Back in my comfort zone...

with a much simpler card, although it is another challenge entry (I know, 2 in 1 day, lol!)...

This one is for the Pollycraft Monday Challenge - Let's have a sing-song where the theme is 'inspired by a song'. I think my entry speaks for itself, no explanation needed, lol! This has been one of my favourite songs for years so thank you to Glee and of course Joe McElderry for bringing it back!

Image is the Lilybean Fairy Clover Butterfly Wishes digistamp from Pollycraft

coloured (badly!) with Promarkers

backing paper 'Ice Cream Curls' from Pink Petticoat

and the little butterfly in the top left is a dimensional sticker from Anita's (strategically placed to hide the black mark left by my printer - silly me coloured and trimmed the image before running back through the printer to add the sentiment!)

Time for tea?

Isn't she a little cutie?

I've finally taken the plunge and bought my first Lili of the Valley stamps - looking back now I can't understand why I waited so long....

And to celebrate I thought it was time I also entered my very first challenge, this one at the Lili of the Valley challenge blog. It's a sketch challenge, and this is also the first time I've worked to a sketch but I'm quite pleased with the result...

 image is 'Tea Party' from Lili of the Valley

stamped with Memento Inkpad onto Clarity Stamps postcard

coloured with Promarkers

Martha Stewart border punch

Nellie's die-cut frame

backing papers from Forever Friends, Papermania Honey and Hugs and a Pink Petticoat download

sentiment from Craftwork Cards and think the flowers are Prima, held together with a Dovecraft brad

Simply baby boys...

Just a quickie to post these two, have been wanting to use the images for a while so out came the Promarkers last night and these are the results...

This first one uses an image (think it was a freebie?) from Pollycraft, I'm not sure if he's still available.  My cool aqua Promarker is on its last legs so I inked the edges of the die-cut panel with the aqua colour from a Kaleidacolor Inkpad in 'Caribbean Sea' colourway. Simple matting and layering (love the textured cardstock!) and a few mini buttons to finish it off.

This was also a freebie image, this time from Bodils Scrapperverden and again I've left the matting and layering very simple. The gingham paper has been punched with my new Martha Stewart Doily Lace, then I decided to colour the edge with the PM used in the image. I haven't put a sentiment on this one as I thought it could be used as either a new baby or a 1st birthday card.

That's all for today folks - will have some girlier designs next time...

Inspired by...

...well I hardly think I need say any more - the cute little scottie dog says it all! I bought a pack of the scotties at Harrogate in March with a card for one of my sisters in mind - she's a collector of a certain designer handbag range and my budget doesn't run to the actual thing...

Anyway there I was sat trying to decide what to do for the 50th birthday card I'd been asked to make, with the brief of 'girly' and cast my mind back to the conversation where I'd been told that part of the gift for the birthday girl was a you-know-who bag...

...and voila!

Papers are Pink Petticoat, handbag shape traced from a Craftwork Cards blank then layered with 'panels' cut on the robo. I cut a pocket into the front of the bag to slot the scottie into. The '50' charm was also cut on the robo - I cut 3 layers and stuck them together for strength, and the brad used for the closure was from Dovecraft I think.  Some assorted flowers and thin strips of black vinyl and we're good to go :-)

As has become the habit with my 8 x 8" cards I made a matching box instead of an envelope and I think it turned out pretty well, after completely mis-measuring last night - the 1st attempt wasn't even square lol!

Of course I'm my own worst critic and worried that it wasn't up to scratch but my friend loved it, and I think I'll be making a very similar one for a 21st birthday card she needs too...

Oh yes, and not forgetting my sister's card!

Heaven, I'm in Heaven...

Crafty heaven of course! Bank holidays are definitely bad for my bank balance, lol!  No pics just yet (I've just got home and the light is really poor) but this (extended) weekend I have bought

• 8 x 8 card blanks
• Forever Friends wall decor sets for a bargain £1.99 each - they're a perfect fit for an 8x8 card!
• 2 wonderful DCWV 12x12 cardstock stacks for just £7.99 each
• a Martha Stewart scoreboard
• some self-adhesive wallpaper border stickers (6 sheets in a pack) with diggers and cars etc for only 69p per pack
• a couple of 8 x 8 baby-themed scrapbook kits (10 sheets of paper, stickers and chipboard frames etc) for only 99p each
• oh yes, and a laptop!
• and quite a few other things as well - my friend did ask if I have any room left in my home ;-)

In my defence (as if it were needed between crafters!) I did spend a lot of time at the weekend making some cards for my office to sell at a charity fun day this coming weekend.  I'll hopefully get to take some pics tomorrow before handing them over....

