Happy holidays at the Glitterpot!

I've just got back today from a week's holiday in Kent - never visited that part of the world before: we had a lovely time, staying at a gorgeous boutique hotel in Royal Tunbridge Wells called the Brew House hotel , and visiting various places around Kent and East Sussex.

One of the highlights had to be the day that my husband went fishing, and I drove over to The Glitterpot, where I also met my crafty friend Karen for the first time. We have been online friends for over a year in a small friendship club started through a shared love of Penny Black stamps, so it was brilliant to finally get to meet. And what better place than the Glitterpot, which has got (amongst many other fabulous things) the biggest selection of PB stamps I have ever seen in one physical place. Karen is lucky enough to live about 20 miles from the Glitterpot so it wasn't her first visit, though I think I will probably have to revert to online ordering from now on lol!

So here we are - that's me on the left, and Karen on the right. You will notice that we had to get pictured surrounded by PB stamps - what you can see there is only a small selection of the whole!!

All in all we had a fab time - shopping ... chatting and getting to know each other .. and chatting with the lovely GP staff. All I need to do now is get going with some cardmaking to use my new acquisitions - hope to be back soon with my first post-holiday card, and also catch up with some blog hopping. Luckily I'm not back in work until Tuesday :-)

hope you've all had a great weekend!

Penny Black Challenge #60 - Recipe!

Hello again, and welcome to week 60 of the Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Last week as always we had some wonderful entries for the soft and sweet challenge - don't forget to have a look at the PBSC blog to see if you have won last week's fab prize of the transparent stamp set.

This week's challenge is a recipe - yes, what we would like to see on your cards is

3 ribbons, 2 flowers & 1 charm/pin

The rest is up to you ... so long as we can also see a Penny Black stamp or sticker on your creation. The DT have really been cookin' with this recipe, so please do go and check out their blogs for some inspiration.

This week we have another brilliant prize by our sponsor Dick at PB Stamps ... a 15% off voucher to spend in the online shop. And what Penny Black lover wouldn't manage to spend in there - it has the biggest range of PB stamps anywhere!

Anyhow, here is my card. This is the second leaving card I have made in two weeks, and again I have used this darling image of a cute hedgie about to take a walk. I have actually cheated slightly on the recipe as I have used raffia lace threaded with 2 ribbons; but I'm sure when it comes to that level of cheating I will be far from alone lol!

Recipe:
Main image: from Penny Black "Tiny Wishes" transparent set, coloured with watercolour pencils and rose on hat decorated wtih Stickles;

Sentiment: computer generated;

Paper: Bo Bunny "Shabby Princess" collection;

Supplies: pearlised lilac card embossed with Cuttlebug "Floral Fantasy" embossing folder; green leaves cut with Leone Em "Ash Family" punch; raffia lace from Hobbycraft; rose charm from Dolls Made Up; spacers from Craft in Time; Papermania adhesive shimmer dots; flowers (a birthday RAK) and ribbon from my stash.

Have a great weekend!

Something Old ... Something New ....

My colleague Paul is getting married to his fiancee Claire this Friday; so what better excuse did I need to buy some of the fabulous new WOJ wedding collection stamps, and then set about making my first ever wedding card?

I felt quite a sense of responsibility making a wedding card as I hope that they will keep it as part of their wedding memories; so I agonized for ages over the papers, layout etc. I had craftily tried to find out, through casual conversation, the the colours of the bride's dress, wedding flowers, groom's suit etc .... not easy when it's the groom you're talking to lol!! Anyhow I did my best and eventually was pretty pleased with the result.


I used the stunning new WOJ "Willow" and "Oakley" wedding stamps, and tried some masking to get them standing close together (aww!). Knowing that the colour theme I was looking for was pink and ivory, I was fortunate in that I had some wedding theme papers in those colours which had come free with Creative Cardmaking magazine.

Here's a pic that shows the shimmer on the bride's dress and groom's waistcoat, which I achieved by painting with Twinkling H2O's in oyster and iridescent gold. The glimmer is actually quite subtle - just when it catches the light.

I also roughly painted the flowers with the H20's in iridescent gold, which made them quite twinkly.

I'd like to enter this card for this week's Creative Inspirations Challenge #13 which is

Something old, something new ...

