Double Challenge!

I just love these new Sweet Pea stamps and have decided to have a go at two challenges with this one (a first for me, lol). I have put this forward for Crafts and Me's first challenge and also for the DT call on Sweet Pea Stampers. I have used the gorgeous Dark Royalty stamp for this and coloured her with lots of Distress Inks (Tattered Rose, Weathered Wood, Spun Sugar, Tumbled Glass, Shabber Shutters, Mustard Seed and Milled Lavender). The bg paper is from the Papermania Sweet Nothings 6x6 pad and I've sponged the edges with Spun Sugar and Tumbled Glass and stamped a Dovecraft Fantasy Emblems swirl in the corners with Spun Sugar. The ribbon came from good old Woolworths (sadly missed), the butterfly was cut and embossed with my Cuttlebug and the bead, chain and charm from my stash.

Frog card

I found this lovely little frog stamp by Anita and couldn't resist making a card with it. I made a background with Alcohol Inks (Stream, Meadow and Lemonade) and stamped the frog on top with black StazOn. I cut the image out with the Nestability Dahlia die on my cuttlebug and then cut out the matting and layering with the same dies in shiny/glossy card. The background paper is from Papermania Secret Garden pad as is the borders (which were very fiddly to cut out!)

Birthday Treats

It was my friend's birthday (busy month March!) so I went to town and made her a Tunnel Card, a necklace and altered a little jar for her. The bgs for the card are made with Distress Inks in shades of blue and mauve and then a bit of glimmer mist over the top. I used all sorts of stamps and highlighted with a gel pen. The necklace is a very simple strung one using some pretty beads I found in my local craft shop and the jar is covered with a napkin then Cuttlebug'd butterflies and paper flowers added.

Beads turning blue . . .

I decided to make another 5 string necklace for my sister's birthday. I had forgotten how difficult it was to finish off but soon learned my lesson. The stringing part was really easy, then you have to thread each thread through a tiny crimp bead, then a 5mm bead, then a wire guardian, then back through the 5mm bead and then back through the crimp bead and crimp it tight. It went quite well with the first end of the necklace but the second end . . . !!!! First of all one of the strings decided to empty itself all over the floor - lucky for me only the small crystals and not the seed beads. Once they were rethreaded the fun started as I theaded each string through the crimp/bead/guardian/bead/crimp. The difficulty is in keeping all the threads tight, not helped by the fact that this time I had used thicker thread. By the time I was satisfied and ready to crimp the air was definitely blue. The earrings were not easy either as I had to thread the beads onto a headpin, make a loop and attach direct to the candelabra as there wasn't room for jump rings. Still my sister was thrilled with the necklace but I promise I shall not be making another one like this ever again!!

Birthday Gift

I made this black and white necklace for a friend for her birthday - it's made using 5 strings of different size black and white beads which are then twisted together. I then decorated a little box I gor from Hobbycraft to put it in by painting it with white Acrylic paint, adding Brilliance Moonlight White paint to give it a bit of shine and then scrunching up a piece of copier paper, dipping it into Brlliance Black and dabbing it onto the box. The image on the top is from the Crafty Individual set CI-265 stamped onto a piece of stampbord. I used the same image for the card matted and layered onto black and silver card and then black card and white card which has been embossed using the Diamonds in the Rough folder on m Cuttlebug.

Bling Maiden

I got out one of my favourite stamps to make a card the other day. It is the Bling Maiden from Aspects of Design Butterfly Beauties. I stamped it in black StazOn onto a background I had made by scribbling Marvey Metallic markers onto glossy card and spritzing with water. It was cut and matted using my trusty Nestabilities and then I added pearls and bling and flowers. The bg paper is from PaperMania Inspirations pad (Earthtones).

Corset Mingle

I recently joined a mingle where you had to send a Corset related item to the person on the list below you. I decided to make a handbag charm (really keen on these at the moment) with beads and shrink plastic corsets and then I made a little box for it with the same stamp (Hampton Art Clear Expressions ATC Corsets) embossed onto red glossy card and stamped the black box with a lace stamp using Brilliance Moonlight White. The most difficult part was threading the cord through the eyelets!

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 17 - Spring into Spring

Challenge 17 over on Crafty Cardmakers and this week's challenge is Spring into Spring which gave me the chance to use paper from the beautiful K&Co Daffodil Pad. The pad I've got is 6x6 so that made it really easy to use a 'scrapbook' type paper for a card by just trimming off a sliver round the edge and attaching it to a square card blank I made out of white card. I added some silver Sakura pen to the butterflies and bees to make them sparkle a bit too. Then it was just a case of a bit of Design Objectives Fancy Yellow Organza and Raffia ribbon stuck diagonally across, then a topper made by stamping the cute little hedgehog from the Penny Black Critter Party clear set and colouring it in with whispers and sakura pens then cut out with my Nestability Labels Ten using my trusty Cuttlebug, matting it with green card..

