Penny Black Saturday #183 - CASE It!

Good morning crafters, and welcome to the first Penny Black Saturday Challenge for 2012!

Thanks to everyone who entered our Christmas tags challenge over the festive period - hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and New Year, and don't forget to check the main challenge blog to see if you are a winner.

This week we are starting with the first of a new regular monthly challenge theme, which is to CASE a  favourite PB card chosen by a member of the DT. If you haven't heard of this before, CASE means "copy and share everything" - in other words, just let elements of the card such as the image, colours, layout or theme inspire you. If you have a look at the gorgeous samples made by the rest of the DT you'll get the idea!

We are starting with our lovely teamie Beth, so this week's challenge is to

CASE the following card by Beth

To help you get in the mood we have a fabulous prize from our regular sponsor The Ribbon Girl

and it is this yummy yellow mini-ribbon kit.

Don't forget that to be eligible for the prize you should link to a new piece of work which features a Penny Black image stamp, large sentiment or stickeroo as its main focus.

Here is my effort for this week.

This actually was a bit of a challenge for me, as I don't really craft using the colours red, white and  blue (particularly red!) so I didn't really have any suitable papers. That being the case I decided to focus on copying the concept of stars and just to allude to the colour scheme.  

My best option was to use my Marianne D star bauble die with coloured card behind it, so I made my background by embossing white pearlised card with star shapes. My hedgie image should normally be raising his arms to flowers, but I thought it might work if I masked off that part of the image, and I  then cut out teeny holographic silver card stars using my Cuttlebug "Snowflakes #2" die set - I rather like how that turned out lol!

Stamps: Penny Black "Hedgehog Joy" ;

Media: Promarkers and Flexmarkers;

Supplies: red and blue matt mirri card, silver holographic mirri card; ribbon, gems and peel-off from my stash;

Tools: small, large and lacy circle nestabilities; Marianne D Creatables star bauble die; Cuttlebug "Snowflakes #2" die (stars); Cuttlebug "Christmas Stars" embossing folder.

Challenges:

Fabulous Fridays - No Patterned Paper

Crafts & Me  #66 - Anything Goes (3rd entry)

Look forward to seeing another year of your fab Penny Black creations :-)

Sending Love At Christmas

Yesterday evening I sat down to a bit of a colouring session, and completely outdid any previous attempts at batch colouring as I completed EIGHT images of this gorgeous FF Santa teddy. Or to put it another way ... over the next week or two you are likely to see this image featuring on my cards a LOT lol!

Stamps: Forever Friends Santa teddy; Pink Gem sentiment;

Media: Promarkers and Flexmarkers; glamour dust on coat and hat;

Papers: Dovecraft "Holly Jolly";

Supplies: flower by WIld Orchid Crafts; pearls from The Hobby House;

Tools: large oval and large scalloped oval nestabilities; Cheery Lynn "holly flourish" die.

Challenges:

Crimbo Crackers #3 - Santa

Kaboodle #96 - Colours of Christmas

Sparkles #26 - One You Love At Christmas

Daring Cardmakers - December Flowers (Holly)

Crafts & Me #63 - Pearls & Swirls

My Mum's #34 - Keeping Warm

Paper Sundaes #98 - Sundae Bar

(I used red + stripes + die cuts)

Craft Your Passion #87 - Anything Goes + Glitter

Simon Says - Anything Goes
Totally Gorjuss #109 - Sketch

The weather here has been absolutely freezing today, t hough we haven't had any snow (YET!!). Hope you are all keeping warm .. I'm just off for a cockle-warming cup of tea now :-)

Vintage Angel

After I had finished some DT work last night I just had time to make a card with this sweet LotV angel which I had already coloured.  I decided to go for a vintage look using some yummy papers by My Mind's Eye and a sketch I found over at Stamp With Fun. Here's the result.

Stamp: LotV "Little Trumpet";

Media: Promarkers and Flexmarkers;

Papers: My Mind's Eye "Jolly Holly ";

Supplies: flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts; gems from The Hobby House; sentiment from Craftwork Cards; ribbon from my stash;

Tools: Labels ? nestabilities; Memory Box "Frosty Winter border" die; punched panel was a freebie so don't know what it is!

