Blue, white and silver Tilda

Hello bloggers, hope you all are well today. I'm in a hurry as I want to get this card blogged and linked to a challenge before that challenge closes. I've done this card specially for it, so I'd be disappointed if I was too late!

Copic Creations has set a challenge to colour with blues. I must admit, I only really use blues to colour jeans, so it was a good way to use them differently. 

I used this image of Tilda again because the balloon is really lovely to colour. I used blue-greens for this (BG01, BG05, BG09), and for her dress I used the blues that I would normally use for jeans (B93, B95, B97). They've come out a lot darker as I went over it again and again to try and blend better. The hairband also uses these blues, with the addition of B91 as I wanted a nice shine on it to show that it's satin ribbon. More blue-greens were used for the background (BG0000, BG000, BG10, BG01) together with a few dots of yellows and pinks.

I didn't use backing paper, but instead I had this white-on-white pearly cardstock which I was using for another card. I teamed it with white flowers and silver accents in the form of mirri card mats and silver leaves. A gem garland, some pearls and sticky gems, silver and white ribbons finish it off. The photos are not good....it actually looks nicer and more silvery in the flesh. Hope you like it.

Image: Magnolia Tilda

Colouring: Copic markers

Large flower: Prima, everything else from my stash

I am entering this card in these challenges:

Copic Creations #46 - The Blues

Just Magnolia - Bingo (Gems, Flowers, Ribbon - my gems are in the garland and scattered around the flowers)

Incy Wincy Designs #87 - Sparkle & Shine (my silver leaves & ribbon, gems, mirri mats and pearlescent cardstock)

ABC Challenge - R is for Roses

Charisma Cards - Bling & Sparkles

Delightful Challenges - Flowers
Paper Romance - Bling

 

Happy crafting!

Carole x

Tilda with Balloon

Hello, just a short post from me today so that I can blog this card in time for a challenge. My week of rest was rather interrupted by a setback with poorliness, so it hasn't been the break I had planned. Nevermind, I've done some very gentle crafting and this is the result, a bit each day at least makes one card a week, lol.

Firstly, some nice news.......my fairy card, which was also my very first DT card, was a Top 5 winner at Crafty Cardmakers which really pleases me cos I enjoyed making that one so much.

 

This is me combining a couple of colouring challenges: Make It Colourful wants to see green and yellow blended together - this I've done with the balloon, where I blended from mid-green G24 to yellow Y02 via G21 and YG03.  And iCopic wants us to use the colour combination of green, lime, and turquoise - my green is in the grass (G20,G21,G24), my lime is the balloon (Y02,YG03,G21,G24), and my turquoise is my little Tilda's dress and hairband (BG000,BG01,BG05,BG09). Lots of firsts for me in this card....first time I'd used this image, first time I'd attempted to colour the folds of a dress, the leaf die is new, it's a colour combo I would never have come up with myself, and I finally managed the nerve to spray completed work with glimmer mist. What a scare-dy cat I am, he he. I tried to keep the background colours and the flowers nice and fresh for spring and to tie in with the colour of the balloon.

A close up of the colouring

Image: Magnolia Tilda

DP: My Mind's Eye, the cover of a free calendar

Colouring: Copic

Leaves: Magnolia Doo-hickey die

Flowers & Pearls: Wild Orchid

Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist - Pearl

Lace, ribbons, roses, from my craft box

This is for these challenges:

Make It Colourful - Blend yellow and green together (my balloon)

iCopic - use Green (grass), lime (balloon), and turquoise (dress)
Let's Ink It Up - Diecuts/punches (my rose leaves are diecuts)
Wild Orchid - Dieing to Punch It Out (my rose leaves are diecuts)
Papertake Weekly - It's a Mom thing/Girlie (I went for the girlie option)
Spoonful of Sugar - Ribbon, Pearls/Rhinestones, and Flowers
Pile it On - Pearls, Rhinestones and Bling (I used pearls, glimmer mist and glitter on the flowers and mat)
Crafty Purple Frog - Going Green
Do You Stack Up - Shine ON, sparkles and bling (I used pearls, glimmer mist and glitter on the flowers and mat)

Ooops, not such a short post after all! I hope you like the card, it was another one I enjoyed making a lot.

Happy crafting!

Carole x

Dream Valley Challenge #3 - Mothers Day

Hello everyone and I hope you are well this Sunday.  Today is a new fortnight  and a new challenge for us at Dream Valley Challenges, and the theme this time is Mothers Day. This is something many of us are making cards for right now, so I hope you'll join in and share your creations with us.

We are sponsored this week by Digis With Attitude.

Digi’s With Attitude! is a Digital Stamp Company that brings Sass & Attitude to your stamping projects!

Meet the newest Attitude’s in town!
’Grumpy Gretchen’ is a sure beauty with sexy curves and very unique facial features.

