Mo-vember

 November is being touted as Mo-vember - the month of the moustache, or maybe its just an excuse not to bother with the shaving gear and have that saved time for an extra few minutes snooze in the morning.

Now, Facial Topiary really doesn't do it for me at all, but each to their own, eh?

So  anyway it's Samm's turn to set the dare over on the Daring Cardmakers and this is such a fun one - as you might have guessed from my intro we've a Moustachio challenge  this week - and I reckon that "on a card" is just the best and most fun place to see a moustache!

The BLOG looks fab, so please check out what the girls have been doing this week.

I've had my card made for a few weeks.....no I'm not really a Mrs Swotty-Knickers, its just that I'd spotted and saved an image ages ago that would be perfect for my pizza-loving cousin's birthday card, and then Samm added her challenge to our calendar and Bob's your uncle, or Colin's your cousin....

 The image is from a free colouring page I found on the net and converted in PSP to cut on my Craft Robo.  Contact me if you'd like a copy of the template.

By chance I'd just taken delivery of a paper pad with the moustache paper in - how fortuitous was that then!

Materials:

Brown 14cm sq card blank Papers all from Echo Park "Times and Seasons 6x6 pad, White, Peach, Brown and Black card, Glossy Accents

Tools:

Craft Robo, Promarkers, Nesties Circles die

I had a great time making this and its such a fun idea for a challenge - just the thing to have a bit of a laugh with, so I'm hoping lots of people will join in and have some Moustache Madness with their cards this week.

Anice of Funky Hand is celebrating her birthday with a 43% off sale today - I'm sure you can guess why that odd number!  Check out the Fabulous Funky Bargains HERE

http://www.funkyhand.com/

 This time last week we'd just arrived at the venue for our Segway Rally Racing "experience".  It was fun!  I didn't bother with the "racing" bit and just concentrated on getting round the twisty, bumpy circuit safely - round and round I went - apparently all of the others fell off at least once but I stayed on.  And then as we were just standing around at the end I got too close to hubby's segway, wheels met and off I fell.  We set off again this time going as fast as we could back over the field to where we'd left our stuff, and blow me if I didn't come a cropper again, this time landing flat on my face.  Oh the indignity of it all! hahaha

 I'm going to try to catch up on my blog-hopping over the weekend as it's been ages since I had a good old ramble around to see what everyone is up to, but for now, I can't put it off any longer; back to my Christmas Card Making week I go, thanks for visiting today

Stockings and an Experiment

I'm deeeeeep into my week of dedicated Christmas card making but thought I'd take a break this afternoon and update my blog with a couple of ideas I've been trying out.

The first I'm happy enough with to have made a few of and it's a good chance to also mention that tomorrow is Funky-Anice's Birthday and to celebrate there's a Birthday Sale at Funky Hand with some really fab offers....

For instance you could grab for a bargain price the Twelve Crafters Crafting CD - I used the "Xmas Presents" papers and the cute "2 Stockings" image from the CD to make this card

Materials:

Papers and Image by Funky Hand

Silver crochet thread, homemade decal sentiment, Silver Stickles

This second card was a bit of an experiment as I finally received the Memory Box dies I've had on pre-order for a couple of weeks ....oh the thumb-twiddlingness of waiting..... :(

I've used the tiniest of the Spellbinders Nesting Baubles set and it's oversized for the tree die - but does it look like a mistake or does it look cute in it's oversizedness?  It does actually look better in the real than in the photo. 
What do you think?  

 Materials:

MME Stella and Rose papers,

Gold Ice Stickles, gold card, homemade decal sentiment

Tools:

Spellbinders Nesting Baubles, Memory Box Winter Tree die, Craft Robo to cut hangers and circles for sentiment

Maybe I'll see how it looks using the even tinier Cuttlebug bauble or maybe I should cut out some with one of my Craft Robo templates - I guess I was just being lazy by not doing that in the first place.

Thanks for visiting - a message would be fab if you've time to leave one :)

Get Funky at the Double

I'm really playing catch-up today!  Not only was I late to blog my DCM card, but Friday  was also my turn to share my project for the latest Get Funky challenge.  I thought I'd make a separate post for each - hence two posts on the same day (and probably none for the rest of the week hehehe) 

Our hostess this month is Jackie and she announced the new challenge on the Funky 15th November - so it's pretty new and there's a nice long time to go if you fancy having a go at winning yourself a prize - now that would make a lovely little Christmas present for yourself, wouldn't it?

