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All work exhibited here is my own design, unless otherwise stated, in which case I shall have credited the original author of that work. I am thrilled to be able to share my designs with you but would appreciate that you respect that these are my designs and do not copy and place them anywhere else online or use them for your own personal gain in any way.


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Monday 25 October 2010

CCM Spotlight – Digital Plus

32 Digiplus WM
I have had a very frustrating time trying to get my Crafty Cardmakers’ Spotlight done for this week. I had in mind what I fancied doing, as Halloween is on Sunday,  but lacked the materials to do so. I ordered myself some printable inkjet shrink plastic from Crafty Computer Paper, but it didn’t arrive and it didn’t arrive. Eventually I telephoned them, but after they told me they had posted it a few days before and no sign of it they very kindly helped me out by mailing it out via courier to me at no extra cost so that I could get my Spotlight project finished and blogged on time. Big thanks go to them from me….. Big whinge to Royal Mail as the original parcel still hasn’t turned up! Do you think my Postie might be a secret crafter? Have to say, by the way, that this is the nicest shrink plastic I have ever used. There was no hint of it getting tangled on itself, like I have found quite a lot do, and it gave me a finished product I was really pleased with. It dried beautifully and was easy to trim out too.

To add insult to injury my printer decided that last week was a good week to have it’s swansong and to start spitting out great big blobs of black ink over everything I printed, which made getting a decent digital image out so that I could even colour it a ruddy nightmare. Thank you printer for conspiring against me!

Anyhow enough of my moaning. Onto the project. So this fortnight we are concentrating on doing something extra with your digital images, other than just printing and colouring. Paper piecing, merging with other digis, merging with normal rubber, making your own digital backgrounds, adding text, or in my case creating jewellery from digis. The possibilities are endless, which is why digi stamps are so popular these days. We are by the way sponsored for this spotlight by Stitchy Bear Stamps, just click on the teddy logo below to visit their site. They have very kindly offered a choice of 5 of their digital stamps, and boy do they ever have a huge range to choose from.
image
We are also sponsored by our very own, and very talented Eiglas, who has offered up 3 digis from her range which can be found here.

Goodness me I just realised why my teamies call me Lil Miss Chatterbox, I have been prattling on for 3/4 of a page and not gotten down to the nitty gritty yet. Soooooo without further boring you to sleep or before you switch off, my project.

So I printed out 4 digis from Just Inklined and then coloured them in with various DIs. The following pictures are after I scanned them back into my pc. Bat1 bub1 coffin1 pumpkin1 I then copied them and pasted them enough times to print out on one sheet of shrink plastic, but before doing so I lightened them as shrink plastic will deepen your colours as it shrinks. I flipped the image of Bub on one of the copy and pastes so that the earrings would be opposite and look like a pair rather than two left earrings.

Having waited, as instructed, for the sheet to dry I then trimmed them out,  remembering to punch a hole for attaching them, (here is Bub  ready to shrink) Bub Pre-shrunk1and shrunk them with my heat gun, before turning the finished items into jewellery.

The finished ensemble:-
 Ensemble1Close up of the earrings.   Earrings1Close up of the bracelet
Bracelet.1
I decided to make a little card to go with the jewellery as they are a present for my great niece for wearing on Halloween night.

For this I downloaded a colouring page and removed a few of the elements as it was already quite busy, and then using the merge technique in Paint I merged the precoloured digis into the background and printed it out again. This time I coloured the other areas with promarkers, and finished off with some DI for the sky. I made it up into a card with a lovely halloween themed page I downloaded free from Bearly Mine Designs, with all halloween text on it.

