Crafty Cardmakers Challenge # 26

Over at Crafty Cardmakers the challenge this week is a recipe.

We are to use colours orange or yellow, punches and an animal.

For my card I have used various papers in yellows and oranges (my Happy Colours)

Fiskars punch for the edge of the card and an EK Success punch for the corners.

The Butterflies (I know not STRICTLY an animal) are a Martha Stewart punch and a Papermania white felt one coloured with a yellow Promarker. I little bit of twinkle courtesy of gems and Stickles glitter glue and a lovely summery card is born :)

I am suffering from sever lack of mojo at the moment and on the advice of the lovely Vix I am going to have a sort out of my papers and craft room to see if that will coax it back. At least having had a tidy up I can now see my desk so that is a good start.

I hope we will see you joining in our challenge and I look forward to visiting your blogs.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge # 25

It's challenge #25 over at Crafty Cardmakers and the DT have been provided with a photo as inspiration.

The first thing I saw when I looked at the photo as Love Hearts sweeties which I absolutely ADORE. I really, REALLY wanted to buy a couple of packets to do the posh 'stage the photo' thing but would have eaten them and as I am trying to lose the pounds I put on whilst on the cruise (and then carry back on losing again, I've got a goal you know!!) I thought it might be a good idea to give them a miss. When I was a kid I used to open up the whole packet and read the messages. I'd eat the rubbish ones 1st and the save the best ones till last like 'I love you' and 'Be Mine'. Of course nowadays they have messages like 'Text Me' & 'Email Me' so it's nice to see they have kept up with the times.

Anyhoo, I digress...... I immediately knew I wanted to use some mega cute Quickutz dies I have had for a VERY long time. You know, you just HAD to have them and then I am ashamed to admit I have until now NEVER USED THEM!!!! I am trying so hard not to do that anymore and actually use my stash.

I made an easel cards as the overall design as I do like how they make a card look more special. I used the new Papermania Summer Blooms paper to cover the front and the inside of the card. I used my ever faithful Martha Stewart Doily punch to cut the 'ribbon' and used a small magenta ink pad to distress the edges of all the papers and elements.

The Forever Friends bear is a clear sticker. I love that image and my friend Sarn had given me some stamped images which I have used many times so I think I need to invest in the stamp, it is the perfect image for many cards.

The love hearts were cut from different shades of card and layered with 3d foam. The original die is a heart shape so I cut small circles and layered the heart messages over the top to make them look more like the sweeties. I added another heart inside to provide the stand for the easel. Last but not least I added some FF message stickers from Papermania which I coloured with a pink Promarker to the inside of the card.

This is the prefect card to give to my hubby later this month as we celebrate 22 years of love and happiness. We've been married 9 years in September but you can't forget to celebrate the fact we have been going out with one another for so many years longer.

I would love to see you join in our challenge at Crafty Cardmakers and look forward to popping by your blogs.

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges :-

• Creative Craft Challenges - Summer Lovin (colourful flowers and butterflies)
• Fresh Brewed Challenge 10 - Summertime
• Cute Card Thursday 120 - Summer theme
• Allsorts Challenge #60 - July Love
• Flutterby Wednesday #112 - Open theme

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge # 24

For the latest challenge over at Crafty Cardmakers we have been encouraged to have inky finkers and uses ink in one form or another.

I have opted to used my tried and trusted Tim Holtz pad to do some distressing. I had been given a load of greetings cards to recycle and found this fabulous foiled tree and leaf border. I used the distressing pad to rub over the tree to help define the embossed texture and also on the edges of the papers and card blank. The Hampstead papers from Papermania are perfect for this as the colours are autumnal. The mat is a Nellie Snellen frame which has been edged in gold pen and last but not least I used 2 colours of ink to darken the Docrafts 'scrabble' letters as they were a bit too clean looking and didn't suit the card.