The challenge this week is to share TWO projects:

1. A Christmas project using "Traditional colours" meaning red, green, gold, silver etc not the lilacs or blues etc which are around at the mo
2. A non Christmas card or project using Christmas papers please.

The DT will all be using the latest CD "Twelve Crafters Crafting" for BOTH our projects.  We're trying to show that this collection is not just stuffed with Christmas themed stuff, but has plenty to offer you for the rest of the year too.

If you've visited my blog recently you'll know that I try to keep my Christmas cards fairly simple so that I can soon see a nice big batch sitting on the windowsil, glitter drying!

So I stuck with that idea for the first part of the challenge and shared a few of the cards I've been making using the "Vintage Christmas" sett from the CD :

I've made a belated birthday card for my non-Christmas card using Christmas papers - I've used EIGHT different papers on this one - so that's proof that there's a lot of designs on this CD that you'll be able to use at any time of the year - this fab colour-way is the "Xmas Presents" set and I absolutely adore these rich, vibrant shades - so expect to see them on some Christmas cards soon too!

We're hoping you'll join in the fun and make those two projects for us this month.  The only rule is that you must use at least one Funky Hand product to qualify - it sounds simple but every month we get several people linking who haven't bothered to read the post - what can you do, eh?

There's always a Funky Freebie you can use just in case you haven't any other Funky Hand stash yet.  Although I've not used it on my projects, the colours are the same as those on my cards and it's a gorgeous paper covered with tiny Christmas trees.

The fabulous Get Funky! challenge blog is HERE

Twelve Crafters Crafting and all other Fantastic Funky Hand products can be found HERE - including the wonderful  brand new Funky Freebie.

So far on the blog you can see my projects along with those from hostess Jackie and the latest post from our Fab Debs, but the rest of us will be along every couple of days over the month with lots of new ideas so it's worth popping by often to see what's new.

Right, time for a coffee and them to get on with adding a few more cards to my Christmas Card box.

Have a great day, thanks for visiting

Late Again!

Friday was a bit hectic and I'm not entirely sure what happened to the weekend, so once again I'm late with my Daring Cardmakers post.

Our challenge this week is to use, or portray WATER on our cards and there are some fabulous ideas to see on our DCM BLOG - lots of watery inspiration!

I decided to go down the "use water" direction and started off by giving all the papers and ribbons I planned to use a darned good soaking and crumpling and leaving them to dry overnight.

For the background I used various inks and a watery brush - I rather like the way this turned out.  All the water made the painted card piece less than flat, but I couldn't be bothered to get the iron out so instead I used an embossing folder and ran it through the Cuttlebug instead.

I'd added a little PVA to the water I soaked the ribbon in as an experiment and this resulted in a slightly stiffer ribbon. Although I didn't actually end up making a bow this time, I think it would make a lovely crumply bow for another project.  This time I just loosely twisted two shades of the "treated" ribbon together.

Materials:

Smooth White 14cm sq card blank, All papers are MME Breaking Free, soaked and crumpled, Backing piece made from white card, several turquoise and green inks (Versamagic, Cats Eye, DI) and brushed with water.  2 shades of seam-binding soaked in a mix of water and a little PVA (and a small amount of Glamour Dust), Scrap of satin ribbon inked to match, large jewel brad,

Imaginisce hot fix i-rock turquoise gems

Tools:

Cuttlebug Distressed Stripes embossing folder, 

Spellbinders "Blossom Tags and Accents" die set, Bosskutz mini tag die

 Thanks for looking

2 for the price of1

Over on The Sketch File Blog today, I've shared a couple of different ways to use the current Frames Galore sketch.  I thought I'd add the cards here too, plus a couple of extras for good measure!

If you visited yesterday you'll know I've been using these gorgeous Stella and Rose papers, they aren't Christmas papers but the colours and patterns just seem to work really well with my collection of Christmas dies - and using them has helped me get into the Christmas card-making groove big time!

The first card uses the sketch just as it appears in it's original form

Here's a reminder of the sketch:

This works fab for the little trees, but as I was working I realised that if I twisted it around the three lines would be perfect for "hanging" my tiny Spellbinders bauble on.

In fact as I seem to prefer my focus being on the right of a card, as well as rotating the sketch I mirrored it too - so it now looks like this:

Here's one of the cards I've made using the "new" layout

I'm not very good at making a lot of cards all the same - so although I make the bits and bobs in batches, the cards all tend to vary from each other in some way - even if it's just the shape of the card, or gold instead of silver thread, or a different shade of Stickles! 

