Home sweet Quirky Home, part 1

Kemly set us the challenge of Home Sweet Quirky Home and picked out two file sets for us to use from our generous sponsor The Cutting Cafe. We have two of the huge sets of cutting files provided by our sponsors, one is 3d Houses and the other is Window sills. These are full of a variety of houses in different shapes and sizes and accessories even printable greetings, and they come in file formats for different cutting machines and if you don't have a machine they also come in .pdf format for printing and hand cutting.

I am running so late, I decided to buy a Klic n Kut, and bin the eCraft that was sitting like a useless lump in a box in the room, and it was due to arrive by Saturday (yesterday) which it did. My attempts at secrecy failed when hubby took delivery as the postie arrived the same time as our visitors, whoops! If he hand't taken it in in disgust he would probably have noticed the noise by now, I have been tidying my craft room/office like crazy and rearraging stuff - not sure you would notice yet, but I was going to try and get away with the moving thing - it's been there years I just moved it sort of thing!

Anyway with any new computerised or electronic, or even manual piece of equipment there are instructions to read, and a learning curve. I stayed up to the earlybbours due to not being able to get on my PC until late partly due to my visitors and partly due to my son who is visitng trying to help me sort out a problem I have with my new monitor (which may well be going back for replacement), and I got the Zing Air to do a test draw, test cut and tried to cut my first house and failed. I went to bed and got a few hours sleep then had to get up as we were looking after a three year old for the day.Today I managed to cut our the start of my house, then forgot the instructions on assembly (too many new instructions in my tiny brain) and assembled it wrongly. So tried to cut that part out again and the machine would not work. With the help of someone on the Klik n Kut facebook site I have managed to get it going again, so will keep on with this as long as I can stay awake, but the finished article might appear tomorrow when our visitors have departed.

Here is my new baby and on the top is a house stand I cut out, a how not to assemble your house example in yellow and how to do it properly in red! I have put a couple of magazines under the Zing which seems a lot noisier than I was expecting having watched the videos and read up on it, it might be the metal stand it is temporarily on isn't helping, it will be on the wooden bench eventually (could make it worse). So I am trying to finish this but not wake my little grandson up!

I was the lucky winner of 6 months of new releases from The Cutting Cafe last year, and at last I have something to cut them with apart from hand cutting! Not all of the files are cutting files, some of them are full of loads of digital images for printing.

In the meantime you can see some really cute houses and windows by the team at Quirky Crafts and join in with anything home related to win your own files or printables.

Katy's bribery candy

Katy is offering candy if you are a follower, or become a follower of her lovely blog - I thought I would post it because there isn't long before it is drawn on Sept 1st!

Quirky embossing reminder.

Once upon a Sunday it was reminder time.....this cute digi is from Sweet Pea Stamps and is Lisa Victoria's Dragon Luck. The image is coloured with turquoise Graph'it Markers and ProMarkers, then die cut with Spellbinders. The Spellbinders label has some embossing round it and I added some pink lace.

The sentiment is die cut with my IO dies and has a gem dot to the "i". 

The background is embossed with a Cuttlebug folder and the flowers are punched and embossed with Nellie Snellen punch and emboss sets and have ProMarker and micro-bead centres.

I found some narrow satin ribbon in the exact colour of the cardstock.

The challenge is also sponsored by Limited Runs and Robyn's Fetish and as usual our top 3 each get a prize.

So hop on over and play embossing with us at Quirky Crafts, or just come and see the great examples the team have made today!

This card has fluttered into the following challenges:

Tuesday Throwdown - texture (Tues)

Fab and Funky - things with wings (Wed)

Inspiration Destination - #47 anything goes (Wed)

Crafty Gals - anything goes (Thurs)

A Gem of a Challenge - for the girls (Sat)

ABC - P is for Pretty in pink (Sat) (10 challenge rule)

Creative Card Crew - lace (Tues 1st Sept)

Coffee Chocolate and cards - use a sentiment (Fri 4th Sept)

Creative Fingers - #90 anything goes (Fri some time in the future lol)

Glitter n Sparkle - Happy Birthday (Sun)

Very Quirky embossing and sugar skulls.

This beauty is Helena Reis's Dia de los Muertos from Sweet Pea Stamps, I think she is gorgeous! I used a Sizzix Tim Holtz cracked glass embossing folder with Coordinations paper sanded to reveal black. The Life is a Beautiful Ride paper is from a My Minds Eye chalkboard stack and it is matted onto a red sparkly square of card, and the paper behind is Papermania as far as I remember.

I coloured the digi with Promarkers, her hair is blue and it looks much darker in real life, I might have to darken it down.

I added black lace and some skull and crossbones ribbon to the bottom, and two gem flowers.

All of this is mounted on an 8" x 8" scalloped card blank by Cardcraft. 

Hop on over to Quirky Crafts to see more like this.