I am entering this into the following challenges:-
Creative Inspirations – Halloween
A Spoon Full of Sugar – Boo
My Time to Craft – Ghosties and Ghoulies and  Long Legged Beasties
Creative Inspirations Wednesdays Challenge Blog – Spooky
Stampin’ For The Weekend – Halloween/Fall
By The Cute and Girly – spooky
Stamp Something – October Digi Day

I enjoyed this immensely, once I had all the hastle out of the way, lol

Don’t forget to check out the CCM blog for more inspirations and indeed to enter into the fun and the chance to win some digis.
Butterfly 2 Signature Lin

Saturday 23 October 2010

The last of the samples from Sheena’s last show

Sorry folks. Meant to blog these last week, but I have been taking advantage of awaiting some supplies for a CCM project and a lull in things to do by redesigning my blog? What do you think??? I am really pleased with it. The backgrounds were all designed for me by a friend in Italy who I believe will be setting up in business as a blog designer. Mine is the first blog she has designed for and I am both thrilled and flattered that I get to try out her first one. I am loving my new look, very purple, very me.

I shall be putting links to her design blog once she is up and running.

So now back to the samples.

Leaves 1

This first one was shown on the show on Tuesday. Using Sheena’s own embossing powders I randomly stamped a background of the oak leaf (I think?) and the other one….. sorry but nature is not my strong point, lol I then stamped four of the leaves onto acetate and using double sided adhesive film applied gilding flakes to the backs. I thought the effect was quite good until Sheena blew me away with that gorgeous sample she did with mica powders on acetate!

The next one also came from the leaf plate and I coloured them with distress inks to give an autumnal feel. I love the sentiment here as autumn leaves really are as beautiful as a lot of summer flowers, with all the range and shades of great reds, russets and golds. Again this is stamped and embossed with the Wow powders, this time in gold sparkle.

The BP is also basic grey but not the stella ruby, although the stripes do look similar lol. There is a mat beneath the image layer which I embossed onto shimmer red paper.

Autumn Flat

The next one is from the branches set and I coloured it up to look like cherry blossom using DIs, and dotted some flowers that I cut from some lace ribbon and also added some cherry blossoms from Wild Orchid Crafts. The papers are again Basic Grey and the background has been overstamped with the flourishes plate which was with the second set of three stamps on C&C.

Blossom Flat

The final sample comes from the poppy plate again. As soon as I saw the stamp I thought of the gorgeous K&Co Blue Poppy papers and decided to go with blue. I stamped it and embossed it with the Black Glint and have colured it in with cosmic shimmers. Depending on how the light catches it the flowers go from blue to a gorgeous green. I edged the image with lace and turned it into an easel with the beautiful sentiment and a couple of flowers on the lower layer.  Again this one was aired but didn’t get opened up fully which was a shame as the sentiment is lovely.Blue Poppies Full

Assuming I can get my errant printer to behave itself, which is sadly looking unlikely at the moment, please check back on Monday to see the latest CCM challenge. We have a great Guest Designer at CCM for Monday’s spot, someone whose colouring is top notch and her eye for detail is fantastic.

Butterfly 2 Signature Lin

Monday 18 October 2010

Final sneaky peek for tomorrow’s show

Here is my last sneaky peek card for Sheena’s show tomorrow and I am being dead cheeky and also entering this in the Stampman Challenge no 7 ‘Autumn’. I did actually make this one with that challenge in mind but have not been able to blog it before now because naturally it was for Sheena’s show tomorrow! I hope neither The Stampman, nor Sheena mind the crossover?!?

Red Poppy  Easel

Here I have used the new poppy stamp from Sheena’s ‘A Little Bit Sketchy’ range, which comes in a bundle with the twisty tree and flourish stamps.

I made the background paper myself from a large 12x12 Basic Grey Sheet from the Stella Ruby collection. It started off life looking like this

Stella Ruby before

I chopped it down to 6x6 and then went around the edges with Tattered Rose and Barn Door DIs. I then gave the whole thing a generous mist with Glimmer Mists in Starfish and Rose Tea. After giving it a bit of a blast to dry it out I turned my attention to distressing it with the flourish stamps, which I stamped and then embossed with the gold sparkle Sheena Wow embossing powders. Before finally roughing up the edge and edging with the same powders. You can see that in a couple of places I did catch the edge of the stamp, and ordinarily I would have started again, but as I was going for a well grungy distressed look I decided it added to the charm of the piece (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!)

