Oldie But A Goodie #21 - Where In The World?

Hi there, and welcome to another Oldie But A Goodie challenge. Thanks so much to everyone who entered our Lots of Layers challenge - there were some fabulous entries. Don't forget to check the main challenge blog to see if you have won the prize.

Before we get on to this fortnight's challenge we have a bit of news ... we have a new DT member joining us, so hope you will give a big welcome to Sara  :-)

This time it is Laurie's turn to pick the challenge theme, and she has chosen

Where in The World?

We would like to see something associated with a particular country ... maybe the colours of a flag, holidays, national flowers etc ... you can interpret this however you like, but in order to be eligible for our prize you should submit a new piece of work that uses a stamped image (no digis please) which is at least six months old ... that's why we're called An Oldie But A Goodie :-)

Laurie has also donated the prize for this challenge ... it is this yummy Oriental selection.

Hope you will have a look around the other DT ladies' fab cards and see if you can guess where in the world they are trying to represent .... I have stayed right here in England with English roses.

Recipe:

Main image; Elusive Images "Script Rose", heat embossed with detail gold, coloured with Promarkers and highlighted with Twinkling H2O's; matting distressed with "Victorian Velvet" distress ink;

Sentiment: Elusive Images;

Papers: Andrea James "Pampered Pets";

Supplies: pink and ivory roses and lace from Crafts4U2Do; green roses from Wild Orchid Crafts; pearls from my stash;

Tools: deckle edge blade used on image matting and papers; Leone Em "Ash Family" leaf punch.

And here's a closeup of my delicious new flowers which are mostly from Crafts4u2Do.

Challenges:

Simon Says Stamp and Show - Distressed / torn edges

Kaboodle #71 - Floral Showcase

Totally Gorjuss #84 - Flower Power

Stamp With Fun #115 - Pearls and Flowers

Shabby Tea Room #66 - Pink Lemondade

(Pink + green + neutral + flowers, with the following gorgeous inspiration picture)

Totally Papercrafts #70 - Summer

Scrapbook Sisters #39 - English Country Garden

CES #40 - Saturday Night At The Movies

(The Name of the Rose)

Crafty Pad #125 - Just Because You Can

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Pretty in Pink (+ silver + white)

Here's another card from my latest Christmas batch .... quite a few challenges were winking at me from my blog roll when I logged on this morning so I decided to make this one into a quick post. I would like to enter this card for: Wild Orchid #13 - Pink, Silver and White

Cupcake#121 - Non-Traditional Christmas

Incy Wincy #72 - Non-Tradional Christmas Colours

Stamp With Fun #89 - Christmas

Pollycraft #74 - White Christmas

The Pink Elephant #90 - Winter Wonderland

Catch the Bug - Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Stamptacular #89 - Winter Wishes

Keep It Simple - Season's Greetings

Sentimental Sundays #33 - Let It Snow

Totally Gorjuss #60 - Snow!

Daring Cardmakers - Snow Much Fun

Alphabet Challenge - G is for Glitter

Bunny Zoe's #7 - Sparkle & Shine

Stampalicious - Stampaliciously Simple

Recipe:

Main image: Penny Black "Snowy Park", covered in crystal Fine Art glitter;

Sentiment: Penny Black;

Paper: pearlescent white card embossed with Cuttlebug;

Supplies: small roses from Wild Orchid Crafts; silver gems and ribbon from my stash;

Tools: Cuttlebug "snowflakes" embossing folder.

That's all for today :-)

Penny Black Saturday #124 - Spooky Nights!

Hello and welcome to another week of the Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Thanks so much to everyone who joined in last week with Debby's fabby sketch - there were some beautiful interpretations ... and don't forget to check the challenge blog to see if you are a randomly drawn prize-winner.

Before we get onto this week's challenge a little bit of news .. we have a new teamie so would like to give Jenny a great big welcome. Her cards are awesome so you are in for a real treat!

This week we are getting into the spirit of the dark autumnal nights when witches and ghosties creep abroad ... so we have a Hallowe'en theme for you.

