Further down The Quirky Silk Road....reminder

For my first reminder card, at the Quirky Crafts challenge blog, I used Lucy Loo Fire Dancer from The East Wind. I printed her in two sizes and this was the largest, she is still very intricate to colour and I think she needs to be bigger still!

I coloured her with Promarkers, added a bit of Spica pen to the flames for sparkle then rough cut her out to go on the dark background. The paper is more (other side of red double sided) Papermania, and so are the stickers.

This card has burned its way into the following challenges:

Graphit Markers - wk#30 Hot Colours (8th Aug).

The Paper Shelter - anything goes (5th Aug)

Paula Holifield Crafts - It's Magic (July)

For this masculine birthday card I used Junk Boat from Squigglefly with Chinese Happy Birthday from Squigglefly also. Both are coloured with Promarkers and I added a few waves with a white Prismacolor pencil.

I die cut the Junk Boat after marking the part that came outside the die which I cut around manually afterwards.

Paper is Papermania, and it has a slightly metallic sheen. The sentiment is not straight but the Affixit tape is so instantly permanent that I daren't try and peel it off to straighten it! I added a Chinese coin charm, might be Woodware.

This card has sailed into the following challenges:

Creative Fingers - #44 anything goes (8th Aug)

I thought I should show you the first prize for this challenge, it is so good!

Just look at all the goodies you can win from That Craft Place!

If you come second or third you can win some digis from Squigglefly or The East Wind, both sponsors have highly desirable digital images.

The Silk Road - its Quirky oriental!

Monica set us the challenge to make something oriental. We have two sponsors at Quirky Crafts and they both have great oriental characters and sayings.

My first card is made with Mewshu Pork cat from Squigglefly, with Chinese thank you also from Squigglefly. I coloured them both with Promarkers and a gold Spica pen, and fussy cut them before sitting the cat on top of the sentiment box. The papers are a Make Me pack of Han-Ji papers of two designs. I added a doubled tassled cord to finish. When I tried to tie on the cord I found I had stuck the cat and sentiment on totally the wrong way round so had to cut the panel out again and mount it on another card blank, so easily done!

This little cat slurped his way into the following challenges:

Squigglefly - over the edge (closes today)

Incy Wincy Designs - strings and things (Mon/Tues)

Graphit Markers - #28 Christmas colours (ends 25th July, winners #30)

My next card features Lucy Loo Bookaholic by Unky from The East Wind. She has such beautiful hair, and it is so so long (and full of wildlife)! I coloured her with Promarkers and die cut her with Spellbinders long rectangles. The papers and embellishments are by Papermania, and the ribbon is Crafty Ribbons. Normally I would keep the two sponsors apart but the Chinese proverb about a A book is Like a Garden.. from Squigglefly, which I cut out with a Spellbinders book die, was so perfect for this image - I hope I am forgiven!

Lucy Loo has read her way into the following challenges:

Incy Wincy Designs - strings and things (Mon/Tues)

I love Promarkers - Girls, Girls, Girls - (Wed)

Chocolate, Coffee and Cards - for the birds (bird and nest in her hair) (Fri)

Creative Fingers - anything goes #43 (closes Fri)

Charisma cards - anything goes (23rd July)

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

Open Minded Crafting Fun - vacation related (I always read lots on vacation) (Aug 9th)

I am thrilled that Pam picked me as her favourite, it means more to me than to be randomly picked for a prize!

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........

Quirky Boxer dog

Here is my last project for the current Quirky challenge. I used Boxer, by Enid Barnes, from Squigglefly. I adore Boxer dogs, they are so fierce to look at and so daft when you speak to them they roll over and go all soppy!

I coloured the dog with Promarkers and Graphit markers. I used the rest of the Gelli print I told you about in the last post, I was going to attempt another new technique but decided to keep that for another day.

The card in close up, that dog is gorgeous! The ribbon is from Crafty Ribbons, the background behind the dog is the ghost print from yesterday, see previous post, and the background is the offcut from yesterday. I used those Snaps again, not sure I like them but they go with the circles in the print and I have a lot of them! They are like eyelets, but no hole so you can't call them eyelets but you set them in the same way with a flat surface selected on the top, using the Cropadile Big Bite. A normal eyelet setter would probably do it, not tried yet.

Small squares were cut with Spellbinders Nestabilities.

