How Old?

I made this card with two challenges in mind, Visible Image July challenge - anything goes using Visible Image stamps of course, and the DCWV July Stackaholic challenge for which there was a sketch.

This is the sketch which I turned upside down. I used the All About Boys DCWV stack for my card, and I thought the cowboy papers went so well with  Silverheels from Visible Image, which I bought from That Craft Place in the sale, bargain!

Tonto is coloured with Promarkers, his hair came out ginger in the photo, I was trying to go for darker but with a red tint and clearly failed! I also coloured the fire and hatchet with Promarkers.

How is cut in grey board from packaging to which I stuck copper slug tape, yes slug tape! Normally this stops the slugs from eating the plants in the pots is it around, not this year! Anyway I thought it was so pretty I could use it on cards somehow. I think it would emboss well too.

Old is cut from brown textured card, all letters are die cut with Sizzix Lollypop alphabet dies. I cut some smoke puffs using a speech bubble die from a Papermania set.

The train is punched from red card with a Martha Stewart punch. The card blank is an 8"x8" Card Craft scalloped blank.

Challenges entered:

Visible Image - July anything goes

DCWV Stackaholic challenge - sketch (Aug 4th for top 12)

Addicted to Stamps - #106 Anything goes (Wed - 10 challenges)

Art By Miran - #11 anything goes (winners 15th Aug)

Creative Fingers - #44 anything goes (Fri)

Fussy and Fancy - #119 Words (winners 15th Aug)

Graphit Markers - July, Hot Colours (Aug 8th)

That Craft Place - anything goes (Sun 3rd Aug)

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Anything goes

Bauble cat - take 2!

I was so ashamed of Bauble Cat card number one due to the awful highlights on the bauble and the too dark colours, it's below a couple of posts, I almost didn't post it and if it hadn't been for the challenge and if there had been enough time before it went live I would have ditched it and made another.

So here is my second attempt and I am really happy with this one, same as before Ike's Art Bauble Cat was supplied by Stitchy Bear Digital stamps who are sponsoring the Quirky Crafts Challenge this time. The challenge is Christmas in July with dies or punches (or both). 

I die cut the cat with a Spellbinders Heirloom Bauble die and coloured the image (made the cat Siamese this time) and bauble with Promarkers. The papers are DCWV, and gold card are also die cut with a 5" x 7" card maker die set, and the poinsettia is also Spellbinders. The pine branch is, as before, punched with a Martha Stewart punch. The Let it Snow ribbon is from Crafty Ribbons. Finally I added a red bow and some flat back pearls.

Again I decorated the inside to match, the card blanks are poor quality so I am hiding that a bit with papers.

This card will be perfect for Mum and Dad who have a Siamese (called Katy, although she is a very slender cat not like Ike's cat), who loves watching snow on TV.

I forgot to say today is my birthday! Also I now have 100 followers, so I think I might do a little candy soon!

This card purred its was into the following challenges (max 10):

WINNER at Ike's World Challenge Blog - Christmas in June (7th July)

Tuesday Throwdown #207 - anything goes

Addicted to Stamps - Make your mark (Wed)

Pile it on - #27 add flowers (winners on Wed 16th)

Crafty Ribbons - anything goes with ribbon (Thurs)

Art By Miran - anything goes (winners 18th July)

Bunny Zoe's - Layers (July 14th)

Crafting at the Weekend - anything goes (26th July - last Sat in month)

Cards Galore - use a digi (month of July)

