Dream Valley Challenges #1 Anything Goes

I am delighted to be posting my first design for the brand new Challenge Blog Dream Valley Challenges. We are launching with a nice easy one today, as it’s anything goes.

For my card I have used the second of the Marianne cut and emboss dies I mentioned in an earlier post. I think these are so pretty I just couldn’t resist them. You will note a liberal dose of my favourite colour of purple.  The image is an Inklined Digital stamp which I believe I actually got free from Imag-e-nation crafts, and I have coloured it with my promarkers. The die cut element is mounted onto some DCWV card and a scalloped blank.  The butterfly is a Spellbinders die, and all the gems were applied with my hot tool. I hate that thing, one minute they are not stuck and the next the glue is all of a slither and they are slipping and sliding all over my card. I must practice more!
This first challenge is sponsored by Lili of The Valley for the first prize of a £10 voucher

Second prize is the Fashionista and Dude Simply Sassy Set of stamps

Third Prize is the Windswept Simply Sassy stamp

So come on folks what you waiting for, head on over to Dream Valley Challenges and join in the fun! I look forward to popping around your blogs to see what you have come up with.
Whilst you are there I am sure my fellow teamies would appreciate you clicking on their links too!
I am also entering my card into
CES (Crafty Emma) Challenges – Flowers and Flutterbys
Crazy 4 Challenges – Flowers
One Stop Craft Challenge – Spring Flowers
If The Shoe Fits – Purple
Fussy and Fancy – Embossing and/or paper piecing
Stamp Something – Something with Flowers
By the way, after I finished it, I decided to glitter the peony. What do you think should I have left it as it was, unglittered?

Don’t forget this first challenge runs for just a week, and thereafter we will be coming at you fortnightly on alternate Sundays.

The ABC Challenge O is for Ovals

As mentioned in the post below I was absolutely blown away to get an invite to join the team at The ABC Challenge. Woohoo. If you could see me you would see me doing the happy dance.

Anyhow here is my first effort for the team and I hope it’s up to standard

We are sponsored this week by

 

who have donated a very generous £10 gift voucher for their store.

My card was made with a Cuddly Buddly digital download in the Toby range, which I coloured with oridinary kids colouring pencils, just to see if I had improved any since I was six! The BP is from Prima’s Annalee pad, and was perfect with it’s oval centre.  Flowers and heart pin are from Wild Orchid Crafts.  I created the sentiment on my pc.

I am entering this into the following

Party Time Tuesdays – Anything Goes

Creative Cowgirls – Use hearts on your card

Gingerloft Challenge – Our Furry Friends (image)

Bee Crafty – Hearts and a Digi (my digi has a heart in it)

Some Exciting News – Twice!

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I have been chosen to be part of Melly’s brand new Design Team at Dream Valley Challenges. I shall be posting my first card this Sunday 27th. The first challenge will run for just a week but thereafter fortnightly on alternate Sundays. We have some great sponsors lined up so PLEASE pop back on Sunday and see if you can tickle our fancy with your creation, and I promise this first one is easy peasy just to get you all in the mood. I have put a brand new blogroll up so if you fancy seeing who else is in the team just scroll down until you reach the Dream Valley badge and click on the blogs you find there.

Don’t forget to pop back here on Sunday to check out the first post for this new team.

I am doubly excited today as I also had an email out of the blue from Heidi at The ABC Challenge to ask if I wanted a spot on the team. Sadly someone had to drop out and she asked if I would like to take her place…. well would I? Of course I would!!!!

Please check out the B team at ABC in my blogroll. There are two teams the A Team (cue silly music) and the B Team and we take it in turns on alternate weeks to meet the challenge set for that current week. As usual each week will be based on a letter, and the first challenge I am involved with is O is for …… Each week’s offering will be on that letter until both teams have shared their creations and then the third week will be the next letter for two weeks and so on. Hope I didn’t lose you, lol. The challenges will be posted up every Wednesday.

I shall be posting my O is for directly after this post, although of course the way the blog works it will appear before it.

Two blog awards

Things are coming in two’s today!