Challenges:

Lili of the Valley #122 - Anything Goes

I ♥ ProMarkers #93 - Anything Goes

My Mum's Craft Shop #33 - Things With Wings

Sparkles Christmas #10 - Angels (2nd entry)

Wags 'n' Whiskers #68 - Snow Angels

Flutterby Wednesday's #181 - Open (with butterfly, fairy or angel)

Everybody-Art #169 - Christmas Card

Little Red Wagon #108 - Christmas

Crafts & Me #62 - Shabby Chic / Vintage

Moving Along With The Times - Ribbons & Bows

Paper Sundaes #96 - Beautiful Bows

Stamp With Fun #138 - sketch

That's all for today - back tomorrow with another Penny Black Saturday Challenge.

Silhouettes

Just a very simple card today which I made for this week's Less Is More Challenge - Silhouettes.

I stamped this gorgeous silhouette wildlife scene by Crafty Individuals - this is another stamp I'm ashamed to say I've had for a long time (about 3 years I reckon!!) and has never seen ink until now! I cut it out and distressed it using Milled Lavender, Dusty Concord, Faded Jeans and Chipped Sapphire distress inks; then added a sentiment and another silhouette of two wildflower stamps - all by Lavinia Stamps ... job done!

Challenges:

Less Is More #42 - Silhouettes

Crafts & Me #61 - Simples!

Flutterby Wednesday's #180 - Open Theme (with butterfly)

Thanks for looking :-)

Getting inky!

What with one thing and another I haven't had a lot of time for crafting outside of my DT cards over the past few weeks, but I was determined that I would join in with this week's Less Is More Challenge to use ink in a new or favourite way on a one-layer card..

Over the past few months I have been starting to get into distress inks .. I'd never much bothered with them in the past, but now I really love making a mess on my non-stick craft mat!!  I decided that rather than using themn to sponge or brush a masked square, I would have a go at splodging inks onto an acrylic block and spritzing them with water before "stamping" onto my base card.

Approx ten attempts later this is what I ended up with ...

This is a card that I love in concept, but I have to admit that the execution leaves a bit to be desired ... I got rather impatient and as a result my text stamp is a little smudged, but my story is that that is all part of the grungy look ... and I'm sticking to it lol!

Recipe:

Main image: Unity set "Insighful Meadows" flowers stamped with TH "Chipped Sapphire" distress ink;

Background: text stamp by Crafty Individuals; background rectangle stamped using Faded Jeans, Tumbled Glass, Shabby Shutters and Peeled Paint distress inks;

Sentiment: Unity set as above.

Challenges:

Less Is More #28 - OLC - Use Ink

Crafts & Me #48 - Blues/Greens

Pile It On #33 - Three Shades of Blue

(Chipped Sapphire, Faded Jeans, Tumbled Glass)

Off to catch up with my DT work now ...

Penny Black Saturday #155 - One For The Guys

Hi everyone ... another week had flown by, and here we are again at Saturday, which means it's time for another Penny Black Saturday Challenge.

Thanks to everyone for your doodletastic entries into last week's challenge - don't forget to check the main blog to see if you have won either of last week's yummy prizes.

This week we guess many of you may be gearing up for Father's Day ... or if not, then maybe you need a card for one of the men in your life. So this week's challenge theme is

One For The Guys

As always you can interpret this however you wish; but to be eligible for this week's prize you should submit a new piece of work which features a Penny Black image, large sentiment or stickeroo.

And to tempt you this week we have got another delish prize ... it is from our lovely ex-teamie Carole

and is this delish PB stamp "Love Nip".

The other ladies have conjured up some fabulous masculine cards - here is my effort for this week.

