Crafty Calendar #19

Hello everyone - back with my second post of the day, and this time it is to welcome you to the April challenge for Crafty Calendar. First of all apologies that I haven't managed to get all my commenting done for the past month as I have had quite a lot going on one way and another ... but i'll definitely try harder for April!!

This month it is Liz's turn to choose the challenge theme, and she has chosen

April Showers Bring Forth May Flowers

You can interpret this however you like so long as you submit a new piece of work and have a link from your blog to the Crafty Calendar Challenge.

We have a great prize on offer this month, which is from our sponsor Sentiments 4 You

... and it's a $10 voucher to spend in their online store - nice!

They very kindly provided some digi sentiments for the DT to play with - you can see them on my card and on several of the other DT ladies' gorgeous efforts.

Anyway, here is my card for this month's challenge - I focussed on the "flowers" rather than the "showers", and this image suggested itself to me straight away - not only is it very spring-like but also this particular flower got its shower from a watering can :-).

Recipe:

Main image: Sugar Nellie "Flowers" coloured with Promarkers;

Sentiment: Digi by Sentiments 4 You;

Paper: Papermania "Forever Friends - Springtime";

Supplies: cherry blossoms and pearls from Wild Orchid Crafts;

Tools: Martha Stewart "garden trellis" deep edge punch and "small monarch butterfly" punch; Leone Em "Ash Family" leaf punch.

Challenges:

Sugar Bowl #56 - Sketch

Top Tip Tuesday #27 - Nature Inspired

Crafts and Me #28 - Use Yellow

Kaboodle #60 - Spring Has Sprung

Stamp Something - April Digi Day (digi sentiment)

Double Dutch #65 - Old, New, Borrowed & Blue

(stamp / paper pad / digi stamp supplied by Sentiments 4 You) / flowers)

Crafty Ann's #37 - Inspired by an Elvis Song

(It's a Wonderful World)

Hope you can join in this month's Crafty Calendar Challenge - have a great weekend!

Crafty Calendar Challenge #17 - Love

Good afternoon everyone - here I am again with a second post for today - blimey! (If you would like to see my earlier Penny Black Saturday Challenge post, please go here).

Today is the first Saturday of the month, which means it's time for another Crafty Calendar Challenge. Thanks to everyone who took part in last month's challenge, don't forget to check if you are a winner.

This month we have a theme which is very much in line with this time in the calendar - it is

♥♥♥ Love ♥♥♥

We are sponsored this month by Squiggle Stamps who are offering a £15 gift voucher.

Anyone who has called by this morning will have noticed that I have already got my husband's Valentine card sorted; so I went in a slightly different direction for this one and made an anniversary card.

Whenever I use an image with a watery theme I always get the urge to follow it through in the colours of my papers. I had a particular piece in mind which was soft shades of pale blue and green ... but could I find it anywhere?? Nope! However I was quite pleased when I settled on this MME paper, as it gave me the opportunity to use a really lush co-ordinating Prima flower, which was in a pack Iwon quite a while ago and which has been waiting for a card to stick to since then!! :-)


Recipe:
Main image: LotV "Bubble bath", coloured with Promarkers, and image edges inked wtih Versamagic chalk ink;
Sentiment: LotV Sentiment circles;
Papers: My Mind's Eye;
Supplies: large flower by Prima; large pearl brad from The Hobby House; heart charm & ribbon from my stash;
Tools: small circle, large circle and lacy circle nestabilities; Martha Stewart "Valentine lace" edge punch; Leone Em "Ash Branch" leaf punch.

Challenges:

Lili of the valley #83 - Romance
Crafter's Companions #9 - Romance (2nd entry)
Simon Says - Love Is In the Air (2nd entry)
Allsorts #89 - It Must be Love, Love, Love
Creative Craft - Hearts and Flowers
Kaboodle #52 - Monochromatic
I ♥ ProMarkers #51 - Anything Goes

Hope you will visit the Crafty Calendar blog to check out the inspiration from the rest of the DT.

The challenge will stay open until Friday 4th March 8:00pm (GMT), and we will be back with the next challenge on Saturday 5th March

Have a great weekend!

Penny Black Challenge #87 - Pins & Pearls

Hi everyone - hope you're all having a great weekend and are feeling ready to go with the latest Penny Black Saturday Challenge. It was wonderful to see last week how so many of you were able to make a card for someone special ... awww! If you entered don't forget to pop over to the challenge blog to see if you have won the fab discount voucher from PB Stamps.

This week's challenge is

Pins and pearls

As always you can interpret this however you like, so long as we can see at least one Penny Black stamp or sticker on your creation.

