I'm so excited....

......squeeeeeeee!

So I just had to tell everyone I won a challenge at Pan Pastels, and I am so looking forward to the prize!

This is the card that won:

All the details can be found HERE.

Need a smile? I do.

 This Grinning Pug from Squigglefly makes me smile, how could you not smile looking at this! There is a pet advert, for doggie dental chews, where all the dogs end up with off with false teeth - unless they get the dental chews of course, it is really funny (not that I often watch adverts), these grinning dogs remind me of that advert! Maybe I should add a gemstone twinkle. I might have to purchase the other two dogs in the set, I hope there will be more, Schauzers would be good! I printed the image then coloured it with Promarkers, the fur is pastel beige, which just subtly changes it from white. I need to study pug colours! It didn't need much colouring.
I die cut the pug, and a piece of Gelli Print ghost print from the other day, and scalloped squares in glittery steel, the sentiment is made up by me using Page Plus, then die cut and mounted on the sparkly steel. Both of those are mounted on a piece of woodgrained gold card, bone eyelets added to the corners and mounted on a pale blue leather effect card blank that I cut and scored myself.
Not had a good day today, some of my cards were accused of not being handmade, and looking "assembled", maybe I should have told the people concerned to read my blog where every card is described in detail. I'm afraid I took it very personally, and as I have been under a lot of stress for the past few weeks, and this week hasn't been great so far I got upset, stupid stupid me.

Today was Slimming World day, and at least there we had such a good laugh because one of our members is a natural born comedian, she should be on the stage! Laughter is good for you, it must have helped - right?

Inside this card, panels of doggy print card, I have a lot of this stuff. I kept it to the palest colour so it can be written over.

I have entered the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge - anything goes.

That Craft Place - anything goes (April)

Cards Galore Encore - anything goes (May)

I have recently bought a whole load of yarn at bargain prices from a lady who sells on Facebook under the name Knitting Mad. I have a load of balls of DK cotton in various colours, and while I try to decide what to do with that I decided to start on this shrug. I love this sequined yarn which is sort of dip dyed in shades of purple. I have a little bolero I normally wear over dresses or tops for formal occasions and for dinner in the hotel when we go away, but I have lost so much weight it is too big. So I need a replacement and I searched for and found this shrug pattern and thought it would be perfect. I had a dilemma over size, do I go for the size range that I am at the bottom of right now, or the one below that I plan to be in soon? I started on the larger size, then changed my mind. A shrug is just a pair of sleeves joined across the back, so does the bust measurement make a huge difference here, it doesn't fasten in any way or have a front. 

Well since starting this we have had a wedding invite, so I could need it for that - I also need to find a dress or outfit to wear with it!

These are the colours of cotton I have, the darkest blue at the top is intended for something for Kenny, I have two balls of that. I have 4 in the palest pink, which isn't in the photo. I was thinking of a seperate little top from that. So the rest is what I have to work with for a striped jumper. 

The first pattern I found was this one in Inside Crochet magazine, and I thought I would make it but looking again I am not sure I like the back view, I still might make this, and I might have to get some red cotton to go with it, or I could keep it to more muted colours that I have.

I found another pattern in a hard back book I have had for years, it is similar but skinnier and longer and with a much deeper welt. I tried a tension piece and found that it must be for Aran not DK. Sportsweight can be either apparently - it is an American book so needed translating to European terms before I found the yarn was too thin to do it.

 Or I could make this cardigan, but more stripes, there isn't enough of any one colour to make this exactly, and I am not sure I really like it.

This is a cardigan from an extremely old hard back crochet book from the 70s, I have always loved this, I think I attempted it once, can't remember what happened. I would love to do this one, but is it too dated? and is it long enough, I wanted long, maybe could alter it but that might not work out.

Another oldish book, and a Tunisian crochet sweater, I quite like it, I don't have the sizes in the Tunisian hooks needed. 

So I need to decide what to make, or find another pattern that suits the yarn that I like.

Oh and I have a bag full of bamboo and cotton yarn in 4 ply, and on order I have recycled cotton aran yarn for a specific pattern that I fell in love with from Inside crochet, and I bought some chunky yarn to make a scarf........

Well I made a Quirky mess alright!