Her hairstyles constantly change, as does her clothing and element she is in.
She is sassy and isn't afraid to show it! Everyone loves Grumpy Gretchen. We know you will too!

You can now meet the new Animals With Attitude! too! They are in the store and ready for you to adopt them.

All images are 300 dpi and come in both JPEG & PNG instant downloads.

 

and the prize for the random winner is $10.00 Canadian dollars to spend in their shop!

This is my card.....I am used to fairly traditional floral cards for Mother's Day which as you see is the style I made here.  The image is actually a freebie decoupage from a magazine, and I teamed it with a couple of feminine floral papers, a bit of lace and pink ribbon. A simple computer-generated sentiment finishes it off.

Image: freebie decoupage from a magazine

DPs: Papermania Signature

Lace & ribbon from stash, sentiment printed from computer

Challenges entered:

Lollipop Crafts #30 - Let's Make It With Lace

Scrap Creations - Anything Goes (2nd entry)
Tuesday Throwdown - Lace
Crafty Creations #110 - Mothers Day
Southern Girls - Flowers
Crafty Catz #74 - Mothers Day
Little Claire #3 - Pink & Green

I shall be taking a little break from blogging for a week now, just need a bit of a rest and a chance to catch up with other things. Will be back soon though, and no doubt you will have filled your blogs up with lots of things for me to look at and admire. Have fun!

Carole x

Country Cottage Get Well Card

Hi bloggers, have you got nice weather like we have here in Brum today? It's chilly but there's a blue sky and some sun, the birds are singing and it's good and quiet. Big smiley face!

I've had some great luck with a couple of recent creations.....I was very pleased to discover that my Tilda frame card was a Top 5 in last week's ABC challenge, and someone saw my DT card for the Dream Valley Challenge on my blog and asked if they could have it or one like it for a wedding she was going to! That was a real compliment as no-one has ever asked me for a card before.

Here is a card I made for a friend who has been pretty unwell. Now, as you know I don't really 'do' male cards, but this image is a good one to use for a man.  This chap and his lady are keen gardeners too, so another reason to use this great country cottage scene. I thought the lattice background looked quite like a garden trellis and seemed to really fit with the theme. The individual paper strips are woven and laced together, and it's something that I've been meaning to try for a couple of weeks, then when I saw this fantastic card on Joan's inspirational blog, it gave me the reminder and the spark to have a go.

Image: Papermania V&A Hanoverian something or other

DPs: green stripes Anna Griffin, green paisley Papermania

Colouring: Copic markers

Computer-generated sentiment, font is called Jane Austen

I'm entering this in the following challenges:
Ooh La La Creations #75  - It's a Man Thing
Creative Card Crew - Show Green
Scrap Creations - Anything Goes
Aud Sentiments Challenge - Get Well Cards
Fab N Funky - All Things Green
Paper Pretties - Masculine Card
Pixie Cottage - Green
Crafty Purple Frog - Going Green
CES#27 - Men Only

Hope you like it.
Happy Crafting!

Carole x

Tilda's in the frame: Make It Colourful challenge card

Hello everyone, hope you've all got the Friday feeling and are looking forward to a good weekend. I've spent today crafting and made this card using a digi image of a floral frame from Make It Crafty and a Magnolia Tilda. I coloured the frame and flowers, then made a mask for them and stamped the Tilda image over the top of the mask so that she ends up behind the frame. I printed off the frame image again and cut out the flowers which I then decoupaged onto the ones on my frame after shaping them and adding a bit of glitter. The papers were aged, distressed and hand-stitched, and I added some lace, ribbons and pearls to finish off. 



Shiny hair, shiny metal frame



This is for the Make It Colourful challenge, which this week is to show at least 2 things that shine in your colouring...not to use glitter or gloss to make the image shine, but to actually use your colouring to show the shine.



On my image, I've given Tilda's hair some shine and also coloured the frame to look metallic. Well, I'm not sure how well I've achieved that! It's not easy to do, but that's the point of the challenge, to try new things outside of your comfort zone.

This is also my card for the Magnolia-licious challenge, which is to include a frame in your design and at least one of each of these: bling/pearls (I have lots of them, lol), ribbon/trim (I used lace trim), Magnolia image (tick!) and flowers (again, tick!). And I found a challenge this week which I wanted to enter: Sundays With Crissy which has Stitching as the challenge. Hope you like it.