Spooky Nights

... and we have a fantastic prize this week from Fantastic Ribbons of four rolls of ribbon of the winner's choice - as always the winner will be drawn randomly. Don't forget to be eligible for the prize you need to use a Penny Black image, large sentiment or stickeroo as the main focus of your project.

The rest of the DT have been scaring themselves (and each other!) silly with their fab spooky creations - here's mine.

I decided to take the theme "spooky nights" rather literally, and created a pearlescent white moon in a purple sky by inking a cut out mask with Brilliance ink; and as I am so short of Hallowe'en supplies I created some bats using downloaded clipart.



Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black "Witchy Mouse" (2253K) cloured with Promarkers and Copics;
Sentiment: Penny Black "halloween web" (3902K);
Papers: Bo Bunny;
Supplies: pearls from The Hobby House; lace and spider's web corner peeloff from my stash;
Tools: large classic circles and lacy circles nestabilities.

Naturally there are quite a lot of similarly themed challenges out there right now, so I would like to enter a few ....

Stamp With Fun #81 - Hallowe'en
Really reasonable Ribbon #10 - Hallowe'en

Crazy4Challenges #60 - Hallowe'en

Creative Inspirations #45 - Hallowe'en or Fall
Baby Bud #1 - Hallowe'en or Fall

Creative Inspirations #83 - Spooky!
CRAFT #73 - Spooky...
Spoon Full of Sugar #126 - Boo!
Ooh-La-La #65 - Scary Stuff
Dutch Dare #89 - Hallowe'en, or Purple, Black, Orange and Green
Kaboodle Doodles - Let's Go Batty!
My Time To Craft #111 - Hallowe'en - Ghosties, Ghoulies & Long Legged Beasties
Raise The Bar #41 - Orange, Black & Purple
Top Tip Tuesday #7 - Anything Goes

My "top tip" for Top Tip Tuesday is to dowload clipart or templates for simple block-coloured shapes, resize them on your computer and then just print and cut out. this is especially appropriate for silhouette shapes (such as bats), and is both time and money saving for shapes you won't use very often.

Hope you can join in with the PBSC this week, and I promise to come out from hiding behind the sofa to look at your spooky creations ;-)

Penny Black Saturday #108

Hello again - welcome to the weekend and to another Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Thanks to everyone who joined in last week - fab paper patches fom you all!! Don't forget to check out whether you have won the prize :-)

First - some exciting news. We shared a couple of weeks ago that we are now being sponsored by

... and this week for the first time we are offering some prizes they have donated. Many of you will have seen the exciting new Mimi and Betsy Bluebell range, and this week we have got not one but THREE prizes from the range for lucky randomly drawn winners - aren't these the cutest?

Betsy Bluebell



Easy Rider



Sweet thing


Not only that .... but we have also got another fab prize from another of our regular sponsors - the lovely Julia at Stampers' Supermarket


... which is a Penny Black stamp of the winner's choice.

Wow!! I wish I could enter lol!!

So what do you need to do to be in with a chance of winning one of these adorable prizes??

This week we are celebrating American Independence Day (4th July) with our American friends, so we would like to see your creations using the colours

red, white and blue

Don't forget the challenge rule that you must use a Penny Black image, large sentiment or sticker as the focus of your project to be eligible to win a prize - and please no backlinking ... you are welcome to combine our challenge with others, but only new work please!

Do check out the rest of the DT's creations as they have truly been waving their star spangled banners of talent !! Here's my red, white and blue creation....

This wasn't very easy for me as the truth is I hate the colour red, and i could only think of one blue paper in my stash that might sit well with red. However I soon got into the swing of it .. who could possibly resist red roses lol?? I can never resist inking up this cute hedgie and I do love popping a little paper rose on her hat. I also used another of the yummy ribbon samples supplied to the DT by Fantastic Ribbons.