I have interpreted this broadly as being a wedding card; but if we need to be literal then here goes ...

Something Old - pink & cream wedding papers from issue 3 of Creative Cardmaking magazine

Something New - Willow, Oakley and sentiment stamps by Whiff of Joy, and my MS Valentine Hearts punch
Something Borrowed - the idea of masking the bride so that you can still see the groom through her veil - from the lovely Rach's blog (example here)
Something Blue - this was me last night, as I only finished this card at 12.20am lol!!

Here's a peek at the inside....

Recipe:

Main image: Whiff of joy "Wedding Collection", Willow the Bride and Oakley the groom, coloured with watercolour pencils and Twinkling H20's;

Sentiments: from the WOJ "Wedding Sayings" collection;

Papers: K&Co (cream script paper); others free with Creative Cardmaking magazine;
Supplies: pink & white flowers from Poppicrafts (a birthday present from my friend Helen), painted with H2O's; paper roses from Hobbycraft; crocheted ribbon from Quixotic Paperie; charm from Dolls Made Up; leaves punched with Leone Em Ash Branch punch; edges punched with MS Valentine Hearts punch; pearls from my stash.

Having made this card I also managed to make my first ever box to put it in, so it wouldn't get squashed. No photo of that as I left it plain, but I'm now thinking I will want to make more boxes in future!

DC Combo Six-Pack

Today DC is for Docrafts, as this is my Docrafts July friendship card for Wakey Susan; and DC is also for "Daisy Chain", which is the name of this darling Penny Black stamp which I have had in my collection for some time (having paid WAY OVER the odds on ebay as it was supposedly retired ... and now it's not!!) ... but I have never inked it up until now.

I always knew that I wanted to team the stamp of the cute miceys making a daisy chain with this sentiment stamp - a friendship card is just the perfect opportunity.

So to square the circle I also looked out for some challenges to incorporate - no way could I use a sketch for this as the stamp is so big; but I managed to tie my card in to the following six:

Secret Crafter #41 - spots and stripes - which inspired me to use these yummy MME papers;

Our Creative Corner - triple play - which invites us to use at least 3 types of embellishments. Well for me that's not too hard to do lol! - and I have used flowers, brads, spacers, charm and crocheted ribbon ... so I guess that should just about cover it!

Dutch Dare #56 - using dies and/or or punches: again I have covered all bases with die-cute nestie shapes for my matting, punched leaves and my MS doily lace edge punch.

The Pink Elephant #24 and Lili of the Valley #32 - Animals

Paper Blooms - Animal Fun - well I think these li'l animals are having a lot of fun lol!

Here's a peek at the inside ....


Recipe:

Main image: Penny Black "Daisy Chain" (1690K) coloured with watercolour pencils, matted onto "Gemstones" cardstock cut using mega scalloped rectangle nesties;
Sentiments: Penny Black "Everything's ..." (2733K) (front); Penny Black "...second self" (3386D) (inside);
Papers: My Mind's Eye;
Supplies: crocheted ribbon and "friends" charm from Quixotic Paperie; spacers from The Hobby House; Papermania pearl brads; dragonfly brads and Prima flowers from my stash; green leaves punched using Leone Em "Ash Family" punch; edging punched wtih MS "doily lace" punch.

Penny Black Challenge #58 - Soft & Sweet

Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's Penny Black Saturday Challenge. I'd like to start by apologising for the fact that I haven't commented on many people's entries for last week's challenge - I have been having serious 'pooter problems that seem to boil down to having installed Windows IE8 - and I have been unable to access a lot of my blogging sites. I think it is now almost (though not completely) resolved, but alas I got so behind that no way could I catch up on all the comments I had missed!

That means though that I am looking forward all the more to seeing all your creations for this week's challenge, which is

Soft & Sweet

As always you can interpret this any which way, so long as you include a Penny Black stamp or sticker somewhere on your project. To get your creative juices flowing, the DT has produced some fabulous samples - please do visit their blogs to check them out; and don't forget to visit the challenge blog to see if you are last week's prize winner.

Talking of prizes ... this week we have a fantastic prize for you kindly donated by Julia at Simply Stamps Friends. Simply Stamps is both a shop in Rye, Sussex, and also an ebay shop which sells a fabulous variety of stamps including lots of Penny Blacks. Julia also exhibits at various craft shows; and I'm sure that many of you in the UK will, like me, be familiar with the fantastic "bargain bucket"! This week's prize is this gorgeous transparent set.