Some of the girls have done some amazing projects and I would really encourage you to go take a look at them. It would be great to see you join in our challenges and I look forward to visiting your bogs and seeing your work.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge # 23

It's challenge number 23 over at Crafty Cardmakers and we want to see a card made for a man.

The card I made for this challenge was to celebrate the 65th Birthday of a special friend. I have used the Hampstead range of papers by Papermania, cut mats using Nestabilities dies and used a new embossing folder by Indentz, distressed the text and inked over the top and around the edges with a Tim Holtz distressed ink pad.

The decoupage is a Forever Friends bear which has several layers. The chipboard numbers have stickles glue added for a bit of bling and the sentiment was recycled from an old greeting card. As the recipient is a gardener for his living I have used FF stickers inside to make it more personalised.

I don't tend to make as many cards for men as I do ladies so I'm very much looking forward to visiting your blogs and seeing your lovely creations. I hope you will join us in this challenge.

AWOL

Been a bit AWOL lately. Have been on holiday and had a fantastic time and then of course you have the post holiday blues and lots of catching up to do.

We had a fantastic time on a cruise around the Canary Islands with two fantastic people who showed us the ropes of cruise etiquette. Paul took lots and lots of photos which he is still sorting out, that'll teach him for taking so many. Hoping to get access to them soon so I can upload a few.

Have had absolutely no chance to do any crafting since before I went away, still don't feel like I have got back to 'normal' yet. Work has been totally hectic since I got back and that has taken up a lot of my time and energy. We had a container full of blinds and poles come from China yesterday and it all has to be unloaded by hand within 2 hours. I ache so much today and have got some really nasty bruises, especially on my arms.

Going to an airshow tomorrow at RAF Cosford, never been to one there before so really looking forward to it.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge # 21

The brief for the latest challange at Crafty Cardmakers is to decorate the inside of the card as well as the outside. I have to admit this is something I don't normally do as I don't have much time for crafting due to work commitments, but it does make a card seem more finished and special.

The image is a rubber stamp from Wild Rose Studio. I have coloured it in using Promarkers and used paper piecing for the dress and scarf. This card is for my Sister in law's birthday on and I have personalised the hair colouring to match hers. I think this is a great image for doing that. I have also coloured the wine rose to suit her favourite tipple.

The papers are from Docrafts Rose Garden pad which also has die cut sentiments which I have used both inside and out. The blossoms are layers of cherry blossoms and assorted mulberry flowers which I have coloured with Promarkers and added glitter.

The inside of the card has been decorated with matching paper, more rubber stamping which are images which my friend Sarn gave to me (thankyou sweetie xxx) and a couple of sentiments. my SIL loves clothes and especially shoes so it was great to make her a really pretty card incorporating all the things she likes.

I'm going on holiday on Friday 21st so will be taking a look at the cards submitted for this challenge when I get back. I'm looking forward to seeing all the beautiful entries and I hope you enjoy decorating the inside of your cards just as much as the outside.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge # 20

For the latest challenge over at Crafty Cardmakers we are to use distressing techniques. I personally admire very talented peeps who can do this, however I always feel that my attempts look very amateur in comparison.

The distressing techniques I have used are inking the papers with a Tim Holtz distressing pad and also a Versafine chalk pad in green, love the soft finish the chalk gave to it. The stamped image I have distressed with the edge of a pair of scissors, I love the roughed up texture it gives and this absorbs ink really well. I also bought a distressing tool from Do Crafts and used it to scratch away at the edges of the chocolate background paper.

The linen textured green backing paper and Birdcage papers are from the Chatsworth collection by Papermania. I do not usually do vintage but was drawn to these papers and the matching rubber stamps, on of which has been used here with a small amount of glitter glue added to highlight the likkle tweetie birds.

The pink paper and letters are from the Rose Garden paper pad by Papermania which has 3 sheets of matching die cuts in it. Great idea to add them into the pad itself rather than having to pay for them as a separate item.

The swirls in the corners are Doodlebug doubles sided stickers which have been generously sprinkled with fine glitter. The flowers and gem are from stash and Stickles glitterglue has been liberally added to the Nestabilities scalloped mat for an added bit of bling.