I also had a slight drama as I originally intended punching 3 strips of red, white and blue card using my doily lace punch ... but for some reason it wouldn't punch cardstock suddenly - OMG!! It would punch through paper, but when I tried with card it just wasn't haviong any! That's a problem for another day, but in the meantime I improvised by punching with my valentine lace punch instead, and in the end I was actually quite pleased with the effect - a happy accident you might say lol!

Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black "Tiny Wishes" tranparent set, coloured with Promarkers;
Sentiment: Craftwork Cards;
Papers: Craft Creations;
Supplies: flowers from Hobbycraft and Wild Orchid Crafts; dotty ribbon from Fantastic Ribbons;

Tools: large classic scalloped rectangle nestabilities; martha Stewart "Valentine Lace" edge punch; Leone Em "Ash Family" leaf punch.

Challenges:
Simon Says - Check it out!
Creative Inspirations #37 - Paper Piecing
Spoon Full of Sugar #110 - Animal Crackers
Magical Crafts #18 - Flower Power
Corrosive #70 - Lots of Flowers
Paper Sundaes #24 - Birthday Card
Crafts & Me #7 - Birthdays
Everybody-Art-Challenge #97 - Birthday
Stamp with Fun #65 - Birthday
Stamp Something - Colours of your Flag (Union Jack - red, white & blue!)
Raise the Bar #25 - Colours of your Flag


Have a great weekend and looking forward to seeing all your wonderful creations !

Penny Black Challenge #98 - Recipe!

Wow - don't know where this week has gone to ... no crafting and not a single post since last Saturday ... but at last the weekend is here again and it's time for another Penny Black Saturday Challenge.

Thanks very much to everyone who entered last week's "monochromatic brown" challenge - not an easy one but you definitely rose to the challenge with some fab creations.

This week we have a really great challenge for you - a recipe. What we would like to see is projects that incorporate

3 flowers
2 buttons
1 bow

How easy is that??

And we also have a brilliant prize as usual for one randomly drawn winner - this week it's a Lifetime 15% discount voucher for the online craft store of our regular sponsor


Don't forget to check out this week's gorgeous samples from the rest of the DT - here's mine.


I must admit that the whole thing revolved this week around the fact that I had finally managed to get my hands on a Marianne D Creatables "ribbon flower" die set ... and was just soooo excited!! I have to say though - after I had cut it the paper was an absolute pig to get out of the die - even my pokey tool wouldn't shift it - so if anyone has any handy hints and tips as to how to do this without ripping three fiogernails I'd be very grateful ;-) Also I feel that it would be easier to thread wtih soft organza ribbon as thicker ribbon fills the central hole too much ... but I guess it's a case of experimenting. I don't think I've quite got the finished flower perfect yet, but I'm still pretty pleased with the result (when I eventually got there ! :-) )

Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black "A Tender Hug", coloured with watercolour pencils;
Sentiment: Craftwork Cards;
Paper: My Mind's Eye "Pretty Please";
Supplies: pink roses from Hobbycraft decorated with Stardust Stickles; large spacer from The Hobby House; large jewel brad, buttons and ribbons from my stash;
Tools: large classic circles and large classic scalloped circles Nestsbilities; "Fancy Tags" Shapeabililties; Martha Stewart "garden trellis" edge punch.

As usual I would like to enter this card into a few challenges .....

Paper Sundaes #14 - No people
Stamp With Fun #55 - Animals
Pile It On #15 - Spring
A Spoon Full of Sugar #100 - Happy Birthday
Daring Cardmakers - Die Cut Crazy

One Stop Craft Challenge #77 - Metallic (chunky spacer on my flower)

S2G Challenges - Spring has Sprung with a Twist (flowers)

Our Creative Corner - Blooming Blossoms

I should be out at the Aintree craft show today - will try to restrain myself and not buy too much stash ;-). Have a great weekend whatever you're doing.

Penny Black Challenge #92 - Spring Colours

Wow another week has flown by, and it's time already for another Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Thanks to everyone who entered last week's easel card challenge - there were some amazing creations. Don't forget to check if you are the lucky winner of last week's prize.