I have received the following blog awards

 

I received this award from two lovely blogging friends

the first was Fi at SugarplumDoodles and you really need to go check out her fabulous eye for colour, she is currently guesting at Sugar Nellie and they would be mad to let her go methinks.

and the second was from Ei at Eiglass who seems to think I have lost the plot, but where she formed that opinion I have no idea. She thinks she might be jealous of me, but I suspect she hasn’t done the craft equivalent of looking in the mirror as with her talent there is nothing to be jealous of!

Thank you Ladies and I graciously accept

This special award is aimed at bringing unknown good blogs to light and in accepting the award I have had to agree to the following conditions;

1) You have been tagged, do you want to accept? YES! then create a post on your blog and post the love blog photo.
2) Link back to the person who gave you the award and say if you accept.
3) Choose 3-5 of your favourite blogs to tag, link these in your post too and tell the lucky people they have been tagged
As the aim of this award is to bring unknown good blogs to light, please don't tag somebody with 300+ followers.

I am passing this onto the following lovely bloggers

Fiona @ Handmade by Fiona McCarthy 

Bev @ Little Miss Muffet’s Crafty Moments

Jacki @ Cards By Jacki

Angie @ Angie’s Blogspot

The second award I have received is courtesy of both Jack at Jack’s Arty Crafty Creations and also Mel

The conditions of this Award are . . .
1. Make a post linking back to the person who gave you the award!
2. Share 7 random things about yourself
3. Award 7 recently discovered bloggers with this award
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them they've won the award.
Here are 7 random things about myself:

*  I am quite likely to burst into song in my local Tesco with a complete stranger

*  Despite the above I used to use my voice to make my Daughter’s friends leave when I had had enough of their noise. It was described by one of them as ‘does your Mum know she sounds like someone stood on a bag of cats?

*   I am an Elvis Fan and when visiting Graceland I met his Cousin, his Secretary and two of his closest friends – check me out, lol. His secretary and I had the same favourite song ‘Baby You’re So Square’

*  I am terrified of frogs and toads

*  I watch Gossip Girl, heck did I really say that out loud!

*  I built my own pc. This current one is about the 7th one I have built

*  I once sat opposite Jerry Marsden of Jerry and the Pacemakers Fame on the way home from school on the train and couldn’t even drag my jaw off the floor long enough to say hello. This was before the days of Hello Magazine and Tweeting etc, so to see someone famous was fabulous.

I'd like to pass this award onto these lovely bloggers . . .
Peri  I know Peri is not blogging at the moment for personal reasons but she has inspired me so much I could not leave her off this list
Fi
Sandra
Jenni
Fi – a different one to above, lol 
Gill 
Ali

Crafty Cardmakers #40 Fairies and At Least 2 Punches

Here I am a day and a dollar late again, grrrr. Poppy had to have her injections yesterday and she had a bit of a bad reaction so I was playing Puppy Nurse all afternoon and evening. She is fine now…. She decided 1am was an excellent time to recover and start creating havoc! But hey I was just glad to see that there was not a long term problem as the poor little love had been whimpering in pain for ages on and off. Anyhow back to the business in hand.

This fortnight’s challenge over at Crafty Cardmakers and set for us by the lovely Gill is to use at least two punches (please note NOT die cuts, but actual punching) on your project, along with  fairies.

We are sponsored by the very generous to the tune of £10 to spend in her online shop, which is stuffed to the gunnels with all manner of gorgeousness.

So to my card. I used an image by Mo Manning with a cute little fairy sitting inside a teacup.

This was my first chance to give an outing to the delicious new Marianne cutting and embossing die which sits behind my image. (Look out for another card this coming Sunday with the second of these stunners) I punched around the edge of my diecut shape with the MS PAP set called Layered Arches. The second punch is also by MS and is the doily edger punch. I have also used a third punch to make slots for threading the ribbon in.

The ribbon is white seam binding which I spot dyed with three different Glimmer Mists. I have looked at a couple of tutorials for dying this ribbon and I found that letting it air dry, even though I scrunched the heck out of it,  didn’t give enough crinkle to it, so in desperation I pulled out my heatgun and that did the trick nicely by sort of shrinking the fibres a little. I used the leftover glimmer mess, errr I mean inks on my craft sheet to colour over the top of the teacup so it matched the ribbon. The rest of the image was coloured with Lyra Acquacolours, with a little bit of tonertex glitter on her wings. The flowers are various from Wild Orchid Crafts and the two beaded pins I made myself. There was a little ribbon left over so I made a bow behind the flowers with it.

