Double whammy day - CES and Basic Grey Challenges

Morning folks - Saturday thank goodness and lie-in day!  Off to see my Marks and Spencer girlies today!  We all started work at about the same time at the M&S Head Office that used to be in Baker Street London.  We were in Menswear distribution in the early eighties and we had to manually decide where to send stock ( I was in Men's jumpers!!) depending on the amount available, and the size and the sales of the store.  No computers for us then!!  This was in the days when the stores had those long counters with the stock folded up and displayed in piles!!  Now, nearly thirty years later and a dozen children between us we still get together every few months for lunch and an afternoon of chat and chocolates at one or other's house!  Today's extra special as we're all going on a girlie trip to Italy at the end of May to celebrate a special birthday for Sue, so looking forward to deciding on the final arrangements!!  

I've digressed!!  So onto the cards for two challenges that start today, Basic Grey challenges and CES challenges.

This is my card for our next challenge at Basic Grey and the theme, as you can see is Easter.  You can make any sort of project as long as it has an Easter theme in there somewhere and you use a Basic Grey product!  I've gone with papers from the Curio  6x6 pad - beautiful toned papers!!  I've also used this darling image from Whiff of Joy and a Nestie Bloom die for the image and a Tim Holtz die for the flourishes.

The daffodil is home made - I followed a great little tutorial by Joanne at Mainly Flowers here - she makes the most wonderful flowers and has lots of great tutorials scattered through her blog.  ( Joanne is also a Stampin Up demonstrator and gives me my fix of these goodies every so often!)

Hope you can join us again for the next fortnight - you could win the $25 voucher to spend at Simon Says, our regular sponsor!!

And as ever, my teamies at Basic Grey have got some fabulous Easter themed cards to share with you so go and have a peek!

On to my CES card now, and I seemed to have used the same colour combo or near enough!  Funny how that goes, where I seem to make two or three cards on the trot that are similar in shade.  This week at CES we have a sketch for you as designed by our lovely mummy - to - be Emma!! Congratulations again lovely lady!!

Emma was also surprised by Paula at Pollycraft who created this fab new Ronnie image to be sold in aid of Emma's efforts to raise funds for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. He is lovely, isn't he!!

I used him for my card this week, coloured with PMs and used Basic Grey Wander 6x6 papers - all available at Crafty Emma's store here.  (I've also just ordered a rainbow full of some gorgeous new sparkly gems that Emma has in store - I have magpie tendencies - anything that glitters!).

 I've also used some Kraft paper from the Basic Grey Basics pad in this colour combo, the thread is Stamping up as is the journal edge punch

The buttons are from stash.

The CES girlies have made a great set of cards to share with you, many of them using this image - it's amazing how different images can look in the hands of different crafters.  Emma is offering a £10 voucher(excluding p&p) to the lucky winner, so come over to the challenge blog and play along with us!

Phew, I got there and you did too!!  Off to jump in the shower now - have a wonderful day!!