This week our thoughts are turning to spring ...... I keep thinking that surely it must be round the corner now that Easter is nearly here?? So this week's challenge is to create a project using

Spring colours

Now I have interpreted that as yellow and green, but of course you can interpret it however you like so long as you use a Penny Black stamp or sticker somewhere on your creation.

This week we have a fab prize from our regular sponsor

which is a $20 spending spree in their online store - nice!

Here's my card .... I decided to go for an image and colours that would work for Easter .... and I felt that this wonderful "Spring" sentiment worked so well with the magical image of the butterfly on bunny's nose!

As I've had no crafting time this past week apart from producing DT cards I did my best to also tie this card in with a few other challenges:

Stamp With Fun #49 - Spring
Stampin' B's #49 - Spring
Tanda Teaser #137 - Simply Spring
Rosie D's #66 - Think Spring

By the Cute & Girly - Spring is in the air
Sassy Susie's #10 - Easter
CRAFT #41 - Citrus

There She Goes #45 - Yellow Spring Flowers
Charisma Cardz #10 - Beautiful butterflies
Flutterby #100 - butterfly, fairy or angel
Magical Crafts #10 - Things with Wings
Aimee's Challenge #3 - Things with Wings
Cupcake #81 - Flower Power
Creative Inspirations #51 - Charms
Papercutz #32 - Anything Goes!

Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black "Bunny Bath" (3616J) coloured with watercolour pencils;
Sentiment: Penny Black "Spring Magic" (2852C);
Papers: Crafty Creations;
Supplies: pearl brad, pearl gems and spacer from The Hobby House; raffia ribbon from Hobbycraft; butterfly print ribbon, flowers and enamel charm from my stash;
Tools: large classic scalloped rectangle and large classic scalloped square nestabilities; Crafts Too "butterflies" embossing folder.

Hope you will call by the other DT members' blogs as spring has really sprung with all their fab efforts! Look forward to seeing all your crafty creations :-)

Diamonds and roses

This coming Thursday it is my aunt & uncle's diamond wedding anniversary - wow, 60 years of marriage - what an achievement!! And of course, a perfect opportunity to really go to town and make a "special" card. For this one I did actually go out and buy paper, matching bazzill, ribbon and some red paper roses specially, and I hit on the idea of using spray diamantes (rather than spray pearls) to represent the "diamond" in diamond wedding.

Luckily with Valentine's Day just around the corner, there is no shortage of romantic themed challenges that I could enter with this card. First and foremost, Simon Says this week has a photo inspiration which is a picture of a red rose - how perfect is that for this theme?? I would also like to enter this card for the following:

Papertake Weekly - Love Actually
Charisma Cardz #5 - Love
By the Cute & Girly - Love

C.R.A.F.T. #36 - Valentine or Love
Stamp Something - Love Somethings
Paper Play #5 - Love Notes
Ginger Snaps #41 - Romance

Raise the bar #4 - Hearts
Stamp With Fun #45 - Hearts
Die Cut Dreams #34 - Have a heart
Creative Belli #84 - ribbons
Cooking It Up with Katie #10 - home/family theme (uncle & aunt's diamond wedding); punch something, and stickers (hope my silver rub ons and peel offs count?)

Sweet Stampin' Challenge #12 - Floral Frenzy


Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black "You're a Treasure" (1589F) coloured with watercolour pencils and gelly roll sparkle red pen;
Sentiment: rub ons and peel off for "60th";
Paper: make unknown - from Craft In Time;
Supplies: paper roses and diamante spray from Hobbycraft; lace from Quixotic Paperie; ribbon from my stash; Tools: large and small circle nestabilites; Nellie Snedden scalloped circle dies; shapeabilities tag; Martha Stewart "Valentine Lace" edge punch and "scalloped lace heart" punch.

Thanks for looking !

Let it Snow!

I'm sure that "let it snow" is the last sentiment that most people want to hear right now .... but I decided this week I really wanted to join in with BasicGrey Challenge #11 - photo inspiration .... and the only piece of BG paper I could find to suit the colour scheme was a Christmas one lol!