I stamped up the poppy and embossed with the plain gold powders and coloured it in with Cosmic Shimmer paints.  I roughly went around the edges of the flowers with tattered rose DI and dabbed on some Glimmer mist in a combination of the two colours on the BP and then chopped it out with a nestie.

Keeping the nestie in place I used a versamark pen to highlight the beading and tossed on some gold sparkle embossing powder.

A plain red mat and some gold ribbon finished it off. I didn’t add any extra embellishments to it because I thought it would detract from the image and cover up the background I had created.

As I mentioned above I am entering this for The Stampman’s current challenge, as poppies are so evocative of Autumn because each November we are reminded of their beauty as we all wear our poppies with pride to signify Armistice Day, when we remember our heroes who have fallen in the two world wars and other major conflicts.

I do have a couple more samples to share with you, but I will blog those after the shows tomorrow.

More samples can be found on Sheena’s blog here and Vicky’s blog here

Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow at 8am and 12 lunchtime to catch Sheena demonstrating her gorgeous new stamps in person.Butterfly 2 Signature Lin

CCM 32 Use A Freebie

If you are like me, you keep all the freebies that come on your monthly magazines, intending to perhaps use them in the future, but you just have so much other gorgeous stash that needs to be used that the freebie pile grows ever bigger and bigger and never gets used. So this challenge was perfect to get me motivated into using some of it.CCM 32 Use A Freebie-

I had spotted the lovely papers I have used in Card Making and Papercraft and straight away they really spoke to me, but they got pulled out and filed, as usual. So when we were asked to create a project made from a freebie I went looking for these immediately.

I also had these little fairy stamps filed again from CMP. I noticed several comments on these fairies on various forums about the fact that they were pretty but ruined by their faces! Awwwww poor fairies!

I stamped this one onto centura pearl cardstock and embossed her in gold detail powder.

I coloured her in with a big n juicy inkpad, but used scattered straw DI for her wings and spun sugar DI for her skin.

Sadly the only freebie flowers I had were not nice enough for this, and/or the wrong colours so I did use flowers from my stash, but the ribbons came wrapped round some chocolates I had been given a couple of years back. I am STILL trying to work out how to incorporate lush brown ribbon with the logo ‘Lily O’Brien’ on it into a project! LOL

Don’t forget to pop on over to Crafty Cardmakers and join in with the challenge. The prize this fortnight is a couple of gorgeous Crafty Individual paper packs. Whilst you are there, the Fancy Folds spotlight is still running for another week, so why not have fun with that, or maybe you can incorporate both ideas into one project?

And don’t forget your remit is to use a FREEBIE, that means something that came free with something, ie, magazine etc. NOT a gift someone else gave you! The idea is to get you using up your stash of free goodies that come with your monthly magazines and the like.

I am looking forward to checking out your entries and seeing how inventive you all are.

Butterfly 2 Signature Lin

Sunday 17 October 2010

Another Sheena sneaky peek

Tuesday is fast approaching, when Sheena’s latest designs will get their premiere TV airing. These are very much in the style that we have come to love about Sheena and are all nature based.

My last peek came from one bundle and these two comes from the other one. Sheena has already shown us the gorgeous poppy stamp from that second bundle, so I have decided to go with the other flower. Because I didn’t get a chance to blog yesterday I am sharing two cards with you today; and hopefully the two cards show two different ways of using the same stamp.

The first is very traditional matting and layering with a lot of mirri card thrown into the mix! Apologies for the reflection in the mirri, buy hey at least it wasn’t like the guy who was selling a kettle on Ebay and took his photo in the nip! Priceless, lol

The layer behind the image was embossed with the new embossing folders from Craft Concepts. I love this one which is called Budding Vine.  Purple Daisy 1

The ribbon is a soft lilac organza with this gorgeous heavily embossed silver swirl on it, and the back mat has been cut with MS PAP layered arches. The sentiment is from the same bundle, a beautiful font again. All the stamping was embossed with the platinum sparkle Sheena Wow embossing powder. The flower is coloured with cosmic shimmer paint.

