ABC F is for Frosty

Our challenge at ABC is - "F for Frosty" -

Use snowy scenes, snowflakes, a snowman, or anything you can think of to get your frosty fun out.
We want to see some FROSTY themes.

For mine I chose a LOTV stamp called Build A Snowman

We are sponsored by

My papers are from K&Co’s Winter Wonderland stack and the glittery flourishes are cut from glitter paper with dies from MFT and Cheery Lynn. The Cheery Lynn dies do not like my BS and I spent an hour picking all the bits out of that corner flourish, but oh so worth the effort! The poinsettias were in my stash. I have coloured the image with DIs.

 

I am entering this into the following challenges:-

Crafts and Me - Christmas

Crafty Boots Challenges - Christmas

Crafty Purple Frog – It’s Cold Outside

Creative Belli Blog - #132 Winter and Christmas

Cupcake Craft Challenges – 172 Don’t Look at The Light (Glitter, Bling, Shine etc.)

Divas by Design - #17 Christmas

Freshly Brewed Challenges - ‘76 Christmas

Paper Crafting Journey – Christmas

Paper Creations Ink – #14 Bling It Up

Paper Cupcakes – Winter Fun with Bling

PaperPlay Challenges - #50 Christmas

Stampin’ With The Dragon – Show Us Your Christmas Bling

Victorine Stamps - #23 Christmas

This is likely to be my last post before Christmas and perhaps even the New Year, depending on how busy I am so I want to wish anyone who reads this post a very merry Christmas and a healthy, happy and prosperous 2012.

CCM #58 Use It Three Times

Our final challenge of the year at Crafty Cardmakers is for you to ‘Use It three Times’, and for my interpretation I stamped the same image three times and coloured it three different colourways and placed it on identically designed cards but with three different combinations of backing papers.

 

We are sponsored for the final time at Crafty Cardmakers by the lovely Joanna Sheen, to the tune of £10.

Most of my BPs are Basic Grey, with the exception of the softer pink card which are all printed from the Polka Doodles Magical Winter CD. My image comes from Adam Pescott and was free with Card Making and Papercraft. The snow is Shaved Ice and the glitter highlights are a sparkly glitter glue, and the little metal snowmen have been in my stash for a few years! I blinged up the two first snowflake corners with Spray and Sparkle from Crafters Companion, but the one on the third card was cut from glitter paper.

So what’s your favourite, mine is the final card as I think the papers match the dogs which I am calling Scotties but I feel sure someone will correct me and tell me that in fact they are a different breed entirely, lol.

I am entering these into the following challenges:-

Crafts and Me - #64 Snow /Snowflakes

Crafty Purple Frog – It’s Cold Outside

Hanna and Friends - #123 Wintercards

Let’s Ink It Up – Christmas

Paper Crafting Journey - Christmas

Paper Sundaes - #99 Anything Christmas

Pixie Dust Studios - #104 Glitter and Bling

Stampin’ With The Dragon – Show Us Your Christmas Bling

The Squirrel and The Fox - #7 Christmas

Winter Wonderland – Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

Lexi’s Creations #55 Non-traditional Christmas

Lexi’s latest challenge is an non-traditional Christmas – no red or green.

It is a fairly easy theme to follow 'Christmas', the twist being you must not used the colours RED or GREEN.

You can make whatever you wish to, cards, notebooks, tags, bookmarks, 3D items, please remember to follow the theme to be fair to everyone. Most important of all have fun!

This challenge will last until 9th January as we are taking a break for the Christmas holidays.

We are sponsored by the fabulous and the prize will be 5 of Lexi’s lovely digistamps.

I have used Lexi’s image of the spiral bauble christmas tree, and have coloured just the baubles in a purple sakura sparkly pen, which oddly looks black in the picture above.

I first printed out the image and then embossed and cut it with the gorgeous Marianne craftables cutting and embossing die, which I then matted onto purple shiny paper. The edge of the card was a plain bracket shaped edge and I ran just the edge through the BS with a CBug snowflake embossing folder, and then layered some more of the shiny purple paper just under the edge.