Edited to add - here are the pics of some of the cards, images are Digistamp Boutique (I played around with a couple of them to create the image I wanted for my Fathers Day cards), papers are Zoe Pearn and Nitwit and some of the images are coloured with Promarkers...

and finally...those wallpaper stickers from The Range - once they're snipped up they'll have cost less than 4p per image!

Lisa's special RAK event for her sister

I can't believe how long its been since my last post - how do people manage to find time to blog every day??? Actually if I did more blogging and less reading of other blogs then I might get somewhere, lol!

My card today is for a very special RAK which you can find here.  Lisa's sister is terminally ill with lung cancer and she has asked us to send her sister cards to make her smile, preferably including a frog.  Paula from Pollycraft has very kindly donated a freebie digi image to use.

This was my first effort, I love how the red (which is actually 'hot pink' Promarker) goes with the green.  For once the card came together almost exactly how I'd pictured it in my head...

I designed the sentiment circle myself using wordart - the flower in the centre is cropped from the main image to co-ordinate perfectly. Once I'd scanned the card however I had another look at Lisa's post and saw the request for funny cards and thought I needed a funnier sentiment so eventually came up with this one...

Again the frog's head in the centre is cropped from the main image (and to save making the card all over again I just stuck the new sentiment on top of the old one!)

The backing paper is a pink petticoat download which I only bought last night (how's that for speed?), printed at half size, and everything else is coloured with Promarkers.  Now I'm just wondering whether to add googly eyes if I can find them amongst all of my clutter lovely stash....

Off to colour in some more frogs while watching the footie now x

Hang In There...

After all of the 'big card' fuss last weekend, I've been able to get back to something that's a bit more 'me'. What do you think?

The image is a freebie digi-stamp from Sassy Cheryl's over at Paper Craft Planet - here's a close up version

He's coloured with Promarkers (of course!), as is the cardstock used for matting, and the card candy - the perfect way to get an exact colour match.  The pink backing paper was in my goody bag from Craftwork Cards. Finished off with a computer-generated sentiment (printed directly on to the card before assembly).

Just a quick update on that wedding card though - I managed to make a box and a matching insert for the card just in time to take it to our tea-party! I wasn't entirely happy with the box but was told that I was being over-fussy and everyone else loved it...

I don't do big cards...

...so could someone please explain how I came to make an A4 size card???

I offered to make a wedding card as one of my colleagues is getting married on Saturday and we've clubbed together for her gift.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, until I realised that I know very little about this person's tastes,  not to mention the rest of my colleagues...

I decided to steer away from the lovely cute Lili of the Valley image I bought at Harrogate and had a picture in my head of an 8 x 8 inch square card with a 3D tiered wedding cake in ivory with red accents as the bride is wearing a red dress with full-length ivory coat.  Took the prototype in to show my colleagues the other day and got the impression they didn't approve of the colour scheme - eek!

Lots of hours later I ended up with this - the only thing it has in common with my original concept is the tiered cake

I finished it after midnight last night, then dragged myself off to bed knowing that I wasn't really happy with it.  So this morning I pulled it to bits!  This is version 2 - very little difference except the cake is now lower on the card and the springy wires connecting the hearts are gold coloured instead of silver.

I'm as happy as I'm going to get with it now so I think its time to make the box - I've got about 4 hours, lol!

