PC Problems

Sorry if there is anyone out there in blogland that has been following my blog but I have had some severe pc problems. I had to build myself a new rig as the motherboard on my old pc upped and died on me.

It has taken me ages to get everything over from the old pc to the new one, and what with having to make some christmas cards and coping with an infection in my arm and a (painful) swine flu jab, I just haven't gotten round to posting for the best part of a month.

I have a bunch of cards I need to get finished and then I am hopeful to join back in with with the regular challenges as I adore making cards to suit them.

I'm off for a read now, so may well be commenting on your blog shortly :-))

Lin

Fly Away

Here is my entry for A Spoonful of Sugar challenge 73, which had this sketch to follow.The image is a Penny Black stamp called Fly Away which I coloured with prismas and OMS. The papers are WRMK Tiffany pad and some lush brown shimmer paper from Kanban. I rubbed on the 'play' and '2gether' messages onto two large green brads from my stash and the ribbon is also from my stash, the metal sentiment word came from a magazine freebie.

I liked this sketch, sometimes less is more and in this case it is. Pop on over to ASOS and see for yourself what the DT have come up with.

Lin

Brain Training

I have attempted something this week which I have seen many of you do before. A multiple combined challenge. When you have ME thinking things through sensibly is really hard work. Sometimes it's like your brain is in a fog. However, luckily for me I spotted a few challenges that had similar themes, so thought I would have a go. Just wondering do the rest of you write them down so you can check them off or is that just me.

Anyhow, the challenges covered in this card are Stamp Something, which required brown plus, but the predominant colour being brown. Next over to Stampin' for the Weekend who requested brown, orange and green. Over to Secret Crafter and the challenge there was autumn colours. Which brings me finally to the last challenge from Mojo Monday which was to use this sketch.So now I have thoroughly given my brain a workout I'm actually quite pleased with the result.

The image is a Penny Black stamp from their Victorian Country range called All Dressed Up, coloured with prismas and OMS. Just love those PB stamps. The papers are Bloom and Grow to mat the image and the lovely K&Co paper, and the gorgeous brown background is from Papermania. The ribbon I dyed several times and boy did it make my hands messy, until I managed to get approx the colour I wanted and the flowers are Floral Doodles.

I have never thought much about autumn colours except to marvel at nature when the leaves are turning but I have discovered I quite like oranges and browns.

I was also intending to enter in the Roses on Paper challenge too, but this will show you the foggy brain, it never registered with me that they required a stamped image from particular ranges and I had used the wrong one. C'est La Vie!

Lin

Mo's Challenge Blog #1

Mo Manning has got a brand new challenge blog up and running.

For the very first challenge the card had to be made in 'Bella's' favourite colour, which is purple, or perple as Bella calls it. Also to include a Mo Manning stamp. Now that bit's not hard as she is the most amazingly talented artist and there are plenty of her gorgeous digital creations to choose from.

I opted for a brand new one called Tea Party. Now anyone who already reads my blog will know that, like Bella, purple is also my favourite colour so I set off to colouring this one out with all shades of purple. I added a couple of blues a touch of green and some yellow for her hair as she was in danger of being too purple.

After I finished colouring her in then the problems started. Had I lost my purple mojo. Nothing seemed to work. Was she shaded in the 'wrong' purple, is there a wrong purple?

I had some rather nice Kanban Duo Reflections card, which comes in a plain matt sheet, a mirri sheet and an acetate sheet and I settled one of the matt ones for the background, but somehow I managed to ruin both it and the mirri version, leaving me with only the acetate one left to play with.

The frame is a Carol Wilson one and I backed it with some silver mesh fabric, and lifted the whole thing with foam tape.

The ribbon was a jewelled self adhesive one, but I didn't like the gems so I changed them for the lilac flower gems instead.

There are some gorgeous DT cards for this particular challenge. Do please go and check them out.

My next DS from Mo will have to be the card making one I think.

Lin

First past the post

Assuming I get this typed out in time I think I might be first past the post with the Cute Card Thursday challenge to make a 'charming' card. The challenge was to use a charm somewhere on the card.

I have been up since the crack of sparrows this morning and was feeling creative so this one came quite easily. I had already coloured in the gorgeous Bildmalarna stamp with Lyra Aquacolours and was wondering how to use her when this challenge actually inspired me to finish the card off. I had a few garden charms, one was a watering can which was the identical shade to the watering can on the image, but it was too 3D and stuck out too far, it might look better on a scrapbook page I think.

