My first attempt at a double challenge

I have finished my first ever attempt at combining two challenges. The first is the Penny Black Saturday challenge which was to use stitching on your card, and the second used the Friday Sketchers sketch template. Having had a quick look through the cards on PBSC so far I appear to be one of only a couple of people who have handstitched. Most people have used their machines to do edging stitching.

When I saw the FS sketch and looked at the flowers at the bottom I knew immediately what I wanted to do and it combined perfectly with the first challenge for stitching. I loved that I was able to stitch the flowers instead of finding flowers to stick on.

Took me ages to position those flowers in approximately the right spot though before I could stitch them and horrors I have spotted a small error in my stitching after it was all stuck down!! See if you can tell me where? Once upon a time I would have pulled it all apart and corrected the error but there is so much double selo on the back that I would have ruined it. So I shall just have to live with it, but I am so pernickity it grates on my nerves....... just think yourself lucky you are not my Daughter, imagine having to live with me!

I enjoyed this, as I used to stitch on my cards all the time, but got hooked on stamping and colouring and apart from my wizard card earlier I hadn't stitched for ages.


And look, no purple in sight!

I must put some of my previous stitched cards up on here later.

Lin

PS. Oooops. I got so wrapped up in bragging I completely forgot to say what went into the card. The image is a Penny Black one, obviously, the mat is cut from a nestie, and the papers are a combination of WRMK Tiffany and Basic Grey's Lemonade. The thread is Joy Crafts.

L

And finally, for now anyway

These are two cards I made for swaps over on Crafttelly.com. The first was July's swap and the theme was an invitation.

The image is from House Mouse, coloured in with prismas, except for the teabag box, which has the detailed picked out with sakura pens. I used my Martha Stewart Doily Lace punch for the first time here..... yummy punch, and the papers are DCWV from their Sweet stack, as the cupcakes were perfect for the theme. The inside read something like........ You're invited to Afternoon Tea, Bring your own sleeping bag!

The ribbon is from my stash and the licious silk flowers are also from my stash, primas I believe.

I stuck an invitation on using my BS and a BS folder and core'dinations. When I had sanded down the embossing I went lightly over it with a lemon coloured memento inkpad because it didn't show up too well just sanded.



The second card is for this month's swap, the theme of which was using the colours mocha and teal.

The oriental lady again I found online and coloured her in with prismas (getting a little boring with the whole prismas thing, lol). I had to get a magnifying glass out when it came to her lips and nails as I just couldn't see them with my naked eye well enough to colour. Oh the indignities of middle age....

I used a combination of different DCWV stacks including both garden party and far east.

The flowers are daisy box blends.

In the inside I put this truly dreadful rhyme:-

I hope you enjoy this August card designed especially for you
An oriental lovely in shades of brown and blue.

Mocha and teal to be precise but that just didn't rhyme,
So I changed the names to fit the verse as I was running out of time.

The person I made this for has a passion for oriental, not so sure he has a passion for my dreadful doggerel though.

Move over Carol Ann Duffy (current Poet Laureate) Twisted Witch is coming in..............

Lin

.... two more

The next two cards were made for male friends of my DD's. How come they are all having their birthdays in the same month!!

She sprung both of these on me with less than one day's notice and one she only gave me an hour to do!! Luckily I had already got the image coloured in ready.

The first uses a bombshell tattoo stamp called Man's Ruin as the friend in question apparently has a thing for bottoms! So this one I called Bottom's Up, as a play on words and a traditional drinking toast. I coloured her in with prismas and OMS, and when it came to put the whole thing together I was completely stumped. Had no blokey type charms or embellishments and in the end plumped for some matching coloured core'dinations which I ran through the bigshot with a bug folder and sanded off the top. It's meant to represent the bubbles popping out of the glass.

It's not showing up here, but I used diamond glaze on the drips coming out of the small glass and on the stem and base of the large glass so they would look like, well glass, lol and try as hard as I might I just could not get a pic that didn't have the image slightly blurred. Whether the camera was focusing too hard on the purple mirri I have no idea, but that was frustrating.

The paper at the back is from Twelveby12.

The second card has the image I had luckily pre-coloured and it's a manga/anime girl I found online, again coloured in with prismas.

The background paper was just black, white and grey, so I drew in a few red lines to pull the whole thing together, and again being at a loss for embellishments I plonked a couple of felt backed buttons (felt side up) on and secured them with a bit of knotted black fancy thread. I loved the font on the text as it had martini glasses as the y's. Wish I had spotted this font for the purple card, they would have looked funky there.




Lin

A couple of this weeks card's

Before I start off on a journey to see what challenges I fancy this week I thought I might post a few of the cards I made this week, which left me no time for challenges.

First off are two cards I made for my DD's best friend and my surrogate 2nd Daughter. The first one is an anime image I found online coloured in with prismas with hints of sakura stardust pens for highlights, the backgrounds are all mats from a kit I got from QVC. Excellent value for money with some great colours, textures and shapes. The mirrored mat I did myself.

I had mounted up the girl before I decided she looked a little bland around the edges but figured it was too late as she was already on the card then I had a brainwave........ I stuck the discarded card from when I cut the nestie shape out back over the card and then got a nice scrolly stamp and randomly stamped it around the edge. The previously discarded waste protected the layers that this was sitting on.


