Reasons to be cheerful ......

ONE:   I am really excited because the card I posted at the beginning of the month - the 'Shoes and Handbags' one - well, it was picked as one of the top 5 cards on the Passion for Promarkers Challenge blog that I entered it into!! My colouring skills must be improving, as there were 176 entries!! Have added my new badge over there ----------->> on the right!!

TWO:  This is my 150th blog post. OK - a bit random, but a little milestone for me. 

THREE: It's not raining and my greenhouse heater is working again - so will be all systems go in there later this week!

Moving on!! This is a card I made for my friend's little girl. The topper is from the Kanban -Sugar Buttons - Fairy Friends sheet! The base card is gold pearlescent card that I found at my local craft stall at Wimborne Market. I have never found it anywhere else - so if she has it in when I visit, then I have to stock up.

I matted the image onto a Spellbinders scalloped oval, cut from the gold. The pink stripe card used for the front mat, and the pink textured card used for the back mat, are also from the same craft stall (great value at 10 pick and mix sheets for £1). The pink flowery DP is of unknown origin - was lurking in my scraps box!! The silk and organza ribbons are form my (extensive) stash, as are the clear gems and little silk flowers. The letters were cut using my XCut Roma Alphabet die.

Don't forget that we still have our 'This is a Man's World' Challenge running over at Crafty Cardmakers and More. I am hosting this one - and have visited over 50 blogs already, looking at the amazing creations people have come up with. There is still time to get your entries is - it runs until this coming Sunday!! So get creating!!

I would like to enter my card into the following:

Come and Get It Challenge - Make It Girly

Back soon!!
Cxxxx

My Valentine!!

I have decided to go with some pretty unconventional colours for my husband's Valentine's card this year. I've got a thing about blue and green at the moment (the previous two posts have also had this colour combination!)- and couldn't tear myself away from it. So, here it is:

The image is from Pink Gem Designs - called Flower Heart. It comes in four colour ways - black, black outline, coffee and pink. I used the PNG versions to layer a black outline stamp on top of a black stamp. I then took my Promarkers and coloured the edges with Marine and the flowers with Green Shoot. This was cut out with the largest of my XCut heart nesting dies.

At this point, I decided it needed more height, so printed the image again twice - this time onto Papermill Spring Green card. I fussy cut out a layer slightly smaller than the original, and also the three largest flowers. Initially I was just going to leave them like that, but decided to colour over them with the Green Shoot pen - hence the slightly different colour in the middle. The centres of the flowers are coloured with Marine. I drew around the large heart die to create the Spring Green mat for the image to sit on. 

The base is made from a piece of Papermill Teal card. On top of this is the Spring Green embossed with Grand MBossabilites Dainty Dots. The next layer is Bazzill Bling, with a piece of DP from a cheap 6x6 Vintage paper pad. Another smaller piece of Bazzill Bling is topped with Spring Green embossed with Creative Expressions Cascading Hearts A4 embossing folder. 

The large piece across the centre is from a Create and Craft Textured effect pad. The ribbon is a green/gold colour. I was instantly drawn to it when looking through my ribbons, but then hummed and hawed about using it. Having exhausted all other possibilities (and believe me I have a very extensive ribbon stash) I somehow couldn't find anything else I liked better. The small hearts are cut using the smallest of the XCut Heart and Scalloped Heart nesting dies. The two buttons and the pearls are from my stash.

I finished off by stamping his name and 'love you' with Blue China DI onto scraps of the Spring Green.

As I said - very unconventional colours - maybe even a little jarring for some people. But I kind of like that - and I hope he will too.

I am entering this into Papermill's Valentine competition. He has promised me he won't look at my blog until after he has seen the card!! 

Cxx

CCM&M 109 - This is a man's world!!

Yay!!!! It's my turn to host the challenge over at Crafty Cardmakers and More!! And I have chosen 'This Is a Man's World' - so any project suitable for a boy or a man. We are sponsored by Flourish with a Bling - who have a wonderful $15 gift voucher on offer. And also by The Stamping Boutique. They are offering 3 images of the winner's choice - BUT if the winner has used one of their images, then this goes up to 4 images!! Get on over to their website to check out their fab digis!! 