Die Cut Divas- buttons and bows (month of July)

~~~end~~~

Die-ing for Christmas in July is Quirky!

Lyn set us the challenge of Christmas in July at Quirky Crafts, with die cuts or punches, and then couldn't find her die cutting machine! I thought I was bad!

Anyway our sponsor is the great Stitchy Bear Digital Stamps and as soon as I saw Ike's Art Bauble Cat I thought of the idea of making the bauble cat into a bauble too, but my attempt at "lights" for shine have failed miserably and look like dirty patches that I forgot to colour. I used Spellbinders dies to cut the paper panel, bauble and poinsettia and a Martha Stewart punch to make the pine branch. Papers are some old Papermania ones, and the ribbon is from Crafty Ribbons. I added a few flat back pearls to the centre of the poinsettia. The bauble and cat are coloured with Promarkers and I added some sparkly Mod Podge over the top. I am already working on another version, this time a Siamese cat!

Inside I die cut two panels from the paper and a smaller bauble in white to write on.

I know it isn't the greatest but I have entered my card in the following challenges:

Ike's World Challenge Blog - Christmas in June (7th July)

Tuesday Throwdown #207 - anything goes

Crafty Ribbon - anything goes with ribbon (Thurs)

Pile it on #27 - flowers (Sun)

Happy Valentine's Day

I decided to make a masculine Foxy Valentine's card for Hubby 

. This was the first Unity Stamps fox I coloured in and is the wrong way round I feel. I coloured him with promarkers die cut with Spellbinders and embossed with Mbossabilities tyre tracks and added baker's twine and a key charm,  then blinged the Fox's hearts with red Stickles. I used the paper that I cut the heart from as a mat for economy, and I punched the edge with a Martha Stewart punch.

Paper is by Me and My Big Ideas and was a recent bargain.

I have entered the following challenges:

Crafts Galore - bling and you're in. (Feb)

Crafty Cardmakers - This is a Man's World (Mon)

Craft All Day - Male Cards (Feb 28)

Cute Card Thursday - Clever cutting

Bunny Zoe's Crafts - Love/Hearts (Feb)

Feeling Crafty - die cuts or punches (Feb)

GraphIt's Challenges - Love/Floral (Feb)

Papertake Weekly - With a Heart (Thurs)

Passion for Promarkers - Have a Heart (Thurs)

Polkadoodles - Love Romance (28th Feb)

FWF Unity Stamp Co

Ali Craft Challenge - Valentines (22nd March)

Diamond wedding

 My parents recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, and about a week before I organised a surprise family meal, and days before I ordered a cake to be made by a friend of the family. I decided to make them a Bookatrix card, this is the box lid. I found this pretty border stamp in a set that I think could be Papermania, I am not certain. I used Brilliance metallic sky blue ink and toned it down with white pearl embossing powder. The letters are die cut, the eBosser doesn't like Sizzlits so they aren't great. The hearts were punched with a Martha Stewart punch, the dates hand written by Vanessa, her writing is neater than mine!

Here is the card in the box. I stamped the ivory pearlescent layers with the same border stamp, and added gems to the blue pearlescent. The everlasting hearts sentiment is Visible Image, and is stamped and heat embossed in PI detail white. The left hand side has Mum & Dad, the Mum and Dad are Papermania the & is Visible Image, and Happy Anniversary is Hero Arts. The ribbons are all from Crafty Ribbons, the white with flowers is perfect. Then I found some daisies that went with the monochrome colour scheme, the only splash of a different colour is red, I wanted to add two red heart gems. 60th is die cut with a Sizzlets alphabet set.

I even stamped inside the bottom of the box.

 Out of the box, the bookmark is vellum, as is the top page, Papermania printed vellum which was 6"x6" so I had to make two pages and join them, and the bookmark was diagonal. I stamped Together (Inkadinkado) and heat embossed in white, then stamped more of the blue leaves on it, added a couple of gems and attached it with a ribbon. The pages are kept in place by brads in each corner of the first page, the foam sticky pads wouldn't hold them. I matted the whole thing on the blue card, and added a couple of layers of card to re-inforce the base and keep it flat.

I notched the lid with a Sizzix Paddle Punch and added gem brads (Dovecraft) to the corners.

I have entered the following challenges:

Chocolate, coffee and cards - flowers (Friday)

Crafty Ribbons - anything goes with ribbon

Papertake Weekly - two by two (two people, and two embellishments ribbon and flowers..)

Simon Says Wednesday challenge - use a rubber stamp

Love and Lace

I made this card for the Hero Arts Love and Lace challenge, it ends I hope today (are the USA behind or ahead of us?). I stamped the large image in white ink and embossed it onto black card, coloured it with Prismacolor pencils which I haven't picked up for a long time so it was a joy to use them. One of the wonderful things about these pastel pencils is that they colour over any other colour card. I wrote Love Grows with a white pencil and went over some of the lines to make them whiter and added a bit of chalk mess to make it look more chalkboard like. I stamped the craft blank along the bottom with a heart bloom stamp, I will check the name, and the top of the background is stamped with a dots flourish stamp from a clear set, all stamps are Hero Arts. The background is also coloured with Prismacolor pencils. I mounted the main image on a panel of green, and added a border in red punched with a MS punch, and after adding some black lace this was adhered to the card blank. A few of the hearts punched out of the border are scattered around.

Challenges entered:

Hero Arts as I mentioned above - Love and Lace

Cute Card Thursday - Something old - my Prismacolor pencils

Engagement card

I was commissioned to make a personalised engagement card and here it is.

 You can't really tell but the gorgeous purple card has an embossed pattern of flowers and leaves all over it. All shapes cut with Spellbinders Nestabilties, and border punched with Martha Stewart deep border punch. Words stamped and heat embossed in silver. Couple stamp is by One Rubber Room, Crackerjack Palace. I had the idea of the two hearts, the top one stamped with the word Love, which is  Rubaddubadoo stamp as is the On Your Engagement sentiment. The names are stamped with Stamps Away alphabet stamps but now some are missing sadly, I hope I find them. The heart underneath is stamped with the date of the engagement using Stamps Away alphabet stamps.

