Allsorts Challenge #696

Hi everyone, and welcome to a new Allsorts Challenge. Lynn has chosen the theme this week, which is

*** Gardener's Delight ***

So we look forward to seeing your makes incorporating anything you might reasonably find in the garden!!

This week we have 2 fantastic garden themed prizes on offer-from Oakwood Direct:

Firstly this beautiful Stampendous garden themed stamp set

Secondly we have this gorgeous stencil.

Also we have three digital images of another winner’s choice from Ruth Hamilton Design

Here's my card for this week.

As soon as I saw this week's challenge theme I immediately thought about this adorable LotV stamp. It is one for which I have a particular affection as I used it to make the last Mother's Day card for my mum before she passed away in 2013 - here. As I don't now colour with alcohol markers very much I brought up that picture to guide me, and that inspired the general look and colour scheme of this card. In fact this card is really a throwback to the style of crafting I used to do years ago, involving alcohol marker colouring, designer papers, punches and dies ... and even though I’ve rather lost my confidence when it comes to marker colouring, I really enjoyed it for a change!

I stamped my image and coloured it with Promarkers and Flexmarkers, then cut out using a stitched square die. I created various matting layers using papers and punched edges on cardstock, then die cut a 2 layer flower from glitter card and attached with a brad, and surrounded with a couple of sparkly leafy flourishes. I finished off with a stamped sentiment cut into a stitched hexagon shape, as my stitched squares didn't go small enough!!

Stamps: LotV - Watering the Flowers; sentiment - Summer Meadow (free with craft magazine);

Media: Promarkers and Flexmarkers;

Papers: LotV Nitwits - Pefect Pair;

Tools: Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page - Woodland Branch; flower die - Marianne Design Creatables LR0110; leaf swirl - Magnolia Doohickeys Butterfly Dreams; stitched square and stitched hexagon dies - Amazon.

Challenges I would like to enter:

A Gem of a Challenge #20 2022 - Anything Goes (2nd entry)

Colour Crazy #39 2022 - Anything Goes

Crafty Animals #66 - Anything Goes with an Animal - TOP PICK

Crafty Hazelnut’s Patterned Paper (October) - Anything Goes with Patterned Paper

Creatalicious #244 - Anything Goes with option For a Friend

Creations In Pink #50 - Anything Goes in Mainly Pink

Hero Arts (September) - Die-Lightful

Love To Craft #70 - Anything Goes

Simon Says (Wednesday) - Anything Goes

Word Art Wednesday #563/564 - Anything Goes

Hope you can join us this week, and I look forward to seeing your entries. Don't forget to visit the challenge blog to see more fab inspiration from the rest of the team. Thanks for visiting.

Hugs,

Day of the Month Card Club Challenge #41 GDT - International Day of Friendship

Hi everyone,

Back in May I was lucky to win a top 3 place in the Day of the Month Card Club challenge, as a result of which I was asked to be Guest Designer for the July challenge - and of course I was delighted to say yes!!

So today I would like to welcome you to July's Day of the Month Card Club challenge - and this month's theme is

*** International Day of Friendship ***

International Friendship Day, July 30th is all about the relationship between two or more people based on mutual affection. At least when it comes to the UN General Assembly, which declared this date 2011 as the International Day of Friendship.

As with so many other celebrations and days of action initiated by the UN, the International Day of Friendship has a serious background and an important message behind it. With this one would like to remind not only of the importance of friendship between people, but above all between countries and cultures. In this respect, it is actually surprising that this day of action was only officially launched in 2011. Be that as it may, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sums up the gist of this Day of Friendship as follows:

“On this International Day of Friendship, let us cultivate warm ties that strengthen our common humanity and promote the well-being of the human family.“

A brilliant theme I'm sure you will agree, and a perfect opportunity to make a friendship card or any other crafty project for a friend.  

Here's my GDT card.

I haven't used this image stamp for the longest time, but it immediately came to mind for this challenge, along with the cute sentiment - I think this image is just an adorable depiction of friendship teamwork in action!!