The second card was stamped and embossed with the Sheena Wow embossing powder in plain gold. Again coloured in with Cosmic Shimmer watercolour paints. Orange Daises Easel

I trimmed it out with a circle nestie and layered it over some gorgeous handmade fabric/paper cut from a Marianne Creatables die, which in turn has been layered over the same fabric with a lace ribbon overlayed on it. The paper I printed myself from a set I downloaded, and the embellishments are from my stash.

The sentiment is another of the beautiful ones from this bundle, stamped in wild honey DI and embossed with the Sheena Wow clear fine embossing powder.

Do make sure you look out for Sheena and her brand new stamps on Create and Craft this coming Tuesday at 8am and 12 lunchtime.

I shall be back with another peek tomorrow.

Butterfly 2 Signature Lin

Friday 15 October 2010

Sneaky Peek a la Sheena

Here is my first sneaky peek from the new 'A Little Bit Sketchy' stamps from Sheena Douglass. I was lucky enough to be sent these gorgeous new stamps and my mission was to have a play and see what I could come up with. It's a hard life!!! LOL

I should have started posting these yesterday but real life sort of poked it's nose in and I have been unable to get to the pc properly before now. So here I am a day late with my first card. In fact I am posting two different cards with the same stamp, so that I can catch up with where I should have been today.



The first card I have turned into a christmas card by stamping the lovely cottages stamp and then embossing it with the Sheena Wow Platinum Sparkle Embossing powder. The card isn't crooked by the way, that's my photography! Sadly by the time I had these ready to photograph the light was dreadful and it has not picked out the gorgeous sparkly nature of the image. 

The next card using the same stamp I turned into a late afternoon scene with with the sun just starting to sink over the horizon and the sky one of those lush golden late afternoon skies of early Autumn. I stamped this on watercolour card and in this case I deliberately aimed for a more watercoloured look, soft and light. You can clearly see from the previous card though that this stamp is beautifully detailed. The sentiment is included in this set, and I hoped it fit the bill here, as this is one of those moments that your heart takes a picture to savour on days when there is no colour in the world and the skies are grey. Just call me an old romantic!

I gave the image and the sentiment a spray with the Crafters Companion spray and sparkle in gold which gave it a lovely shimmer.

Hopefully I should be back tomorrow with another sneaky peek from a different stamp set.

Tuesday 5 October 2010

The Stampman Altered Challenge and Blog Hop

Cat Frame LgI made this picture frame for a friend who is cat mad, black cats in particular, but it is perfect for entering into The Stampman Altered challenge.

It started off looking like this

Challenges 002

This is from a set of Brenda Pinnick frames and tags that I bought from good ole QVC. They have largely been sitting unused in a box, but I wanted to frame the Dufex foil print I had of this cat and had no photoframes, then my mate Vix put a post up about the Stampman bloghop and altered challenge that was coming up so off I went.

I took the first, and largest, of those hideous brown frames (sorry BP but the designs are not that nice) and coated it in several coats of plain white acrylic paint. First I had to sand it down as it’s a coated chipboard and it didn’t want to take the paint until I did. I sanded it down between each coat to so that the acrylic would have something to stick too. Several coats later and tearing my hair out I finally got the pattern covered.

Next I got my trusty Cosmic Shimmer paints and set to colouring in so that it would co-ordinate with the cat picture. There are lots of lovely poppies in the pic so I went for red. That also took several coats. Ever tried watching paint dry, LOL, boring or what!

Finally I had it the shade I wanted and covered about as well as I thought I would get it.

I then stamped a freebie stamp I got from one of the papercraft mags months ago. An annoying little acrylic stamp that never had any ruddy stick no matter how many times I washed it in liquid! Eventually I had to glue it to an old spare block! Anyhow it’s quite a sweet image and makes a lovely border. So I stamped all around the frame in black and embossed it.

I stuck little sparkly gems into each flower centre in alternate colours of green and blue.