I also decided to follow the fab Sketch Saturday #85 sketch.
I flipped the sketch horizontally, as my most suitable image to go with the papers already had the sentiment incorporated at the top. I also used a bit of "artistic licence" in my angling of the snowflakes!


I would also like to enter it for a couple of other challenges:

Stamp With Fun #41 - Snowflakes
Everybody-Art #73 - Snowflakes
Simon Says - Shabby Chic! Not sure whether this really qualifies, but I think the blue BG paper is quite "shabby chic" looking, the stamp has a vintage look, and I have edged all my papers with a Victorian shape blade! To be sure though if I try for the DT call I think I'll try to make a better effort lol!

Recipe:
Main image/sentiment: Penny Black "Let it Snow" (2782K);
Papers: BasicGrey "Figgy Pudding";
Supplies: pearl brads and spacers from The Hobby House; pearl gems and ribbon from my stash;
Tools: Fiskars paper trimmer "Victorian" blade; Martha Stewart "Arctic Snowflake" punch and "embossed snowflakes" edge punch.

Well, I'm still on track with my "one Christmas card per week" pledge ... wonder how long it will last??

A Time for Celebration!

Well here we are, almost at the end of 2009 already ... where on earth has the year gone to??

In anticipation of the New Year's party I'm hoping to get to on (weather permitting!) I have made a New Year celebration card for the hostess.

I followed the excellent sketch at this week's Create4Fun Challenge #52, which I rotated 90 degrees to the left. I tried for once to be a bit imaginative and get a bit of artistic licence going (!?!). It's the first time I have cut out a figure and placed her over a background shape .... I know people do this a lot with Tildas but I don't have any of those .. thought I'd try it with Annie, and I'm pretty pleased with the result :-) I also went in for a bit of criss-crossing with some cord ... hope this is close enough to the original sketch!

This card was also made with quite a few other challenges in mind:

Cupcake #71 - A Time for Celebration

Everybody-Art-Challenge #71,
Stamp with Fun #39,
Stamp with Stampavie #75,
and
Lili of the Valley #43
all have the theme this week of
Happy New Year

Simon Says Stamp - Party!
(well, it's for a New Year Party, and I have to say Annie looks like she's started already lol!!)

Daring Cardmakers - New Beginnings
Our Creative Corner - Celebrate Food or Drink
One Stop Craft Challenge #60 - recycled
(my silver star holographic card is recycled from an Asda tissue box!!)

My Time to Craft #72 - Anything Goes
Creative Card Crew #41 - Anything Goes (3rd entry!)

Blimey! I've just counted up and that's 12 ... just about my best effort yet lol!! I actually also made this for 2 more challenges but alas due to poor lighting conditions today for taking phots plus going out for the day .. I've missed them - never mind!!

I love easel cards but am finding them very difficult to photograph (and the miserable daylight conditions don't help lol) ... so here are a couple more closeup shots - first of the "front" of the card ....

... and also the "base" part of the easel.

Recipe:
Main image: Sugar Nellie "Fizz", coloured with watercolour pencils;
Papers: free with issue 10 of Creative Cardmaking magazine;
Supplies: silver gems and stars, silver cord all by Papermania; silver/white ribbon from my stash; recycled silver holographic card from Asda tissue box!;
Tools: large classic circles and large classic scalloped circles nestabilities; numbers cut using Cuttlebug "Hippie Chick" alphabet dies.

I'd just love to wish everyone who visits my blog, end everyone who I visit a

Happy New Year!

Take care, have fun, and here's to more fab blogging and crafting in 2010 ! :-)

Blimey! ... and a funky Rudolph

Blimey - I didn't make a card for a whole ten days until last night .... where has the last week and a half gone to lol?? I'm surprised I didn't have to go to the Priory for counselling to recover from my withdrawal symptoms!

Anyhow, I managed a little sesh last night and made two cards from scratch plus completed another two which had been hanging around the house for a while. Here's the first one, which I have nicknamed "Funky Rudolph" !