In case you want to make your own pins a little tip – do you know the cheap clear rubber backs you can get for stud earrings to replace your gold ones if you lose them or are allergic? Well they make an excellent stopper so that you don’t have to try and glue your beads in place on your pins, and trust me I tried that and it’s too much like hard work. When you have assembled your pin you just push one of those earring backs on at the bottom and voila, beads kept nicely in place.

I am entering this into the following challenges

Digital Tuesday Challenge – Use Punches (I have used three here) and something digital, my image

Incy Wincy Designs – Use punches or die cuts. I have used both

Crazy 4 Challenges – Use Dies. The Marianne Die as mentioned above

Squigglefly – D is for Diecut (the Marianne diecut), dying (the ribbon was dyed), doily edger punch

I Did It Creations Challenge Blog – Anything goes

Sparkles Forum Challenges – Fairies. The Mo Manning Image

2 Sisters Challenge Blog – Embossing. The Marianne die has cut and embossed

From Monday 14th March, our normal Spotlight Challenge at Crafty Cardmakers will be moving to a new home Crafty Cardmakers Spotlight Challenges. We hope you will come and join in the fun there. The current main Sponsored Challenge will remain where it is.

Please pay a visit to the new blog as there is a DT team call on there. If you pop over you can read all about it and see if you fancy joining us. Details are all on the new blog.

Don’t forget to call over to the normal blog and enter your fairy card, and whilst you are there you can see all the gorgeous work my team mates have come up with this week. I have to say there are some stunners there.

If you pop back and visit me tomorrow I have a small announcement to make.

Crafty Cardmakers Spotlight on Plastic

Our Spotlight this fortnight over at Crafty Cardmakers is for you to use plastic in your creations.  This was the lovely Judie’s idea. She wants you to  use plastic somewhere on your creation be that Acetate, friendly plastic, shrink plastic, sweet wrappers etc.  It doesn't have to be a card, we're not fussy here so whatever you fancy creating so long as it fits the theme :)

I have had a couple of attempts at this, the first of which was well dire, lol, so I had to put my thinking cap on and start again.

The picture above is what I ended up with, but before I go into the detail of that I will also share with you my not so clever design which involved Friendly Plastic. I cut out several blossoms with some cutters I have, but they were not the best cutters in the world and almost cut through my hands/fingers before they would cut cleanly through the plastic. They looked so tatty I couldn’t do with them what I wanted, which was to make a tree and use the FP as blossom on the tree, so instead I had the none too bright idea of putting them all into a sort of circle pattern and after they were nice and melted dragging a cocktail stick through each blossom so it dragged into the blossoms on either side or above/below it. The whole lot was then stuck down onto an acetate scalloped circle with the intention of using it for a window hanging. Bad idea Linda. When I hung it up in the window the light showed the nasty plastic looking side right through and it became a translucent mess, at this point I gave up and went back to the drawing board. I haven’t given up hope of using this ‘topper’ on something and if I ever decide to use it to better advantage I will force it on you errrrr I mean share it with you all.

So onto my Spotlight design itself. A nice simple one, I swiped over a scalloped acetate circle with AI blending solution (I have discovered it helps the ink flow a little better to put it on first) and then dabbed various droplets of colour until it was spread out. I then stamped the design in stazon. I had intended to leave it like that but as you can see from the pic below, the image didn’t really pop like that, in fact in places it was difficult to see there was an image, after it was hung in the window.

Not being able to see the stamped design kind of defeated the object so I decided to paint them in. I used some of the Imag-e-nation blending solution that allows paint to be used on acetate and mixed it into various Cosmic Shimmer paints and then painted it.

As you can see from the top picture, the end product brightened up even a rainy day. I have yet to see it in sunshine, lol

Here is a pic of it against a white card.

Anyhow, put your own thinking caps on and see what you can come up with and I look forward to popping by your blogs to see your own creations.

Emily and I have spent the morning trying to make the garden Poppy escape proof. My new puppy is running me ragged and I can already tell that she is going to be a naughty little girl as she has mischief running through her like words in a stick of seaside rock.