Here are a couple more cards using the same stuff:

Materials:

Papers all My Minds Eye; Stella and Rose collection (mix of 12x12 and 6x6). 

Gold card and thread, Silver card and thread, Gold Ice Stickles, Crystal Ice Stickles, Turquoise regular Stickles, Turquoise and Silver Glitter paper, 

Homemade sentiment stickers

Tools:

Craft Robo to cut all the oval shapes and the little silver and gold "hangers", Spellbinders Nesting Baubles (smallest size), 

Cuttlebug Trees die, Tiny star punch

Please join in with us over on The Sketch File, we'd really love to see what you can make with our sketches - they don't have to be cards, anything goes over there!

Thanks for visiting today, please come again soon

A Late Friday Post!

I'm very very late with my Daring Cardmakers post - I hope Sharon will forgive me ;-)

Our challenge this week, set by Sharon was to make a card inspired by a piece of jewellery.  I chose to use a pair of silver and dichroic glass earrings I bought at a craft fair a couple of years ago as my starting point.  I've also managed to work this dare into another commissioned card.... woowoo!

I "drew" a swirl pattern in PSP for cutting on Craft Robo, and made the jewels from blobs of a couple of shades of Stickles which I left to dry before cutting out with a Cuttlebug die and then coating with Glossy Accents

Materials:

papers: MME 6x6 Stella and Rose, Silver card, Imaginisce mirror gems, Tiny gems (Anita's), 

Stickles, Glossy Accents, White lace, PC generated sentiment.

Tools:

Craft Robo, Spellbinders Coiled flower die, Cuttlebug leaves (from quilled flower set)

EK Success Border Punch

Here's a cloe up of the earrings

I hope you'll visit the Daring Blog this week - the cards are stunning.  If you visit the personal blogs of the team members you'll find out about their inspiration too. It would be fab if you'd join in with us too, we'd love to see what you make for Sharon's challenge.

While I was making this card I got to thinking they'd be lovely for Chrtistmas cards - never mind that I have bought loads of new Christmas papers to use......

I think they worked really well and they really looked pretty all lined up on the windowsill while the glitter was drying!  I've used the fabulous Ice Stickles on these cards - it's much thicker and chunkier than the regular stuff and really catches the light.

OK, back to it, then!  Thanks for visiting, I'll be back to share some more Christmas cards soon as I think I'm finally "in the groove" hehehe!

Chrysanthemums for our New Year!

The flower associated with the month of November is the Chrysanthemum, so as it;'s the first Friday of the month those are the flowers the Daring Cardmakers are using as our inspiration for this week's card challenge.
This week's challenge is the first in Year 6 for us - for a full 5 years we've been setting a new challenge each week.  There were scrapbook challenges before we came along, but we believe we were the very first of the challenge blogs specifically for card makers.  Just look how many there are now - no wonder we're proud of what we started hehehe
I have a few cards on order atm so was very pleased to double up one of them with my DCM card this week. Especially as the Cword card making is still not happening! 

I used some free clip art to make the flower template, then cut it several times in different sizes to make my multi-layered chrysanthemum.
 The small coiled flowers are made from the same paper and have tiny touches of glitter to bling them up just a bit.
 The three flowers on the left, and the gorgeous copper coloured card candy are all from the lovely Tracy at Creative Treasures.  I'm definitely in a "Autumn Colours" mood just now and these papers are all from an old Bo Bunny set - gorgeous aren't they?
I mad a pleated paper strip, then fluffed up the pleats with my pointy proddy tool (technical term ;-)) to make the "tubes" - I'll have to add some tissue paper in those before I send it to my customer or they'll just be flat again hehe.

Materials:

Bo Bunny papers and card stock

Various wired flowers, Card Candy (Creative Treasures), Tiny gems from Anita's gem wheel, 

Yellow Stickles

Tools

Craft Robo for large flower, Scoreboard for paper frill

Spellbinders Labels 18, pc generated sentiment

We'd love you to join in with us this week - it would be fab to celebrate our "New Year" with a whole bouquet of gorgeous chrysanthemum cards!  Pop over to the DCM BLOG and see the fabulous cards the team have been making this week - they are sure to brighten your day.
Thanks for visiting today. I suppose I'm going to have to get into Cword making mode now....oh dear - the number of times I've said that and totally failed to make any at all - I even cleaned my desk the other day rather than make something on it!
 Not good, is it? haha