I trimmed her out and matted her onto a spellbinders pendant and used the matching border to that pendant to make a border on the card which I threaded through some pretty floral ribbon to lift it a little. The flower is one of the Woodware range I think and the centre is a dovecraft brad. Just love those brads. I tied the charm behind the flower, and finished off with a sentiment die cut from the Creative Cardmaking magazine's first issue.

The three pictures here look a little different as I have been fiddling with the settings in Photoimpact to see if I could improve the original pic. The bottom two are as my camera captured the card, but the light is not quite bright enough. The main picture I enhanced the light. It's still not quite right, but better. Oh for a super expensive camera.

Lin

Trick or Treat

I mentioned in my earlier post how I had loads of ideas for the challenge over at Saturday Spotlight but that they just wouldn't translate to paper. Some of that was because I lacked a stamp and couldn't find a digi stamp to do what I wanted. So I cheated and trawled the kiddies colouring pages.

Again I need to apologise for the slight blurring. Doesn't seem to matter what I do the camera is giving this slight haze. I guess I am getting older and maybe there is a slight shake to my hand.

Anyhow so I found a colouring page for a magician and then one for something yummy. Coloured with my favourite OMS and prismas with a touch of sparkle on the ribbon on the hat, the cape and bow tie, again sadly not showing up on the camera; matted up onto some gorgeous basic grey with a scrap of ribbon and some rub on letters and bingo Halloween II. I promise not to turn this into a sequel like the movies and keep on knocking these out.

Hope no one minds a second bite of the cherry but I knew if I didn't make this now I would forget the idea in a week and I thought it might fit the requirements quite well.

Off to get ready for the winter flu jab. Wish me luck

Lin

It's Halloween Jim but not as we know it!

Since I started blogging this card has the dubious honour of having given me the biggest headache and made my thinking cap shrink till my brain thought it would implode. Over at Saturday Spotlight with Hidden Potential, a brand new challenge blog, they wanted a halloween card but not using any traditional halloween images. Clearly the hidden potential in this case is the opportunity for the card to be a halloween one but without looking like a traditional one...... I think my potential was on a break because I really struggled with this one.

I had a few ideas but none of them would translate to paper. I settled on this cute Mo Manning image of Cinderella in mid sweep as I could see the broomstick being used for something other than cleaning, but how to convey that? In the end I gave her a thought bubble about starter motors.

The font for the halloween message is called Halloween Match. The background I printed from a spider web and seperate spider I found online. Cinders is coloured with prismas and OMS and I wish I had picked oranges or something more halloweeny as I spent at least two hours trying to match some paper to her colouring. In the end I caved in and edged her in spooky black.

Several times I considered just abandoning the project but I was determined that ME or not my brain was NOT gonna beat me. You would have thought a witch would be better equipped to portray halloween!...............

BTW sorry for the blurred look on the main pic, I think it has something to do with the brightness of the red and the stark contrast of the black and white against it. If you open the pic up to a new window and view it full size the blurring seems to clear a little.

Lin

Buzzy Colours

Cute Card Thursday's challenge this week is entitled 'Buzz Off', in other words use the colours black and yellow.

I have had this little Cuddly Buddly stamp for ages and not used her yet, but she popped into my head when I looked at the gorgeous DT cards that were displayed. I have coloured her in with prismas and OMS. I trimmed round the stamp because I thought she would pop better against a black background. I hate trimmimg up my stamps after they are coloured because a couple of times I have ruined an hour or so's work by chopping some vital bit off. She is matted onto a couple of different monochrome papers from my stash and some embossed and distressed core'dinations card. I love that core'dinations card you can match it to almost anything as there are so many colours to choose from. I made a ribbon with the MS Doily Lace punch and some nice sheer printed ribbon, a couple of flowers layered and a yellow ladybird completed the look.

I tried several times to photograph the card but the yellow seemed to be insipid anywhere other than laid down on the landing windowsill. The sun was shining really brightly though so it threw shadows on the card.

Lin

The Sugar Bowl

There is a great challenge over at The Sugar Bowl which involved a sketch and the use of the colours pink and brown plus a Sugar Nellie image. I decided to give my Gorjuss Miss Attitude her first airing. I guess every other Mum on the planet thinks that this stamp resembles their Daughter and I am no exception, particularly if I put her in a dress! Now if that dress was pink and brown like the one here she would have been scowling as well as doing the arm thing. I just about managed to dress her the way I wanted until she was about 6 and then she just refused to wear a dress at all. She is still a tomboy now and she is 26.