I am entering it into the following:-

Card Makin’ Mamas - #35 Christmas

Crafty Purple Frog – It’s Cold Outside

Creative Inspirations Paints – Non Tradtional Christmas Colours

Crimbo Crackers - #4 Embossing

Lollipop Crafts - #61 Happy Holidays

Paper Sundaes - #99 Anything Christmas

Patties Creations - #34 Christmas

Simply Create Too - #2 Embossing

Stampin’ For the Weekend - #22 Christmas

Winter Wonderland Challenge – Let It Snow, Let It Snow

Dream Valley 22 Christmas

It’s the last challenge of the year over at Dream Valley and in keeping with the season we want to see your Christmas creations. Anything goes, doesn’t have to be a card.

We are sponsored by

with a £10 voucher

with a $10 voucher and

  

also with a $10 voucher.

It’s our last challenge at Dream Valley until 8th January, so you have until the 7th to get those Christmas entries in.

For my card I stamped the gorgeous Papermania Christmas Cheer stamp using a Kaleidoscope Multi inkpad and then embossed with clear powder. I punched four snowflake corners and then mounted it onto brown shimmery paper, and mounted that onto a scalloped card blank.

To my horror I realised I don’t have a Poinsettia punch or die (what are you like Linda, Christmas and no poinsettias) so I substitued the marianne die instead, and I cut through both the patterned and orange paper at the same time which meant that the orange card beneath retained the insides of the petals, which was the effect I was after, and I sort of hoped the end result was a bit like a poinsettia. Of course, it’s bright orange, but hey that’s artistic licence for you.

I am entering this into:-

Creative Inspirations Paints – Non-Traditional Christmas Colours

Gingerloft – GL30 Christmas and Winter

Let’s Ink It Up - #18 Christmas Projects

Lollipop Crafts - #61 Happy Holidays

Paper Sundaes - #99 Anything Christmas

The Squirrel and The Fox - #7 Christmas

Card Makin’ Mamas - #35 Christmas

Clearly Inspired Challenge – CIC41 Christmas

Patties Creations - #34 Christmas

Simply Create Too - #2 Embossing

CCM #57 Heat Embossing

Over at Crafty Cardmakers our challenge to you this time is to use heat embossing on your creation. As our hostess Josephine described it ‘Any technique using heat embossing - stamping or ultra-thick embossing powder or something else I haven't thought of!

We have a fabulous prize on offer from The Stamp Man of some Starburst Stains Pots - Holiday Wreath  I am also extending the Design Team call for another fortnight as last time’s challenge was a little bit more specialised and I wanted to give everyone a chance to enter even if recycling had not been there ‘thing’ Please pop by the blog if you are interested, and, of course, to enter the challenge.

So onto my card. I printed out a couple of sheets from the Artylicious Seasons’ Greetings CD in two different sizes and on the smaller one I stamped the gorgeous Baroque Christmas Tree from IndigoBlu, and embossed it with white detail powder. I wonder if anyone makes a truly WHITE powder as this one, in my opinion is more cream than white, especially when compared to the white mat I have under the first layer of paper.

I added a few little presents diecuts that have been in my stash since Adam was a lad! Guilty as charged MeLud, I purchase stuff and hoard it! The oh so lush snowflakes are cut from glitter card with a Memory Box die. I am fast falling in love with these dies, and I bought mine from a seller on Ebay US so got an excellent deal on them.

I’m sitting here nursing a bad back, everyone say Ahhhhh!, which happened when I had to rescue my little Poppikins from a huge brute of a dog that was chasing her down across the park. My back just went pop. About ten minutes later I was chatting to an elderly lady, bemoaning my lot when the monster dog reappeared. She was like Supergran. She bent down and scooped Poppy into the safety of her arms and then starting yelling at Dogzilla and swatting at him ‘go away you brute, leave her alone’. Big up Supergran, thanks for rescuing us because at that stage there was NO WAY I could bend over to grab my dog.

Right back to the business at hand.