DPs: Lacy - Peppermint from Kaisercrafts Tea At Elsie's Collection; Stripes - Anna Griffin

Colouring: Copics

Flowers, lace and pearls: Wild Orchid, Ribbonbox, and stash

Challenges I'm entering:
Make It Colourful - make it shine
Magnolia-licious - frame + pearls, trim, image and flowers
Sundays With Crissy - Stitching
Spoonful of Sugar - vintage/shabby theme
ABC Challenge - P for Pearls

Have a good evening and weekend :)

Carole x

Image: Magnolia Tilda, Make It Crafty Ornate Floral Frame

Yay! Yippee!! Hurray!!!.....plus a Country cottage card

He he, as you can tell I am obviously a bit chuffed about something: I've just found out I've made the top 3 at Make It Colourful! Well, it's a top 4 this week as it was a tie, voted for by the design team, and my Tilda In The Garden card was one of them.  I'm well happy....it's a colouring challenge and very challenging it is too! 

This comes a few days after winning a free digi image from Make It Crafty too - I'm hoping good luck might come in three's so I'm definitely doing the lottery this week :)

This is my latest card, and as seems to be the case with me right now, another experiment. A friend sent me some images with a cry of 'Help! How do I colour this??"  I have to admit I would run a mile from an image like this, it looked really hard to colour. But a crafty girl never runs from a challenge, neither does she ignore a request for help, so I sat down and tried to change my inner voice from "I can't do this!" to "It can be done!" And guess what.....it could be!!!

As this card is for a man, I decided to keep it Clean & Simple even though that's not my usual style at all, but I've been a bit frilly with my cards lately so maybe CAS is a welcome change.  Some simple matting and layering, using gold mirri card which I always think suits a traditional card, a tiny bit of blue ribbon to break up the lower part of the card, a computer-generated sentiment (the greeting on it says "Happy Birthday" in Welsh), and that's all.   Sorry the photo isn't so good again, I'm not sure if it really is bad light like I keep complaining about or if I've been and gone and changed some vital setting on my camera. Knowing me, that's probably what's happened! Anyway, hope you like this one even though it's a bit different from usual.

Image: Papermania V&A Hanoverian Collection

Colouring: Copics

DP: Pocketful of Posies

Computer-printed sentiment

Mirrr card and ribbon from stash

I'm entering this in these challenges:
Ooh La La Creations: It's a Man Thing
Top Tip Tuesday: Happy Birthday  (my sentiment says Happy Birthday in Welsh)
ABC DT challenge: Happy Birthday

Happy crafting!

Carole x

Dream Valley Challenge #2 - New Beginnings

Good afternoon bloggers, I hope your weekend has been enjoyable so far. Well, it's Sunday which means that it's the second of our challenges over at Dream Valley. The theme this fortnight is New Beginnings, whatever you take that to be. Think new babies, new job or school, new home, marriage, celebrating new shoes, even retirement being a new chapter, or anything else that means NEW to you.

This is my DT card for the challenge, and as you can see I went for a wedding card. I stamped this bridal couple straight to paper in sepia ink and added the swirl corner also in sepia. Some extra swirls in Tim Holtz Tattered Rose breaks up the backing paper a bit more. As you can tell, I am loving my layers of Martha Stewart-punched borders right now, and I added some ribbons because you just have to, don't you? I wanted the 'bouquet' to be the main focus and I fronted it with a stamped cartouche to which I gave a little colour with pencils and aged the central panel a little. The sentiment was printed from the computer and I placed a couple of pearls on it to finish it off. Hope you like it, I was quite pleased with it and made a couple of anniversary cards in the same design the next day.

Images: Papermania bridal couple, Papermania swirls, Anna Griffin cartouche

DP: Papermania Exquisite

Pearl spray: Wild Orchid

Everything else from stash

I'm entering this card in these challenges:
Ooh La La Creations: Pink, pink and more pink
Wild Orchid: Anything Goes
Digital Tuesday: Celebrations (computer-generated sentiment)
Papertake Weekly: Anything Goes, optional something old (the stamps and papers are pretty old)
Top Tip Tuesday: Favourites (border-punched layers are a fave, also the papers & flowers)
ABC Challenge:  P is for Pink
Little Claire:  Flowers


I hope you'll join in, we had such a fantastic response to our first Anything Goes challenge which was a great start to the new blog. Remember, the challenge is fortnightly from now.

Happy crafting!

Carole x

Blog awards

At last I've got a chance to post about some recent blog awards that have come my way. First the Stylish Blogger award which the lovely Mel, Jennie and Chrissie have all passed on to me. And secondly, Alex, to whom I owe my love of Copics, has award me the Versatile Blogger Award. Thank you to all you girls, it's much appreciated.

For this award, I have to say 7 things about myself and pass it on to 15 other blogs. Well, I just happen to have 15 teamies at Dream Valley, so I'll pass this onto all of them.

I've received the Stylish Blogger award a couple of times already and passed it on to a bunch of blogs, so I won't pass it on again, if no-one minds.