I followed the fab sketch for this week's Friday Sketchers #80 - suitably encouraged by the Magnolia-licious prize they have on offer this week :-)

I also chose my Christmas theme and contemporary colours for the following challenges:

Crafty Cardmakers #9 - Alternative Christmas
A Spoon Full of Sugar #80 - Non-traditional Christmas colours
Charisma Cardz #47 - Anything Christmas
Creative Card Crew #39 - Christmas
Stamp With Fun #35 - Christmas
Stamp with Stampavie #72 - Christmas

Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black "slapstick" stamp "Fancy Antler", coloured with watercolour pencils;
Sentiment: Penny Black "a wish...." (3502F), stamped with Versacolour chalk ink;
Paper: BasicGrey "Eskimo Kisses";
Supplies: pearls gems, and pink/brown dotty ribbon (just seen) from my stash;
Tools: Martha Stewart "embossed snowflakes" edge punch; Cuttlebug "snowlakes #2" die.

Off to have a cup of tea now and catch up with some telly - hope to be back tomorrow with another card :-)

Penny Black Challenge #72 - and an 11-into-1 combo

Yippee! It's the weekend ... so it's time for another Penny Black Saturday Challenge! Thanks to everyone who entered last week's challenge using Nat's fab sketch ... sorry I didn't manage to get round to look at everyone's entries, but I'll try my best this week :-) Don't forget to check out the blog to see who won last week's fab prize!

Now hold onto your (witches') hats ... this week we have a very scary challenge for you, which is

Hallowe'en

Yes ... we want to see all your spooktacular creations with lots of scary spiders ... ghosties and all things spooky! As always the only rule is that you use at least one Penny Black image or
sentiment.

I'll 'fess up straight away that this was a totally scary challenge for me , for a number of reasons - not least of all the fact that I had NO Hallowe'en images, NO sentiments, NO suitable papers ... ribbons ... charms ... embellishments ... EEK! You start to get the idea lol?? Add to this the facts that I'm terrified of spiders, ghosties and ghoulies freak me out, and I hate the colour orange ... and it wasn't looking too good! Luckily my fab PBSC teamie Domi came to the rescue with some cute rather than scary Hallowe'en images and sentiments, and I managed to download my first ever paper (a free one!) so I was at least able to cobble something together .... and although I don't normally use peel offs much nowadays I thought the spiders webs were a cheap and convenient way to hit the spot!

As usual we have got a gorgeous prize for you .. it is this fabulous PB stamp "Cozy" donated by our very own Carole - thanks hun, it's wonderful! :-)

So here's my card ..... spookily it was very sunny when Itook this picture which is totally inappropriate for a Hallowe'en card I know ... strange how the sun never seems to come out when I want a bright picture lol! The rest of the DT has also woven lots of Hallowe'en magic, so don't forget to peek through your fingers at their scary offerings!

As this is almost certainly going to be my one and only Hallowe'en card this year, I'd like to also enter it into a few challenges .....

Corrosive Challenges #34 - Spooky Times

Pile It On #19 - Ready for Hallowe'en

Kaboodle Doodles - It's a spooky challenge

Cupcake Crafts #62 -Things that Go Bump in the Night

Stamp with Fun #29 - Hallowe'en

Creative Inspirations #32 - Hallowe'en

My Time to Craft #82 - Hallowe'en Colours

Everybody-Art-Challenge #62 - Hallowe'en

Stampavie & More #66 - Hallowe'en

Stamp Something - Hallowe'en Somethings

Stampin' for the Weekend #21 - A Haunting Good Time

(11 - a new personal best lol!!)

Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black "Pup-o-lantern" (2538J), coloured with watercolour pencils and the pumpkin decoupaged;
Sentiment: Penny Black "Trick or Treat" (1906E);
Papers: "Super-Spooks" - free download by Marie Stones from Free Digital Scrapbooking
Supplies: Black & orange sparkly brads by Doodlebug; black dotty ribbon and spider's web peel offs from my stash;
Tools: Martha Stewart "Scallop dot" edge punch.

Looking forward to seeing all your spooky creations ..... sleep well, and don't have nightmares ha ha!