I am entering this into the following:-

4 Crafty Chicks - #65 Snowflakes

Addicted To Stamps - #18 Christmas Card

Cardmadfairy’s Digi Days - #22 Winter Wonderland

Charisma Cardz - #46 Snowflakes

Fashionable Stamping - #9 I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

Fun with Shapes and More – #97 Cold as Ice

Our Creative Corner – Oh Christmas Tree

Paper Sundaes - #97 Winter Wonderland

Scrapbook Sisters - #61 Christmas Time

Stampotique Designers Challenge - #43 Non Traditional Christmas

Stamptacular - #140 Anything Christmas

Lexi’s Creations #54 One For the Lads

This time on Lexi’s Creations we want to see your creations for the males in your life.

We are very lucky again this time to have two sponsors,
the wonderful Fairy Dust Crafts ....
Giving one lucky winner the choice of 5 digi images from her store.

Our other fabulous sponsor is designer Marina Neira owner of The Stamping Bazaar....

Giving one lucky winner the choice of one digi image.

We are holding a DT call on the blog so please drop by if you are interested in joining our team.

My card will be heading off to my great Nephew, so I hope he doesn’t think it’s too cute, lol. I have used Lexi’s own image called Sammie Snowman and coloured him with my promarkers. The paper is from K & Co and I used glamour dust for the snowman’s body and the snow beneath him and stickles for his hat trim and bobble as they are dimensional and a slightly different shade.

I am entering this into the following challenges:-

Crafty Catz - #110 Snowmen

Crazy4Challenges – #115 Some sort of snow

Fairytale Challenge Blog - #29 Christmas

Gingerloft – #30 Christmas and Winter

Here Come The Boys - #16 For the Man/Men in Your Life

Mark’s Finest Papers – #83 Make It Masculine

Pattie's Creations - #34 Christmas

Phindy’s Place – #83 A Sprinkling of Snow

Simply Create Too - #1 All About Christmas

The Poodles Parlour – Christmas

Dream Valley #21 Sparkle

Our challenge at Dream Valley is for you to sparkle! We have a prize on offer of a couple of stamps from Lili of the Valley.

For my card I started with a stamped image on acetate. So sorry no idea what the stamp is called as I unmounted it and forgot to label it! I glittered onto the wrong side of the acetate as this protects the final card from shedding glitter, which is one of my pet hates.

The card is a bracket edge and I ran it through my BS with a texture plate for the embossing. I did run a very pale lilac inkpad over the raised areas, but it’s not really showing up here. I also cut two Marianne shapes, one in glitter card and one in white and layered them onto the centre of the embossed card front with the glitter panel on top. I made a sentiment on my pc and added a couple of flourish die cuts to the back of it.

I am never sure which picture to blog, one looks too dark the other always looks too bright, wish I could get it somewhere in the middle, lol

For the inside, because of the cut away edge it was difficult to put an insert so I made a plate for the greeting to go on, to match one of the mats on the front of the card, and with the same font as the sentiment on the front.

I am entering this into the following challenges:-

Alphabet Challenge Blog – V for Very Vibrant

Crafty Purple Frog – For Someone Special

Fab’nFunky #100 Happy Birthday

More Than Favors Wacky Wednesday –  #60 Birthday

Papercraft Star - #72 Anything Goes

Papercrafting Journey – Anything Goes

Sweet Stampin’ Challenge – Punches & Dies

The Hybrid Chick Card Caravan Challenge - #7 Glitter

The Outlawz Twisted Thursday – Anything Goes

Totally Gorjuss - #108 Sparkle

Free Card Template - Santa's Sleigh

Get a free "Santa's Magical Sleigh" card making template from Card Carousel.
Just visit www.cardcarousel.co.uk/free/sleigh.html

Fantastic Blog Candy at The Craft Barn

The Craft Barn have the most amazing Blog Candy on offer! Who wouldn't want to win all the lush goodies in this photo

To be in with a chance of winning click here and follow the instructions.

ABC D is for Dazzle

At ABC today we want you to Dazzle us! We want to see lots of sparkly and blingy projects.

We are sponsored by Bugaboo Stamps and they have a fabulous prize of

My design incorporates a gorgeous Lili Of The Valley stamp called Fishing Buddies, which I coloured with promarkerts. And that has been stuck to a mat which I ran through the BS with a snow embossing folder.

