July Elemental Inspiration Challenge

 

Hello!

It's been the kind of week where finding time to do any 'noisy' crafting tasks has been tricky because OH has had so many meetings and video calls! Whilst he always uses a headset for these, my electric die-cutter is still a bit invasive so I'm only able to use my hand operated mini cutter - which of course only cuts smaller dies.

Anyway, I shouldn't moan - if I were better organised there probably wouldn't be any problem at all 😉

This week my turn to set the monthly Elemental Challenge for the Daring Cardmakers came along:

Its the first Friday of the month so time for our

 July Elemental Inspiration Challenge

I thought I'd have a go at creating my own picture this time, so gathered together a host of things to use.  There's no theme, its just a rather random assortment of crafting bits an bobs, but I hope you will find some inspiration to kick-start your creativity!
Just choose at least three elements from the picture to use when you make your card.

See what my lovely teamies made HERE - they are all absolutely stunning

 Bearing in mind the things in the photo are all my own, it was actually quite hard to decide what to use for my card!

In the end I used the stencil, tissue paper, bottles flowers and a frame

 

 

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I started by die cutting the bottle shapes and colouring them with blue inks. Once dry I added a layer of Glossy Accents to each and left them to dry overnight. Using my favourite stencil and adding a few shapes to the corners of the card base using a pale pink Tonic mousse. 

From the tissue paper I tore a piece to adhere across the card and added the Scribble Flower frame (Tonic Studios) which I'd cut from gold card, along with a few spare leaves

Next I die cut some lily of the valley flowers (Joanna Sheen) and made a few pink roses 

Once the bottles were dried I arranged all the bits and glued them in place. finishing with a handmade decal sticker sentiment

Thank you so much for coming by, please don't go without leaving a little message as I do love to know what you think.

 

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe,

 

Into the Garden

 

Hello!

Well, I'm happy to say that we'll be handing over £400 to our local hospice after another couple of donations came in after our Pizza and Pudding Night last week! As so many people just don't carry cash atm, we had an IOU notebook available on the night, and those donations have now come in.  Pretty good result for a fairly small street, I reckon.

It hardly seems five minutes since I posted last week's card, butt here's this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge , set by our lovely Nat

Into the Garden

Over the past year in particular, gardens have become important spaces for many of us. 

Whether just being a place to enjoy some fresh air, read a book in the sunshine, dine outside, or indeed witness the seasons change.

For this week's dare: 

We're celebrating the bounty of your garden or favourite outside space.

Click here to see what we've made this week

 

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The wood effect background paper is from a lovely 6x6 pad from Studio Light

All the dies used here are from a couple of Sizzix ets and cut from various scraps of Bazzill card, making good use of my scraps boxes! I just added the flower centres with dots using a black gel pen

 The sentiment is another version of one I used a few weeks ago - if I need to make a new one I generally make two copies, maybe in different fonts or different sizes.

Thank you so much for coming by, please don't go without leaving a little message as I do love to know what you think.

 

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe,

 

Just Checking, Pizza, Pudding and Fund-Raising!

 

Hello!

I'm late with my 'Friday' post - it's been quite busy around here for a change _ I'll add a bit more about that later! But here's this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge and my card

Just Checking!

 All we're asking this week is that you use some kind of check pattern on your cards. 
It could be stamped, embossed, patterned paper, stencilled, hand-drawn...
You could use checks as a background or as part of a design element of an image e.g. on a Chef's apron or tartan rug...
We're looking forward to checking up on your makes, but for starters here are some ideas from our fabulous design team to help inspire you
All we're asking this week is that you use some kind of check pattern on your cards.  

Click here to see what my fabulous Teamies have made this week

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I stencilled my check pattern by using a stripes stencil first vertically, then horizontally. I used a Spellbinders embossing folder to add texture to the rest of the card

The gold Scribbled Square Frames are by Tonic, as are the petal shapes I used to make the flower.  The deep aqua paper is from a Studio Light paper pad and I used some ready made black stamens and some gold micro beads for the flower centre. 