The layout of the card is a sketch from Day 35 of 365 Cards.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge # 19

It's challenge #19 over at Crafty Cardmakers and we are challenging you to make your card from the items you would take with you on a desert island.

Ideally, of course I would NEED to take my computer but I'm guessing power could be a problem so that means digi stamps would be out so of course it would have to be rubber stamps so I could colour them in with my trusty Promarkers and Twinkling H20's.

Another absolute must is yummy papers. These ones are from My Minds Eye and the pale green is a Papermania one. I would have to take my Big Shot and Nellie Snellen dies. I have only a couple of sets so far but love them so much and they make a matted layer look so much fancier.

Ribbon, anyone who knows me knows I love ribbon and have a pretty large collection. I am lucky living in Birmingham as we have the Rag Market and it is great for buying cheap ribbons and lace trims and I love having a mooch round there from time to time.

Flowers, of any type must really feature somewhere. These larger blooms were a magazine freebie and the paper cherry blossom was from a seller on Ebay. My very good friend Lisa recommended buying cream ones and colouring Promarkers. I am very pleased with the results.

Last but not least, everyone needs a bit of bling. In this case it is in the form of glitter on the papers themselves. Quite subtle for me LOL

This card is currently winging it's way to a very special friend. Hope she likes it :)

I hope you will join on our desert island. It would be great to see what 'Must Haves' you all take and whether there is anything new I NEED to buy.

Cheers Big Ears

Last card from the crafty weekend and I've used paper from the free My Minds Eye pad that came with a magazine recently. There have been some great freebies of late and having recently been introduced to MME I love the colours they use and how bright, yet muted they are.

The eleflump is from Creative Cardmaking magazine matted onto a scrap of pinky red paper which has been inked around the edge. The MME paper has been heavily inked and I think it really suits this paper. I have added a cream loopy ribbon from my stash with a blossom, silver bead cap and Card Candy. A nice simple thank you card using a great sentiment and scrummy papers :)

May The Wind Always be at Your Back

Another card from the crafty weekend and more papers and elements from Creative Cardmaking Magazine. I have to admit when I first saw this magazine advertised I was very dubious about their claim that the papers were good quality but they REALLY ARE!!! I personally love bright happy colours and they have been perfect for me.

I matted the sentiment in a crap of patterned brown paper. The ribbon is from my stash, the flowers were from a scrapbook storage set that I got from Costco with a Card Candy centre and again some pretty butterflies left to flap freely.

May The Sun Shine Warm on Your Face

The title of this post is very appropriate considering the gorgeous weather we have had this weekend :) We went out last night to the pictures with our friends and it was so warm I didn't have to wear a coat. I've even turned the heating off today so lets hope it's the promise of things to come.....

This is the second card I made at our crafty weekend. All the papers and elements are from Creative Cardmaking magazine and I love oranges and yellows, they are such warm colours.

I have added a strip of cardstock which has been punched with the MS doily punch. Stickles glitter glue has been added to the flowers and butterfly whose wings have been left to flap freely.

Just being going through the challenges on 365 Cards and this will match in with Day 34 which was to use the colours of green, orange, white, yellow and red. Well that's one crossed off the list :)

Baby Girl Card

This is one of the cards I made at the crafty session about a month ago now (doesn't the time fly?)

I bought a QVC kit which was a themed one for a baby girl. All the papers, rub-ons stickers and ribbons co-ordinate with one another and the papers are double sided and some are glittered.

The glittery butterfly was cut from one of the papers and I used Craftwork Cards card candy for the spots on the wings. Only the body has been stuck down to allow the wings to stand out from the the card.

The centre panel is one of the cardstock stickers which is matted onto 2 layers of papers. The ribbon covering the join is from Docrafts and the flower is from my stash.

