Funky Fairys Challenge

This is the card I made for the first Funky Fairy's challenge which again is Valentine - I'm loving the excuse to make all these Valentine's cards! - I have used the sentiment and a heart image from the 'All you need is love' free download from Funkyfairy Inspirations, added lace to the edges of the heart, doodled on it with Sakura glitter pen and added a heart charm. I inked the edges of the dotty backing paper and stamped a couple of flourishes in the corner. The ribbon is black velvet and has a piece of cream ric rac ribbon on top to finish it off. Hope you like it.

Sugar Bowl Challenge 3

Love and romance is the theme for this weeks challenge at the Sugar Bowl and the card I made is below. I have used the gorgeous Leanne Ellis image coloured with Promarkers and a Heidi Swapp sentiment, ribbons and buttons from my stash.

Tagged

I have been tagged by June
The rules are that you go to your photo albums on your pc (or in my case Mac), open the 6th album, choose the 6th picture and explain.
The photo is of my mum - Neil was trying to get a portrait of her that he could use on her website. This was not the picture he used in the end but I actually like it better although she does look a bit serious, take a look at the website (which is still under construction after at least a couple of years!!!) and see which you prefer.

I now need to tag five others so I'm going to get back to this a little later......

Pollycraft blog candy

Blog Candy up for grabs at Pollycraft, they have some fabulous new stamps about to be released, go and have a look - a great opportunity to win some!

Toilet Roll mini book

Saw a great tutorial over here at Annie's Antics and couldn't resist having a go. Really enjoyed doing this and now no 2 son Evan wants one of him so have started saving up more toilet rolls! The result follows, let me know what you think.

Twinkle, twinkle.

Been trying to build up my card stocks a bit before the first craft fair of 2009 so was looking for new images - get a bit fed up with the stamps when trying to do a lot of different cards - anyway Pink Petticoat had these great new images. She's called Twinkle and that's just what she does! I also got some of the great new backgrounds but my printer is really low on ink at the mo so I used something I had already printed off some weeks ago. The image was coloured with a few odd Copics I found in the cupboard, knew I had some somewhere but came across them by accident the other day, the colours were pretty limited but I think they worked out alright.



In case anyone was wondering, we finally got our heating up and running again after 3 very cold days. We were all going around wearing as many layers as we could squeeze into!!

Another shot at ATCs

Because I enjoyed doing the Feathered Friends in my earlier post so much I managed to fit in a few more this week, just done for fun and not for any challenges.
The first two have alcohol ink backgrounds and the third one was done with distress inks, the boy with fish image is from Paper Artsy.







If anybody would like to swap please let me know, Heidi and Lorraine get first dibs!

Stamp Something challenge

Thought I'd enter this card into the Stamp Something weekly challenge. The challenge over there is Birthday Somethings and the winners prize will be stamp sets from Starving Artistamps - definitely worth entering for!

Shivering

I'm sitting here shivering at the moment waiting for the central heating engineer to show up, isn't it Sod's law that when it snows the pilot light on the boiler goes out and can't be lit again for love nor money??!! The engineer spent a couple of hours yesterday trying his best to get it going again but had to admit defeat and went off saying he'd go into Edinburgh for a new part this morning and return to fit it this afternoon - can't be soon enough as far as I'm concerned! This is my day off - it's always like an oven in the library where I work - Sod's law I tell you!

Another Papertake Weekly Challenge

Decided to have another go at the Papertake Weekly Challenge whose theme this week is 3 shapes. The heart image is once again a stamp with no info on it so I'm not sure where it came from, the sentiment is by Mary Hughes at papercraft4you.co.uk. I coloured the image with Prismacolour pencils and added some sequins & diamante bling to the corner, the ribbons are from my stash.

Sugar Bowl Challenge

Just wanted to show another challenge I've done this week before I have to go and get ready for work.
This weeks theme on the Sugar Bowl challenge blog is Three.
Three different backing papers and three different embellishments - my papers were from Papermania and the the embellishments were the buttons, the fibre and the tag. The image is True Love from Leanne Ellis.
Thanks for looking!

Fantasy

The subject of the second Charisma Cardz challenge is fantasy - great I thought, another opportunity to use my Lavinia Stamps 'Fairy House".
I coloured the image with Prismacolour Pencils and Sakura glitter pens then die cut it using a Nestabilities die and inked the edges. The DP is from Papermania, I distressed the edges with sandpaper, added a ribbon, some star shaped eyelets and pink cord. I then used a Fairy image also from Lavinia Stamps and stamped onto shrink plastic and then hung that from the cord. I finished by adding some tiny iridescent stars and a computer generated greeting.

Feathered friends

Wanted to do something with the alcohol inks I bought before Christmas at the Stitch and Craft show in Edinburgh. I only have a few colours at the moment but can see I'm going to have to buy some more! Anyway I made this set of ATCs which also incorporate a set of stamps which I bought at the show, they are from Inkadinkado



The set is available for swapping if anyone is interested!

Papertake Weekly Challenge

This is my entry for the sketch challenge at Papertake weekly challenge Dawnys Sketch #6. I have used an image I got free from Paper Artsy, some backing paper from Pink Petticoat (for the corners), sorry no manufacturers names for the main backing paper or the sentiment - have thrown the packaging away! Ribbon and buttons are from my stash.