The sentiment piece elements are a pc generated check strip and Happy Birthday message with a piece of the gold card behind.

To complete I added some metallic aqua gems

 

 Well, I've mentioned before about the wonderful neighbours we have on this street, and how supportive everyone has been during these difficult months of Covid19.  Well, at one of our socially distanced Meet-in-the-Street Sunday drinks someone mentioned that they'd heard of a local Pizza Van company - I guess the kind of thing that usually parks up at festivals and other events to help feed the punters!  One thing led to another and once we were sure we could get the minimum 50 pizza orders it was booked to come and park on one of the neighbour's drive on Friday. Then the idea of adding a charity element to the event was suggested - if some people made cakes and puddings we could then have a donations bucket and maybe raise some money for our local hospice.  One of the neighbours is a wine merchant, so he decided to set up a wine table, also for donations.  Well, it all went swimmingly - almost literally as after a couple of weeks of blazing sunshine and high temperatures, of course it absolutely threw down most of Friday! Undaunted, gazebos were set up in front gardens and our garage (still pretty new and clean!) was earmarked for the pudding servery.  

In the end we were lucky as there was only some occasional drizzle during the evening, and everyone got into the spirit, collecting their freshly made pizzas from The Roaming Dough to either take away to their own gardens, or use one of the gazebos nearby for shelter.  

We had SO MANY puddings! Two trestle tables full of them and people came to help themselves and pop their donations into the bucket. We've just heard that we raised well over £350, just from selling pudding! 

Which from a street of around 30 households is quite a lot of pudding

 

 

Needless to say, there was plenty of cake and puddings left over so our garage had various visitors over the weekend popping back for more treats! I just feel so lucky to live in a place like this.

Thank you so much for coming by, please don't go without leaving a little message as I do love to know what you think.

 

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe,

 

Cascade

 

Hello!

This one has been sitting in Blogger for a few weeks, waiting for me to get round to adding some text.

It's a cascade card, made to celebrate the 90th birthday of  brass banding gentleman.  

Cascade cards are made with two 'wedge' shaped pieces of card,  linked together so that the card folds flat, but when the folds are pulled open you get the cascade effect which is fun to decorate with die cuts etc

 You can find instructions on the basic Cascade fold card by doing a quick search on the internet so I won't give them here.

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The card for the base is blue Bazzill and I found some music notes themed download papers on Etsy which I used to cover the various panels before adding the die cuts.

I've used various die sets from Paper Discovery and DoCrafts (Xcut) for the brass instruments and the other musical notation die cuts.

 

I had a lot of fun putting this together and it was much easier to do than it looks - which is always a good thing, isn't it!

 That's all for today, thank you so much for visiting, I hope you'll leave a comment, I do love to read them!

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe,

 

 

For a Superstar

 

 

Hello!

How are you?  Feeling tickety-boo I hope!

We had our second Covid vaccines at the end of last week, so that's good. I hope that wherever you are, you're also managing to get vaccinated and help with getting rid of this horrible disease.  In the way of these things, it took just a couple of months to start spreading across the world, but will take years to conquer.

I've not had much crafting mojo lately and  I think I need to give myself a big kick up the pants and get back into it! I do actually have projects on my to-do list and there are deadlines for them so I do need to find that mojo soon.

This week it was my turn to set the challenge for The Daring Cardmakers and after a lot of thought and rejected ideas I settled on something which turns out to hold a very lucrative vein of inspiration - I must remember this one!

Up the Flag Pole!

I find the flags of different nations so interesting - there are some wonderful designs to be found when you start looking, some simple and elegant, and some really wild and wacky ones!
So this week I'd like you to your inspiration from the flag of a country other than your own - there are plenty to choose from! or the colours...
This web-link has a huge number of flags from all sorts of interesting places which will give you loads of ideas: https://flagpedia.net/index

Click here to see what my fabulous Teamies have made this week

It was really hard to choose which flag to go for, but in the end I decided to go with the flag of Cuba, somewhere I visited a few years ago and found wonderfully inspiring on many levels. 