So another 7 facts? I'm not sure there are that many things to say about myself!
1. I cannot and WILL NOT eat prawns, I just can't put one in my mouth.....yuk! Although in a spirit of adventure I did once lick one.
2. While I sit in bed blogging on the laptop, I listen to Spotify on headphones. My playlist right now includes Elbow, The Seahorses, Smashmouth, Boston, Caro Emmerald, Eminem and Barbara Dickson. Yes, Eminem and Barbara Dickson on the same playlist! lol.
3. My new favourite TV programme is C4's comedy, Friday Night Dinners....the father is hilarious and the programme captures the silliness of family life perfectly.
4. There was once 2 firemen in my bedroom! No, they weren't strippagrams, they were there with a lady firefighter too because of an incident with a leaking water pipe and a smoke alarm, but I do enjoy telling people I had 2 firemen in my bedroom.  I don't tell them that on another occasion there was a fireman in my living room cos then it just sounds like I lure them to my home, ha ha.
5. I believe I'm a better person since crafting.
6. I sing in the shower :)
7. I can count up to 100 in Welsh and sing the Welsh National Anthem, although it makes me cry (the national anthem, not the counting).


So, these are the 15 I'm passing on to:

Carrie of Paper Glitter Stamps
Fiona of Fi's Cards and Crafts
Jack of Jacks Arty Crafty Kreations
Jennie of Jennie's Crafty Things
Kendra Crafts and Cravings
Khristen of Khristen's Craft Room
Lin of Twisted Witch Designs
Lynne of Ruby-dooby-doo's Stampin Spot
Mags of Madcap Manor
Mary of Woman of Many Thoughts
Mel of melsanford29
Melly of Mel's Craft Room
Sandra of Sandy C's Craft Creations
Sarah of Sarah's Craft Stuff
Susie of Crafty SusieLou

If you check out their blogs, you'll see why they all deserve this award.

Happy blogging

Carole x

Tilda in the garden

Hi all :) It's a lovely sunny day in Birmingham this Friday, with blue skies and only a little cloud. I hope you have some uplifting weather where you are right now.

Today's card is one that I made for my little niece who will be 5 years old this month. I really like this stamp for her because she used to look like this little lady, well to me anyway.

The challenge at Copic Creations this week is to use complementary colours (those on opposite sides of the colour wheel). I've actually got 2 pairs of complements on my card.....the main one being red and green, and a second one with the blue sky and the golden orangey-yellow of the umbrella. I made the wood of the garden fence a greeny-brown to bring more green in to the image and also because I don't like colouring wood brown. The challenge at Make It Colourful this week is to have your light source coming from the top left. Well, my card for their challenge last week actually did have a top-left light source, so I used an almost identical colouring of Tilda for my card today - I didn't want to make my umbrella green so I kept the golden yellow.

I used a digi image from Make It Crafty for the garden fence behind Tilda, and punched out lots of leaves to make a frame. I found some oval die cuts that the lovely Alex had sent me some time ago, and placed a golden number 5 on them....it's nice for kids to have their age on the card, isn't it? I hid a little lady bird amongst the leaves as I thought it would be fun when she spotted it, and added a couple of flowers and butterflies as well. The sentiment is stamped and attached to the card in a curved shape which you can't see so well in the photo. 

Image: Magnolia Tilda, Petals & Palings by Make It Crafty

Colouring: Copics R20 R22 R24 R27 R29 R59 / R32 R35 R37 R59 / Y11 Y21 YR23 Y28 / E31 E34 E37 E29 / E31 E34 YG95 W3 W5 W7 / YG00 YG03 YG63 YG67 C5 / YG11 YG63 YG67 G94 G99 N6 N8 / BG0000

DP: Papermania Oriental Spice

Others: Woodware leaf punch

I'm entering this card in these challenges:

Make It Colourful: Light Source Top Left
Copic Creations: Complementary Colours (red & green)
Papertake Weekly: Anything Goes plus optional something old (I made the flower a couple of years ago, and the butterflies and the numeral I've also had for years)
Tuesday Taggers: Inspired by a song.....'Umbrella' by Rihanna
Penny's Challenges: Going for Green
Allsorts Challenge: Make your own flowers (I made the flower from vellum, a punch, an embossing tool and coloured ink)
CES Challenges: Flowers and Flutterbies (I have 2 of each)
Whoopsi Daisy: Let's Get All Cute
KB Cute Monday: Anything Goes With A Digi Stamp (my garden fence is a digi image)

The amazing Zoe from Make It Crafty has been Spreading The Love amongst bloggers that left a comment after she'd offered a freebie just recently. Well, I've just discovered I've won a free digi image from her for being one of the randomly-selected commenters. I'm so pleased....the fence image above is one I bought from there recently. I shall relax in bed with the laptop later and choose an image at my leisure.....how's that for a wild Friday night?! lol.

Have a good day, and happy crafting!

Carole x