would put out fridge calendars every year and would give me the left over ones. There's lots of things you can do with magnetic sheets .. cut them up with the dies for a start!

When my Mum died I brought home her sewing machine. It was a present to her when she had retired years ago but she had barely used it. So it sat here at home for a few years mending the odd rip or sewing on cards but I decided to actually do something with it so here is my first go at a quilt. Very very basic but I enjoyed it.

That is brilliant Jill, quiltmaking can be addictive though, I know many quilters.

It is funny you mentioning sewing on cards, I actually sewed on one yesterday for the first time, it certainly saves on adhesives.

Oooh that's fab, Copago!
My mother in law was totally addicted to patchwork (she said she found it therapeutic), and made hundreds of quilts ... every single stitch was done BY HAND, including the quilting!!! We kept dozens of them when she died, but gave away tonnes more. It's something I'd like to get into some day, but as it's time consuming and time is in short supply for me, it's not for now.

Wow, Sue, such a lot of work on that card! It looks great!

I really enjoyed the making the quilt .. I'm much better at constructing things than designing them though It did take lots of time but these long hot summer days are good for that

Love you card Sue ... and the stitching! You're right .. nothing is going to move when it's stitched on@

Another flowery card, this time using a die for the background.

Oooh very nice!

Very pretty, Sue.
Love the die .. what company is it, do you know?

It is a Marianne Anja die. I cut two pieces and butted them together with one piece overlapping on each side. That is why there is 'stuff' covering the join.

That is what 'stuff' is for
It looks great.

Just been googling those dies ... great range. Dies are my weakness.

I spent today card-making with two of my friends. I made two Mother's Day cards (because it is Mother's Day in Australia in eight weeks' time). I also made five wedding cards as I have two weddings to attend in April and another later on in the year. This is one of the wedding cards. Although the photo doesn't show it very well, all the accents are purple as that is the bride's favourite colour.

I love it, nice and clean, something which I have difficulty making, mine tend to be too fussy and my daughter doesn't like them.

Looks really good, MG .. love the embossing