Crafty Cardmakers #81 Our Final Challenge for 2012 – Inspired by a Song

I think I went a little mad at Crafty Cardmakers with our current and final challenge for 2012. I was sitting, as you do, at the pc and listening to music and Jim Croce’s ‘Time In A Bottle’ started playing and as I listened to the words it reminded me of all the Christmasses past when I had so many family around me, and of all the happy times and just what it would mean to me to be able to save time in a bottle to spend when, where or with whom I like. So I thought it would make a great final challenge for this year.

I would like you to click the link above for a listen, or read the lyrics below, and see if they can inspire you to create something a bit different to the normal Christmas challenges for this time of year. You could go with the entire sentiment of the song, pick out phrases, maybe make a scrapbook LO, something time related? I am sure you get the idea.

If I could save time in a bottle

The first thing that I'd like to do

Is to save every day

Till Eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever

If words could make wishes come true

I'd save every day like a treasure and then,

Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do

Once you find them

I've looked around enough to know

That you're the one I want to go

Through time with

If I had a box just for wishes

And dreams that had never come true

The box would be empty

Except for the memory

Of how they were answered by you

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do

Once you find them

I've looked around enough to know

That you're the one I want to go

Through time with

Anyhow, I am in desperate need of a clock for my front room as I broke mine whilst packing to move, and have been so busy since I got here that I hadn’t had time to make one so this seemed the perfect excuse to get down and dirty and see what I could come up with.

I caved in and purchased a couple more PanPastel colours!!! I couldn’t help myself, since my experiment with the pure turquoise I was a goner, so I went for the Magenta, Violet, and Phtalo Blue too!

I started off by blending the PanPastels onto the clock base, until I was happy with the colour and then I placed a Tattered Angels Glimmer mask over the centre and used various TA Glimmer Mists to spray to leave the buttefly pattern on the clock base. Before I removed the mask I used a small paintbrush and removed the spray nozzle from some other TA Glimmer Mists and used it to paint the patterns inside the butterfly. The edges of the clock were stamped with various parts of a swirl stamp, and the sentiment was printed onto safmat, and is one of the phrases in the lyrics of the song.

I finished it off with a small floral embellishment on one corner.

This is my gift to me, along with the PanPastels (naughty Witch!)

I have to say that I originally did this on a bracket shaped clock, and I had it almost as I wanted it, but decided that the edges needed something a little extra, maybe some embossing. It was at that point I got really angry with myself as I overdid the embossing powder and it looked awful. There really was no way to rescue it so I attempted to trim the embossed part away but that made it look worse, so several hours of work ended up in the BIN!!!! Never has the phrase ‘there never seems to be enough time’ seemed quite so appropriate, lol

I am sorry that you cannot see the gorgeous shimmer on the butterfly and surrounding it, but the light conditions are not good, particularly as I now have a 6 foot tree blocking the natural light in my lounge and there is virtually no natural light in my other rooms!

I would love for you to show me what you can create over at Crafty Cardmakers and we have a fabulous prize offered by our lovely Kim which I am sure you will have a great deal of enjoyment using. So come on over and see if you would like to join in the fun.

I am entering this into the following challenges:-

Craft My Life – All Crafts Challenge #3

Crafty Bloggers – #6 Anything Goes

Di’s Digi Designs – Anything But a Card Christmas Creation

Glitter N Sparkle Challenge Blog – #10 Use Some Metal (My clock hands are metal!)

Great Impressions – December Challenge Anything Goes

Love To Create – #45 Anything Goes

PanPastel – #48 Song or Carol Title

Sugar Creek Hollow – #41 Stencils and Masks

Stamp Your Life – #1 Anything Goes

Stamps & Fun=Creativity – #129 No Christmas Card

Stamptacular Sunday – #193 Anything But A Card

Lexi’s Creations #80 Snow

Our challenge to you at Lexi’s Creations this time is SNOW, and I hope we don’t actually get any here as I recently moved half way down a hill and I suspect any whitestuff and I will be housebound until it clears!

We are sponsored by the fabulous Joanna Sheen with a £10 voucher for her store.

I have gone for some nice unsual Christmas colours for my snow creation. My image is from Wee Stamps and is called Heidi, and I have coloured her with copics.

The glittery vellum I used for my Memory Box border die was in my stash for years, as is the snowflake embellishment. The white embossed background is an M-bossabilities folder. Small strip of paper is from Best Creations, although I went over it with Rusty Hinge DI to colour it to match the other colours used on the card.

I am entering this into the following:-

2 Sisters Challenge – #121 Snowflakes

ABC Challenges – #8 Let It Snow

Addicted to Stamps – #45 Bingo (Glitter, Embossed, Snowflake)

Christmas Card Challenges – 2013 Christmas Card Challenge Week #2

C.R.A.F.T. – #184 Christmas

Crafty Sentiments Designs – Snowflakes

Die Cuttin’ Divas – #94 Holiday Spirit

Just Us Girls – #166 Embossing

My Time to Craft – #200 Non Traditional Christmas

Scrappers Delight Challenge Blog – Non Traditional Christmas

Dream Valley #47 Christmas

Our challenge to you at Dream Valley until next year is a nice simple one, Christmas!

We have three fabulous sponsors, Bugaboo, Meljen’s Designs and Crafty Ribbons, please see the Dream Valley blog for more details.

For my card I used the new Crafter’s Companion SWALK Digital cdrom with all the cute SWALK images todate as digital images. I do like rubber, but digital is so much more versatile in different ways to rubber, most especially being able to resize or intigrate with other stamps without masking, although this one is just the one image. This one is called Happy Holidays. I coloured it with my copics. The papers were a freebie from a magazine CDRom from My Craft Studio, so it’s basically all digital, apart from the diecuts which are a Marianne Christmas Tree and Britannia word dies.

I am entering this into the following:-

Card Crafters Circle – #52 December Celebrations

Cupcake Craft – #222 Merry Christmas

Deep Ocean Challenge – #40 So This Is Christmas

Delicious Doodles – #14 Anything Christmas With Blue

Emerald Fairies – #38 Christmas

Loves Rubberstamps – #30 Let It Snow

Pause, Dream, Enjoy – #49 Blue and White

Raise The Bar – #123 Blues and White

Stamp Your Life – #1 Anything Goes

Sweet Stampin’ Challenge – Dies and Punches

ABC C Clear it Out

Oh dear you can tell Christmas is at hand, I completely forgot to post my ABC card for this fortnight! Ooooops

Our challenge is C for Clear It Out.

We are sponsored by Stamp Fairy with a $10 gift certificate.

I have used a lovely Stamp Fairy image called Lenny, and coloured him in with prisma pencils. My papers are from Basic Grey and they are what I ‘cleared out’ as I have had the Origin papers for a very long time! The brown mat is a Marianne die and the patterned frame is a lovely die from Memory Box called Tiffany Frame. The bow die is also Memory Box and the butterflies are Magnolia DooHickey. If you look at my lower butterfly you can see that it has the yellow waste from the top butterfly. I was trying to be a smart alec and save myself a bunch of cutting and cut the green and yellow papers together. The result was a happy accident of the yellow waste transferring itself to the green butterfly so I left it in place as I thought it looked interesting.

I am entering this into the following:-

7 Kids College Fund – Anything Goes

Bugaboo Stamps – Anything Goes

Crafty Boots – Anything Goes

Digi Galore – Anything Goes

Corrosive Challenge – #163 Anything Goes

Great Impression Stamps – Anything Goes

Joanna Sheen – Anything Goes Excluding Christmas

One Stitch At A Time – Anything Goes

Stamp Your Life – #1 Anything Goes