Happy Christmas

Hello all, it's that most special day, Christmas Eve, and so I'd simply like to wish you all a very happy Christmas. I've loved getting to know my fellow bloggers this year, it's been such a pleasure.

I'm still not up to doing any crafting, but I can feel the spark of interest growing again, so hopefully it won't be too much longer before I'm back.

Till then, all the best from me.

Anything Goes at Sundays With Crissy

Hello everyone, no I haven't emigrated and left blogging for good, I'm just having a break until the New Year to get a bit stronger. But this is a card I made recently for this month's challenge at Sundays With Crissy, the theme being everyone's favourite: Anything Goes. How easy is that?

This sweet image is one of Crissy's that is available from Wags N Whiskers, called Zoe & Gemma's Snow Fun - don't you think it's cute? Coloured in copics as usual, and the backing paper is actually the cover of a brochure I received in the post....I liked the design so much I thought it would come in handy for a Christmas card.

A couple of felt snowflakes, a punched snowflake, gem brad, navy gingham ribbon and stamped sentiment were added to complete the card.

Hope you like the card and feel like coming along and joining us at Sundays With Crissy this month.

More apologies for not visiting any blogs, I'm just not up to all the reading and commenting right now, but I hope to be back reinvigorated in the New Year.

Till then, happy crafting!

Leap of Joy....non-traditional colours

Hello everyone, I'm here with a couple of cards today, they form my DT project for this month at Sundays With Crissy. This time, we'd like to see a Christmas card in non-traditional colours, so any colour other than red or green. I've used a tiny bit of red and green in my colouring, but there wasn't really any other colour I can do berries and holly.

I chose to make a non-traditional blue, white & silver card and a pink, white & silver one, using Crissy's image Leap of Joy in both - being a digi I was able to print the gorgeous reindeer at 2 different sizes. Colouring was done with copics, and I over-coloured with pencils to modify the shades and also add a little texture to the reindeer, as the colouring was too smooth with just the copics. In both cases I cut the image out with a nestie shape using the 'outside the box' technique so that the hind feet overhang the nestie. 

The blue card measures 15x15cm and is made using a piece of very shiny foiled Kanban cardstock in blue and silver, to which I added a square doily and a wide strip of blue and silver Christmas ribbon. Although it looks as if the background is uncoloured, it's actually a pale blue. A white poinsettia made with Marianne dies and a foiled 'With Love' sentiment finish it off. 

Cardstock is really very shiny and reflective!

The pink card is a book-fold C6 size, and made using paper from the very first designer paper pack I ever bought (5 years ago and still going strong....it was a BIG Papermania pack!).  The ribbon is a nice shiny silver one, and I made another white poinsettia to embellish.  I finished it off with a Papermania sentiment, stamped in grey.


I bet those carefully shaped poinsettia petals will get flattened in the post!

I'd like to enter these 2 cards in these challenges:

2 Sisters Challenge - Ribbon

ABC DT Challenge - Christmas card challenge

Cardmakin Mamas - Cut it out (nestie shapes round the images, and poinsettia die cuts)

Crafty Ribbons - Bingo (punch/dies - flowers - ribbon)

Papertake Weekly - Anything goes

And I'd like to enter the blue card only in these challenges:

Crafty Purple Frog - Sparkle

Secret Crafter - Flowers ribbon lace

Truly Scrumptious - Bingo time (lace - flowers - ribbon)

I hope you like my cards. The SWC Design Team upload their projects every few days, so keep checking out the challenge blog to see more non-traditional Christmas colours. You have till the end of the month to enter and be in with a chance to win 5 of Crissy's images.

Happy crafting!

Beer mat gift box

No, not a gift box for beer mats, silly! A box MADE using a couple of cardboard beer coasters that were headed for the recycling bin. Unused ones, I hasten to add, he hee.

I wanted to make a gift box just big enough to hold a few chocolates to give a very special person, and this is what I came up with. There was a tune going round my head at the time, a Billy Joel song called You're My Home, and there's a nice line in it which goes "Home is just another word for you" which seemed very appropriate for the person I was thinking of, so it became a sentiment on the box lid.