I clean forgot to add some glitter to the actual image before I stuck it down inside the aperture I created using the MemoryBox Frostyville Border die – isn’t it just lush! The die that is. I trimmed out top and bottom of a six inch square of white glitter card and then just trimmed up the edges to form a snowy aperture. I should have started with a larger piece of card, but I was constrained by the internal opening of the BS, but if you have a Grand Calibur I would recommend starting with card 6.5 to 7” wide. I then stuck it over acetate and created a shake card with foam tape. The shaker is filled with Shaved Ice mica flakes. The little tree and purple snowflake are from my stash.

These dies are a bit fiddly to pull out as they are so thin that they don’t want to part company easily from the waste, but oh so worth the effort of a bit of poking with a pokey tool.

I’m entering this into the following challenges:-

Christmas Stampin’ All Year Long – Never Seen Ink

Crafty Hazlenut’s Christmas Challenge - #46 Whatever Lights Your Candle

Crimbo Crackers - #2 Make It Sparkle

Delightful Challenges - Snowflakes

Floweret Stamplar - #8 Christmas

Inky Impressions - #32 Glitter It Up

Mami Doodles - #37 Christmas

Samuel Taylors – Christmas

Sweet Stamps Challenge - #41 Non Traditional Christimas Colours

Wags N Whispers - #67 Christmas Themed

Whoopsi Daisy Challenge – The Colours of Winter

 

CCM #56 Recycle

Over at Crafty Cardmakers this week we want to see you use something recycled on your projects. That could, for example, be a pringles container you turn into a pen pot, the inside of a parcel tape roll to make a jewellery box. Alternatively just something on the project that is recycled, ie corrugated cardboard for background, bits of sweet box ribbon, shiny foil etc.

We are once again sponsored by with a £10 voucher for her online store, and as Joanna doesn’t charge postage in the UK that’s even better value for money.

I have gone slightly mental, or should that be metal, with mine. Firstly the image, the gorgeous new Friends Forever from Lili of The Valley,  was stamped onto the back of a box of cereal and coloured with cosmic shimmer micas mixed to a paint with water.

                                           

The borders, swirls and flower were all made from recycled coke cans. I should issue a word of warning here, be VERY careful when you are handling them as I ended up with a sliver of metal in my thumb which took ages to fish out.

After I had trimmed down the cans I added alcohol inks and left them to dry then I cut out two swirls with a Die-Namics die and two borders using an EK Success punch.

                               

The flower was a combo of S!r T!m of Hotlz' Tattered Florals Die and a small punch for the centre of the flower, plus a brad. It got a little messy on the edge of my image because I attempted to stick the flourishes down with glue gel, which didn't work. In the end I went for Stick and Stay, but I think that a better method might be to anchor the swirls with a flower or something to hide a glue dot.

 

With the borders, I cut them long enough to fold under the backing paper and then stuck the whole thing down onto the green card. The paper is from the new Basic Grey Picadilly pad.

The pic below shows just how shimmery the cosmic shimmer micas are. I angled it into the light as the other pics make the painting look a little flat.

I’m really annoyed at the gluey mess left on the side of the image, so if you want to incorporate metal into your design, I recommend some test gluing first so you don’t end up spoiling your design like I did.

 

 

I am entering this into the following:-

Blog-A-Doodle – Sparkle And Shine

Challenge Up Your Life - #56 Friendship – The stamp is called Friends Forever

Crimbo Crackers - #2 Make It Sparkle

Cuddly Buddly - #20 Two Little Characters

Divas By Design – #14 Use Metal

Flutterby Wednesday - #179 Friendship

If The Shoe Fits - #96 Try Something New (I have never used recycled aluminum before)

More Than Favours - #58 Buttons, Bling or Brads

My Partner In Crafting Crime - #35 Use A Freebie/Recycle – Apart from the paper and actual image, everything on my card is recycled

Party Time Tuesday #41 Bling It On

Ruby’s Rainbow - #16 Something With Wings