I stamped my image onto a piece of white stamping card and coloured with Copics and Promarkers, then created faux stitching with my pokey tool and a fine liner. I matted the image onto blue and pink linen cardstock, and then onto floral paper which I had also faux stitched, and attached all to a DL card base I had cut. I attached a die cut picket fence, punched glittery butterflies, and my stamped sentiment, and finished off with a few sparkly gems.

Stamps: Penny Black "Daisy Chain" (1690K), "Everything's..." (2733E);

Media: Promarkers and Flexmarkers; Memento ink (black); Versafine Clair (Charming Pink); Fine liners (blue and pink);

Tools: Martha Stewart large and small Monarch Butterfly punches; Magnolia Doohickey "Lovely Fence" die;

Papers and gems from my stash.

Challenges I would like to enter:

Crafts Galore Encore #101 - Anything Goes

Crafty Animals #63 - Include an Animal - TOP PICK

Crafty Catz #602 - Anything Goes with option Say It With Flowers

Creatalicious #238 - Anything Goes with option Lots of Layers - TOP 3

I ❤️ Promarkers #514 - Anything Goes with option of Animals

Pammie’s Inky Pinkies #2227 - Anything Goes

Penny Black Saturday Challenge (July) - Anything Goes

Penny’s Challenge #525 - Anything Goes With Paper

Through the Craft Room Door - Anything Goes

Word Art Wednesday #551/552 - Anything Goes

I hope you can play along with the challenge this month - link up your entries here. 

Thanks very much to the DotMCC Design Team for inviting me to be GDT this month.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Hugs,

Fanfare

I'm feeling really excited right now, as having got back into crafting over the summer I have now decided to get some new playthings to take my crafting in new directions, and have ordered some TH Distress Oxide inks, stencils and masking sheets.  My first order of distress oxides arrived yesterday,  so I just had to have a play with them!  

I have been watching numerous online tutorials recently about blending techniques etc. including one on Craft World which involved layering stamped distressed card on top of a non-coloured image as per the following photograph.

 that is what broadly inspired today's card. 

This was a really simple card - I stamped my main image directly onto my base card, then cut a panel of smooth Neenah cardstock which I distressed with my 3 inks and splattered with water to get some resist effect. I then stamped my image again onto the distressed panel, and sliced it to create the effect where the image beneath can be seen peeking through.  Finished off with a few scattered gems and a simple sentiment - voila! 

I have to say at first sight I am really blown away by distress oxides and will definitely be using them a lot more in future ... I can see why they have taken the craft world by storm over the past 3-4 years when I was pretty much out of the crafting loop.

My main image is an old Penny Black wood-mounted stamp; but I also used my brand new stamp positioning tool to place my sentiment directly onto the base card. On Monday I took delivery of a Press To Impress tool  and it's absolutely fab - don't know how i managed without it! In fact I'm now wondering about converting my old woodblock stamps to unmounted for future use!

Stamps: Penny Black "Fanfare" (3946K); sentiment - unknown;

Media: TH Distress Oxide inks - Picked Raspberry, Kitsch Flamingo, Salvaged Patina;

Gems from my stash.

Challenges I would like to enter:

Time Out #197 - Inspiration Quote

(I have been inspired by the ideas of flowers and friends)

A Bit More Time To Craft #145 - Anything Goes

A Gem of a Challenge #20 - Anything Goes

Crafter's Castle #45 - Anything Goes

Creatalicious #219 - Anything Goes with option of Friends

Cute Card Thursday #692 - Anything Goes

Happy Little Stampers (Watercolour): September - Anything Goes

NBUS #30 - Use Never Before Used Schtuff (2nd entry)

(mine is my Distress Oxide inks and stamp positioning tool) 

Penny Black Saturday Challenge (September) - Anything Goes (2nd entry)

Simon Says (Wednesday) - Anything Goes

Through the Craft Room Door - Anything Goes

That's all for today, but I will be back soon with more inky experiments. My question for the rest of this afternoon is ... should I play some more with my distress oxides or tackle my large basket of ironing??  Hmmm ....

'Til next time - thanks for visiting.