The lid and base are made from 2 beer mats which I covered both sides with brown dogtooth-checked paper, sanded a little around the edges. I made a small box from cream card using a box-maker and adhered one beer mat to the top of the lid and the other to the bottom of the base.  This is what the beer mats looked like before they were repurposed:

To decorate, I first used a lacy doily on top of the paper-covered beer mat, then I took a square of paper and made a background by aging it around the edges, crinkling it up and running a distress ink pad over it to highlight the creases. Then I added an epoxy flower embellishment, some roses, a die-cut gingham heart and some pearls.

The ribbon wrapped around the box is a beautiful patterned white ribbon from my good blogging friend, Kevin.

Background is made from some pale pink backing paper which I aged and distressed a little, then I scrunched it up and wiped a distress ink pad over the flattened out paper to show up the creases.

I'm entering this is these challenges:
2 Sisters Challenge - Ribbon (round the sides of the box)
Bearly Mine - Anything but a card
Bunny Zoe's Crafts - Lace it up
Cooking It Up With Katie - Anything but a card
Crafts & Me - Let the music move you
Crafty Cardmakers - pink, brown and cream
Crafty Emma's Store - Entertain us, song- or film-inspired
Lollipop Crafts - Anything goes
Secret Crafter - Flowers, ribbon, lace
Southern Girls - Can you hear the music?
Sugar Creek Hollow - Trash to Treasure vintage
Top Tip Tuesday - Make your own background
Truly Scrumptious - Bingo time (Gems-Flowers-Diecuts line, I used pearl gems, roses and a diecut heart)

Have a good weekend all.

Dream Valley #19 - Anything Goes

This fortnight, the challenge at Dream Valley is an old favourite.....Anything Goes.  Melly, our wonderful leader, will be offering a very lucky person a £10 voucher to use in either Crafty Emma's delish shop OR Saturated Canary's Digi's image Esty store - you choose!! How fab!!

My card is a new baby card using a photo, 2 designer papers (Crafters Companion pink gingham, and K&Co pink paper), ribbon & lace, an epoxy sticker, pearls and embossed vellum.

No, my copics haven't broken! hahaa. I just felt like a change and used a printed photo instead.

Check out the challenge blog for my clever teamies' fab projects. Happy crafting!

Colour some texture

Hello bloggers, I hope everyone is well. I've had a bit of a change round on my blog and added a second sidebar so I could do some tidying up. The header etc is different too but it won't stay like this for long....I was messing about with backgrounds yesterday when something happened to my blog so that I could no longer open it (shock horror!) and it kept making my laptop freeze to even try and open my blog. So I didn't get a chance to change the background to something more crafty. I'm too scared to touch it now in case it won't open again!

Anyway, we have a new challenge today at Make It Colourful, which is to COLOUR SOME TEXTURE. This could be anything you like: some grass, a woolly jumper, straw, fur......anything! If it's got some texture in there then you can enter. You can use any make of image in your colouring, doesn't have to be a Make It Crafty one, although there is an extra prize draw for MiC images.

I had been dying to colour this image by Crissy Armstrong, Turk In Boots. The tailfeathers I coloured in a deeply-grooved corrugated effect, and the pumpkin was coloured in long strokes of my copics to look like the many little ridges on the surface. And my final bit of texture is in the body of the turkey, which I coloured smoothly with copics then added little feathery pencil marks to look, well, feathery.

I kept the colours very autumnal, browns, golds and oranges with a little green, and picked up some violet from the backing paper to make a faint violet shadow around my turkey.  The chippie leaves are coloured with the same greens from the hat band. Hope you like it.

Image: Turk in Boots by Crissy Armstrong

Colouring: copics and pencils

Chippie leaves: Butterfly Leaves by Make It Crafty

DPs: K&Co, Brenda Walton Brookfield

Spellbinders: Lacey circles and standard circles

Computer printed sentiment

Ribbons from my craft stash



Don't forget to check out the Make It Crafty gallery to see more inspiration for colouring a little texture.