When I had trimmed up the cat image, horrors, it was too small for the frame! This was turning into one pain in the backside project. Anyhow I put me finking cap on and came up with the idea of a piece of silver foil to go behind it, as the dufex image is a foil one. I ran some craft foil through my BS with a texture plate and stuck the image to it. It was then okay to go in the frame.

There were no backs for these frames in the kit, because I guess they were meant to be used on scrapbooking pages and the like, so I took a small solid one and used it to make a stand, and just covered the back of the frame with a piece of card from one of those board backed envelopes that I had had something sent to me in. Some times I am so grateful I horde rubbish!

I was quite pleased with the result, cos it was kind of a make do and mend idea but made a pretty gift. Butterfly 2 Signature Lin

CCM Challenge 31 – Step Away from the Square

Oh dear apologies for posting this a day late. For some strange reason I convinced myself all day yesterday that it was Sunday! I do hope my marbles are not heading out the door.

You need to go over to Crafty Cardmakers and click on the links to my teamies’ blogs. There are some absolutely gorgeous creations on there!

So, as the title suggests, the challenge is to make something other than a square card. My shape of preference is square. I just find it aesthetically pleasing so seem to be drawn to it most times when I have a project in mind. But on this occasion with the challenge in mind I suddenly had a spark. I had initially thought to make a shaped easel and then it came to me to made a card linked like a book instead. If I had had my thinking head on I should have realised that three curved bottoms would struggle to stand up and I should have trimmed them all off a bit at the bottoms so that they had a flat surface, but by the time I worked that one out I had stuck all the embellishments etc on!CCM 04.10.10 Main No WMUsing the nestie labels 10 set I cut three large shapes in plain card and then six sheets of K&Co Sparkly Sweet paper to cover them with.  CCM 04.10.10 - 1

I have also shown it laid out flat as the light is better on that one.

I stamped up a couple of the new Kanban stamps of Betsie Bob and coloured her in with promarkers and then trimmed her out. I used various embellishments from my stash to decorate the shapes with, and the centre one has a butterfly decoupaged on top so that it flutters, or it would if I hadn’t misfired the glue. Good job I only made this for a challenge and not to send to someone, LMAO

Here is a close up of each section

CCM 04.10.10 - Left  CCM 04.10.10 Middle CCM 04.10.10 - Right

Note to self ‘I must concentrate more and try harder!’

We are sponsored this week by image who is offering a £10 voucher for use in her store. As we all know Joanna doesn’t charge postage so that £10 will go a long way.

So come along ladies and gents and join in the fun – I look forward to popping round to your blogs.

Butterfly 2 Signature Lin

Sunday 3 October 2010

Final Sheena samples – Wouldn’t It Be Lovely

All the while I was making these I was singing the tunes from My Fair Lady. Naughty Sheena, now I can’t get the tunes out of my head.

This was made with the gorgeous little flower cart stamp, which I stamped out with Hydrangea Big N Juicy ink, and then coloured in with the same inkpad. I trimmed out a nestie from pink mirri card and cut an apeture in the centre with another nestie so that the cart would peek through. Nice idea, nightmare to workout. As you can see at four points on the resultant frame there is very little card between the frame and the eyelet holes punched by the first nestie shape. Also the image needed to be trimmed so it wouldn’t show in the holes, and I had to do it twice cos I cut the first one too small and there was a gap between the image and the frame. DUH!

SHEENA 02.10.10 - Flowers 1 Stand

The corners are filigree metal shapes. Again nice idea, nightmare to stick down as there is nothing to put the glue on!

This is my spinner card. Front view of the spinner:-

SHEENA 02.10.10 - MFL Front

and back view

SHEENA 02.10.10 - MFL Back

You need quite strong cardstock to support the spinner, I had to reinforce mine with strips of card glued to the inside as I only had a lightweight card in mauve.