The ribbon was a length I found in my ribbon organiser and is now all gone, and I wish I knew where it was from as I would like some more. It took a lot of work to end up with the finished product and a lot of trial stamping and cutting to get here but finally it all came together beautifully and congratulations to Bethany and Ollie, I hope you liked your card!

Christening card

A lady at work commissioned me to make a christening card, and here is the result. It took ages to finish as I kept taking bits in to show her and see if she was happy before assembling the finished card. The main stumbling block was getting all the wording in, and I couldn't find a christening stamp in my collection. So I had the idea of putting the words "on your Christening" and the date, which was a requirement, in the little Sizzix die cut prayer book, to which I added a ribbon, between the two layers, which matches the ribbon with the hearts on. The image is Sugar Nellie and I think it is one of the Gorgeous Girls, might even have been a charity stamp. It was the one that came to mind when I was asked for this card for this 1 year old girl. 

I tried die cutting the name at first, but then the customer asked for all three Christian names so I decided the best thing was to stamp them under the image, the letters are Stamps Away, the Granddaughter stamp is from a Papermania Family set and all the lettering is stamped using Versacolour ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. The image is coloured with Promarkers, and die cut with Nestabilities. The lattice heart is punched with a Martha Stewart punch. Various ribbons some from Ribbon Oasis. Inside the card we took a while to come up with the finished personalised verse which is printed on pale pink marbled vellum type paper. I rounded the corners to finish it off. The customer was very happy with it and now I need to fill her next order for an engagement card.

Angel in paradise

Here is the same angel but stamped and embossed with white Brilliance ink and Hampton Art white embossing powder from a set of pastel colours. Added a punched edge using a Martha Stewart trellis punch, stamp is as before Inkadinkado, sentiment is Hero Arts. Snowflakes punched with Xcut punch and a freebie Tonic punch that I got with a magazine recently. Accent colour here is blue metallic only used for the biggest die cut label, Nestabilities used for the die cuts.

Don't forget to go and enter your black and white craft project with an accent colour and lots of punching over at the Quirky Crafts Challenge blog. You have until Friday (around 16:00 GMT) to get them in before voting starts Friday afternoon. Don't forget to visit and vote on Friday or Saturday even if you haven't managed to make something for the challenge.

I just spotted a challenge I can enter, The Crafty Pad challenge this week is snow (there are a lot of snow cards about, not to mention the weather in the U.K. right now). Going to look for more.

ABC Christmas challenge blogspot have an Xmas challenge so have entered that too.

Quirky Crafts Challenge 39 - recipe by Cazzy.

Yep, it is my recipe, and the recipe is mainly black and white with one accent colour and LOTS of punching. So get out your punches and go wild. We are still taking names of people interested in joining us on the design team permanently or for a guest spot. Also the winners of the last challenge have been announced over on the Quirky Crafts Challenge blog. We have also introduced an exciting new feature of Inlinkz, which is public voting so anyone can go vote for their favourite three cards at the end of the challenge and we will have a public and a DT favourite as our winners.

Here is my DT card:

This wasn't the card I had in mind to make, it just sort of happened. I was moving a box of stamps and spotted the Inkadinkado angel stamp still unused, and thought I would try it. I tried it in white on black too using embossing powders and after several attempts with different powders I got a good image, so watch out for the next version of this card. Next I went to look for punches and suddenly found the musical note punch, perfect for the angel with the trumpet. Instead of holly or snow, I ended up using a deep border punch by Martha Stewart to make the black lace, and punched out snowflakes in silver, which became my accent colour, with an Xcut punch. I cut the angel and matting shapes with Nestabilities large labels die set. Finally I looked for a sentiment and found the Peace stamp in a Hero Arts clear set, stamped and embossed in silver and die cut with the same large labels set. I also corner punched the gate fold corners. I had problems getting this photographed, even with a mini photo studio. Here is another version:

Not sure if that is any better to see, it is on a small easel that I cropped out.

 

Quirky Crafts Challenge 27 - Going Postal

I chose the challenge over on the Quirky Crafts blog this week, and I hope you like it. It is called Going Postal, and you can make any craft project you like as long as it relates to post. You can win some mystery fun things, so go on have a go.
You could incorporate postage stamps, letters, post boxes, mini envelopes, post cards, franking, let your imagination run riot.
Here is my card which is also following the Sugar Bowl challenge sketch this week which I have turned around, and I used a Sugar Nellie stamp which I love, DCWV Pocket full of Posies papers and some Cordinations paper. Punched edges are done using a Martha Stewart punch.
The stamp and frank stamps are from a set by Inkadinkado that I have just spent hours looking for.

Scaredy cats

I'm in the mood for magic! Well it is nearly Halloween. These two very different cats are looking very spooky too. I found I had the gold embossed spiders web card which I had forgotten about so decided to use it, I also had a little heap of Halloween brads. Cat in a Hat is Penny Black, and he is coloured with Pro Markers and Trias, and some Stickles Ice glitter glue. The shapes are cut with two different Nestabilities label sets. The spooky edges are cut with my Fiskars rotary trimmer. Ribbon is Papermania.

Card two features fluffles as a vampire! same card, edge punched with a Martha Stewart punch, Nesties again, and bat sequins.  The Happy Halloween on both cards is from a Sizzix stamp set, and I stamped inside the second card too but forgot to take a photo.