Initially I thought I would really struggle with this theme, as I have loads of PB stamps but hardly any "masculine" ones .. and those few I do have have already been seen by the only two male family members I need to make cards for! When I started scrabbling around amongst my stash I found these couple of images in a tranparent set called "Bubbly" - masculine and sight unseen by my nearest and dearest - but ... they are absolutely TINY and no way would they make a focal point of a card. I therefore decided that I would make my text big and artfully (?) place the images around it ... but then came the next problem - my die cut alphabet isn't big enough, and I don't have any templates for letters .... so I ended up making some letter templates using Wordart, and then cutting out the letters by hand from patterned paper. If you look closely they are a bit rough and ready, but the thought's there!

Recipe:

Main images: Penny Black transparent set "Bubbly", coloured with Promarkers and Copics;

Sentiments: computer generated, with "Dad" cut out from Wordart templates;

Papers: All My Memories (double sided paper), distressed with Vintage Photo distress ink;

Supplies:  buttons from stash;

Tools: Martha Stewart "scalloped dots" edge punch.

Challenges:

PaperPlay #23 - Father's Day / Man's Card

CRAFT #106 - Father's Day

Sparkles #13 - Father's Day

Alphabet Challenge - F is for Father's Day

Sew Many Challenges #56 - Father's Day

Creative Inspirations #115 - Card For Dad / Man's Card

Fab 'n' Funky #76 - Magnificent Men

Crazy4Challenges #91 - Masculine Card

Wags 'n' Whiskers #56 - One For The Boys

Everybody-Art #145 - Distress

Stamp Something - Something Punched

My Mum's Craft Shop #9 - Punch It

Passion For Promarkers #103 - Blue and Brown ( with accents of green)

Crafts and Me #38 - Stamp Something

Crafty Ann's #42 - Use More Than One Image

Cupcake Crafts #145 - Things With Tails

Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes

Hope you can join in with us this week - have a great weekend!

Penny Black Saturday #153 - One For The Girlies

Yippee! It's a Bank Holiday weekend again here in the UK, and time for another Penny Black Saturday Challenge. So sorry I haven't been able to get round and comment on your wonderful creations for last week's Fussy and Fancy challenge due to the problems we've been having with Mr. Blogger - but they were all wonderful! The stamp I donated last week will be winging its way to one lucky winner - do go and check out the main challegne blog to see if it's you!

This week our challenge theme is

One For The Girlies

Brilliant theme for me this week, as I love all things girly - dresses ... pink ... flowers ... gems ... ribbons ...lace - ooh fab! And if you think it's a great theme too you could be in with a chance of winning this week's lovely goodies, to be awarded to 2 randomly drawn winners!

Firstly ..... 4 rolls of ribbon of the winner's choice from Fantastic Ribbons

and secondly, a 15% lifetime discount voucher from PB Stamps

Here is my girly creation - the other DT ladies have gone girly too so don't forget to check them out.

I decided to go for a freindship card, as I so love this cute vintage PB image. Normally I tend to use this image with vintage colours and papers, but I was feeling girly so decided to go for a fresh summery pink and green colour scheme - i think it is my favourite colour combo.. A different look for this image, but I'm quite pleased with it :-)

Recipe:

Main image: Penny Black "Rain or Shine Friends" (312K), coloured with Promarkers;

Sentiment: Penny Black "Second Self" (3386D);

Papers: Pink Petticoat "Vintage Rose" and Papermania "Forever Friends - Springtime";

Supplies: cherry blossoms and lace from Wild Orchid Crafts; roses from Sweet Lilac (Crafts4U2Do); papermania pink heart gems; ribbon and pearls from my stash;

Tools: Marianne D Creatables doily die; Leone Em "Ash Family" leaf punch.

Challenges:

Papertake Weekly - Pale, Pretty Pastels

Stamp With Stampavie #143 - Pink

Totally Papercrafts #68 - Pink and Girlie

My Mum's Challenge #7 - Favourite Colours

(pink and green as a combo)

Crafty Catz #84 - Pink and Green

PaperPlay #21 -  Blossoms and Blooms

(I have actually managed to incorporate both cherry blossoms and rose blooms on this card :-) )
All Ways Something Creative #6 - Flowers

I ♥ ProMarkers #67 - Pearls

Crafts and Me #36 - Gems and Pearls

Passion For Promarkers #101 - All The Twos

(2 girls, 2 roses, 2 cherry blossoms, 2 trims, 2 heart gems)

Stamp Something - Something Sentimental

My Time To Craft #142 - Use A Die Cut

Creative Card Crew - Anything Goes!