She has crept into the following challenges:

Crafty Gals - any holiday day of the dead (Wed)

Cute card Thursday - anything goes

Addicted to Stamps - Make your mark (Wed/Fri)

Our Creative Corner - Mexican Moods (Sept 4th)

Awards:

I made top 3

Ikes' World - #44 F is for fashion (Tues)

Quirky emboss it.

Myriam is leaving the Quirky Team to pursue other interests, and this is her last challenge to us. We will miss her loads, she is so talented.

Quirky Crafts has three sponsors for this challenge, Sweet Pea Stamps, Limited Runs and Robyn's Fetish.

My first card is made with a Limited Runs digi set called Birds on a Wire with another of their digis called Birdhouse 2 set. The sentiment and a few more come with the birds on a wire set.

I coloured the digis with Promarkers, cut out the panel with Spellbinders and fussy cut the birdhouse. The background is embossed with a set of three little embossing folders that came free with Card Making and Papercrafts magazine a while back, and I enhanced the embossing by rubbing chalks over it, although I don't fix them with hairspray because I am allergic to it!

I am running late with my Sweet Pea card but I will try and beat the deadline, if not it will be along later.

Hop on over to Quirky Crafts to see some even better examples of embossing and to play along with the team. All you need to do is include any kind of embossing on any kind of project.

This card has fluttered into the following challenges:

Cute Card Thursday - anything goes

Addicted to Stamps - make your mark (Wed/Fri)

Sketch Saturday - sketch

Fab n Funky - things with wings (Aug)

Stereotype!

 This is a mixture of stamps and hopefully will be ok for at least two challenges I want to enter.

The typewriter doll is by Lost Coast, her sexy legs are by Unity Stamps, the circles and spirals are Rubber Dance stamps, and the type stamps are Craftwork Cards.

You might remember my altered French/English dictionary which I started as part of The Craft Barn challenge last year - well this is another page I have done in that dictionary.

The page is painted with white gesso, the typist is stamped on white card and coloured with Promarkers and a Distress marker, circles and spirals are stamped in Distress inks and the torn edges are inked with Distress ink.

The small Rubber Dance circles have words in them and say: "you are unique and so am I" and "this is different" - I think it is! She has typed - "I am not A Stereotype".

When I got careers advice a very long time ago the adviser thought all girls should become typists, he didn't like it if you wanted to become anything else!

I have a list of challenges I want to enter to try not to forget, and already one has passed by so I have to add a different one for that.

Challenges entered:

That Craft Place - anything mixed media (Sun)

Love to Create - #16 anything mixed media or inky (Sun)

The Craft Barn - pens (Sun)

Lost Coast - circles (you can use any stamps) (7th ASept)

Special mention in:

Rubber Dance - colour challenge (Aug - 7th Sept)

I've been published

I hadn't read when my facebook friend Marg Byatt told me that my letter was in Simply Cards and Papercrafts issue #140 with the little notebook I made.

I used one of the dies that came free with the magazine to decorate my birthday book which I blogged about here. How about that!

Gone Quirky fishin' instead of just plain wishin'...

 I'm still singing gone fishing, and if you want to hear that song by Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby and a modern one on the first challenge post by Chris Rea hop over to Quirky now.

The team have been having fun with the great fishing images provided by Crackerbox Palace, and the really good news is that they are all 20% off until August 17th in honour of the challenge.

Alternatively you can enter our challenge and hope to win some of the images.

I used Smiley fish with the funny worm, along with the Drop me a Line sentiment and put them all in the Crackerbox Palace jar. The line the worm is on goes from the "i" in sentiment. I coloured the images with Promarkers and the "water" with Graph'it Markers. I've added real shells and some microbeads to the bottom of the jar and some ribbons that I got a long time ago from Crafty Ribbons. I used my wave blade on the rotary trimmer to cut a wavy edge which reveals the blue card insert when closed.

Don't you think of Finding Nemo when you look at this?

 Crackerbox Palace.

To play along hop on over to Quirky now, and you really should see the fantastic examples by the rest of the team too!

This card has swum into the following challenges:

Tuesday Throwdown - sketch

Simon Says Stamp - tie it up (Wed)

Addicted to stamps - #156 anything goes (Wed)

Simply Papercraft - #10 anything goes (Fri)

Left of Centre - #90 inspired by a film - finding Nemo (Fri)

Allsorts - #232 inspired by Summer (orange) (Sat)

Ribbon Girls - anything goes with an image (Sun)

The Craft Barn - pens (Sun)

Creative Fingers - #89 anything goes (Fri 21st)

Country roads take me home...

I have two sets of Artistic Outpost stamps which I bought in a closing down sale, and I wanted to enter the Artistic Outpost challenge so I thought I would have a go.

I have stamped some of the images in shadow ink, decoupaged the truck which is coloured with Promarkers, and cut out the second set of words and re-arranged them around the Home stamp. I sponged the edges with Distress ink, and stamped the clock faces with it too. Home is metallic blue. 

