Sunday 23 January 2011

Allsorts Challenge - Male/ Boys

Well now we are onto a subject that I have a lot of stuff for. Yet I was still lacking inspiration. So I delved into my craft stash and found the perfect CD. "Its a Mans World" from My Craft Studio. I got the CD in a bundle at the NEC last November. It was a free gift for subscribing to Crafts Beautiful magazine.



I just loved the lighthouse image.

The card is made using only the elements sheet, a few holographic peeloffs, holographic card and some gems. Who said you can't use bling on a man's card?

I jazzed up the images by spraying them with CC Spray and Shine so it was difficult to photograph without the shine reflecting too badly.

Cupcake Craft Challenge

Weddings. Not my favourite theme, although if I had ever decided to have a proper wedding it would not have been white but themed on the colour red. Or maybe purple. I'm the quick trip to the registry office type, which is exactly what I did.

My perfect wedding?





You can see the inspiration for the colour scheme of the card :).

The card was made almost entirely from Crafters Companions products. The exception is the sentiment and embellishments. The decoupage images (printed on high gloss photo paper) and backing papers (satin finish paper) are taken from the Popcorn Romance CD. The card is Centura pearl and the red paper taken from the special paper pack. The layout is based on one of the projects on that CD. I love the way CC cards are quite chaotic in their layout with masses of matting and layering. I found the bow and flower embellishments in a drawer. I think they were from a kit on a magazine but I can't remember which one.

Oh and I used red flowersoft to pop out the flowers in the bouquet and veil.

If I was a wedding person I could almost picture myself in the card. LOL.

Saturday 22 January 2011

Charisma Cardz Challenge

I made this card using the freebies from Let's Make Cards, Issue 38.



I am not very good with flowery papers and stuff. Most of my craft stash is bought with men in mind since I have a very male dominated family. I don't have much opportunity to do girly stuff except in practice cards. The card is a bit of a practice for a card for my niece's 21st birthday, but its not too bad. I made the flower embellishments from some paper flower shapes which I crumpled and then coloured using distress inks and dry foam.

By coincidence, I found the magic numbers challenge on Charisma Cardz, so I thought it was good enough to enter.

Sunday 16 January 2011

Allsorts Challenge - Teal and Brown

Teal and Brown card


I loved the idea of creating a card from two colours that I don't normally use, let alone together.

The card is made using Crafters Companion pearlescent card and some old brown card I found in my stash. The stamps are from Clarity Stamps. I used a Waterfall Big and Juicy for the verse. The edging was made using a Martha Steward punch.

Three posts and two new cards made, all in one day. I have been busy.

Crafters Companion Challenge - January 2011

In an effort to keep up with the blog, I am looking at papercrafting challenges to enter. I have entered the CC challenge before so I thought I would do so again. If I do one card a month for the challenge it can't be a bad thing. I also bought a load of papercraft magazines for inspiration at the weekend and I just loved the Daisy and Dandelion stamps that came with the January edition of Papercraft Inspirations.

 Pumpkin the cat


I made a 6" square card using the Ultimate Pro board (best scoring board around!) and then used the downloaded papers and the stamp. I found an old corner punch in my stash that made a pretty floral corner. I stamped the image using a Watermark stamp pad and then embossed using Sheena's ebony fine Wow embossing powder. The image is coloured in using Sakura pens. The picture doesn't do justice to the glaze but I promise that it looks nice and shiny. I also used the glaze pen around the edge of the circle nestie which really brought out the colour of the sage green distress ink. The card is finished off with the a peel off coloured green to match the colour scheme of the card and a few embellishments and ribbon I had lying around.

New Year New Start

OK - well I guess in the run up to Christmas I can use being busy as an excuse not to have posted anything and to a certain extent that was true. of course, the real reason is that I am hopeless at maintaining my focus on any one project and so I got distracted by other things. I did manage to make most of my Christmas cards and the following are pictures of those worth showing.

Hunkydory Luxury Christmas

Hunkydory Luxury Christmas

Hunkydory Luxury Christmas

Hunkydory Luxury Christmas

I love HunkyDory products. They are such good quality and you get so much in each of their kits. I do sometimes find myself lacking in inspiration though. I need to work on that.

Sheena Douglass Scenic stamps

Sheena Douglass Scenic stamps

The same cannot be said for the fantastic Sheena Douglass stamps. I loved playing around with these. The stamps lend themselves to so many different ways of using them. If I had bought these earlier I would probably have done no Christmas shopping and we would have had ham sandwiches for Christmas dinners. Did I say I loved them? I had so much fun and each card was really quick to make.

Christmas Flower Fairy

Popcorn

Popcorn

Having played around with Sheena's stamps I rummaged through my stamp collection and made some cards using the wonderful Crafter's Companion stamps and the CD artwork that goes with them. The Hunkydory Diamond sparkles are also great for adding a border to toppers.

I love stamping!

I also took a leap of faith and bought one of the sets of Grand Nestabilities with fingers crossed that some of them would fit in my Sizzix machine. They did. In fact, of the one I bought, only the largest would not fit on the cutting plates. I would love the Caliber machine but there is nowhere to fit it on my craft desk and I have promised DH that I will economise this year AND I only got the Sizzix a year ago.

I have no room left in my craft workstation to put anything now so I need to use up my existing stock of card and paper and inks and colouring stuff and embellishments etc.