It is an A5 size card with the fold at the top.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge # 18

The latest challenge over at Crafty Cardmakers is a challenging Challenge. This for me is a 2 part challenge. I have used a sketch from Day 155 of 365 cards which was from August 2009. As a sketch I just wasn't inspired by it so never did it.

But the main challenge was to actually USE the Flowersoft that I bought at show at the NEC almost 2 years ago. I've got 6 pots of it and have never used it because I'd heard it could go all over the place and make an awful mess. Well I did make a mess, but not as bad as I'd suspected.

The papers are all from a colour co-ordinated capsule pad from Papermania. I just love the oranges and yellows, they are so bright and cheerful and a perfect antidote for the bad weather we have been having lately.

The shaped corners and the centre panel have been cut using Nellie Snellen Dies. The Flowersoft stalks have been placed inside a real terracotta plantpot and I have attached a ribbon bow from the co-rdinated accessories with the Papermania papers. The flowers, gems and sentiment are from my stash.

So I hope that you will take up the gauntlet and join in the challenge with us. I look forward to popping by your blogs and seeing your entries.

Mother's Day Card

This is one of the cards I made recently at a crafty session my forum buddy Lisa organised in Ripple Village hall.

It is he second time we have been there and it was a fab venue once again. It was a lovely sunny Saturday and we all had a fabuous day. There was gossiping, eating, drinking and even some crafting LOL

Helen brought the travelling QVC store and I have to admit I did purchase a few items (Ok, more than a few LOL, well the prices were too good not to)

One thing that I needed to do was make a Mother's day card for my MIL. Her birthday was the 13th March and as it was only the day before Mother's day I needed to make 2 completely different cards.

I had read Simply Cards & Papercraft magazine and there was an article and all the cards used the MME papers I bought recently. I loved this particular card and knew Mom would too. It is a large card which opens on it's side so I used a sheet of A3 card and cut I lengthways to make it big enough. The central section was supposed to be a pop out but I cut it wrong. I didn't have another piece of the inside card so I made it have a centre flap instead so it still worked really well and no one else would know it wasn't right anyway. Believe me, as a previous control freak who demanded perfection it used to take a lot for me to admit I'd done something 'wrong' and bot start allover again!

Anyhoo, I cut an aperture in the card to allow the flower to show through. I covered it with the small leaves paper as I preferred this to the ones they showed in the article. I took the sheet with the large flowers and cut a couple out and applied Rangers Crystal Glaze to them. It took a good few hours to dry. Although the paper is quite strong I wished I had backed it onto card first as they warped a bit and cracked whilst they were drying. The crafty girls thought this looked ok as it gave them more texture so I think I got away with it. but that's one to learn for next time.

Liberal amounts of glitter were added for bling factor, a card candy centre and the sentiment was hand written, hand doodled and added to 3D foam with a little ribbon round it.

I love how this card turned out and MIL loved the colours and the papers so everyone was happy :)

Mom's Birthday card

My mother in law loves bears and whilst reading Papercraft Inspirations magazine I came across the templates for this Bumble Bear card.

I downloaded the online version from the magazines website as this is already sized at 100%. I cut all the bear pieces from a thick card, distressed the edges with a pair of scissors and added chalk for shading.

The tulips were cut from DCWV textured card stock in 3 different shades. I bent and curled the edges, added chalk and they are all mounted on different levels of 3d foam.

The backing paper is from My Minds Eye. The sentiment is recycled from a greetings card and the bow is Papermania. It took a fair bit of work with all the cutting out and shading but Mom loved it so it was well worth it.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge # 16

Challenge #16 at Crafty Cardmakers was to use an image of a lady on your card. I knew immediately I wanted to use the smashing papers by Debbi Moore that came with issue 13 of Creative Cardmaking Magazine.

The Art Deco ladies are so very elegant and in particular I wanted to use the purple one in honour of Purple Day which was the 26th March. This is a day to help bring awareness to Epilepsy and all you have to do is wear the colour purple. My beloved husband has suffered with Epilepsy all his life and there is a lot of stigma attached to it due to ignorance of the condition.