I'd like to enter this card in these challenges:
Charisma Cardz - Anything Goes
Crafty Boots - Autumn or Halloween
Crafty Creations - Leaves and fall palette
Digi Doodles - Anything Goes
Paper Crafting Journey - Use a digi
Partytime Tuesdays - Anything Goes
Shopping Our Stash - Halloween OR Autumn/Fall colours

Colouring snow for Make It Colourful: Ragged Angel and winter background

Hi all, I did some colouring last week and have only just today made something with it.  This is my DT project for Make It Colourful, where the challenge this fortnight is to COLOUR SNOW. This means not just adding glitter to look like the white stuff, but actually using your colouring to depict snow.

We are so lucky in that there are some new background snowy winter scene images now at Make It Crafty, and I've used 3 of them in my scene together with this fabulous image from Mo Manning. Now, I have to admit that Ragged Angel melts my heart, she's beautifully drawn and so adorable, and a poor little child out in the freezing snow - well, it can kinda move you to tears. So I had to colour the Angel in warm colours so that she could be warm inside despite the cold environment.

Colouring is in Copics as usual, and the way I've coloured the snow is to leave the majority of the paper white and uncoloured, and added some shadows and little areas of very pale blue (B0000) and a pale cool grey (C1 and some C3). It's a daytime scene, hence the lightsource from the right, but I decided the street lamp would be lit even though there's daylight, so it just casts a little warm light onto the snow on the lantern itself. The sky is coloured in a pale violet as if there is more snow in the sky - oh that poor little urchin!




Images merged with permission from Mo Manning


The finished colouring has been made up into a shadow box card so the image is sunk into the cardstock. The paper in the border is from Websters Pages, inked around the edges and matted onto green card.  The sentiment is from Stempelglade, and some lace, a metal filligree corner, a poinsettia, punched snowflake and a couple of roses finish it all off.

I hope it is OK to say that I do like this scene that I merged and I'm really pleased with how the colouring went. Always room for improvement but I'm happy.

I made this card for Mo's Bronte & Bella's challenge which this week is Inspired by a Song. When I was planning this, I had the song "It may be winter outside (but in my heart it's spring)" going round my head because I didn't like the thought of our little Angel suffering the cold and kind of imagined that she'd have an inner warmth to keep her OK. Kind of like the old Ready Brek advert, for those of us old enough to remember, lol.

Images: Festive Lantern (from Festive Elements), Large Pine Tree,

and Winter Fence from Make It Crafty;

Ragged Angel from Mo Manning

Colouring: Copic markers

DP: Websters Pages

Metal corner: Wild Orchid Crafts

Martha Stewart snowflake punch

Prima poinsettia, lace, roses from my stash

Sentiment: Vintage Christmas from Stempelglade

I'd like to enter this in these challenges:

ABC Christmas Challenge - U for Unused Stash (all my images are brand new, and this is the first time I've used this sentiment stamp)

Bronte and Bella's Challenge - Inspired by a song ("It may be winter outside")

Aud Sentiment Challenge - Winter theme

Bunny Zoe's Crafts - Lace it up

Fabulous Friday - Fancy trim

Flutterby Wednesday - Open challenge

Whoopsie Daisy - Free & easy

I hope you like my project today. It's gone very cold here in Brum and I'm sitting with a hot water bottle as I type this, lol. Keep warm everyone!



Blog hop winners

Hi everyone - today is the day when we announce the winners of the Make It Crafty blog hop. A full list of winners can be found at Make It Colourful.

A big thank you to everyone that left a comment for my hop cards, I really wish I could send a gift to each and every one of you, but as Highlander says "There can be only one" so I am pleased to announce that the winner of my candy is.......(drum roll)



JANETTE of Little-Boscraftyplace!!!!!


Congratulations Janette and let me have your address so I can get something nice posted to you.

Congrats to all the other winners too and I hope everyone enjoyed the hop.