Hugs,

Festival of Learning #LovetoLearn - Card Class for Beginners

Hello everyone! It is fully 9 months since I have posted on this blog and there have been good reasons for that, as an awful lot (and a lot that's awful) has happened during that time ... last year I only posted once due to my dear dad being very ill, and sadly he passed away on November 12th.

I miss him greatly, but have been kept very busy what with running backwards and forwards (a 4 hour round trip!) sorting out his affairs and house, and dealing with my own house, husband and job! Over the past couple of months we have also started some much neglected home improvements .. and that's likely to keep me pretty busy for the rest of the year!

It would be fair to say that my crafting mojo had pretty much taken a battering due to all this, and I haven't made a card in all this time.  It is also true that the longer you leave it the harder it is to start again ... will I still be able to colour??  Will I have lost my eye for composition??

I decided to test things out when I was asked by my HR department to take part in the national Festival of Learning

This is a national celebration of lifelong learning, with 'Have a Go' learning events taking place during May and June. 

Warrington Borough Council where I work is holding a month-long Festival during June, with employees giving of their time to impart knowledge and skills to colleagues in the lunch hour on a variety of themes including Digital, Craft, Culture and Wellbeing.

This Tuesday was Craft Tuesday, so I agreed to host a card making class for beginners .... my first!!

There were two timeslots of an hour each, and I decided to give a 10 minute presentation on why card making is a good idea (artistic expression, inspiration, make friends on social media, give something unique..) followed by a simple card project that would take about 40 minutes. This required quite a bit of planning, but I decided to go with showcasing rubber stamping of a large sentiment, punching of butterflies, and assembly of a card with patterned paper and embellishments.  The goal was to create a card that looked something like one of these ...

... using one of the project packs I made up like this ...

I also compiled a "resource pack" giving a bit further info on common techniques such as rubber stamping, dry and heat embossing and die cutting - all with links to further web-based information and tutorials; plus some info on basic equipment and supplies, and a few links to sources of ideas and inspiration (including this blog :-) )

All in all I did a lot of preparation, though quite a bit of it would be re-useable for  future events.

I really enjoyed my class, and the ladies who attended also gave kind comments and seemed to enjoy themselves - they both managed to produce cards they were happy to take away. Sadly there were not many attendees  .. there were several other interesting crafty topics on offer the same day such as jewellery making, gift tags, pottery making .. and local government employees are all so stretched nowadays that finding an hour is difficult. However it was a great learning exercise for me, and I am hoping to repeat my class at a future public Festival of Learning event in Warrington.

A big shout out should go to my crafty friend Clare, who lent me a few ink pads and some extra sentiment stamps in case I had a large take up for my class.

I had a variety of large sentiment stamps available, and during the class I made this card .. which I added some extra flowers to afterwards to make it a bit more special. I think my friend Clare may well cop for this when I take her stash back tomorrow :-)

Stamps: Penny  Black "To You..." (2908F) and "friends matter" (2073F); Great Impressions #D228 (If friends were flowers ..);

Papers: Melissa Frances;

Supplies: flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts; pearls and twine from my stash;

Tools: Martha Stewart monarch butterfly punch; X-Cut small butterfly punch.

For the first time in a very long time I would like to enter my efforts into a few challenges ...

Penny Black Saturday (June) - Birthdays

Penny Black & More (June) - Flower Power

Dream Valley #133 - Vintage

Frillie & Funky - Pastels & Pearls

Crafty Inspirations #317 - Tic Tac Toe (sentiment/punch/pearls)

ABC - J is for Just As You Like

The Ribbon Girl (June) - Anything Goes

Craft your Passion #316 - Always Anything Goes

Penny's Paper Crafty #282 - Anything Goes

Crafty Ribbons #156 - Anything Goes

That's all from me for today ... 'til next time.

Hugs,

Penny Black Saturday Challenge - January Blues!

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the first Penny Black Saturday Challenge for 2013. Sorry I'm late this morning, but last night my blogger went funny and I couldn't upload any pictures to my post from my PC - anyone else having this problem?? Luckily my dear fellow teamies have suggested a temporary "workaround" but this post is a bit picture-lite this morning - hope it sorts itself out soon!

