CCM Spotlight Bottle Caps

Over on the beautiful new Spotlight blog for Crafty Cardmakers we are challenging you to use bottle tops on your creations.

The challenge was set by Paula and here’s what she had to say about it

‘I'd love you to use Bottle caps either metal ones (new or used) or plastic ones - and remember, you don't have to make a card, you can make anything you like incorporating the bottle caps....anything from jewellery, card embellishments,fridge magnets or like me, a key ring.’

We have a prize for the winner of a set of Hero Arts stamps LL997 called Tiny Greetings

I have to confess to having had lots of ideas none of which came to fruition. I was using real beer bottle caps and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t flatten them! I think it says more about me than the caps, lol, not enough welly in my hammer hand.

So in the end I plumped for something different.

I made a scrap LO of my lovely Poppy with a few pictures of her sleeping. The papers and embellishments (which I printed and then cut out) are all from Nitwits. The caps, which formed the title, were filled with some lovely K&Co epoxy stickers that had the perfect sentiment for the page.

Please pop on over to the Spotlight blog and have a look at my teamies’ clever designs, and I am sure you will find something there to inspire you.

ABC S is for Sparkle

Over at ABC this week our challenge to you is to sparkle!  Our Sponsor is

with a fabulous £10 voucher to spend in their online store.

For my Sparkle creation I used Sheena’s new Paint Fusion technique. I cut a card with my Go Kreate Dies in the largest size, approx 6”. And stamped out the sweet peas and then used the fusion painting technique to colour them in! As you can see I am still very much getting to grips with this technique and my leaves are not the most attractive on the planet, but hey nature is marvellous, and I bet if you look really hard you could find some leaves that look like that, just not on a Sweet Pea!

For the sparkle element I have edged my card with an embossing pen and used Sheena wow powders in a sparkly pink, which I also used for the words and for the Sweet Peas’ tendrils.

There is also sparkle in my thread that it is hanging from as I plaited together three strands of different sparkly threads to create a thicker one.

The butterflies are Nestie dies and cut out of two different glitter papers.

When I had finished painting I cut another shape the same size and glued the two together and it made a nice sturdy wall hanging.

I’m entering this into the following challenges:-

Creative Craft Challenges – Embossing (Heat or Dry)

Flutterby Wednesday – Open, but to include a Butterfly, Fairy Etc.

Freshly Brewed Challenges – Lots of Sparkle

Ladybug Crafts Ink TLT – Anything Goes

Simon Says Stamp – Emboss It

Top Tip Tuesday – Open Challenge – I have a tip. Paint a blob of ink on the top of the lid of your acrylic paints, that way you can find the colour you want from above without having to pull out all the bottles searching for a particular colour

Woodware Usa Clear Stamps – Die Cuts/Punches – My whole card front is die cut plus the butterflies are die cuts.

CCM 44 Red, White and Blue and/or a Wedding Creation

With the Royal Wedding being just around the corner, over at Crafty Cardmakers Challenge on the main blog we are looking for RED, WHITE AND BLUE and/or a WEDDING CREATION. If you go for the former please make sure that the colours listed are the most PROMINENT colours on your card, but if you don’t fancy the whole royal colour theme then any wedding creation will be equally fine.

We are sponsored by one of our lovely regular sponsors who is offering our

winner a £10 voucher for her online store.

Do please pop on over to the blog and check our the creations of my lovely teamies.

So onto my creation. My Sister, a long time Steam Rally enthusiast asked me a month or so back if I could make a card for her friend who she meets up with at the rallies. The only problem was she seemed to think I could magic up a picture of a bridal couple on the back of a steam traction engine! Now just where did she think I would find such a beast is beyond me. So having trawled through Google and having come across the odd picture of someone’s personal wedding celebration – and I didn’t feel comfortable with pinching someone else’s wedding pics and putting it onto a wedding card – I was beginning to get a little desperate so I put a call out on the CCM team blog for help!!!

The lovely and talented Eiglas came rushing to my rescue and offered to draw me such an image.  Boy was I relieved.

This is what I came up with after she sent it over to me.

As you can see I didn’t colour the engine because apparently the engine that my Sister’s friend owns is black! Whether this looks anything like it I have no idea, but it’s like cars isn’t it, there are black ones and there are coloured ones!

Anyhow I coloured the bride and groom in with promarkers and prismas. I then made a bridal boquet rather than the one that Ei had drawn simply cos I fancied that. The image is matted onto some Centura Pearl cardstock which I first punched with the MS PAP in the double heart design. This was in turn layered onto some brushed silver cardstock and the whole lot onto a 7x10 card which I trimmed down to fit, and also edged with Sheena’s Wow Platinum sparkle embossing powder. The flowers are from Wild Orchid and the silver swirls are an old Quick Cutz die cut from silver glitter paper.

I made the sentiment on the pc and backed it onto one of the new nestie tags.