So, we all tend to moan about making cards for the men and boys in our lives - me as much as anyone else. I've lost track of the variations of football themed cards I've managed to come up with over the years. But, in truth, there are some really fabulous images out there for male cards - we just need to look!! Check out the DT inspiration on the CCM&M blog to see what they all came up with.

I have used an image from our sponsors The Stamping Boutique called AJ the racing car driver. 

I already had the striped backing card in mind when I chose this image, so I cut a little sample, stuck it on a piece of card and then matched my Promarkers to it. From these base colours, I added in a few more for blending, some skin colours and the Warm Greys for shading and the tyres.

I made my A5 base card using a piece of brown card from my stash. Both patterned cards are from a very old 12x12 DCWV Spring Glitter Stack. I used more of the brown to matt and layer, along with a piece of white card from my stash onto which I mounted the image. The blue organza and brown satin ribbons are from my stash, as are the buttons (the greens are from the Papermania Sew Lovely range). I tied a little twine through the buttons for added interest. Finishing touches are Cosmic Shimmer Aqua Twinkles on the front of the car, and Glossy Accents on the headlights.

I am really looking forward to seeing what you all make - and am sure I will be busy visiting your blogs over the next couple of weeks.

I would like to enter this into:

Glitter n Sparkle  - Buttons

Send a Smile for Kids - For the Boys

Cxx

Shoes and Handbags

A friend asked me to make her a 40th birthday card to give to a friend. The theme I was given was 'shoes and handbags'. After a little bit of searching I came across the perfect thing in the Wedding section at Just Inklined - their Fashion Shoe and Wedding Purse digi stamps.

The feather effect on the back of the shoe, made me think of peacock feathers, so I decided to to for that kind of colour combination. To help me (and to give me an idea of the shading on a shoe), I made myself a mood board.

I started with using the PNG versions of both files, so I could place the bag slightly behind the shoe. The image was printed onto 300gsm Elegance card. I chose the following Promakers to colour the image:

These picture hopefully show the stages of colouring in the image. Am getting better at it - but still need a lot of practice. If you have any colouring advice or tips, please feel free to leave a comment on this post. 

And here is the finished card.

I used a 6" square base card, with a large green mat. The next layer of white is embossed with the XCut A4 Butterfly Pattern embossing folder, and edged with the Umber pen. The strip of mink card is Centura Pearl embossed with Grand MBossabilities Dainty Dots, and the blue layer is Bazzill Bling. I used a little Cosmic Shimmer Aqua Twinkles on the flowers, and the ribbons and pearls are from my stash. Finally the numbers were cut with XCut Roma Alphabet die set.

Passion for Promarkers have an 'Anything Goes' Challenge this week - so am going to enter this card.

And if you have dropped by and like what you see, please feel free to follow my blog. Leave a comment to let me know how you have signed up - either through Blogger or by email. I really appreciate your interest.

Be back soon!!

Cxxx

What's in a name?

Well, having put myself through it on Wednesday, I woke up Friday feeling like a cold was coming on. By Saturday morning I knew I was right - but still made the effort to do parkrun. As lunchtime approached I felt as rough as you like. Have ended up spending Sunday and Monday in bed. Am feeling somewhat better now - am back working tomorrow - so hopefully will be OK.

Anyway, I make birthday cards for a lot of my friend's children - and sometimes struggle to come up with a unique theme. Here's one I made a liitle while ago, and this time, I went just for the name. 

The A5 blue base card is made from my stash. I then chose the papers I wanted to use. Surprisingly, the ones I chose came from Papermania's 'The Little Cake Shop' collection. Not all the papers are cupcakes and girly colours! A long time ago I bought a set of very large letter stencils. I used them to cut out the letters in the three colours. I then mounted them onto another piece of the blue card, and cut round them. 

I then used the same three papers to create the mats and layers. The wide red satin, green gingham and blue ric-rac ribbons are all from my stash, as are the buttons and clear dew drops (I took the photo before the glue was dry - so they look white!!) Sam was very please with his card - and it is now stuck to his bedroom door!

