This is the House that Jack Built

It's my turn this week to set a challenge for The Daring Cardmakers this week:

I've taken the title of my challenge this week from an traditional British Nursery Rhyme that starts with the line:

 "This is the House that Jack Built"


You can read the whole rhyme HERE if you want to - it's far too long to copy here, but really it's just a nice title for a challenge that's all about Houses - or the walls, roof, doors, windows etc that you need to build a house.  Your card could show a whole house or just some of those - maybe just a door, or a window...it's up to you.  Just have fun and get creative

We're looking forward to seeing what you make, so please come and let us know where we can see your creations

I have a really bad habit of thinking "ohhh, that would make a good title for a dare" and bunging it into our calendar without givng any thought to what I might be able to make for it - and of course I did it again with this one!  Hey ho....

So all week I've been trying to come up with a plan and yesterday was playing Last Minute Minnie again to come up with a little cottage by the sea - well who wouldn't want to have  one of their very own?  I know I would....it's good to have a dream, eh?

I tweaked some clipart to use as the basis for the little cottage, and made a template for cutting it with Craft Robo.  I used an assortment of papers and just hand cut them to make the simplistic background.    The  picket fence is also a Robo template - believe it or not it started out as a row of birthday candles - a bit of Paint Shop Pro tweaking and now I have a fab picket fence template - I've been meaning to make one for ages!  The yachts are just hand cut from scraps and the tiny flowers are another Robo template

Materials and Tools:

Card blank: 14cm square ribbed Kraft card

Papers: various, including MME, Bo Bunny, My Little Shoebox

Various colours Bazzill card

Stickles:; various,  Liquid Pearls; various

sentiment is pc generated

Craft Robo, Spellbinders die, circle punch, MS flower punch (for trees)

Then sometime around teatime yesterday I had another idea and couldn't resist seeing if I could make it work.  I thought that a Housey quotation with the words taking the (vague) shape of a house, then with a simple cut out roof, door etc added might look cute,

Making the words fit the shape was the hardest part - I didn't really have time to mess around in PSP so just did this one in Word, altering the fonts, sizes etc to fit and leaving enough space to add a door and window.  I just printed out the quotation then, and cut it down to size.

 The windows and door are Robo templates I already had from a previous project so I just needed to get the size and shapes right to fit this "house" instead - easy in Robo thank goodness!

Materials and Tools

White 14sm sq card blank. 

Quotation made in Word and printed on the same sort of card as the base card

Bazzill: red, blue, brown

Hand cut roof and flower pots

Coiled flowers and green pot made from paper scraps

Roof tiles scribbled in by hand

Craft Robo to cut windows and door

I'm really pleased at the way this has turned out but I just wish I had had the idea a bit sooner!

I hope you'll join in with us this week - please visit the DCM BLOG to see what my wonderful teamies have come up with this week

Thanks for visiting

Fun with Pictograms

It's Daring Cardmakers Day again!

This week is Zuzana here and I think I've come up with a very interesting dare for you:
Fun with Pictograms
 With the  London Olympic games knocking on the door I came up with the idea to  create cards using pictograms, icons or silhouette signs. Choose sport, travel, washing or some other basic signs, print them out -  or if you prefer use die cuts, punches etc
Have some fun and get crafty!

 When you think of it, we're surrounded by pictograms.  Most of the time it's easy to tell what they mean - after all, that's the point of them, isn't it?  To indicate something which you'll understand whatever language you speak.  Looking around for pictograms to use for Zuzana's Daring Cardmakers challenge this week though, I cam across quite a few which might mean something to somebody, but meant nothing at all to me!

Zuz gave us a link to the pictograms for the London Olympics and I spent a few minutes seeing how obvious the sports they indicated were - and then I chose a few to use on my card for this week

 I copied and enlarged the pictogram images, then arranged them on the Craft Robo desk-space.  Using the Position Settings button I checked that they all fitted into a 14 cm square (for fitting onto my 15cm square red card blank), then cut the whole piece out using white Bazzill

The tricky bit was making sure that none of the tiny white pieces such as on the diver and rowers went missing!

To give it a UK flavour I cut a triangle of blue card to fit diagonally across one half of the square before attaching it to the red card, then using tweezers I added those tiny details

Next it was back to Craft Robo to cut the letters, numerals and rings which were adhered to the top of the card filling the gaps between the pictograms.  It was a bit like a jogsaw making everything fit and there was still a gap by the athlete pictogram, so I echoed the Olympic rings with some coloured brads to fill it!

I reckon that you could find a pictogram for pretty much any sport or hobby, and lots of other things too - so they'd be a great way to deal with personalised cards - especially for those tricky "man and boy" cards - beer mugs, sports, hobbies, music - there are pictograms for all occasions out there waiting to be used!