My Sister hasn’t even seen it yet, as she was not at home when I took it down to her. I hope she likes it, lol

My Sister first got interested in traction engines when she came across this somewhat poor quality old photograph of our Grandfather on top of C&F Freeman’s engine in a local history book. Sadly he died before our parents were even married and long before we were born so was not around to tell us tales of his days working for the local timber merchant and doing the rounds of the farms at harvest time with the steam driven harvesting equipment, but we understand from our Dad that he was a bit of a hero, having jumped into save a man who fell into the threshing machine!

Years later my Sister came across this lovely old engine lovingly restored at a rally and was thrilled to be given a ride around the field on it.

Life certainly looked gentler then and a much quieter pace, but hey bucket and chuckit loos…. I know where I would rather be!

Spookily, it has an uncanny resemblance to the image that Ei incorporated into her wedding drawing! Small world, lol

I’m entering my card into:-

Anita Be Stampin Challenge – Anything Goes

Creative Craft World – Love and Marriage

Little Miss Muffet – Glitter and Shine

Polka Doodles – Tie The Knot

Dream Valley #5 Easter

Over at Dream Valley we are already on our Fifth challenge, time sure does fly, and this time the theme is Easter. Goodness before we know it, it will be Christmas again *shudders*

Anyhow we are sponsored this week by Stitchy Bear Stamps  with a generous $10 to spend in their store.  We were lucky enough to be given a few images from Stitchy for our Easter Challenge. As soon as I saw the image I have used I liked it. It is entitled Bunny Break, and I can just imagine the Easter Bunny sneaking off to the pub for a swift drink between hiding eggs to be found by the children.

I coloured him in with promarkers  and prismas.

The papers are from the Prima pad Jack and Jill Celebrations. The Charm was from my stash and the flourishes are cut from Kanban acetate.

I shan’t be doing Easter myself as this time last year I was diagnosed with Diabetes,  so chocolate is a no, no.  But my mouth waters at the thought of a huge Cadbury’s Egg *sigh*

I am entering this into the following ‘Easter’ challenges:-

Cards For Men

Craft Your Days Away

Delightful Challenges

Die Cut Dreams Challenge Blog

Easy Craft Projects

Hanna and Friends

Pattie’s Creations Design Challenge

Pollycraft Challenge

Sparkles Forum Challenges

Stampin’ For the Weekend

Tellen’s Place Designs

The Crafty Pad Designs

The Sisterhood of Crafters

and finally this Eggs/Bunnies inspired challenge:-

Creative Belli Blog

 

ABC R is for …

Welcome back for another exciting challenge at the ABC Challenge Blog. This weeks challenge is

R is for Ribbon

Our Sponsor this week is:

The winner gets to choose 5 digi stamps, and there are some really cute ones on there!

Here is my first public effort with Sheena Douglass’ new Paint Fusion concept.

I created a scalloped square from mountboard with a sizzix BIGZ die, and used the Resist technique to make the background and that lilac coming through is my bedroom paint, so you get a sneaky peek in my bedroom as well, lol. I also edged the scallops with dusty concord DI.

I used the stamps from the Simply Sweet set and then embossed them with silver sparkle embossing powder. I seem to be blessed with being cackhanded as my Mother would have called it. I don’t know if it’s the ME or just advancing years or plain ole fashioned clumsiness but I struggle to hold the brush and do the strokes, especially on the smaller things like the leaves and stems as my hand seems to be shaking enough to throw me off course as it were. Anyhow, I did the leaves and then made the roses with the fabulously easy technique of swirling a couple of colours together with the end of the paintbrush!

There was already one hole punched in the corner of the scalloped square so I used my CropADile to punch three more so I could thread ribbon through. Four sweet little ribbon roses covered up the ‘joins’.

I put the whole lot on an 8” square scalloped card which I first coloured with dusty concord DI.

The swirls are a Marianne Die which I had to cut forwards and backwards, from some lovely glitter card, so I could reverse the image. It wasn’t until after it was posted on the ABC blog that I spotted a mistake with the way I laid the swirls onto the background card, and now that’s all I can see…….

I’m entering this into:-

A Spoon Full of Sugar – Tons of Texture - two different textures on your card – Mine are the ribbon and the acrylic paint

Ambers Crafts and Stuff – Try a New Technique (Paint Fusion)

Creative Stamp Friends – Swirls

Papertake Weekly – Anything Goes optional extra Something New (my Paint Fusion is a new technique)

Stamping Vacation – You Name the Challenge (the Paint Fusion, it was a challenge to make something I was happy to blog as I am not very proficient in the technique)

The Paper Shelter – Anything Goes

There’s Magic in The Air – Let’s Use Flowers

Try It On Tuesday who are sponsored by One Stop Card Crafts – Inspiration from Your Home (my bedroom, pics below, and the actual paint used to decorate it is on the card)

CCM 43 Recipe

Our challenge over at Crafty Cardmakers this week is a recipe challenge created by our lovely Dee and she would like you to:-

Use Yellow as your MAIN COLOUR

Add Ribbon

Use Stitching Faux or real

Use Rhinestones/Gems

We are kindly sponsored for this challenge by The Stampman who are offering the winner a £10 voucher for their store, you can spend this online, in the shop, or if you're lucky enough to see them, at a show!