The stamp is coloured with polys and OMS, K&Co paper for the background, Core'dinations for the top nestie mat and some ribbon (dyed to take the edge of the white), gems (also dyed to match) and some flowers, all from stash. The hearts on her dress really are pink, but I went over them with the clear stardust pen and it's obviously not as clear as the name would imply. I chose the nestie because it had hearts in it and she had hearts on her dress and in her hair.

Strangely my DD came in just as I finished colouring the stamp in and she said 'who knew brown could look so pretty', I think that was a compliment, lol

Lin

Penny Black 67, Papertake Weekly and Basic Grey 4

Wooohoooo I have managed a triple combination challenge. My word how some of you crafty folks do more than that I am in awe. I had to write down what each one had as a requirement and keep referring back to it or I should have been completely lost. I'm ashamed to say my favourite colour snuck back in there again! Penny Black's was to use lace and pearls and of course a PB image. So I stamped up Good Friends from the Victorian Country range. I just adore that range of stamps and have to confess to having a few... I have coloured her in with Inktense watercolours. The lace is double layered both of which I dyed with Brilliance inkpads to tone in with the colour scheme and the 'pearls' are made from pearly paint, so that completes the requirement of Papertake Weekly which was to 'fake it'. Handy really as I didn't have any pearl gems in my stash, why not I wonder, :-)) nor ribbon of the correct colour. Then over to Basic Grey for their gorgeous papers, these come from the Euphoria stack, and their requirement was to use embossing. So the top mat was cut with the blossom nestie and then run through with a CB folder. I was impressed at what the embossing did to the paper, it has given it a look of shimmer when in fact the paper was perfectly plain. I did all this with raging tootache....... all say ahhhhhhhhhh! Sadly for once crafting didn't take my mind off the pain and I had to keep going down stairs and making warm drinks and crying, and I had to finish it off this morning. There is no pain like toothache and now I have the added terror of a trip to the dentist PDQ. Lin

A Spoonful of Sugar and Truly Scrumptious

I have managed another combined challenge card. The Spoonful of Sugar challenge was Autumn inspired projects and over at Truly Scrumptious they have a sketch to follow with the extra challenge of using three stamps, not including the sentiment.

The card above is what I have come up with.

I normally start with the image, but this time I had only just taken delivery of the My Mind's Eye Bloom and Grow 12" paper pack and straight away the lovely autumnal leaves jumped out at me. So I needed to find something that would go with that.

I used a Pink Gem stamp Autumn Milly and coloured her in with prismas and OMS. I thought I had managed to crack hair colouring, but the camera shows up a multitude of sins the naked eye appears to miss, although she is definitely not as grey haired as this picture implies. I used a range of oranges to shade her coat, and the fallen leaves and greens for her wellies, bows and gloves. I cut a mat for behind her with the blossom nestie and just reversed the main backing paper. In fact all the paper, apart from the small embossed leaves strip in the middle came from the one sheet of MME paper. I just reversed it and back again to give the different patterns.

The white card I stamped on seemed very harsh against the soft oranges on the card so I chalked over with a couple of shades of orange and yellow shimmery chalks to soften it.

The added challenge at TS was to use three stamps, so I opted for a nice scroll stamp I got free with a magazine to make the orange scroll designs and the final stamp made the leaves. I stamped onto shrink plastic with memento inks and then drew the colour in with a damp brush. I did have to go over the veins with a sakura stardust pen as the memento spread and dissolved the vein pattern when I filled the colour in.

The flowers were from my stash with glue dots in the centre glittered with some fine glitter, in three different shades.

Now the weather is definitely turning to autumn, the leaves are just starting to turn and the temperature has really dropped, so much for our 'Indian Summer' we were promised in the UK.

Lin

Midnight Madness Wk 17

This is my card for the Midnight Madness Week 17 challenge. There is a sketch to follow, and this is my take on it.

I started off with a gorgeous little fairy digital stamp from Sketching Stamper and coloured her in shades of turquoise, highlighting some areas with sakura stardust pens. For some reason the camera refused to pick up the sparkly highlights were which her butterfly bag, edges of her wings and her sash belt.

The papers are K&Co and DCWV and the ribbon is from my stash and dyed blue/turquoise with some brilliance inkpads. The peel offs were also coloured to match and the mats are some card from QVC which is very similar to Bazill Bling.