The image was stamped onto that lovely watercolour card that Sheena was demonstrating on Create and Craft TV yesterday, and coloured with distress ink. The back of the spinner was the same card as the base. The spinner itself is glued either side of a kebab skewer, which I coloured with DIs and then inserted in the spine of the card and supported either side by foam pads, which forms a gap for the skewer to spin in. Remember to snip the pointy bit of the skewer off!

The next one I stamped the large violet corner in opposite corners and coloured them in with promarkers. I then stamped the gossiping heads but I snipped off the lady on the far right to leave a couple, as I wanted to make a wedding card. I coloured them in with DIs and put them on 3d Foam. I trimmed the mat up with a MS PAP and edged the pansies/violets which were punched out with DIs. The sentiment I made on my pc.

SHEENA 02.10.10 - Heads 2 Stand

The next card uses the Eliza Doolittle stamp itself. This is a lovely large stamp with lots going on. I stamped her onto watercolour card and coloured her in with a combination of distress inks and big n juicy inks. She is matted onto Basic Grey papers, with some prima and wild orchid flowers from my stash and some ribbons from my stash.

SHEENA 02.10.10 - Liza 1 Stand

This card is the posh version of Ms Doolittle, all done up in her Sunday Best. I have coloured her with promarkers and layered here and some prima flowers a couple of scrolls and some gems onto a doily. I do love the look of a doily on a card, but it’s difficult to find the small ones.

SHEENA 02.10.10 - MFL 1

The final couple begin with the One that Got Away!

The One That Didn't Make It

I actually started with this card, but I didn’t have a strong enough base card and while I was waiting for it to arrive I photographed what I intended to do. When it came time to assemble the card I decided I didn’t like the bright orange I had coloured her in with, so stamped up a different image with Big N Juicy Spice and then coloured with the same ink. I gave her a spritz over with some Touch Of Mica in gold.

SHEENA 02.10.10 - Liza 2 Stand 1

The BP I made myself by stamping different scrolls with the same ink and embossing them and distressing the edge and embossing that too. The bit of shimmery card at the side came off of the card I made for last week’s CCM challenge when I trimmed it up. The ribbon came off of a skirt of mine that had seen better days and was heading for the rag bag when I decided to remove all the lovely lace inserts from it. It was originally pink and I coloured it with ink to match. Now that I am looking at it I wish I had spritzed the flowers with the mica mist too as I think they are a little plain.

I was much happier with the final card, what do you think?

Hopefully there are some new stamps winging their way to me for Sheena’s next couple of shows on Create and Craft TV on 13th October. So make sure you keep it in your diary as I am sure you will love the stamps she has planned for that show.

Butterfly 2 Signature Lin

A few more as promised – Bah Humbug Stamps

These are the rest of the samples I made with the Bah Humbug stamps.

SHEENA 02.10.10 - Village 3 Stand  SHEENA 02.10.10 - Village 1.1 SHEENA 02.10.10 - Village 2 StandSHEENA 02.10.10 - Santa 1

I believe Sheena pointed out on the packaging that you can make a small image fit a large card, such as the village scene. However, I like a small image anyway. I often sigh to myself when I have coloured something in only to find I can’t use a nestie to cut it out because it’s just that little bit too big. This village stamp however, is just perfectly sized to use in either way.

The first three samples were just mainly embossing with silver detail powder, apart from the one with the holly border which had a small amount of colouring with my prisma pencils and OMS. The bottom one was coloured with prismas. I am not a fan of the reds in the Promarkers, not for anything, but none of them seemed to suit a santa outfit, so I went back to my old favourite of the pencils to colour it in.

I do like my promarkers, but find that I can get more detailed shading with the prismas.

The snowflakes on the last village card were made with a lovely shimmery cotton lace. The same lace I used in the ‘have you heard the news?’ sample I posted on Friday. The poinsettias in the bottom sample were trimmed out of a beautiful piece of christmas ribbon that my sister bought me.

Sadly, I didn’t get time to show these beautiful stamps off to their absolute best, but there are lots of little sentiments and extras which can be used to really make your card look special. Butterfly 2 Signature Lin

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