They have a ton of items in store and one of their newest are their FRAMIE STAMPS which are designed to fit exactly into Nestabilites with many more coming in you need to check these out! Please don’t forget our new Roolz and if you wish to combine your entry with other challenges can you limit this to 9 others (10 in total). Sadly those entries that do not meet this challenge will not be eligible for the above prize and we will not be able to comment on your creation no matter how lovely it might be.

For my card I used a couple of digistamps from Make It Crafty to make a background, Ivy Swing and Daffodil Dell. I also resized a Mo Manning digi called Lacie so that she would fit on the swing. I love that you can fiddle around with digis and make something fit really easily.

I printed the background scene and Lacie onto watercolour paper and coloured them both in using Inktense Watercolour Pencils in various tones of yellow with some green for the grass and leaves, of course.

I made myself a frame from the waste of a nestie shape in both lemon marble paper and plain yellow paper, the latter I cut slightly larger to form a border to my frame and stuck the whole lot onto some scalloped textured card from DCWV. There was not the right colour of yellow to match so I used a white one and colour toned it with Mustard Seed and Dried Marigold DI.

My stitches were made with a lovely stitching stamp which I had forgotten I had until Vix mentioned that she had this set of stamps with stitches – and there was I struggling with the ruddy sewing machine last week and all the while I had a small array of stitches to hand ready to stamp! I stamped this so that it went over the frame and background.

I made two floral embellishments with prima petals for the base, after I had tinged the edges with Dried Marigold DI, a length of sparkly ribbon tied in a bow and a daffodil from Wild Orchid Crafts which I changed the colour of the centre to match my image, using Dried Marigold again. Where would we be without good old S!r T!m and his Distress Inks…..

I added a couple of butterflies which I then stuck gems down the centres for their bodies and also a couple of dragonflies to finish it all off.

Now have you ever opened up one of those little pots of gems upside down! Twenty minutes later after I had separated them all and chased the dog to get back the ones she has picked up and ran off with and I was ready for a cuppa.

Speaking of the dog, grrrrr she has been in chew heaven this last few days. Firstly she chewed through the usb cable that connects my camera to the pc (thank heavens for my new all singing, all dancing printer that has a card reader incorporated, then she found herself a Paint Fusion card I had been working on for ages and chewed away both the top corners and just to add insult to injury I found her in the garden having a good chew on some St. Ives Swiss Formula Apricot Scrub, so I’m guessing her tummy is the cleanest and smoothest in town. Gooooooooooooo Poppy, do please go!! LOL

I’m entering this into the following:-

Colour Create Challenge Blog – Use Pastels

Craft Your Passion – Anything Goes

Crafts and Me – Use Yellow

Craft Us Crazy – Happy Easter and/or Spring (obviously I have gone with Spring)

Heart 2 Heart Challenges – Spring Has Sprung

Lexi’s Creations – Monochromatic (If you think there is too much green, please feel free to delete)

Paper Playtime – Anything Goes

Stampin’ B’s Design Team – Make a card using stamps to create a background and NO designer paper

The Crazy Challenge – Just Add Flowers

The Rubber Cafe – Spring Flowers

Catch you back here on Wednesday for The ABC Challenge

 

Dream Valley #4 Things With Wings

This week we have another easy Challenge for you to get your teeth into

"THINGS WITH WINGS"

This can be anything  winged thing you like such as birds, fairies, butterflies on any creation you like and as always it doesn't just need to be a card . You could make a scrapbook LO, a piece of jewellery or even a 3D item!

We are sponsored by One Stop Card Crafts with another fabulous prize of a £10 voucher to spend in their online store for our winner.

I had such fun with this one. I used another of those gorgeous Delicious Doodles images from Stitchy Bear Stamps – this one being called Endless Love.  I coloured it in with prismacolour pencils and OMS.

The sentiment is printed onto plain white paper and then run through the BS with one of the new nestie Fancy Tags dies, and then coloured with Dusty Concord DI.

The BP is from Artylicious, and the backing mats were from a kit I purchased from QVC.

I trimmed up some corner gems to make adornments for her arm, fingers and hair, and a couple of Marianne Swirls. The fancy yarn threaded through the sentiment I have had for ages.

I’m entering this into:-

Catch The Bug Challenge Blog – Anything Goes

Bling It On – Use A Digi Stamp and Some Bling

Digis With Attitude – Anything Goes

Frosted Designs – Use Some Bling

Stamp Something – April Digi Day

I Did It Creations – Anything Goes

Haunted House Design Macabre Monday – Magically Witchy (I am hoping that a Dragon qualifies as Magic, if not please shout out and remove me)