Here is my card ... I interpreted the theme to mean soft and sweet colours, fluttery dragonflies, a gentle sparkle effect, pearls and soft organza ribbon. I made this card for my friend Gail's birthday - she just doesn't do "cute" ... but it just goes to show that you can achieve a variety of other looks using PB stamps.


I also felt that the interior paper carried on the soft & sweet theme quite nicely.

Here's a different angle to try to show the sparkle on the card - very difficult to show up on photographs!


Recipe:
Main image: Penny Black "Fanfare"(3946K) coloured with Marvey brushstroke pens and decorated with glamour dust;
Sentiment: Penny Black "Happy Birthday" (2912D);
Papers: BasicGrey "Wisteria";
Supplies: mulberry paper flowers & pearl brads by Papermania; punched borders using Martha Stewart "doily lace" edge punch; ribbon from my stash.

Hope you all have a great weekend, and hope I will be able to access blogs to catch up with all your creations this week :-)

One card - four challenges

Here is a leaving card that I made last night for a lovely lady at work .... I couldn't help but think that this gorgeous cute hedgie image, with her trainers on and rucksack ready to go, was just perfect for this occasion!

I would like to enter it into the following four challenges:

Papertake Weekly #19 - Dawny's sketch. Now I have taken a couple of liberties with it insomuch as I have rotated it by 90 degrees, and then I have replaced the oval with a wavy rectangle (cos that's what I had to hand and I didn't want to cut off hedgie's uber-cute feet lol!) Anyhow - I hope you still get the idea :-)

Stamp Something this week has a theme of pink, green and yellow - so I deliberately chose these beautiful summery papers to fall in with that.

Simon Says Stamp wants to see summer fruits or summer fruit colours - well I have not gone especially for English summer fruit colours, but rather for exotic fruits such as watermelon pink, lemon, grapefruit yellow and kiwi fruit.

Stamp With Fun #15 asks us to use shapes or punches - I have used nestie shapes for my matting and layering, plus punched leaves and a border punch (inside).

Talking of which ... here's the inside ....

Recipe:
Main image: Penny black transparent set "Tiny Wishes", coloured with watercolour pencils and decorated with Stickles;
Sentiment: computer generated (front); Penny Black (inside);
Papers: K&Co "Wild Raspberry";
Supplies: crocheted ribbon from Quixotic Paperie; charm from Dolls Made Up; spacer from The Hobby House; Doodlebug sugar coated brads; leaves cut using Leone Em "Ash Family" punch from Edwin Allen; border inside punched with MS doily lace punch from Dies to Die For; flowers and pearls from my stash.

Have a great evening and thanks for looking!

We have a winner!!

Many thanks to all of you who entered my blogoversary candy draw, and I was really touched and thrilled by all your lovely comments both about my candy and my blog :-) I really hope you will continue to visit in future.

...but let's be honest, you're visiting right now to see if you've won - right?? So without further ado, I have used random.org to draw a winner (sorry i don't know how to print the outcome on here) .... and the winner is .....

No 33

which is ...

Lovely Linda

who said ...

Hello Pauline from Canberra Australia!! What YUMBLY Candy - I just love thay gorgeous hedgie....adorable - thank you for the opportunity to play for it....and the other treasures!! I have linked your Candy to my Blog:http://lovelylindascraftcentral.blogspot.com/and would love you to visit sometime!! I will enjoy following your Blog - thanks again for this great opportunity! God bless you!

So congratulations hun!! Guess I'd better start saving up for the postage lol! but in fact I'm happy to post to and make friends with someone on the other side of the world :-)

Please let me have your details via email, and I will get your package posted out to you. If I don't hear anything by Sunday 19th July midnight BST, I will draw another winner.

Hugs

Double celebration candy

This candy is now closed - thanks to everyone who has entered and all your lovely comments. I will announce a winner Monday evening.