I would like to enter this into:
Send A Smile 4 Kids: Anything Goes (For Kids)
Alphabet Challenge: Y - Young card for a little one (I hope being 9, classes as a little one)

Back soon,
Cxxx

Homage to parkrun!!

(picture from parkrun)

If you have read any of my earlier posts this year, you will remember that I have mentioned parkrun. To quote from their website:

'parkrun organise free, weekly, 5km timed runs around the world. They are open to everyone, free, and are safe and easy to take part in.'

My husband was the first one to catch the 'parkrun' bug, closely followed by my stepson, Sam - and then of course myself. So much so that I chose to go for a run this morning. Great idea - you say! And I was also applauding myself!  But in my enthusiasm I forgot a couple of important things. First - to take my daily morning inhaler!! And second to take my other inhaler with me. Because of the cold (and this is why I have avoided running in winter 'til now) I ended up sounded like an old squeezebox - sore and painful. But I did get round 1.5 miles - and am glad I got out there. Lesson learned!

Anyway onto something more important. My stepson, Sam, started his involvement in parkrun by first coming over to our local Poole parkrun. But when the Bournemouth one was set up, he was there right from the word go at the first run - and has been an active member ever since, including writing race reports and interviewing 'Runners of the Week'. So, it seemed appropriate that this year, I incorporated it into his birthday card.

I have used one of the many great parkrun logo pictures as the focal image for the card. As you can tell, my camera didn't do justice to the vibrant green of the logo picture - it came out rather yellow! But looking at the top of the page will give you the right idea.

The picture was printed onto Elegance card, and I then chopped it into three. The base Kraft card is from Papermill, as is the Teal card on top of it - which is embossed with Grand MBossabilities Dainty Dots. I embossed the white card with one of my many new embossing folders - this one was Flower Power from CC Die'sire Embossalicious 8x8 range. I inked over the embossing and around the edge with Crushed Olive DI.  On top of that is another piece of the Kraft card. 

The pictures are mounted onto lime green Bazzill card, then Teal texture effect card (from C&C). All of these are on top of more cream and dark brown textured card. I used a mini alphabet stamp set to randomly stamp the greeting, and edged it with Walnut Stain DI.The finishing touch is some matching buttons (from Papermania's 'Sew Lovely' range) with a piece of twine threaded through.

If you are interested in joining parkrun, then click on the link to go to their website and find your nearest run. I don't profess to be a great runner - I am always one of the last to finish each week - but I do get a sense of achievement and the knowledge that I am keeping myself fit and active.

And Sam? Well, when he isn't taking photos as he runs round(!), he's usually in the top 20 or so finishers!! And these days (hangovers excepted!!!) he's usually a lot faster than his Dad!! Happy Birthday Sam!! 

I would like to enter this into:
Deep Ocean Challenge - Birthday
Love to Create - Button It Up

Make My Monday - Kraft card

Now I've cooled down from my run - I can go and get myself ready for the rest of the day! Bring it on!!

Cxx

New CCM&M Challenge - and a Thank You!

There's a new challenge on over at CCM&M. This week it's the turn of the Pixies and they have been working on Kim's Challenge of Black and White. Sponsors this time are Woodware, and Di's Digi Stamps. Pop over to the blog for more inspiration and details.

As for me - here's another Thank You card - similar to the one I shared a couple of weeks ago. This time I used a piece of gorgeous printed Kanban cardstock, cut down and folded into an A6 blank.

The 'Thank You' is the Papermania Typography stamp again - stamped directly onto Bazzill cardstock with Timber Brown Stazon. Because the cardstock is textured, it gives a more vintage feel. I cut this out with a Spellbinders Label 8. The mat is cut from Centura Pearl with the Spellbinders Lace Doily Motif. The flower is Carnation Creations Shapeabilities - along with Floral Flourishes. I finished it off with a couple of Creative Expressions hat pins. 

I would like to enter this into:
Brown Sugar Challenges - Anything Goes

Sister Act Card Challenge - Anything Goes

Just a quick post today - but will be back with more soon! 

Cxx