I folded and cut a gold pearlescent card blank to mount it on and added some blue and white baker's twine.

Challenges entered:

Simon Says - tie it up (Wed)

Addicted to Stamps - anything goes (Wed)

We love to create - anything mixed media or inky goes (Sun)

Artistic Outpost - verses and greetings AO stamps (Aug)

The Artistic Stamper - anything goes (Aug)

Unity tag.

I have labelled another of my stamp files, getting there slowly. This time it is Unity Stamps, and I used the caravan Itty Bitty stamp with a house from the Pixie Lane set to stamp the front of my tag. I coloured the images with Promarkers. The tag is die cut with a Sizzix Tim Holtz designed tag Bigz die.

The back of my tag is stamped with a snowpeep and an owl, I love that owl - looks like my Dad with those glasses. I coloured them with Prismacolor pencils.

Now before I did this I microwaved around 150 Prismacolor pencils, a tip someone pointed me towards when I was having a rant about the constantly breaking pencils, so much so that some were down to stumps before being used and most of them had not been sharpened because I was disheartened. Well I had tried the microwave method on a couple and it seemed to work, so I thought I would go for it and do all of them. This had mixed results, most were fine I managed to sharpen them afterwards and I even sorted them into shades of a colour. Around 40 of them were still breaking, and my metallic set suffered terribly both blistering on the outside and the wood developing pencil length cracks - oh dear. The 40 I redid, half of them worked, the remainder I microwaved for a third and forth longer time, I think they mostly gave in.

Oh and I just upgraded to Windows 10, it is free to do, was really easy and looks good. At first I thought it was a scam, but I found out it is genuine! 

I have entered the following challenges:

Passion for Promarkers - Summer lovin (Tues)

Papertake Weekly - anything goes (Tues)

Crafting by Design - windows (Wed)

I love Promarkers - in the garden (Wed)

Inspiration Destination - #45 anything goes (Wed)

Addicted to stamps - #156 anything goes (Wed)

Allsorts - inspired by Summer, what is more summery than a caravan? (Sat)

Die Cut Divas- favourite holiday - (Aug)

Life's too short.....

I love the sentiment that comes with this Itty Bitty red rubber stamp from Unity. I've often been tempted to start a blog called the lonely sock club, in which I would photograph all the odd socks that end up on my dressing table waiting for a friend, some wait forever - where do those odd socks go?

Anyway I wanted to enter the Unity Challenge (and I have) and this fortnight there is a choice of layouts or/and colour combo - see below. I know I have used green too, but the other colours are from the combo, and I used the sketch. This is much brighter than my usual cards I think. The socks were coloured with Promarkers, Happy Birthday is cut with an IO die, the panels are cut with Spellbinders dies. Papers are by DCWV and were chosen to fit the colour combo and the twine is Tim Holtz paper string.

Inside decorated to match.

I have entered the following challenges:

TTCRD - anything goes Aug 4 - 10

Glitter and Sparkle - anything goes (Tues)

Papertake Weekly - anything goes (Tues)

Inspiration Destination - #45 anything goes (Wed)

Addicted to stamps - #156 anything goes (Wed)

Unity - Be Inspired Jul 9th - Aug 13th (winners 18th)

Creative Fingers - #89 anything goes (Fri)

Chocolate coffee and cards - #87 frame it (Fri)

Fantasy Stampers - lots of layers (Sat 15th Aug)

Our creative corner - Mexico moods (4th Sept)

Gone fishing - that's Quirky!

My turn to set the challenge at Quirky Crafts and it is called Gone Fishing. You just have to include something fish or fishing related on your project, even a fish in a bowl.

Our sponsor is Crackerbox Palace and they provided all the images I have used and the sentiment, and to see more images and witty sentiments hop over to the Quirky blog now.

I coloured the image with ProMarkers and the sea is painted with diluted Brusho crystals, you only need a tiny bit to make a lot, I painted a sheet of watercolour paper to use it up and I still have some left!

I die cut the image and panels with Spellbinders dies and added some real twine to the fishing line, and some little fish charms (or are they beads?). The paper is by DCWV.

I hope you will come and play Gone Fishing with us over at Quirky Crafts, any project is acceptable and we allow a little backdating because nothing is more frustrating than seeing a challenge and knowing you posted the perfect card for it yesterday! 

This card swam into the following challenges:

Love to Scrap - #58 anything goes (Mon)

Passion for Promarkers - Jolly Holidays (Tues)

I love Promarkers - 3 or more layers (Wed)

Inspiration Destination - #44 anything goes (Wed)

Little Miss Muffet - hot Summer nights (Thurs)

Cute Card Thursday - citrus 

Pile it on - Sequins or beads (Sun/Wed 13th)

Glitter and Sparkle - anything goes (Sun)

Simply Papercrafts - anything goes (Aug 14th)

ABC - O is for open (Aug 15th)

Crafting by Design - anything goes (Aug)

Our Creative Corner - Mexico Moods (Sept 4)