I adore that shade of blue, so decided to use the broad striped background from the flag design, but use more of the blue for the triangle, then supersize the star and make it gold for my 'well done' card

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I used a top fold square card, and masked off 2.5cm stripes with washi tape before inking the blue areas. I then chopped off the excess card from the bottom.  My maths is rubbish so I wanted to make those stripes nice and easy!

The blue triangle was cut from some matching pearlescent card, and then the  star made from 2 die cuts using embossed and glitter card.

Next I made the sentiment on the pc, I made a few versions as I didn't know which I'd like best once they were printed.  I'm not very decisive! 

Aster a tussle with the printer (why are they so contrary?) I managed to finish the card a day after I started it.  Which is ridiculous for such a simple design,  So to show who was boss I added an extra star punched from red glitter card.

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when you do!

Happy Crafting, and please take care of yourself.

Balloons for June

 

   Hello

Somehow or other I completely forgot to blog my card for the last Daring Cardmakers challenge, so as the new one is out tomorrow, I thought I'd better get on and post it quickly!

 Rizwana chose the mood board for our June Elemental Inspiration challenge

 "I've chosen a bright and Summery board with lots of Summertime treats and pleasures!
Just choose at least three elements (colour scheme counts as one element) from the picture to kick start your project."

 Click here to see this week's design team inspiration  

For my card I chose the Squares from the layout, the Balloons and the word 'Hello' as my main elements, but added some bright Summery colours in too.

 

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My base card is a smooth white square card blank stencilled with a Crafters Workshop stencil and a couple of shades of blue Nuvo Mousse from Tonic Studios. 

I then cut an aperture in the front of the card and added more blue colour to the inside where it shows through.

For the balloons I inked a few pieces of card then die cut the balloon shapes, arranging them over the aperture.  I added black and white baker's twine to the reverse. The loose ends of the twine were gathered up and the striped card glued over them to keep them in place.  To complete this card I made the 'Hello' sentiment using a similar font to that on the mood board

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when you do!

Happy Crafting, and please take care of yourself.

Make a Splash

 

 Hello

  Hope you had a lovely week. The weather is improving at last, which is a bit of a shock as its a Bank Holiday weekend!

They're now doing walk-ins at out local Covid Vaccination centre for the 2nd dose of the vaccine, so we're going to get that done asap instead of waiting till mid June for the appointments we were given.  It will be good to get that all sorted.

This week's Daring Cardmakers' challenge was a tricky one for me,
 but a challenge is a challenge and opting out just because its not an 'area' I'm into would be cowardly!

 it's Jenny here to host this week's challenge and  I wanted to squeeze this theme in before June comes along.  

 You're Mermazing!

May is a month to celebrate mermaids with artists and crafters sharing their projects using the hashtag #MerMay.  I'd love to see your mermaid inspired cards this week, check out the gorgeous makes form my design team colleagues just in case your imagination needs a little spark to get started.  I can't wait to see all your mermazing makes!

 Click here to see this week's design team inspiration  

 

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A smooth white square card blank, with a square of the same card coloured with a few aqua shades of Nuvo mousse, edges inked in black then adhered to the base card.

As usual when there's a tricky challenge, I turned to Etsy and hunted out some suitable digital papers.  This one comes from a fabulous collection of fish scale patterns by PixelJungle

Using  an image from the web as a guide I drew the mermaid tail shape and made a template.  I resized the digital paper before printing then used the template to cut the tail. I made a sentiment piece, glued it in place then finished the card with some glitter glue and some dew drops in clear and turquoise.

 

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when you do!

Happy Crafting, and please take care of yourself.

Hot, Steamy and Totally Tropical

 Hello

  Hope you had a lovely week.

We've been having crazy weather all this week.  Bright sunshine, downpours, hailstones, thunder and now its very windy too.  I'm sure my calendar says that its May, but.....

Ots quite nice that this week at the Daring Cardmakers we've put the cold behind us to play with more tropical themes

It's Rizwana here with this weeks new challenge and I've decided to go all tropical. I'm hoping it'll bring some warmer weather.  

 Tropical Paradise.