I was a bridesmaid in a dress very similar to hers except it was a hideous shade of peach! Why are some brides so cruel to their bridesmaids?

Lin

PS When you are over at Midnight Madness check out the fantastic Priscillastyles blog candy!!

Truly Scrumptious Challenge 15

This is my card for the current Truly Scrumptious challenge. There is a sketch to follow and an added theme of 'Indian Summer', something we are sadly not likely to be experiencing here in the UK. Wish I knew what had happened to our 'Barbecue Summer', unless the weather men meant Hyacinth Bouquet's Indoor Outdoor Barbecues! Anyhow I digress.

I had a thought which immediately sprang to mind and blow me down if the very first DT card was using very similar papers and a similar stamp to that which I was thinking of using, so the gorgeous Indian Spice paper can go back into my stash for another day. Just a thought, do any of you ever NOT look at the DT cards and go it alone so to speak, only checking them after you have finished? I can't help but look first! So I started with the image which I coloured with my prismas and the dots on her top I went over with a sakura clear stardust pen. She has a nice suntan to indicate time in the sun, very naughty as she should have been wearing sun cream.


I had this lovely paper in a WRMK Tiffany pad with paisleys all over it and, one of the mat layers I embossed with the cuttlebug paisley folder. I know the theme was Indian Summer, but that naturally made me think of India and that made me think of Paisley. When I was a child our school used to commemorate Commonwealth Day every year and I can vividly recall having to wear the national dress of the country we were representing in a tableau. I had India, which my Mum thought was great as she was no needlewoman. She whipped off a paisley counterpane from the double bed and having washed it it became my Saree, hence my associating paisley with India. So now I have bored you with my youth. I shall carry on.

The flowers I made by stamping with Elusive Images stamps onto some strips of heavyweight paper that I cut from the front of a huge K&Co assortment paper pad which I got from QVC. I couldn't bear to throw this front away so cut it into the various design strips and later on made the flowers. Waste not want not! They are layered over some quite tatty silk flowers. Thank you for looking.
Lin

Penny Black Challenge 64

I am not too sure about this one. The challenge over at Penny Black this week is Christmas.

I have a few of their lovely victorian stamps with very highly detailed clothing etc on the children and I just love this particular little lovely called Sweet Holiday Shopper. I wanted to get away from the traditional christmas colours and I definitely wanted to stay away from purple for at least one other card so I figured I would give orange a go. Coloured with prismas. I rather liked the look of the blue with it too, and fortunately by the time I came to assemble the card I had come into the possession of K&Co's Winter Wonderland specialty pad and right in the middle was the perfect paper for the background of my card.

I also liked the fact that the paper wasn't what I would normally associate with christmas which went with my strange idea for an orange topper.

When I started putting it together though it didn't say 'christmas' to me, but then I remembered a script stamp I have....... wish I could remember where I got it from but I have no idea. I inked it up with a memento dew drop in Bahama Blue and it matched beautifully. A couple of stamped snowflakes in the same colour and Summer sky, and a small greeting finished it off.

Can't mistake now that it's meant to be a christmas card as the greeting and the stamping make that obvious, but I am still not sure about the colours.


It's probably just because we normally see red and green, purple and blue or silver and gold for christmas colours. Perhaps in Australia where it's summer at Christmas they have orange instead.
Lin

Colour Create and Whimsy Challenges

Here is my entry for both the Colour Create and Whimsy Stamps Challenges. The colour create one required the colours, ruby, cream and gold and the Whimsy one simply wanted a touch of sparkle. The background is some lovely handmade paper I found shoved at the back of the filing cabinet, perfect for the colour combo. The back layer of ribbon, the lacey stuff, was a cream crocheted ribbon so I dyed it with my dewdrop inkpads first rocket red and then rocket red gold as the first colour was too harsh, layered over the top is some satin edged organiza from my stash. The button came in a box of oddments.

The red layer is also handmade paper with little gold droplets all over it like really thick heat embossing, you can't see it in the pic because they are obscured but there are also gold roses on it as well. The top layer I stamped from the Elusive Images Poppy sheet and the largest butterfly and flower are also from different EI stamp sheets. Smaller butterflies some random stamps. The large flower was coloured in with cosmic shimmers. Loved the opulence of this colour scheme.

As the flower was coloured with CSs and two of the butterflies were embossed with holographic powder I figured it also met the 'sparkle' challenge over at Whimsy Stamps as well.

Lin

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