Updated: I've now managed to add pics via my html editor but still hope this situation doesn't persist for too long !! :-)
Anyhoo ... hope you Penny Black lovers had a great Christmas and New Year, and that you're raring to go with a whole new year of challenges. Thanks also to everyone who took the time at a very busy time of year to enter last month's challenge - gorgeous creations as always ... and don't foget to check the main challenge blog to see if you're a winner.

So on to the first challenge for 2013, and it is

January Blues

Pretty apt you may say following the excitement of Christmas and New Year ... but what we would really like to see is a creation that features primarily the colour blue ... and of course a Penny Black image stamp, large sentiment or stickeroo if you want to be eligible for one of this month's prizes.

And talking of prizes we have a fab selection on offer as usual for lucky randomly-drawn winners -


$20 store voucher






 The other ladies have made fabulous inspiration cards as always... Here's my card for this month's challenge.

Stamps: Penny Black "Whispers"; LotV "Everyday Grungy Sentiments";

Papers: Papermania "Blueberry Pie";

Supplies: flowers by Wild Orchid Crafts; ribbon from Hobbycraft; pearls from The Ribbon Girl;

Tools: large floral oval nestabilities; Simon Says "Harringon Vine" die; Cheery Lynn "Lace Deco Corners".

Challenges:

Cheery Lynn #61 - Friendship

Simon Says - New Something
(new SS "Harrington Vine" die)

Wild Orchid Crafts #66 - Anything Goes

Thanks for looking, and hope you will be able to join us for this month's challenge.

Hugs,

Rushing to catch up

Hello everyone - I'm back again after almost three weeks of non-crafting due to work and having been away for a week in Devon. It was lovely to get a break, though having been back a week it already seems like a semi-distant memory lol! Still, at least we now have the excitement of the Olympics .... I was totally blown away by the Opening Ceremony on Friday night and thought we really did ourselves proud, and managed to show the world that we've still got it when it comes to creativity (even though alas we haven't yet found it when it comes to striking gold in the medal table !!).

Anyhoo, I haven't had much opportunity to unpack my crafty stash recently, but there were a few challenges I really wanted to enter which close today at the end of the month; so here are two cards which I made last night.

First up, a card I made for a fabulous challenge by the lovely Brenda, which is to use poppies or poppy colours on your card.

I had quite a few ideas for this one; but the card I actually made was heavily influenced by my need to use my current favourite Memory Box die, and some vintage style papers I bought from Crafty Devils Papercraft in Barnstaple while I was away.  Not sure whether this is what Brenda is looking for as I see most of the other entries are more traditional poppies, but this is certainly a bit different lol!

Don't forget there is still time to enter for my Penny  Black blog hop candy which is a brand new "prim Poppy" die - you can find the post here

Stamps: Penny Black sentiment from "Salutations" transparent set (stamped in "London Fog" Memento);

Media: butterfly distressed wtih TH "spun sugar" distress ink; 

Papers: August Moon;

Supplies: pearls from The Hobby House; doily, lace, pearl brad and ribbon from my stash;

Tools: large classic circle nestability; Memory Box "Prim Poppy" die (decorated with glamour dust);  Cuttlebug cut 'n emboss butterfly.

Challenges:

Brenda (Floral Fantasies) Challenge - Poppies

Penny  Black & More At Allsorts - Summer Blooms

Shabby Tea Room #125 - Sweet Summertime

(colours from inspiration photo + flowers + a stamped element)

Paper Pretties Monday #50 - Two or More Papers

Stamptacular - Patterns Galore (I have used 4 papers)

Top Tip Tuesday #82 - Focus On The Ribbon
Crafty Pad #181 - Things With Wings

Fussy & Fancy Friday #68 - Vintage With Distressing & Lace

Totally Gorjuss #142 - Pearls

Fab 'n' Funky #131 - No Stamped Image

My  second card today is a Christmas card - still not made too many of those yet (I think a bout 6 in total!!) so this design may form part of my "production line".

