I Love Turquoise!

Always have - and I really love turquoise when it's teamed with purple and a hint of silver.  They were the colours of my bedroom when I was about 13 - I think it was the first time I'd been allowed to choose and we even found some bedding and curtains in the same colours -I absolutely adored the finished room and as a sulky teen I spent a lot of time in there!  I'm still drawn to those colours.... I wonder if that purple Radley bag on my list will be under the tree on Christmas day.....

This week the Daring Cardmakers reach the very last birthstone of our year-long series and it couldn't really be a better stone to round it all off.  December's birthstone is the Turquoise (in case you hadn't guessed), so we're asking everyone to use the Turquoise as the inspiration  for this week's card-making.

We have a prize to give away this week too - a fabulous set of flourishes and stones is generously given by  Australian company 

Flourish With A Bling!

Head over to the DCM blog to find out how you can win these gorgeous goodies

I did plan to make a glittering snowflake card but then I remembered that in my last box of delights from The Craftz Boutique were some lengths of tulle and one of them was turquoise, so I changed my mind and made a birthday card instead.

I used:

December sketch from The Sketch File
Rosette made from lengths of Tulle, Organza ribbon, Satin ribbon, large sparkly brad, 

dots of turquoise Ice Stickles on the tulle.

White card embossed with Cuttlebug Swiss Dots matted onto turquoise Bazzill Bling card, 

Long rectangle is Doodlebug Sugar Coated card, White lace slotted with narrow turquoise gingham ribbon. Sentiment is Robo-cut from the same Bazzill Bling using a slightly "engineered" Scriptina font

We'd love you to join in with our Turquoise challenge - it's such a fabulous colour to craft with and we're all looking forward to seeing what everyone makes this week.  You can see the cards the DT have made, and find out how to join in by visiting the DCM BLOG.

The Sketch File and Get Funky join forces!

 

Above is thee new sketch on the Sketch File, and you can also see it, and how the design team have used it for their December projects HERE.  We're thrilled to bits that this month's sketch is also being used for the Get Funky" Challenge blog, so there are even more inspiring projects to be seen for using the sketch - plus both teams have used Fabulous Funky Hand papers and other digi goodies to make all the things you can see on both blogs.

I used the "Contented Coffee" collection from Funky Hand's Colour Me Happy CD to cover the notebook and to make most of the decorative bits

 I first loosened the wires and removed the flimsy covers of the original notebook.  I cut slightly larger new covers from cereal packet chipboard.  The notebook is a "reporters" notebook so I printed 2 sheets of  the gingham design to cover them, trimming a few cms of the short side so that when the paper was folded around there was about 2cms margin all round on the reverse. 

At this point I used the original covers as a template to punch the holes at the tops of the new covers, then the book was reassembled.

All the papers are Funky Hand , even the flowers used for the focus decoration. To make the flowers strong enough to use in a 3D way I laminated a sheet of the flowery paper for extra strength then cut out some of the flower shapes and sewed buttons front and back to get the dimension then added some Stickles to the tops - when the glitter was dry I added a coat of Glossy Accents.

 Once all the decorative bits on the front were done I used another sheet of the FH paper to cover the inside of the new covers - leaving this till last means that if you've used brads or sewn things on to the covers all the messy bits will be concealed!

Summary of Materials:

All papers from Colour Me Happy (Funky Hand), Cereal packet chipboard, Buttons, Gingham ribbon, Pom-pom trim, Laminator and laminator pockets, Titl is Robo cut, Stickles (Fruit Punch), lots of extra ribbon knotted through the wires to finish

Please do join in and leave your links on both the Sketch File and Get Funky! this month.  If you used even ONE Funky Hand product and leave a comment over there you'll be in with a chance of winning a prize.  Even if you don't have any FH stuff yet you can still enter as there's a freebie download available on the downloads section of the shop site.

The Sketch File is HERE

Get Funky! is HERE

I've somehow managed to get way behind in adding stuff to the blog so I'll try to catch up over the next few days - I'll also try to catch up with my blog-hopping which has rather gone to pot this week!

Anyway, thank you for visiting my blog, I hope you'll leave a comment before you head off again :-)