Hope you have a great Bank Holiday weekend!

Penny Black Saturday #151 – Clean and Simple

Good morning everyone and welcome to this week’s Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Thanks very much to everyone who entered last week’s Distressing Challenge – hope you all managed to post your entries being as Mr Blogger was being so naughty yesterday!  As always, don’t forget to check back on the main challenge blog to see if you have won either of last week’s fabulous prizes.

Well I’m off to Port Sunlight craft fair today, so i hope that by the time you read this i will already be well in the swing and my credit card will be all a-quiver … hope I find a few good bargains ;-)

Don’t forget that you still have until midnight tonight (Saturday May 14th) to enter my blog candy here – hope you’ll give it a look!

Anyhow on to this week’s challenge, and we are plugging into a theme which is very much the latest trend and all the rage in blogland at the moment – yes, we would like to see your cards that are

Clean and Simple

As always you can interpret this to your heart’s desire, so long as you submit a new project that features a Penny Black image, large sentiment or stickeroo as its main focus.

This week we have another fab prize for you … a $20 online store voucher from our regular sponsor 1-2-3 Stitch :-)

My fellow teamies have produced some stunning cards to inspire you – here is my effort for this week.

Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black “Radiant” (2950K) coloured with Marvey brushstroke markers and spritzed with water;
Sentiment: Penny Black transparent set “Salutations”;
Paper: Docrafts “Pampered Pets” collection;
Supplies: Papermania shimmer dots; dragonfly brad from my stash;
Tools: Martha Stewart “woodland bough” edge punch.

Challenges:
Penny Black Inc. Challenge – Tall Cards
Crafts and Me #34 - Punches
Top Tip Tuesday #33 – Flower Frenzy
Creative Card Crew – May Flowers
MAWTT #98 – 2 B’s (brushstroke stamping, brad)
Crafty Creations #118 – Anything Goes
Stamp Something – Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp and Show – Anything Goes

Hope you can join in this week.

Penny Black Saturday #148 – Happily Ever After

Good morning everyone … welcome to Easter weekend and another Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Hope you have been enjoying the fabulous weather we’ve been having … let’s hope it will last over the Easter weekend!!

Thanks as always to everyone who entered last week’s challenge – wonderful Easter cards, so hopefully you will now all be completely geared up to give your Easter greetings :-) Don’t forget to check the main challenge blog to see if you have won last week’s adorable prize.

This week we have all been overtaken (along with much of blogland, it seems) with Royal Wedding fever, so our challenge theme isn’t really such a big surprise ….

Happily Ever After

Now this phrase is usually taken to refer to weddings, but we realise that not all of you will necessarily have got PB wedding stamps, as they have only ever made a few (I know I don’t have any!). So we have decided to be kind, and this theme can encompass any other event to do with living happily ever after, such as engagements  and anniversaries.

This week’s prize is four rolls of yummy ribbon on the winner’s choice from Fantastic Ribbons.

Please remember that in order to be eligible for this week’s prize you should submit a new project which features a Penny Black image, large sentiment or stickeroo as its main focus.

The other ladies on the DT have produced some fabulous romantic cards – here’s mine for this week.

As i  mentioned I don’t have any PB wedding stamps although I do have several romantic hedgies, mice and cats; so I decided to make an anniversary card.

Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black “You’re a Treasure” (1589F) coloured with Promarkers and roses dusted with glamour dust;
Sentiments: LotV circle sentiments and Woodware sentiments;
Papers: Pink Petticoat “Vintage Rose”;
Supplies: large and small roses and lace from Sweet Lilac (Crafts4U2Do); middle size rose from Wild orchid Crafts; Papermania pink crystal heart; velvet and organza ribbon from my stash;
Tools: Magnolia doohickey “vintage tag”; Martha Stewart “Valentine lace” edge punch; Leone Em “Ash branch” leaf punch; Spellbinders “decorative photo corners” die.