To help get your creative juices flowing we have got another fab prize on offer for one randomly chosen winner - from our regular sponsor Valentine's - a PB clear "Robust" alphabet set.

The other members of the DT have created some really fabulous samples this week, so do go and check them out, including our fab new Guest Designer for February - Janneke.

Here's mine ....


Now I have to confess that I struggled with this a bit initially, as I was very nervous about the prospect of using pins on a card. All the fancy head pins I've seen seem to be proper sharp pins without any guards for the point ...and I'm very puzzled as to how people keep them safe and what they do about posting them?? Anyhow, I resolved this dilemma when I saw some double-ended "bar" type pins in Hobbycraft .... so that's the route I went down.... and now I'm unexpectedly pleased with the finished result so I'm glad I did lol!

I'm having a real roses and butterflies phase at the moment ... here are a couple of close ups of those embellies - I gave the roses a good dusting with diamond dust Stickles lol!

Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black "...dreams..." (2711F) inked with Brilliance pearlescent ink;
Papers: Kaisercraft "Wish Upon" (from The Hobby House);
Supplies: large two-tone rose from John Lewis; smaller roses from Hobbycraft; baby's breath pearl flowers from Edwin Allen; white lace and pearl gemstones from my stash; double ended pearl pin from Hobbycraft;
Tools: "Labels Four" nestabilities; Craft-Too "butterflies" embossing folder (used on green matting); Martha Stewart large "monarch butterfly" punch.

I'd also like to enter this card for the following challenges:

Pollycraft #33 - Things with Wings
Flutterby Wednesdays #95 - butterfly, fairy or angel
Crafty Creations #53 - Wings
Pile It On #4 - Enough of Winter Colours
The Pink Elephant #52 - It's All About Pink (not sure whether this is pink enough ... but I hope so :-) )
Crafty Calendar #5 - Love & Friendship (I see this as a friendship card)
ABC - N is for New. Well ... that would be my two tone and cream roses + my pearly pin ... and the nesties have only been used once before lol!

Have a great weekend, and look forward to seeing your creations.

Steaming hot chocolate!

When I saw that the challenge theme this week over at Simon Says Stamp and Quixotic Challenge #8 is Hot Chocolate, my first thought about what I would most like to make was a cup of this ....

I bought this dinky stocking filler for my husband for Christmas, and what with all the snow, the bitterly cold temperatures plus the fact that I have been confined to the house for the past 4 days with a stinking head cold (this afternoon is the first time for a few days I have felt vaguely human!) it just seemed like the obvious choice!

However I soon realised this wouldn't really cut it in blogland, so I managed to make a card. Willow on the front looks pretty much how I feel ... desperate to keep warm and soothe herself with hot drinks lol! Excuse the electric light photo but there has never really been any decent daylight today all day long.

I tried to follow the hot chocolate theme both in terms of the image and colour scheme, and I also followed the sketch (which I rotated) for this week's Secret Crafter #65.


I also made this card to fit with the themes of the following challenges:

Charisma Cardz #1 - colour combo pink, brown, cream and toffee
Crafty Calendar #4 - Keeping Warm (image associated with keeping warm, plus optional extra of texture)
Cupcake #73 - Going Girly
Creative Inspirations #24 - Distressing (I sponged the edges of the image, and also lightly distressed the embossing on the two plain pieces of paper).

Recipe:
Main image: WOJ "Willow with hot chocolate", coloured with watercolour pencils, and edges sponged with Versamark chalk ink;
Sentiment: Craftwork Cards "Oh! My Words";
Papers: BasicGrey "Bittersweet", "Sugared" and "Two Scoops";
Supplies: flowers - Prima and Petaloo; pearl brads and spacers from The Hobby House; ribbon by American Crafts; heart charm from Jackie's Charms and Crafts Shop;
Tools: large classic ovals and large oval scalloped nestabilities; Martha Stewart "doily lace" edge punch; Cuttlebug "Perfectly Paisley" embossing folder; X-Cut distressing tool (for lightly distressing the embossed paper).

Off to keep warm now with more hot drinks!

How many "Snowflakes" make 11 challenges?

Answer ..... just the one lol!!

I really do love "Snowflake" by Sugar Nellie - I know she isn't one of the latest stamps but she is so pretty ... hadn't inked her up for a little while so I thought I would use her for this week's Sketch Saturday sketch #77.