Thanks & Thanksgiving at Sundays With Crissy

Hi everyone☺  I'm back with my DT project for Sundays With Crissy, where the theme this month is Thanks and Thanksgiving. I decided to make a clean and simple Thank You card using one of Crissy's latest images, the cute Sugar Pie Honey Bunch. She has released this image as a regular line art digi stamp but also as a pencil sketch stamp, which has some shading already added. If you like colouring the Simply Adorable images from Sugar Nellie, then this type of image will appeal to you. Check out the pencil sketch stamp HERE, it looks so lovely.

I used copics to colour the image, and added some pencil on top to add a bit of texture. The papers are offcuts left over from another card and the sentiment is stamped and punched out using 2 nesties, and I then made it into a kind of rosette by adding red ribbon.

 Image: Sugar Pie Honey Bunch by Crissy Armstrong

Colouring: Copics and pencils

DPs: Papermania

Spellbinders Standard circles large and Lacey circles dies

Ribbons from stash

I printed the image out again in pale ink and had another go at colouring....this has quite a different look:

DPs: Stampin Up

Metal corner: Wild Orchid Crafts

I'd like to enter these cards in these challenges:
Crafts & Me - Use a digi
Crafty Cardmakers - Anything goes (2nd entry)
My Mum's Craft Shop - All creatures great and small
My Partner in Crafting Crime - Sweets & Treats
One Stop Craft Challenge - Just for Men
Southern Girls - Boys or Men
The Crafty Pad - One for the boys

Hope you like these, for more Thank You and Thanksgiving cards, visit the challenge blog throughout the month and see what new projects the DT have uploaded.

Enjoy your weekend!

Tilda in sheer clothing!

Hi everyone. It's all change at Make It Colourful, with the weekly challenge now a bi-weekly one, and a new harder monthly challenge to push our colouring skills further!

First, the new monthly challenge. This one is just for fun and to improve skills, and will have a more difficult theme. The idea is to show the process rather than just the results, sharing our mistakes and what we've learned, and you can discuss the challenge and share tips and experience on the NEW message board over at the Make It Crafty gallery.  The first monthly challenge is to colour A Spooky Night Sky, and you can read about it HERE.

Now to the regular challenge......it is now a bi-weekly challenge to give you more time to colour your project and has moved from Saturdays to Fridays. The DT will be uploading their projects throughout the fortnight, so keep checking the gallery for more inspiration. The current theme is Colouring Sheer Clothing, and you can find it HERE.

Both challenges will be posted on the Make It Colourful blog, and you'll find all cards for the challenges in the gallery.

A couple of reminders: there is another week to run for the Christmas/Zoe's birthday blog hop, with candy available on all the DT blogs, a freebie image up for grabs if you make a birthday card, and some tempting giveaways on Zoe's blog, as well as a chance to see the new Christmas images. Click HERE to read about and start the hop.  The blog hop has been so much fun, and I want to say a very big thank you for all the fantastic comments left for my cards....that has meant so much!

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So, after all that I do actually have a card to show, it's one I made for the Sheer Clothing challenge. I've tried to colour a couple of sheer frills on Tilda's dress - you can still see the red dress through the sheer panels. I did this by colouring the bottom of the dress in copics, then used the same colours roughly on the upper parts of the dress leaving some white areas, then used white polychromo pencil on top of the whole sheer areas. the sleeves are also sheer - you can see her arms through the fabric. Well, this was my first attempt and definitely an experiment! I hope it passes muster. There are more sheer colourings from the DT on the gallery.

I used a couple of laser-cut chipboards which I coloured using copic markers, and the butterfly chipboard was also clear embossed before adding a few pearls. There are 2 layers of lace on the card to echo the 2 layers of sheer frills in the dress, and a red flower finishes the card off.

Image: Tilda with Sunflower, by Magnolia

Colouring: Copics and white polychromo pencil

Designer Papers: Oriental Spice, by Papermania

Chippies: Butterfly Leaves and Round Leaves, by Make It Crafty

Flowers, lace and pearls from my craft stash

I also made this as a birthday card for the lovely Zoe, without whom there would be no Make It Colourful or Make It Crafty, and who adds so much to the crafting world.