 I used some printed doggy card for the inside, and a die cut panel of kraft paper to write on.

When I looked at the offcuts they just called out to be made into this tag/bookmark. It can be used as a tag on a gift, then kept to use as a bookmark. It could also be used as a standalone card.

Inside the tag/bookmark/mini card.

Here they are together both standing.

This card bounded into the following challenges:

ABC challenges - J for just as you like (1st and 15th of month)

Crafty Ribbons challenges - Anything goes with ribbon (Thurs)

Incy Wincy Designs - furry friends (Mon)

Moving along with the times - the word "happy" (Thurs)

Creative Fingers - anything goes (Fri)

A sprinkle of imagination - anything goes (May 12th)

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)

Quirky Mayhem, of the messy mixed media variety!

 Gemma set the project this time as Mixed Media Mayhem, and told us to "get messy", well I certainly did that with my project (my hands are still very messy)! I chose this Digi, Tall Ship, from one of our sponsors Squigglefly, and wanted it to be on the sea. My sea isn't as good as I visualised, I had a fine oil painting effect in mind! I took one small flat canvas panel and covered it with white gesso first.When it was dry applied alcohol inks, using first some die cut clouds that I used as masks for the sky, then a wavy wave mask I bought at a show to get the horizon. I added the ship and coloured around the sails to match in with the sky and clouds. I added some fish and seahorse charms, and coloured them with Promarkers, and added glass ball gel medium mixed with acrylic white paint for the foam on the waves, applying it with a pallette knife (badly). I found a seagull stamp and stamped a few birds, and added some seashell ribbon to the hanging loop, the ribbon was from Crafty Ribbons a long time ago.

This is a close up of the project, messy or what! How I imagined this would end up was like a fine old masters oil painting - ermmm, think I have a long way to go!

 I hope to complete another project - it will be along later, and of course there will be many more examples next week in the reminder post.

So hop on over to Quirky Crafts to see some more great makes, and maybe to join in and win one of the three prizes on offer, from That Craft Place, Squigglefly and Digital Delights!

I have entered the following challenges:

Anything but a card - Spring has sprung, open challenge (ends in two weeks)

That Craft Place - anything goes (ends in two weeks)

Quirky New Year Wishes - reminder time.

 Phew, the computer is working at the moment so I can blog properly! I am continuing with my journal, which is all about my weight loss journey. I made a page for each of my certificates and each one has a blank page to add my thoughts, pictures and photos. I want to be able to draw inspiration and encouragement from this journal to continue on my journey and reach my target! All of my certificates were pinned to the fridge freezer, I was running out of magnets, and they were getting tatty at the edges, so putting them in a book is the best thing to do. I punched holes with the Bind it All, but haven't bound it yet or made covers, there will be lots more pages yet - unless I do this in two volumes!

This was my first certificate - slimmer of the week! Pretty amazing, because I didn't know if I wanted to take up the offer of 12 weeks paid for by the NHS, and when I did decide (having been a total slimming club sceptic) I wasn't sure if it would work for me with all of my intolerances, allergies and thyroid problems, I decided to journal my thoughts, here in a Squigglefly freebie journal frame and some journalling spots I stamped with Unity Blossom Stackers set. Fat Mouse from Bugaboo and scales from Squigglefly.

The plan is all about healthy eating, it fitted in with my normal diet just fine, a few adjustments, and here I am on a super healthy eating plan, not a diet! I can still eat treats, but I count my chocolate in squares per day now not bars per day! Peaches, Nibbles with carrot and scales from Squigglefly, and chocolate from Bugaboo.

This was my half stone award, that is 7 pounds!

I decided not to bore you with every page, besides I haven't filled them in yet! I hope to add more thoughts, images and photos to each page. Sassy Gal Angel is from Bugaboo.

She accompanies my latest certificate for 2 and a half stones weight loss, that is 35 pounds! I always worked in kilos before this, but have to think in Imperial again! I could have had kilos if I had known and said at the beginning, but then I would be different to everyone else - and how would they work out the certificates?

This page is the start of my ongoing wishes for 2014, I want to lose the same again - I know now that I can do it! Then I will be able to play with my little grandson as he gets older, and do everything else I want to (well not everything, that would take a miracle - but more than if I don't do this), and improve my health too! I used Girlz get your craft on, and beach boy brat from Bugaboo, and there is room for more.