Flower Soft

I was watching Create and Craft the other day and they were demonstrating flower soft. I knew I had a box somewhere so I dug it out and made this card. I also dug out my Rubber Stamp Tapestry Floral Filigree Wreath stamps, RST pot stamp and Stamps Away Flower Montage stamps. I made a white square blank card and then stuck some paper from K&Co Tim Coffey Daisy Pad onto it. Then I matted and layered squares of white and gold card cut with decorative scissors. The aperture in the white square was cut with a Round Nestability with my Cuttlebug. I stamped around the apperture with leaf stamps in StazOn (Cactus Green and Eden Green) and made the pot of flowers with the pot (Brilliance Cosmic Copper) and flower and leaf stamps (StazOn Cactus Green, Eden Green, Fuchsia Pink and Sunflower Yellow). The ribbon was a tiny bit I found in a bag in my ribbon drawer.

Charm bracelet and Flip-flop box

I got this little flip-flop box in the Hobbycraft sale. I painted it with silver acrylic paint and made the flower out of card and silver foil, then added some black ric-rac.
I made this little bracelet for my niece from some charms I also got in the sale at Hobbycraft and little bead charms I made with beads I got free with a magazine.

Two Birthday Cards

These are cards I made for birthdays. I can't remember where I got the first stamp from, it's a basketball team. I stamped it onto a background I made with Distress Inks. The second one is a Dolly Mama Stamp called - you guessed - Bring Coffee. It's stamped on white and coloured with Whisper's Pens. The background papers for both cards came from a set from American Traditional Designs, Brights Cardstock Bundle.

Sweet Pea Stamps

I was tempted by my friend Vix to buy some of the Sweet Pea stamps. Both the stamps I got are by chin-chou-kuik. The first one is Dark Royalty. I did for my niece's birthday in shades of black and silver using Whispers pens, Distress Inks and Twinkling H20s. The background paper is from PaperMania's Inspirations pad and the word is from PaperMania. The flowers were made with punches.

The second stamp is Spring Luna. This was totally inspired by Vix! She is coloured, again, with Whispers pens and Distress Inks. The background paper is from DCWV Pocket full of Posies pad and all of the flowers, pearls, brads etc are from my stash but the ribbon is from a diminishing supply I got from good old Woolworths.

Mother's Day card

When I was visiting my friend Lucy she reminded me I only had a couple of days to make my Mother in Law a card for Mother's Day. And there I was thinking I had at least another week! So she very kindly let me use all her bits and pieces and this is what I came up with. The large image is a stamp from Artistic Stamper stamped in Sepia Archival ink over a background that I made by brayering Kaleidacolour Baby Powder onto white card. The sentiment was a stamp by Anita stamped in the same Sepia ink onto a scrap of the Kaleidacolour card. The matting layer was made by sponging Broken China Distress Ink onto card. After rummaging through her rather large stamp selection I found a lovely Day-Out Ticket stamp by Crafty Individuals so I used the same ink (Sepia) and stamped it on a left over bit of Kaleidacolour card and wrote and IOU on the back for a day out for my MiL. I made a pocket with yet another scrap of Kaleidacolour card and added a bit of a border Lucy had made with Artistic Stamper Lace Border stamp (hmmmm, can see I really NEED this stamp, lol). Luckily my MiL knows me rather well and knew who her anonymous card was from.

Crafty Cardmakers Challenge 16 - Feminine

The theme for the challenge this week over on Crafty Cardmakers is feminine so here's my card. I started with a cream card blank, took a piece of Laura Ashley Traditional paper and edged it with Marth Stewart Deep Edge Punch (Trellis). I stamped one of the ladies from the DeLartful Leo's Plate in Ultramarine StazOn, cut it out with an oval nestability and matted it onto another oval nestie cutout in blue. The paper flowers and brads are from my stash and the ribbon is from some I bought ages ago from good old Woolworths.

Third post in a day!

I know, nothing for days and then a whole load of posts at once, lol. Well I have been busy running people around and not had time to upload (that's my excuse). So here's my 3rd card. It was originally made for Crafty Cardmakers Tricolour challenge but although I had the card made in time I didn't forward it to the organiser! So here it is in all it's glory.

The rose motif is made from parchment and backed by pink card. The frame around it is made by cutting green card with 2 sizes of Nestabilities Labels One and then running it through the Cuttlebug with the Swiss Dots folder. I covered a piece of card with a lovely tissue I found in Tesco and then mounted my Parchment Rose and frame onto that. I added a little flower cluster I found in my stash and then a green strip of card topped with a pink strip of card that I ran through the Cuttlebug using the flower border strip from the With Love border set and mounted the lot onto a white 5 card.

Another quick card

For this card I used a background I had made some time ago by making a rainbow of Distress Inks across a piece of white card. I stamped one of the ladies from the Faces set from Stamp Attack in Black StazOn and matted and layered onto yellow and pink cards. I cut the bottom of one of the pink layers with a Fiskars Border Punch and then added the little yellow buttons which were from Goodware.

A Quick Card

I had joined a swap which required you to make a quick, simple card so this is what I came up with. I used backing paper from a pad by PaperMania (Venetian Skies in blue). Stamped the stems and leaves from a set of Acrylic stamps called Botanicals by Hot off the Press in black StazOn and added a flower with a brad from my stash. I finished off the card by adding a silver border peel-off round the edges.