For a large card it was incredibly cheap to make - the cardstock is from my bargain buy at Harrogate - pearlised A3 card folded in half to make the base card then decorated with a Rollagraph stamp wheel using Versamark and mica powder ( Harrogate spending spree again!). The cake tiers use Martha Stewart punches (yes, Harrogate!) with a bit of glitter and a few gems. The cake stand uses a couple of Fiskars punches - the curved sides were done using an oval punch. The glittered hearts were also punched from the same cardstock as everything else then run upside down through my mini Xyron before adding glitter.  And last but not least, the sentiment panel was created with my Craft Robo Lite - I love the gel-pen drawing function. Incidentally, the ivory cardstock used for matting and layering, and some of the cake elements is just the same cardstock but coloured with an ivory promarker!

On the subject of weddings I had to chuckle at this post last night by Kerry over at A Load of Old Pickle. Why do we volunteer ourselves for these things, lol?  I made my friend's wedding invitations last year, apparently I'd offered while under the influence of far too much wine (which I blamed on the shock of her finally getting hitched after 10 years together!).  I couldn't help but be struck by the similarities to Kerry's invitations, especially the insides

Can I just point out though - I didn't want the peel-off there  - that was a last minute addition when the bride's father thought a wedding invitation should feature wedding bells (even though it wasn't a church wedding...)

Happy Easter!

Hope everyone is enjoying their eggs and other Easter goodies :-)

Just a quick visit to share this card with you - not strictly an Easter card but it could've been...

I love this design, one of a set of cutting files for my Craft Robo, bought from My Scrap Chick.  Unfortunately, although it doesn't really show in this pic I had a bit of a disaster with the good old pinflair glue , put a bit too close to the edge when sticking it all together - if you look closely at the middle 'tuft' on the chick's head you might be able to see it. But, as any good crafter knows, there's always a way round - et voila (!) version 2...

...with a hastily designed and cut sentiment!

I managed to squeeze a bit of Promarker action in there too - instead of faffing about cutting the eyes and beak out of different pieces of card I cut them in yellow with the main piece and then coloured them in - genius, even if I do say so myself!

Off to do more tidying now :-(

No crafting today :-(

I've nominated today as the day to tackle the chaos that is my spare room, or the room thats meant to be my craft room.  Its so jam-packed full of junk that there isn't room to craft in there, meaning my crafty stuff is gradually taking over the rest of my (not very tidy right now) home...not good!

So, I'm trying to build up the resolve to get rid of stuff, not easy for me as I'm a first class hoarder!  I usually end up with a 'charity shop' box or 3 that takes ages for me to get around to dropping off at a shop so I'm tempted to be really ruthless this time - keep, ebay, dump, and possibly freecycle to get rid of my old tv among other things. Wish me luck...

In the meantime just a quick pic of a card I started months ago and only got round to finishing last week (apologies for poor image quality)

I love the simplicity of monochrome cards but really struggled to get the look I wanted on this one.  Sometime in December/January I rounded the corners of my backing paper and stuck it onto a 6x6 square card but then couldn't find a suitably strong image to go with it. Then I came across some peel-offs that I couldn't resist popping into my basket but wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with them. At some point my cluttered mind married the two together and this is the result.  It looks much better in real life...

Back to the grind now but I think I'll treat myself later to getting the promarkers out and colouring some digi images, especially if I get a proper chance to investigate all of the talent over on Paper Craft Planet...

Still Recovering...

...from a nasty tummy bug last week, and from a full 6 hours at the GNPE in Harrogate last Sunday. Well that's 6 hours excluding the dash to Sainsburys to get some more cash out of the hole in the wall...which also gave me an opportunity to stash what I'd already bought into the car to free up my hands and arms for more buying...
Sunday evening was like some form of torture - I stayed overnight in Harrogate but hadn't had the forethought to take a basic craft kit with me, so had to make do with lots of 'stroking' of new goodies...

I came back with a boot full of crafting goodies supplemented with the purchases made in Harrogate town centre on the Monday morning...oops!

Of course since I've been feeling poorly too I haven't really had much of a chance to create but have managed these 2 cards...