I only wish they had sent me years before this, and maybe I wouldn't have so many health problems, hindsight is a wonderful thing! 

I have seen very large people sitting in wheelchairs in the hospital, waiting for transport, minus limbs, not able to walk, looking awful, on oxygen and I don't want to end up like that if I can help it!

Anyway on that morbid note, don't forget to hop over to Quirky Crafts and join in, you might want a new car, new baby, new house, holiday - show us what you want during this year in any project you like!

A Quirky reminder, ha ha ha ha ha

Your mission if you choose to accept it: An Octopus's Garden (in the sea). Three prizes up for grabs and as nobody has entered yet (too challenging to stick a fish and some flowers on a card?), there is a very good chance of winning if you follow the brief!

I used images by Squigglefly to make my first ever centre step card. The instructions are on Split Coast Stampers. I used Birthday Octopus, Sea Maiden, bubble fish, Crabby, Unbrella fish and Beach Star Fish to make my card. with extra greenery using Martha Stewart punches, ribbon from Crafty Ribbons, ribbon slider die cut with Spellbinders. I coloured all images with Promarkers or Trias, and added some Anita's 3d gloss to the bubbles. Images come in pairs so you don't need to know how to flip them.

The other sponsors are Paper Pretties and Robyn's Fetish.

So hop on over to Quirky Crafts and join in by Saturday 3rd August midday, and you could win some digi images.

Phew it's so hot, so "I want to be, under the sea in an Octopus's garden by a cave" It's Quirky!

Daire set the challenge at Quirky Crafts and it is "An Octopus's Garden" by The Beetles. I can't stop singing this song, and have done for years, it seems to play in my head!

Now you don't have to have an octopus on your make but it must be under the sea with an undersea creature and a garden and if you hop on over you can see some more great examples.

The sponsors are Squigglefly, Paper Pretties and Robyn's Fetish, images provided by the first two. I have used Paper Pretties images on my first card, I used Daisy (fish in bowl), Billingsley (diving duck), Butterfly Blossoms, Max Splasher (dive bombing dog) and Hani (parrot in treasure chest). Most of these come with several great sentiments, Best Fishes is one that comes with Daisy.

All the images are coloured with Promarkers or Trias, the treasure chest is finished with gold Stickles and Liquid Pearls. Paper is by Papermania from years ago. Sentiment die cut with Spellbinders Nestabilities.

You know that awful feeling when you have spent hours colouring images and cutting them out, assembled your card, punched eyelets, added patterned paper to the inside and you are feeling pleased, then you turn it back over and on your main image there is an orange ink line that shouldn't be there? Well I had that feeling last night! Hastily coloured the smaller daisy image, just the daisy, which I had printed previously, and cut it out to cover said line! I tried using the Promarker blender, it was Memento Ink I think so that didn't work. Well a happy accident you might say!

I am working on a second make using Squigglefly images which will appear later,I might not finish it in time.

It is so hot here in the UK that everything in the garden is dying, so I am now trying to save water from washing fruit and veg and rinsing things and even took a bucket into the shower to catch water. Last week when I had to rest and keep my leg elevated I coloured in winter images to try and cool me down!

Quirky Midway reminder - make a mess!

 This background was created by stamping all over a white A4 piece of card with a Fiskars continuous stamping wheel that I got in a sale, then spraying with Glimmer Mist in two colours - Sapphire and Bronze. I used Bugaboo images Ladybug Stack and A Little Birdie Told Me. The messy background is mounted on gold cardstock then onto a pink card. The polka dot chiffon ribbon was from Crafty Ribbons who are also sponsoring the challenge.

I have entered this card in the following challenges:
Catch the Bug - Green Thumb ends next Friday.
Incy Wincy Designs - things that begin with F (flowers and feathered friend. and funny) (Mondays)

Same background card and it is amazing how it varies from the piece above. Again Ribbon from Crafty Ribbons.

Here is my very messy hand!  I tried to spray the Glimmer Mist and it was bunged up, so I got the "pokey tool" and poked it to unbung it, and while I was pondering on why it was still blocked it suddenly came to life and sprayed all over me! Good job I was wearing an old dark blue fleece so it won't show on that!

If you hop on over to Quirky Crafts Challenges you can see some more great examples using images from two of our sponsors, Bugaboo and Squigglefly, and of course you can join in the fun because the challenge doesn't close until Saturday 16th March at 12:00.