All the papers and elements are from the paper pack. I have added the patterned ribbon strips to a rich purple ribbon and created a layered flower using Primas, a bead cap and glittered brad. I have created depth with 3D foam pads and added lots of bling to the frame and floral accents in the main picture.

I gave this card to a very, very special lady who is like a Mum to me. She loves Art Deco and this was the most perfect card to give her for Mother's Day.

Forum Topper Swap

Carol Ann from our forum arranged a topper swap. Each participant was to make 4 toppers and we would all get 4 different ones back.

Now, I have to admit I struggled a bit because I didn't know how big to make the toppers. We'd had a similar swap last year but I hadn't taken so didn't know what to expect.

My MIL bought me a great Kanban kit off QVC for Christmas 2008 and it has loads of elements which I though would be perfect for this sort of thing. I used die cut frames and mats from Sizzix and Nellie Snellen teamed with glitter, bling and lots of layering.

I was very fortunate to stop at a hotel down by Carol's and helped her sort them all out. There was a fabulous selection sent in by our girls and it was great to see them all together before they headed back out to their lucky recipents.

Valentine Commission

I was commissioned to make a card for one of Paul's work colleagues. I was given a very specific brief by the customer, down to the layout, the type of flowers and the writing. It was rather nice to have the decisions taken away and for a client to have such a good idea of what he wanted.

I started with Calla lilies which he wanted to be in a silver wedding bucket. I made this using silver card with a border on the top cut using the Fiskars Threading Water punch. The bucket is double sided as he wanted a window so I needed it to look nice at both sides. The flowers are sandwiched in between the 2 layers and spaced using 3d foam squares.

The aperture was cut using a Nellie Snellen die, with a red frame cut to go around it. The lettering was a combination of a Cuttlebug alphabet for the lower case and a Sizzix one for the uppercase and was cut from DCWV cardstock. Gems were added from my stash.

Luke was happy with it and I believe his good lady was too. Happy customers, just how I like it.

Sorry, I've been MIA......

I have been a very bad blogger. I've had very little enthusiasm for crafting and when I have made cards I haven't blogged them. I even missed out on making a card for Crafty Cardmakers because I went away for the weekend for an emergency chillout before I went loopy. Work has been hard on me recently and with the bad weather I was just getting more and more down and finding it hard to stay buoyant. I am hoping that I am over the worst and I am able to bounce back and be my normal cheerful self.

I'd been really looking forward to a crafty session with some of my forum buddies and then I really nosedived after that. It took me a while to realise that I'd had something nice to look forward to and that had kept me going mentally and then all of a sudden I didn't have anything to look forward to any more. Now that I have realised this I am making a more concerted effort to book things up and organise weekends and basically enjoy my life more and make it more fun.

So, I've got a lot to catch up on blogwise so there will be a flurry of new posts and I'm hoping to be back to little old me ASAP

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge # 15

We've got a new challenge over at Crafty Cardmakers based on a triadic colour scheme using a colour wheel.

For this challenge I have used the colours of Green, Purple and Orange.

I have used a download from the Pink Petticoat With Flowers collection and coloured it in with Promarkers. I have printed it out 3 times and decoupaged it in 3 layers using 3D foam

The backing paper is from the glittered Peeking Posies pad by DCWV and I altered the colours of the flowers with a Promarker so they matched the colour scheme better. The white flowers have also been coloured to match and pulled together with a spotty brad from Docrafts.

I used a Martha Stewart doily punch to make a black strip and attached self adhesive spotty ribbon from Docrafts. To finish I added a spot of bling to the flowers on the chair and a sentiment from a magazine freebie.

The layout of the card is Gloria's sketch over at 365 Cards for Day 352. I can't believe it is almost a year ago when the challenges started. Where has that time gone?

I'm looking forward to seeing the colour schemes people have chosen. I struggled with which colours to use so would love to see what other people have made. I hope you will join in the fun with us at Crafty Cardmakers