Now when I first saw the sketch I was a bit flummoxed by the large circles on it .... couldn't quite picture any of my flowers or snowflake dies filling those spots on the card - inspiration just wasn't coming to me. But after rootling around in my Christmas papers, I found a Bo Bunny one with large and small snowflakes in circles ..... and hey! they fitted my nestie circles so I could cut them out perfectly :-) (I actually tried cutting out the paper circles by hand at first, but we'll draw a veil over that lol!) And as luck would have it the colours co-ordinated with another piece of Christmas tree paper (I think it is by MME but am open to correction on that) ... so off I went!

Here's the result ....

I also did my best to make this card tie in to the following challenges, making 11 altogether - yippee!

Secret Crafter #58 - Seasons ... now it is clearly snowing on my card, so at least if you're in the UK you can interpret that as any season of the year lol!!
Crafty Calendar Challenge #2 - Weather. Oops! I forgot the pearls (not like me! ... I LURVE pearls) so it's a good job they're optional lol!
Charisma Cardz #45 - Merry & Bright. As I'm quite a pastel kind of girl I think this card is quite bright anyway, but the sentiment was specifically chosen to tie in with this challenge :-)
Hand Full of Stamps #5 - Getting Ready for the Holidays
Cute Card Thursday #86 - Glitter Me Silly! Well I don't need asking twice when it comes to sprinkling the glamour dust liberally around!! Hope the poor light conditions can pick it out on the snowflakes and "Snowflake's" cosy muffler!
Creative Inspirations #36 - Sparkle!
Crafty Cardmakers Challenge #8 - Clear as Day. I used sticky back clear gems on the centres of my snowflakes ... a cop out, I know!
Frosted Designs - Bling It On.
Dutch Dare #64 - Felt like it - I have used Papermania white felt ric rac ribbon across the top of the card.
Kraftin' Kimmie Challenge #6 - Lotsa Circles - hope this is self explanatory!

Here's a pic to try to show the sparkle a bit more clearly - not easy given the prevailing weather conditions and shockingly poor light levels even in the middle of the day!

Recipe:
Main image: Sugar Nellie "Snowflake" coloured wtih watercolour pencils and white gel pen, and decorated with glamour dust and polar white Flowersoft (bit difficult to see ... I used a different glue from the norm and not much of the Flowersoft stuck!!);
Sentiment: Craftwork Cards "Oh! My Words";
Papers: MME (trees) and Bo Bunny (circles and pink matting);
Supplies: white felt ric rac by Papermania; snowflake brads by Dovecraft;
Tools: small and large circle and scalloped circle nestabilities.

Thanks for looking :-)

Penny Black Challenge #69 - Autumn Breeze

Welcome once again to the weekend, and to the latest Penny Black Saturday Challenge. It looks like the weather is on the turn here in the UK and autumn is definitely on its way, so to celebrate we thought this week we would have a theme challenge for you ... and surprise, surprise it is

Autumn Breeze

... so what we would like to see is anything on your card that reminds you of autumn .. whether it's an image, shapes or just autumnal colours. As always, the only rule is that we need to see at least one Penny Black stamp or sticker on your creation.

This week we have an absolutely fantastic prize ... our own dear Carole has donated this gorgeous stamp from the latest PB Christmas 2009 range - "Hand mailed" - how cute is that? You've got to be in it to win it, so we look forward to seeing your creations.


Here's my card for this week ... I treated myself to a couple of new Daisy Bucket papers in autumnal colours, and then I couldn't resist inking up this cute li'l mouse swinging from a branch (first time I've inked him up - naughty!!) as I thought the flowers complimented the flowers on the paper. This card is very different from my usual colour palette, but I kinda like it (and of course it allowed me to buy some paper and flowers so I'm more geared up for future autumn cards lol!)

Indeed, life being short and all that, I'd also like to enter this card for 2 other challenges that have an autumn theme this week .. namely the new Crafty Calendar Challenge (where I have also included the optional extra of plants and vegetation) and One Stop Craft Challenge #49.

Recipe:
Main image: mouse from Penny Black transparent set "Tiny Wishes":
Sentiment: from PB transparent set "Party Critters";
Papers: Daisy Bucket "Sweet Marabella";
Supplies: lace from Quixotic Paperie; pearls by BasicGrey "opaline"; flowers and flower-shaped gems by Petaloo; gold, copper and iron brads from my stash;
Tools: image matting and layering cut with large oval and scalloped oval nestabilities; leaves cut using Leone Em "Ash Family" punch.

Thanks to everyone who joined in last week with your fabulous pink, lemon & chocolate themed cards - there were some really yummy creations. Don't forget to check out the challenge blog later to see who has won last week's prize, and whilst you're there do check out the fabulous cards for this week from my fellow DT teamies :-)

Hope you have a great weekend.