2nd challenge today

This is my entry for the Sketch Saturday blog sketch no 33.



I've no idea who to credit for the stamped image - there is no info at all on the wood block but I think I got it from a Stampin Up friend. The backing paper I've used is from Papermania and the sentiment is from Pink Petticoat. I have used a clear Sakura glitter pen on the stamped image but the camera was unable to pick up enough detail to show it.

Charisma Cardz first challenge

Decided to enter this card for the first Charisma Cardz challenge which is Pink.



The backing paper is a free download from Artymiss, the image is Lily & Milo from Rachelle Anne Miller, the corners are sizzlits die cut and the bird is cut by hand and doodled with white Sakura glaze pen.

Will be back later with another challenge entry.

Blog Candy at All the things I love

The very generous Bev has a fantastic blog candy giveaway over here to clebrate 100000 hits. Congratulations Bev!

Something different

Got this gorgeous stamp the other day from Lavinia Stamps, it's called Fairy House and I think it's fab! I coloured the image with my Prismacolour pencils and picked out some of the detail with glossy accents. I distressed the edges of a circle of backing paper to layer behind the stamped image, then mounted both on Basic Grey paper. I then punched a hole in the corner and added some fibre to finish it off. I love it, what do you think?

Let the fairy in you fly

That's the sentiment I used on this card which I did yesterday as a competition entry but have now had second thoughts about. Will try another design today if time permits.

Please forgive the bad photo - the colours on the card have not come out well at all, the flower looks as if it clashes with the rest of the card, when in fact it tones in quite well! The light or should I say the lack of it, has been bad over the last few days.

Had a call from someone last night who wants to come round this morning to buy a fairy so I have to go and tidy and find the few bits of glass I have left after all the Christmas fairs - I think I have only 2 fairies left so really must get started again soon, the first country market of the year is on the 7th of February, not too far away really!

2 Challenges

Have managed to do 2 challenges today, firstly I did the Stamp Something challenge for this week which was to do something new - I used my brand new Fairy stamp from Lavinia Stamps which arrived only yesterday to make this card:



Then I tried the sketch 32 challenge over at Sketch Saturday which has been set by Emma from Sassy Crafts.


This is my entry:



Let me know what you think!

10 from 2008

Just been over having a look at Kath's blog and she has listed her top ten projects from the last year - all fabulous by the way - which inspired me to do my own little review of the crafty year.

2008 was a bit of a year of firsts for me, I did my first Scrapbooking pages, I tried ATCs for the first time, I got involved in a couple of forums which I'd always been a bit too shy to do before which in turn led me to have a go at blogging. I also started my own Scrapbooking group, at the library where I work, which I'm really enjoying and I'm looking forward to expanding it this year so if there is anyone out there in blogland from the Midlothian area interested in joining you would be given a very warm welcome!

Anyway, going back to the fave projects from 2008, (it was quite hard to choose, I don't actually have photos of many of the cards I made - quick turnover sometimes) but here is my top ten - quick before I change my mind!

First a layout of my gorgeous daughter Lynsey,



a couple of cards





an ATC



another card



another ATC



Page from a wedding album made for Lynsey's friend Susie



quick card



advent calendar made for a challenge on the Trimcraft website



and finally the Christmas card I made for Lynsey



Why not have a look back over your 2008 craft projects and choose your own favourites, let me know if you do so I can have a look!

Been playing

As I had a little spare time before going back to work tomorrow, I thought I'd try out a couple of stamps I got way back at the end of November when there was no time to do anything that wasn't Christmas related! So thought I'd do a couple of ATCs for a change. The stamps are from Paperartsy and I've had a go with my new alcohol inks for the background on the first one.





I also made a few cards, firstly for Clare's Challenge on the Docrafts site, the challenge was for any kind of card but had to be done and dusted in 20 minutes, mine actually took only 15 so I hope it still qualifies!

This was the challenge card - can you tell?



The other two weren't for anything special.





So that's about it - the holiday is over. I'm working tomorrow and school starts again on Tuesday so it's back to setting the alarm for 6.30am, which will no doubt feel like the middle of the night for at least another few weeks until the mornings start to get a little lighter. Off to see if I can squeeze in another card while I've still got time!

Blog candy

Just discovered a great stamp website, their images are fab and funky and I'm dying to get my hands on some. There is an opportunity to win some of their brand new releases so go and have a look at their blog Starving Artistamps and check out the website over here

June's new blog

My friend June from June's Arty Retreat has launched a new blog all about her gorgeous paper jewellery - definitely worth having a look at! She is offering some blog candy to celebrate the launch - go and take a look over here.

Sugar Bowl Challenge

This is my entry for the very first Sugar Bowl challenge. The stamp is my favourite from Sugar Nellie at the moment although it's hard to choose a favourite - there are so many fab stamps!

Crafty presents

As money was a bit tight this Christmas I decided to make a few presents for my family. I made a box of mixed cards for my Mum with a variety of cards to save her having to go and buy birthday cards, a set of notecards in a box for my Aunt, notebooks for my Nieces to go along with their customary Topshop vouchers, and scrapbooks for my two Sisters. Here are a few pics of some of my creations, first there are a few of the pages from Gillian's Scrapbook -













and these are the 2 notebooks for Emma and Rachael.