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I'd like to enter this card in these challenges:
Crafty Emma - Totally gorjuss/pretty girls (2nd entry)
Crafty Cardmakers - Anything goes
Simply Create - Older than 6 months (papers, image, lace and pearls are all well over that age! lol)
Stamping For The Weekend - What a cutie
Whoopsie Daisy - Lace & pearls

 

Hope you like the card. Have a good week everyone :)

Dream Valley #17 - Monochromatic

Blogger seems to be having issues again! I decided to catch up with commenting today, but it seems only some comments are actually getting through. I'll keep trying, but sorry if you're one of the blogs I can't comment on. Hopefully, Mr Blogger will resolve this soon.

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Hello everyone, it's time for another challenge at Dream Valley Challenges, and the theme this month is Monochrome. So everything on the card needs to be of one colour, although if you're colouring a character you can still use skin tones of course.

 

Our sponsor this fortnight is One Stop Card Crafts, and a lucky winner will receive a £10 gift certificate for their store!

This is the card I made as my DT project....as you see I chose blue-green as my colour.  I used my new Stempelglede stamp, which I finally treated myself to (available from Quixotic Paperie), and stamped it using Versafine black ink onto gloss paper. Then I fussy cut around the edge of the image to give it a deckle-edge (you can see that better in one of the close ups below), then inked around the edge using some Clearsnap fluid chalk ink in Prussian Blue. Papers were also inked with Prussian Blue and I added some hand-stitching.

I made the embellishments using some laser-cut chipboards from Make It Crafty - a flourish and 2 snowflakes layered up together (an idea I saw on Elaine's beautiful blog). The chipboards were coated in some Adirondack acrylic paint in Cloud Blue and I sprinkled some glamour dust into the paint as it was drying to give them lots of sparkle. A gem was placed in the centre of the snowflakes, and a Prima flower and a pearl spray were placed next to the flourish. Some blue-green organza ribbon and ric-rac finish it all off.

Chipboard flourish coated in acrylic paint and glamour dust

2 snowflakes coated in paint and glamour dust and layered up with a gemstone

Image: Vintage Christmas by Stempelglede

DPs: K&Co and Prima Annalee

Chipboard flourish and snowflakes: by Make It Crafty, available from Quixotic Paperie

Flower: Prima, Sugar Plum roses in Caribbean

Pearl spray: Wild Orchid Crafts

Other: Adirondack acrylic paint dabber, cloud blue; glamour dust;

Clearsnap Cats Eye fluid chalk in Prussian Blue; computer-printed sentiment

Doily, gem & ribbons from my craft stash

I'd like to enter this card in these challenges:

Crafts & Me - Flowers
Crafty Emma's Store - Totally gorjusss/pretty girls

Crafty Purple Frog - Lots of layers

Delightful Challenges - Pearls & swirls

Glitter Geeks - Shabby chic

Kaboodle Doodles - Use a doily

Magical Mondays - Christmas in September (2nd entry)

Paper and Such Design - Recipe challenge (2nd entry) (I chose Ribbon / designer paper / 1 flower)

Simon Says Stamp - Anything goes

Top Tip Tuesday - 2 or more ribbons (ric rac ribbon placed on top of spotty organza ribbon)

And my tip for Top Tip Tuesday: when handstitching your card, paper prick the paper along the edge of a ruler first - not only does it make the stitches neat and evenly spaced but it is so much easier to sew through the paper.

For more monochromatic projects and ideas, check out the challenge blog and see what my teamies have come up with - I can tell you they've made some beauties!

Happy crafting!

Happy birthday Zoe! and the hop starts now!

Hi all! Today I have a couple of cards to show you but first I want to say:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZOE!!!

Yes, it's our Make It Colourful leader's special day today, and to celebrate we're having a blog hop!
 

The hop has a Christmas theme because today Zoe is releasing some fab images for the upcoming season of goodwill - but the best part is you get 15% off ALL the Christmas digis from now until Sunday, October 2nd.  Click on this link HERE to see them all.  Be warned, the coupon code is only for this week even thought the blog hop is for two weeks - so make sure to grab them at this sale price while you can!