Today I have got a double cause to celebrate - it is exactly a year ago today that I first started my blog; and within the past week I have just passed 20,000 hits! ... so what better way to get in the party mood than to give away some

celebration candy

I was first inspired to start blogging by the Penny Black Saturday Challenge blog, as PB's have always been my favourites - I adore the cute creatures but also love to try other looks such as the brushstroke flowers. Tracie was so helpful in getting me started, so I was totally thrilled when after a few months I managed to land a place on the PBSC DT ... all the ladies on the DT are just fantastic and so inspiring. During the year I have found so many wonderful blogs that I love to visit, with fantastic friends and such a wealth of inspiring ideas - I can't imagine the time before I got into all this!! So thanks to all the friends who have made the past year so special.

So to celebrate here's my candy, which contains a few of my favourite things.

I am offering:

1 Penny Black transparent stamp set "Tiny Wishes"

1 BasicGrey 6*6 paper pack - "Wisteria"

1 Core'dinations 6*6 cardstock pack - "Whitewash collection"

1 pack Papermania Mulberry Flowers in purples/lilacs

3 reels of organza ribbon - purple, green and blue

A selection of charms

+

"A year's supply of Penny Black images"

- yes! that's 52 separate different stamped images - one for every week of the year (so no more excuses for not entering the weekly challenge lol!). They include hedgies, mice, cats, teddies, bunnies, flowers, sayings, Christmas images etc .... I'm sure you won't be disappointed..

To get your hands on this little lot, here's what you have to do .. it's quite simple ...

1. Put a post or sidebar link from your blog to this post, to spread the word about my candy.

2. become a follower OR add my blog into your blogroll.

3. Leave me a comment to let me know when you have entered.

This candy will stay open until Sunday July 12th, and I will draw a winner using random.org on Monday July 13th. I will post worldwide, so what are you waiting for?

Thanks for looking, and good luck!

Cuttlebug - the journey to 1000

I'm having quite a bit of trouble with blogger at the moment so I hope I can publish this ok! The Cuttlebug Spot is having a contest trying to reach 1000 followers - visit their site, sign up as a follower and you could win a $1000 voucher for Custom Crops - wow!

Penny Black Challenge #57 - Swirls

Hello there, and welcome once again to the Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Many thanks to everyone who waved the flag last week (whether US union, Union Jack or whatever) by making a red, white and blue card - as usual they were all fabulous. Don't forget to pop over to the challenge blog later to see who won last week's great prize.

Onto this week's challenge .. now for some of you this won't be too much of a surprise, as naughty Mr Blogger crashed yesterday breakfast time whilst I was in the middle of writing my post and bloomin' well posted it on here (a fact of which I was blissfully unaware until later!! )0oops! But for those of you who don't know yet, this week's challenge is

Swirls

As always you can interpret this however you want so long as we can see a Penny Black stamp or sticker somewhere on your project. the DT have produced some gorgeous examples, so please do pop over to their blogs for a look see.

This week's prize has been kindly donated by the craft shop Simply Create, which I understand is local to Kath (I'm sure she can provide pointers for anyone who is interested)
... and it is this totally cute PB kitty stamp.

So get your thinking caps on and give it a swirl (sorry - couldn't resist that!)

Here is my card - I decided to go at it from a slightly unusual angle, inspired by this fabby swirly felt ribbon I had left over from last Christmas. I'm currently well behind with making my Christmas cards, so this seemed like an ideal opportunity!

I used:

Main image: Penny Black "Xmouse Ornament!", coloured with watercolour pencils and decorated with diamond Stickles, matted onto holographic silver card using oval nesties;

Sentiment: Woodware clear set;

Paper: Paper Adventures;

Supplies: white felt ribbon, ricrac & silver gems by Papermania; swirls around sentiment cut from white glitter card using Spellbinders Shapeabilities "doodles"; white glitter card & silver holographic card snowflakes cut with Cuttlebug die "Snowflakes #2";

And here's a different angle photo that tries to show the glitter on the snowflake. The paper is also a bit sparkly but the photos don't really show that.

Looking forward to seeing all your creations - happy crafting and have a good weekend.

Stamp with fun - my favourite things

I just had to enter this week's Stamp with fun challenge #14, as it is a fabulous sketch, plus they are offering an absolutely adorable stamp set as the prize (fingers crossed!!)


I was eager to use my new supplies from my Quixotic Paperie blog candy win (see previous post) and this sketch allowed me to incorporate my gorgeous new crocheted ribbon :-). I kinda squashed the sketch to make it into a square, but hopefully you can still see the basic elements.