This one is made almost entirely from a Craftwork Cards goody bag - the middle flower stem was diecut and foiled and I just used the 'waste' either side to make the other stems.  The leaves were cut from waste at the corners of the same sheet. I used an apple green Promarker to colour them.  The mesh behind the flowers was originally plain white and also coloured with a PM (moss green I think)

This is the first card I made from my new stash and I think I managed to use 5 new products to make it.  The only things that weren't new were the rub-on sentiment and the black paper used for matting and layering.
Image is Indentz 'Funky Tree' embossing folder run through the Cuttlebug using Whitewash core-dinations cardstock. Card candy and backing paper from (another) Craftwork Cards goody bag, and of course the lace is a Martha Stewart punch.  The card itself measures about 8x8 inches and is made from an A3 sheet of pearlised card also bought at the GNPE. If I add in the envelopes and polybags bought separately that makes 7 of my weekend buys used for 1 card!

Off now for some crafting of a slightly different nature - I'm holding an Easter/Spring crafts session for children on Monday at the library where I work.  Watch this space...

It's exhausting being a good daughter!!

This is the Mothers Day card I made for my mam - sailed a bit close to the wind on this one, ie I didn't even start it until this morning! Luckily I wasn't seeing her until about 1pm, but I was a bit worried that the buttons wouldn't have stuck in time...

the base of the card is from a Kanban kit

 layered letters cut out with my Craft Robo

frame for sentiment is a 'Nellie's' die

bunny image is free stamp from Quick Cards magazine

coloured with Promarkers

There are 2 mistakes on the card - the first is that I used the wrong bunny image. I'd stamped and coloured a few bunnies in a variety of colours and stuck the wrong one onto the card but it looks ok so I decided not to risk wrecking the card to take it off.  The second mistake, which I realised only as I was putting the card in the envelope, is that the card base is upside down - I have 'Australian' flowers! Oops!  My mam loved the card though and although its quite small it really stood out amongst all the shop-bought cards on the mantlepiece...

And why exhausting? Well, I popped round there for a short visit and left after 4 hectic hours - take 1 mam, 2 of my sisters, 4 of their children, 1 friend and 2 dogs - throw in installing antivirus software on 3 laptops and fixing a loose key on 1 of them and then teaching my mam to play Mahjong on her laptop, and you can see why I was glad to get some peace and quiet :-)

Better late than never?

Just a quickie tonight, thought I'd post a pic of the project I should have been working on the other day when I was playing with my new Digistamp Boutique images.

This is a birthday card for one of my friends.  It was actually her birthday on Sunday but I didn't make the card until last night - I know, I'm a terrible friend! Trouble is I just couldn't figure out exactly what I wanted to do, other than having the Pollycraft image in mind - actually its a kind of combo of 2 separate images to get the '30' but I like how it turned out. And why is it exactly that I work best under pressure???

It was my first attempt at this shape of card, which happened to give me a great excuse for not posting it (way too bulky - honest!). To try to make up for I made her a matching shrink plastic charm with the same image but forgot to take a pic in my rush to get to work this morning - doh!

I'm a bad, bad, blogger.....

I can't believe it's now 2 whole months since my 1st post, where did all the time go?

I'm sure no-one will be surprised to hear I've been too busy crafting to actually blog about it and, looking around the room right now, its in exactly the same state as on 1st January - I'm such an untidy crafter...this is my living-room floor right now...

And my friends and family wonder why I don't encourage unexpected visits! You can see the occasional patch of bare carpet which I use as 'stepping stones' to get from one end to the other - one of these days I'll do myself a serious injury, but what a way to go!

And I'd told myself I wasn't going to craft today, except for one 'must-do' project (that I haven't done...) but I really couldn't resist the new Spring Coco and Friends digi-stamps which I spotted on the Digistamp Boutique blog. They were only released today but I had to have them.

And this is what I've managed to create so far...

image is Coco Easter Stroll from Digistamp Boutique

coloured with Promarkers

scalloped frames from a Nellie's multiframe die

(the frame around the image was pieced together to get a larger frame)

patterned paper is from Imaginisce All Occasion Build-a-Card Pad

flowers cut with a sizzix die

image is Spring Coco from Digistamp Boutique

coloured with Promarkers

Prima flower, smaller flower and paper ribbon coloured with Promarker

backing paper from Forever Friends Hugs & Cuddles paper pack

And a quick close-up of 1 of the coloured images - the first time I've used my Promarkers in such a sketchy, watercolour type way...

...loving this effect!

Well, time to go to work now, the clearing up will have to wait until I get home...