The second card is a Sketching Stamper digi stamp coloured in with prismas and OMS.


















I found it difficult matching the background for this as the colours were quite vivid. In the end I plumped for some paper from a huge K&Co 360 paper stack. This one is from the Wild Saffron range.













Flowers on both cards are from my stash.

Lin

Woo Hoo an award

Not that I deserve it because I keep woefully neglecting my blog but I have received this lovely award from Ali over at Crafty Dragons. As a thank you for receiving this award I have to


1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
3. Link the person who nominated you for this award.
4. Name seven things about yourself that people might find interesting.
5. Nominate seven Kreativ Bloggers.
6. Post links to the seven blogs you nominate.
7. Leave comments on all seven blogs letting them know you nominated them.

Then I have to provide you with seven interesting facts about myself, never have I thought myself so boring when I was trying to come up with this, but here goes:

1. I have had TWO complete blood exchange transfusions, the second lot my Father reckoned was elephants' blood.

2. I had cocktails with Elvis Presley's secretary and one of his cousins and several of his entourage and discovered that my favourite ever Elvis song was also one of his favourites from his film years, or so his Secretary told me, (You're so Square) Baby I Don't Care from the movie Jailhouse Rock..... sigh! I also met one of his RCA record producers Joan Deary.

3. I may be tone deaf now, but in my youth I used to sing the highest notes solo in the choir.

4. My favourite colour is purple and my favourite film and book is The Colour Purple, the book of which is the only book to ever make me cry with it's powerful emotions

5. Having got fed up with never having a decent pc and not being able to afford repairs I taught myself to build my own and have made several since, including for friends. I also made the cupboard the pc sat on!

6. I had my head sawn off by a clown when I was 6 and have been terrified of them ever since.

7. I love colouring things and I am so glad I discovered card making because now I don't have to hijack little children's colouring books and glower at them if they go over the lines and make a mess.

and finally my seven awards go to:-

My first is Phree from Inkstain Survivor, what this lady does not know about inkpads is not worth knowing

My next is Fab from Craftingmad (paper crafting from a male point of view) who has made me look at meerkats in a whole new way

Third is Nikki from Bunny-Zoe's who took time out of her busy schedule to help me with an issue on the best paper/card to use OMS with. Thanks to her I am colouring away like a demon instead of giving up; not to mention that her blog is just amazing.

Fourth is Sandra of Sandra Dry Designs whose colouring just blows me away.

Fifth is Gill of Satincollies Card Adventures a fellow dog lover and Craft Telly poster

Sixth is Luvtocraft from CardKrafting4Fun who for some strange reason thinks she can't colour. Go check her out and judge for yourselves!

and Seventh but by no means last is Kate from Cato's Crafty Corner another gorgeous blog full of inspiration.

Please go check out their blogs and be as inspired as I am.

Lin

Purple is my passion

Thanks to the lovely Dragonlady I was directed to Our Creative Corner and their latest challenge, which was to use shades of purple. She was right, that theme is right up my alley and gave me an excuse to make yet another purple card, not that I needed one.

I have some lovely fantasy stamps that I have had for ages and not really used and the wizard just looked nice and regal to me and regal makes me think of purple.

I stamped him out and coloured him in with prismas and OMS. All different shades of purple, even his hair had blackcurrant in it......... after all the challenge was inspired by the poem which I grow old I shall wear purple, and he certainly looks old to me.

I had this funky hand paper, not sure from where, and it looked sort of mystical to go with the wizard and it was the perfect colours. I embroidered a nice swirly pattern to one side in some gorgeous purple sparkly thread, but sadly it was not standing out from the purple background enough for my liking so I carefully outlined the stitching with a Sakura micro pen. Wouldn't you know it, I only have one and its............ purple!!!!

I didn't have any purple buttons.. Why not? No idea, so I coloured three in with peel off pens and stitched them at the top of the swirl.

Matted and layered Mr. Wizard up with some nesties (what did we do before nesties) and popped him on. I didn't want to put too much on as I didn't want to obscure the background print of the hands.

TW

Safari sogood!

This is my card for the Spoon Full of Sugar Challenge 62. They had a sketch to follow and the first of the DT's cards set me thinking about animals. I didn't have any whimsical animals, but I remembered that a little while back I had filed away some paper and thought at the time it would be perfect for a jungle card. (Yes I am that organised, I file things in alphabetical order, or in the case of craft the paper is in colours, then patterns, etc. etc. In fact I spend hours organising and less time crafting, or so my DD jokes with me).

I also had a nice set of jungle animals and plumped for the elephant for the centrepiece as he looked the best one to fit in a circle, apart from the Zebra, and there isn't any colouring in a zebra.

Obviously a bunch of flowers would have looked silly alongside the elephant so I plumped for more jungle animals made with shrink plastic.

A little while back I was going to get rid of these stamps, but I can see a future for them. They should make nice cards for men, instead of the usual beer, scantily clad ladies and motorbikes.

The elephants were coloured in with Derwent pastel chalk pencils, and the same for the shrink plastic animals. Certainly makes a change from my colour of choice, purple. After all whoever saw an elephant with a purple hairdo. In fact are there any animals that are naturally purple in colour?

TW