I shall try and find time to put a couple more pics of her later in the week.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone

Special One Off Challenge

My friend and fellow Crafty Cardmakers Design Team Member Ei, is having a one off never to be repeated special challenge over on her blog ‘Eiglas’ to celebrate the birth of her Grandson. Everyone say awwwwwwwwwwww and after you have finished clucking and cooing head on over to Ei’s blog and enter her challenge.  She even has a lovely baby digi free which you can use to enter the challenge, or not as you prefer.

The winner is in line for more of her lovely designs! She also has seven Copic Ciao markers including the blender pen 0, Black 100, Barley Beige E11, Barium Yellow Y00, Mimosa Yellow YG00, Yellowish Green YG06 and Ultramarine B29 as part of the prize. So what’s stopping you.

I only wish I had had time to enter myself but what with Poppy a mountain of birthday cards and other DT commitments I was just too busy, but I would like to extend my congratulations to Ei on the safe arrival of  Baby Toby.

New Challenge Blog starting

Hi all, just a few lines to let you know about a brand new challenge blog that will be starting on February 27th, and will have fortnightly challenges every second Sunday. Dream Valley Challenges is currently looking for DT members with different styles, abilities and ages!

All you need to do to enter the DT call is be a crafter  of any range, style or age! You don’t have to be an experienced crafter, all newbies are welcome! The only must is you that you have an active blog and be able make a creation every two weeks!

If you are interested click on the Dream Valley name above and it will take you to the post about the DT call.

The challenge blog itself will run fortnightly on alternate Sundays with a new challenge for all you crafters out there!  The challenges themselves will vary from challenge to challenge covering a wide range of techniques. The challenge blog will start on the 27th of February opening with a great first challenge and a great prize for the winner!

CCM Spotlight Water

Arrrghhhh I set this to automatically post on Monday, or so I thought! I just went to check my blog and no sign of it. Clearly I did something wrong but blessed if I know what. Anyhow here is my post for the most recent Crafty Cardmakers Spotlight which is on Water.

This fortnight we want to see your creations using "Water or Something you add water to or water has been added" so for example spritzers, glimmer mists, H2o's, watercolours that kinda thing.  You can use any images or stamps etc you like but you must use a water product or technique, if in doubt - shout!

 

I opted for watercolouring my image with Lyra Acquacolours. Although it’s not part of the challenge and on it’s own does not meet the requirement, I also made my card on a water theme too. I got a brand new Craft Robo the day that Poppy arrived, and well you know what puppies are like, I didn’t have a minute to call my own, but finally at the weekend I managed to actually take it out of it’s box and give it it’s maiden voyage.

Having downloaded a few fabulous free templates from UKScrappers, I used one of them by a user named Valerie Palmer (thank you Valerie) which was a sea based frame.  I can see I am going to enjoy my new toy, when I can find the time to get it back out of it’s box.

To be honest I had intended a completely different card, which was going to be all arty using glimmers mists etc, but I just ran out of time so have taken the easier option with this card.

The BP is Basic Grey and a slither of silvery fabric in the aperture of the frame, with a couple of kiddies beads as small embellishments. The card between the two layers of blue, sadly still doesn’t show up, but it’s a lovely soft marble effect blue and white glitter card.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I am finding it increasingly more and more difficult NOT to add flowers, ribbons, buttons or similar to my cards. It is such a huge trend that I feel my cards are naked if I don’t add lashing of embellishments to them, and to be honest I feel a bit of a prisoner to the trend. I feel as if everything I make needs to be a mini work of art. For example, here I couldn’t just leave it as the frame and the image, I felt compelled to find something to add to is, such as the beads. Mind you having said that I have just purchased an obscene amount of that seam binding that is all the rage, and no doubt that will be appearing on my very next card. so just pass me the handcuffs, lol

Because my scheduled post didn’t, post that is, I have taken the opportunity to take another picture of the card as the one over on the CCM blog is way too bright as it was taken at night with a flash.
We are sponsored for this Spotlight by
who are offering a £10 voucher for their store.

Please note as from March the Spotlight challenges of Crafty Cardmakers will be moved to a new blog to avoid confusion with the challenges, each will still run for two weeks at a time and on alternate Mondays, but they will have their own homes. The main challenges will remain on the existing CCM blog, only the Spotlights will be moving, we will keep you informed of addresses etc. later.