I would also like to enter this card into this week's Papertake Weekly Challenge as the theme is my favourite things ... and this card contains a whole host of those!! My fave stamps are undoubtedly Penny Blacks, BasicGrey papers are generally my favourites, and I also can't get enough of charms and pearls.

Recipe:

Main image; Penny Black "Frequent Flier", coloured with watercolour pencils and decorated with glamour dust (doesn't show up too well in the pics!)

Sentiment: Penny Black;

Papers: BasicGrey "Wisteria" - edges on image and paper cut using mega deckle rectangle nestabilities;

Supplies: crocheted ribbon and charm from Quixotic Paperie; flowers and jewel brad by Papermania; spacer from The Hobby House; pearls from my stash; leaves punched using Leone Em "Ash Family" punch.

Quixotic Delights

Woo hoo! I was lucky enough to win blog candy last weekend, and it was a £15 voucher to spend in the online shop run by Elaine called Quixotic Paperie.

I quickly went online (as you do) and was thrilled to discover that she has some really yummy goodies in the shop - quite a few ranges of rubber stamps and also fabulous embellishments including some really unusual charms and ribbons. I got completely engrossed in browsing and must have filled and then emptied my basket several times as it was so hard to choose!

Eventually I decided ... Elaine delivered fantastically quickly and here's what I received - how gorgeous is all this??

You may not be able to see on this pic, but the little charms at the bottom have the word "friends" on them as well as a flower or butterfly .. I haven't seen any like this elsewhere, nor indeed the cute trees or gorgeous and very substantial keys. And as for that crocheted ribbon - fab!!

So if you haven't visited Elaine's shop yet I suggest you go there .. I certainly wasn't in any way disappointed and will definitely be popping back in future :-) Thanks very much Elaine for my win ... first creation using this stuff is soon on it's way!

PBSC Mini Candy Winner

Thanks so much to everyone who visited my blog and left such kind comments about last week's card, and entered my belated PBSC birthday mini-candy. There were lots of stunning cards and I was really torn - I would have liked to send a little prize to every one of them!

However after much deliberation I have picked a winner, and it is

Sue from Sue's Rubber Stamping Adventures

I really love the vibrant colours on Sue's card and the fab vintage stamp she has used - in fact Sue makes lots of lovely cards using vintage PB's - do check them out :-)

And here's the mini package of goodies you have won!

So Sue ... please email me your details and I will pop this little package in the post for you :-). If I don't hear from you by next Saturday I will pick another winner as there were so many fabulous cards to choose from.

Hope to see you all back in the challenge this week!

Hugs

Penny Black Challenge #56 - Red, White & Blue

Happy Saturday, and welcome once again to week 56 of the Penny Black Saturday Challenge. Hope you have all been enjoying the hot weather, but was glad to see that so many of you wisely stayed out of the sun for long enough to get to grips with Nat's sketch last week - there were some fab entries.

Many thanks also to those of you who visited my blog last week to enter for my belated PBSC birthday mini candy - I really enjoyed looking at all your creations and I'll be back later with the winner.

Onto this week's challenge, which honours the fact that today is Independence Day in the USA ... yes, you've guessed it, we would like you to use the colours

red, white and blue

As usual, you can interpret this however you want, so long as we can see a Penny Black image or sticker somewhere on your creation. The DT have been busy as usual, so please do go check out their blogs to see their inspiring creations.

Here is my card ... now I have to hold my hand up and say I struggled a bit with this as I don't really "do" red (unless it is teamed with green for Christmas lol!), so I had to raid my stash to find some suitable materials. I think I used my one and only piece of red, white and blue paper in the house ... so everything else really fell out from that.


Recipe:

Main image: Penny Black transparent set "Every which Way", coloured with Twinkling H2O's;

Sentiment: Penny Black;
Papers: DCWV "Pocket Full of Posies" stack;
Supplies: image and matting cut with "peony" nestabilities; white glitter card punched with MS Doily lace punch; Papermania red gems; Doodlebug sugar coated brads; charm from The Hobby House; various flowers and fibre from my stash.

This week we have a gorgeous prize kindly donated by our new sponsors - Clair and Sharni who are Stampin' Up demonstrators at Valentine's

One lucky winner can win this gorgeous stamp.

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