Stamps: Hero Arts (background Christmas text);

Media: stamping and distressing with TH Vintage Photo distress ink;

Supplies: gems from The Hobby house; ribbon from my stash;

Tools: Memory Box "Flowering Christmas Tree" die; Martha Stewart "eyelet lace" edge punch.

Challenges:

A Gem Of A Challenge #51 - Kraft At Christmas

Sweet Stampin' - Christmas In July

Creatalicious #36 - Christmas in July

Crafter's Companion #26 - Ho Ho Ho Christmas

Cute Card Thursday #227 - So Distressing

Simon Says - Anything Goes

Crafts & Me #94 - Anything Goes

Party Time Tuesday #79 - Anything Goes

J&C Creations #3 - Anything Goes

That's all for today ... hope to manage a bit more crafting this week and that I will be back soon with another card :-)

Prim Poppy

Hello everyone, today I have got a card to show you that is rather different from my usual style. It was inspired by the beautiful new Memory Box die " Prim Poppy" - I thought it was so elegant when I saw it I just had to have it, although I hadn't really thought how I would use it!  Having got the die I was also inspired by the current jubilee colour theme of red, white and blue ... this is a colour combo I would never normally use but it's rather difficult to avoid at the moment lol!!

I decided to keep the card very simple but to give the die cut some impact by draping it around an aperture - something else I never normally do. This also enabled me to showcase the flower die while making a sentiment stamp the central focus.  lastly I got the idea of using the die twice from a card I saw in my local craft shop Edwin Allen - that one was a white on white card which also looked very effective, but I'll leave that experiment for another day! Here's the result ...

Technically I don't know if this card qualifies for a red, white and blue challenge as the flower stems are green .. but hey flower stems just ARE green aren't they ... and my story is they're a natural element like skin or hair!! 

Stamps: Penny Black "friends" ..

Supplies: Memory Box "Prim Poppy" die; Martha Stewart "small monarch butterfly" punch.

Challenges:

Less Is More #70 - Red, White and Blue

Creative Craft - Red, White and Blue

Craft your Days Away #46 - Red, White and Blue

Die-ing For A Challenge - Anything Goes With A Die Cut.

That's all for today ... thanks for looking.

 

Penny Black Saturday #196 - CASE It!

Good morning Penny Black lovers ... Happy Easter and welcome to another Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Many thanks to everyone who entered last week's Sing-A-Long challenge - you certainly hit the right note lol!

This week we have our regular monthly feature, which is to 

CASE a DT member's card ... 

and this month it is the turn of the lovely Helen.

We would like to see a card inspired by the following card by Helen - and not just any old card either - this card won 3rd prize out of countless entries in the Penny Black category of the 2011 Papercrafter of the Year competition :-) ... woo hoo!!

You may feel inspired by the colours, techniques, layout ... we can't wait to see what you create!

And as usual we have fabby prizes - two this week for two lucky randomly drawn winners.

Firstly from our monthly sponsor Penny Black

we have this stamp

and from The Ribbon Girl 

we have this yummy yellow ribbon kit - perfect for spring!

Don't forget that to be eligible for a prize you should submit a new piece of work (no backlinking please!) which features a Penny Black image, large sentiment or stickeroo as its main focus.

The other ladies have created some fabulous examples to inspire you - here's my card for this week.

Stamps: Penny Black "Blush" (2666K); Whimsy Friendship Ticket;

Media: flower watercoloured with Marvey markers and edges distressed with lilac pigment ink; ticket stamped with TH "Vintage Photo" distress ink;

Papers: Papermania "Forever Friends - Springtime";

Supplies: lace from John Lewis; pearls from The Hobby House; ribbon from my stash;

Tools: Th distressing tool on all paper edges; Crafts Too embossing folder.

Challenges:

Crafty Purple Frog #38 - Let's Get Distressed!

Totally Papercrafts #111 - Bingo!

(2 lines - either flowers / lilac / pearls; or lace / lilac / ribbon)

Whimsy #33 - Use Ribbon

Party Time Tuesday #62 - Flowers

Anything Goes #64 - Anything Goes

That's all for today - hope you can join us for this week's challenge.