Even better, everyone in this blog hop is giving away Blog Candy!!  Whoohoo!! You'll have two weeks, until October 12th, to visit each member in the hop below and leave a comment; winners will be announced on Friday, October 14th on their individual blogs.  Feel free to grab the blog hop badge above and display it on your sidebar to spread the word about Zoe's Birthday and Blog Hop!

But that's not all... we've got yet another surprise for you!! We contacted one of Zoe's artists (S.H.) who also wanted to participate and drew us this gorgeous party girl for the occasion. Thank you!!

This is "Party Girl Zoe" and isn't she cute! We wanted to make sure everyone was included in our celebration so we're giving away Party Girl Zoe as a freebie to everyone who wants to join in and spread some birthday cheer!! All you need to do is create a new project using a Make it Crafty image or chippies and upload it into the gallery HERE by October 12th. Then email Barbara, at ForgottenScraps@gmail.com with a link to your project to claim the freebie!

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So, you should have arrived here from the lovely Beccy. If you got here some other way or if you get lost, then go HERE to begin the hop.

I made 2 cards using a couple of little elf images that were really just too cute to ignore, fixing each up in MS Word so that they both printed at the same size. At the weekend in my online browsing I even found some jingle bells like the ones on their hats! You can see them nestled in the fairy lights garland and the poinsettias below. Many thanks to Crafters Cove for super super fast delivery.....ordered on Saturday night, appearing on my blog on Tuesday morning, how's that for service?

Zippy, the boy elf

Tinkles, the girl elf

Do you like the little jingle bells?

 Images: Tinkles and Zippy by Make It Crafty

Colouring: Copic markers

DPs: Websters Pages

Sentiments: Craftwork Cards

Poinsettias & leaves from Prima
Jingle Bells from Crafters Cove
Other: Spellbinders Lacey Circles & Large Standard circles dies

Everything else from my craft stash

Your next and final stop on the hop is the incredible Barbara.

We hope you enjoy the hop and make sure you head on over to Zoe's personal blog and wish her a Happy Birthday! Grab the Christmas Blog Hop badge and display it on your sidebar to spread the word about Zoe's Birthday and Blog Hop! Until then, happy colouring!


A little edit: Amy has asked if Tinkles is supposed to have hands.....of course she is, but I somehow totally omitted to give her any, LOL, just one of several errors in colouring these 2 cuties (blush).  Well, let's just say I've given her red gloves to wear (wink). Thanks Amy, I'll remember to give her hands next time I colour her, he hee. I tried to visit your blog to reply but your profile wasn't available, sorry.

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I'd like to enter both cards as my 2 entries in these challenges:
Anything Goes - Anything Goes
Crafty Ribbons - Anything Goes
Digi Makeover Challenge - Resize your digi
Paper Sundaes - Anything Goes
Partytime Tuesdays - Anything Goes

I'd like to enter the Zippy (boy elf) card only in these challenges:
Here Come The Boys - Bingo (Die cuts / Cute Image / Metal: circle die cuts, and metal jingle bells) 
PanPastel UK Challenge - Anything Goes
Lollipop Crafts - Anything Goes
The Squirrel & The Fox - Anything Goes
Ooh La La Creations - Punches/Die cuts (my circles)


I'd like the enter the Tinkles (girl elf) card only in these challenges:
Paper And Such Design - Recipe challenge (ribbon / designer paper / flower)
Southern Girls - Anything Goes
Top Tip Tuesday (for tip see below) - 2 or more ribbons/lace/twine/fabric (I used 2 ribbons, a dark red on top of a wider gold one)
Magical Mondays - Christmas in September (I hope elves count as magical creatures)

And finally, my tip for Top Tip Tuesday is: if you know what elements you want to include on your card but you're struggling to come up with a layout, lay the pieces out on your card in different ways and take photos of each arrangement. Scrolling through the photos on your camera and comparing the layouts can help you decide which arrangement you like best. I do this all the time!

Thanks so much for visiting and for any comments you left - you really make my day!