So for this weeks challenge I would like you to create a tropical card with your favourite tropical animal or bird. Lets see some vibrant colours and some tropical plants too.

 Click here to see this week's design team inspiration  

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A smooth white square card blank, with some blue ink shades smooshed around the central area.   

A piece of green Bazzill card, smooshed with various other green shades. A circle aperture was cut from the centre and the green layer adhered over the base card.

The tropical elements were cut using a Spellbinders die set.  I either inked some white card scraps, or used scraps of various bits of green card from my scrap box for the leaves, and inked white card for the flamingo and pineapple.

The large flower was made using a punch and some bright card, plus the flower centre from a Tonic die set

Finally I hunted out the smallest of my flower dies to cut in bright colours, and tucked another of my home-made white on black sentiments in among the foliage.

There's quite a lot of dimension to this card as I added bits of chipboard between the various layers, and the flamingo's wing stands out on a little 'hinge' of card

 

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when you do!

Happy Crafting, and please take care of yourself.

Proud as a Peacock

 

 

 Hello

  Hope you had a lovely week.

Just a quick post today as I'm very late; we were away for the weekend and despite having this nearly ready to post I just didn't get around to finishing it.

Joanne set the Daring Cardmakers' challenge for this week:

Proud as a Peacock

This week, I would like you to take inspiration from the beauty of the peacock 

for your card. You might choose an image of the bird itself, a 

beautiful “eye” feather or simply the gorgeous iridescent

 colours of a peacock’s plumage applied to other images

 - think rich blues, greens, purples and even a little bronze. 

Extra brownie points if you can work in a “proud of you” or “you did it!” theme!

 Click here to see this week's design team inspiration  

 

I decided to go with Peacock colours for my card, and circles to echo the 'eyes' on their feathers

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My base card is a smooth white square card blank covered with a piece of royal blue Bazzill card

Using lots of inks in peacock shades I covered an A4 sheet of smooth white card, then used a foam brush to cover it all over with a thin layer of PVA.  

While this was still tacky I added a few streaks and sprinkles of copper glitter.

Once totally dry I arranged various sized circle dies on the different  coloured areas and ran through the die cutter.  I repeated this until I had enough to arrange on the card.

The words were cut using a lime green card and a couple of die sets.  The numerals were also die cut, but I then coated them with adhesive and dowsed them with more of the copper glitter and allowing to dry before gluing in place

 

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when you do!

Happy Crafting, and please take care of yourself.

May's Elemental Inspiration challenge - more hot foiling

 

  Hello

  Happy Friday, I hope you've had a lovely week, its been very windy here at times and not very warm. The wind plays havoc with my hay fever, so its been a very 'drippy' week for me,

This week over at The Daring Cardmakers Miri has chosen the board for our monthly Elemental Inspiration challenge

Welcome to May!

I picked this picture for our monthly inspiration:

 Choose at least three elements (colour scheme counts as one element) from the picture to kick start your project.

 Click here to see this week's design team inspiration  

Having been quite pleased with my hot-foiling exploits last week, I thought I'd use the same hot foiling plate again - after all it looked to be a perfect match for the various dotty patterned squares on Miri's mood-board.

So, my chosen elements were; Squares, Dotty pattern, Blue flower and the heart

 

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My base card is a smooth white square card blank

The blue paper is a gorgeous heavily textured paper from Tonic Studios.  I glued some onto scrap cardstock before hot-foiling with the Spellbinders dots Glimmer plate then cutting into squares. 

The flower is made using the same paper and one of those fab die sets from Spellbinders which have several dies of varying sizes  . 

The heart is also from a multi-sized pack, cut in Tonic mirror finish card, 

For the flower centre I used a blob of Glossy Accents, added some shiny gems, then filled any gaps with those teeny weeny gold micro beads that manage to go everywhere you don't want them, and just occasionally in the place you do want them.

To pull all the components together I added a tiny sentiment, and a gold thread bow, plus some of the blue and gold jewels around the flower

Thank you so much for visiting today, I hope you'll leave a comment, I really appreciate it when you do!

Happy Crafting, and please take care of yourself.