Challenges:
Spoon Full of Sugar #148 – Let’s Celebrate!
Crafts and Me #31 – Pink and Sweet
Creative Inspirations #108 – Animals / Pets
Cupcake #138 – Lots of Layers
I ♥ Promarkers #62 – Anything Goes
Top Tip Tuesday #30 – Open Theme
Create4Fun (April) – Sketch

Hope you have a great weekend and look forward to seeing your creations!

I Followed a tutorial …

Whilst posting a distressed card to the Simon Says Stamp and Show blog for the first time the other day, I happened to notice a thumbnail of a gorgeous card by Nona. I visited her blog and really admired the card .. . the stamp she used had caught my eye as I bought the same set a couple of weeks ago, and also I loved the techniques she used. I saw she had followed a tutorial by Shari … so I went and had a look-see.

Having seen the tutorial I just had to have a go myself … I have recently bought a small number of distress inks, and am also loving the soft wildflower style of stamping right now.

The following card is my interpretation of the tutorial – I have followed the basics but have used a different script stamp (ie the one I have in my stash  lol!) and also changed the flower stamp for a Penny Black brushstroke stamp so that I could enter it for the Penny Black blog challenge :-) Instead of a linen background stamp as used in the tutorial I used a set of distress aged marks, and stamped them both onto the image and the base card to give an aged look. This is a bit of a new direction for me but I’m liking the change.

Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black “Quite Dandy” inked and misted with distress inks in Tumbled Glass, Peeled Paint and Walnut Stain; matting distressed with Tim Holtz distressing tool;
Background stamping: Crafty Creations script stamp embossed with white detail powder: “Butterfly kisses” random markings stamped with antique Linen distress ink;
Sentiment: Penny Black transparent set “Salutations”;
Supplies: ribbon and pearls from my stash.

Challenges:
Simon Says Stamp and Show – Distressing (2nd entry)
Truly Scrumptious #55 - Vintage
Penny Black Blog Challenge – Flowers (use a floral stamp)
Crafters Companion #11 – Aqua and Brown
Crafts & Me #30 – Ribbon
Totally Stampalicious – Anything Goes

Hope you like it :-). I’m not sure about the card blank, and have already thought of some very subtle brown and aqua paper I have which I would use next time, but I’m quite pleased with this stamping technique for my first attempt.

Right … now this is my first ever Windows Live Writer post … looks perfect in the preview window … so here goes, fingers crossed!!

Duckling and daffs

I decided I needed to get a wriggle on if I were to get a reasonable amount of Easter cards ready in time now that the season is looming up on us, and I felt inspired by the couple of sunny days we've had plus the lighter nights since the clocks went forward last weekend.

I absolutely love this Penny Black duck - I've had him a long time but he still always makes me smile, and of course think of spring.

Recipe: Main image: Penny Black "Duckling" (3347H), coloured with Promarkers; Sentiment: Penny Black; Papers: Papermania "Forever Friends - Springtime" (I've actually bought two packs of this paper, I love it so much!!) Supplies: pearls from the Hobby House; ribbon and small silk daffs from my stash; Tools: Martha Stewart "woodland bough" edge punch (just seen); "Decorative corners" Shapeabilities.

Challenges:

I followed this week's sketch for Sketch Saturday #149

Dutch Dare #107 - Spring Has Sprung

Simon Says - Spring Colours / Easter

I ♥ ProMarkers #60 - Easter

Everybody-Art-Challenge #136 - Easter

Stamp With Fun #105 - Easter

Ooh-La-La #77 - Happy Easter

The Pink Elephant #97 - Easter

Dream Valley #4 - Things With Wings

Crafts and Me #29 - Glitter

Spoon Full of Sugar #146 - At Least Two Different Textures

(glitter card and silk flowers)

My Partner in Crafting Crime #24 - Layer it Up

Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes

The Crazy Challenge #61 - Just Add Flowers

Still keeping the posts short as blogger is still runing all my text together unless I put all my div separators in manually. I'm looking to maybe install Windows Live Writer soon, in which case I will be able to get back to my chatty self :-)