Coach House Crafting on a budget

I promised myself that this year I would be on the ball where my cardmaking was concerned. No more excuses that I can't make them cos my stuff is all in storage, or lack of imagination or the most common excuse, I don't have the materials I need for a particular card.
How long did that promise last? Yup, you got it, let's just say.........not long.

My mums birthday was February 5th and I planned her card for months. I bought a Saturated Canary digi stamp and then took many weeks and mucho money finding a cardstock that would work with my new Promarkers.
I scoured blogs and tried everything from cheap cardstock to more expensive Neenah card and even tried Letrasets bleedproof paper - all of em resulted in the markers bleeding through the edge of the stamps - so annoying!
I got some fabulous advice from many craft bloggers and one lady even sent me a sample of the cardstock she used - bingo, it worked! Problem was I lost her email link and couldn't find her blog to buy the cardstock so I made one last purchase of Rymans coated cardstock that other bloggers had raved about and bingo - wait I already said that, oh well!
Rymans card worked fabulously but now I had another problem. My mother was to be 72 and I was suddenly looking at my digi stamp and realising it kinda wasn't for that age bracket ............ or even close.
By this time I literally had 1 day left to make this card so I decided to give up and buy a card and happily went to bed.
Next morning I felt guilty! My mum has given me some lovely craft goodies, the least I could do was make a ruddy card.
So with just an hour or so to go before we were schlepping up to the town to post it  I went into the craft room and chucked something together. After all that planning, prepping and worrying I chucked something together!!!!!!!!!

It's not brilliant but here it is;

 As you can see I didn't use my Saturated canary Ellie digi stamp. Instead I used Popcorn the bear and coloured him in using my Promarkers.
As for the flowers, how awkward!!!!!! Not one of my glues that would dry quick enough would hold those babies down so I turned to my best friend 'Fixsall glue'. I've used this glue for so many things from fixing hubbies digger (yup, the real thing) to making 'these' Roman blinds. I love the stuff!
Not one of my best but in my defence I haven't made cards since Christmas and even those were the first ones in many years and my mum loved it so alls gooooood.
Although after all this pallaver the card didn't arrive on time anyway! A week after her birthday she got  lovely card from the post office saying she needed to pick it up as the postage was low by 12pence! They charged her an extra £1 for the privilege too!!