I'm back, with my second make for the Quirky Reminder. I decided to use the Gelli Plate (hmmm, where did I put it, scrabble scrabble, panic ----- oh There it is!), and re-watched some of the videos first, thought I was ready so after searching for the thing and then some paint I found I didn't have a great colour choice in cheap acrylic, mostly silver, gold, white and some green - oh and some yellow from a tube that split and I tried to save the contents by putting it in a plastic screw top jar and seems to be hardly usable and drying up now, I gave yellow a miss!

If the phone will upload the photos to the cloud I can show you WIP, which started out well then went downhill fast. I wanted to over print my first efforts, and I found some Plaid Artist Acrylic paint in maroon and green (more green), didn't shake it right away so ended up with clear gel stuff, shook it and got the paint, added some of both and brayered away. Tried to do some stuff with stencils and foam stamps, and ended up with a gloopy red and green mess on my card (I don't have Bristol paper, or even know what that is yet, so used my best stamping card here).

(So this was the ghost print from the first print, except I have run the roller over a blank bit and the roller had silver paint on it. It was actually looking promising at this point!

I printed over the green with silver you see, but then added this maroon and green Plaid paint, and tried lifting some like you do, but ended up with this total mess, see details below of how I got from this to .........

this!

This was after over printing in white and then green and this is the panel cut to fit the card.)

Today I came down and the mess was dry so I thought I would add some white over the top, maybe that would help, brayed the Gelli Plate, and then realised that all my efforts with stencils and torn paper was on the acrylic sheet that protects the plate - I forgot I covered it before going to bed! Never mind I wasn't going to waste that so tried to get a print anyway, semi successful. So got the cover off the plate and went for the bright green again, with stencils and again varying degrees of success. I brayered the paint through the stencils before removing them, didn't work on the flowery stencil, so got another one out for that corner.

I cut a panel, mounted it on Kraft, wrapped round some rafia, punched holes and used a couple of flat headed eyelets from WR Memory Keepers, added some metal letters that are ribbon sliders, and added the image which was first mounted on Kraft. The image itself is coloured with Promakers, and I tried to give it a middle of the night look with the shadow round the image, this went a bit wrong when I added blue dots, so I tried to cover it (unsuccessfully) with black glitter glue! I used clear gel medium on the water too. 

I love the image, it is so funny, it is called Ferald Sleepwalking from Squigglefly, what is Ferald? I think I might have coloured him wrong, he looks like a little lion cub to me, but Ferald could be a ferret perhaps!

One thing I can say is that this card is UNIQUE! If you hop on over to Quirky Crafts you can see plenty more uniqueness and if you join in you could win some great prizes from That Craft Place,  Squigglefly and Digital Delights.

I dived into the following challenges:

Cute Card Thursdays - Splish Splash

Pan Pastels - go grungy (3rd May)

Itty Bitty stamps and Gelli!

I've been joining it at Unity Show and Tell, Itty Bitty a day challenge. You don't need to have lots of Unity Itty Bitty stamps, you can make lots of versions with the ones you have. I managed to buy a couple on ebay, and this is the first one. I cut out the cupcakes and mounted them in squares, I used pink and red alternating colour scheme, I don't normally put those two together. Cakes coloured with Promarkers and Trias. Die cut with Spellbinders Nestabilities. I added Stickles to the frosting and cherry.

I have entered the following challenges:

Coffee, chocolate and cards - sweet treats.

The second Itty Bitty is called Bubble Tree, I wanted to make it bright and bubblegum coloured. I had a card blank that I had inked with Distress markers that it looked good on. Promarkers and Trias used to colour the image, and it was die cut with Spellbinders deckled rectangles. Ribbon from Crafty Ribbons.

Finally, I spent my Craft Barn voucher on a Gelli Plate, and I had some Unity stamps arrive, I bought them in January, the first ones never got here and I only recently reported it to Unity who very kindly replaced my order and sent a free Itty Bitty! Very Happy Post!

I have a lot to do now, The Alpha Challenge, I only have tomorrow left to enter, a new Quirky Challenge project to make and stuff to do to the blog post, like add linky and guest designers photos, links and descriptions, vote for winners, one last Itty Bitty entry, and after all of that I might get to play with my new stash!