Still focussed on pictograms I made another card which might be ok for an anniversary, valentines etc

I used:

Pictogram - cut on Craft Robo

Papers and corrugated cardstock: Fancy Pants "Country Boutique"

2 lengths grey-blue organza ribbon  - upper length is twisted and knotted

copper brtads, Narrow blue ric-rac braid

pc generated sentiment. 

Die-namincs Square stack dies

That's it for this time, I hope you'll join in with us this week, it's a fun dare and maybe a little more "challenging" than a lot of the challenges we see around the net!

Thanks for visiting

Lace and Pearls

A chance to play with some of my favourite things is what Keilly's Daring Cardmakers' challenge gave me this week.

Throw in some ribbon and flowers and some gorgeous new Fancy Pants papers and I'm a happy crafter indeed!

 I'm a bit obsessed with cutting holes in the fronts of my cards and having the embellishments peeping through from the inside,  It's just a phase I'm going through ;)

Making this I found out that Spellbinders dies will happily cut through a 300gsm card blank with one paper layer adhered to it, but add a second layer of paper and it's a whole different story!  Never mind, we got there in the end!

I cut the scalloped circle borders using my Craft Robo

Materials:

Papers: Fancy Pants Country Boutique - mix of 12x12 and 6x6

The White Lace with a sparkly thread woven through, the wired, wide Silky Crush Ribbon  and the pearl bead sprays came from  Creative Treasures

All coiled flowers hand cut from the scraps left over 

after cutting the scalloped borders

Tassels are hand made also from scraps

Pearls are iRock gems from Imaginisce, Gold thread, Diamond Stickles

Tools:

 Spellbinders Circle Nesties, Craft Robo

I love these new Fancy Pants papers so expect to see more of them! I think it's that pretty shade of blue that makes them so appealing.  For some reason powder blue doesn't seem to get featured much, yet it's a gorgeous colour and goes with so many other colours too.

Thank you for calling by my blog, I hope you like what you see and will come again soon.  I hope you'll be joining in with us over on The Daring Cardmakers this week - such a fab challenge to play along with!

On TV Today.......

With a bit of luck I'll be getting excited about seeing:

July Sketch File projects

The July sketch was published last week but I didn't get round to blogging my first makes using it on my own blog till now.

First I used it to make a page for my ongoing mini album.  You may remember I'm trying to do pages for all of the places we visited during a year's membership of the National Trust - now, as this was taken out as an Anniversary gift to ourselves on 31st July 2010 you'll see that I'm not quick!  I sat down and made a list last week and found I still have at least 7 places still to do!  I started off doing a facing page of info about each place too, but that has sort of fallen by the wayside big time.  I think eventually I'll re-do those I've already done in simpler fashion so that it will be easier to catch myself up!

Anyway, I've now got as far as September 2010 and a visit to Seaton Delavell Hall in Northumberland.  I just loved this photo hubby took of the fabulous staircase, so made it the main focus of the page.  The picture of one of the wings of the house was the perfect shape to cut down and use for the "ticket" shaped section of the sketch and the pic of the house from the garden side was just right to fit into a circle

I used:

Sketch - July's "Tickety Boo" sketch from The Sketch File    

Papers:  "These Days" 6x6 pad (Kaisercraft)

Border Punch: EK Success

Rosette die: Memory Box

Large Circle Punch

Ticket shape - rectangles and small circle punch on the corners

Next up I made a small and simple hanging plaque

Papers: Simple Stories "Documented" 6x6

Card Candy, Coiled flower is hand-cut, Seam binding to make the hanging loop

Stickles Glitter Glue

Ticket sentiment as before

Die-namics flower die

I'd really love to see anything you make using our sketch this month - anything goes, so scrapbooks, ATCs, Inchies or anything else you care to make is fine by us!

We had a good weekend - for starters there were no trips to B&Q for a change!  On Saturday morning we were at Cambridge airport for Hubby's introductory helicopter flying lesson (birthday present).  Although it doesn't look like it on the photos, it was a bright, sunny and warm morning.  I sat outside watching the various flying club Tiger Moths and other planes while he had his lesson. Just a shame I didn't think to take a bigger camera lens with me as I was a bit too far away (and behind a high wire fence) for getting any decent photos.   I think he's now trying to justify the cost of taking more "proper" lessons.... ;).  I think it would be fun!

Yesterday the Olympic torch passed the end of our road so we went pout and stood for an hour or so in varying degrees of rain waiting to see it!  We'll never get this chance again, so I wanted to be part of it in this small way.  Despite the horrible weather there were loads and loads of people standing out along the various roadsides so I guess I wasn't alone in thinking it was worth getting wet to be part of the event.

That's it for today - Thanks for propping by, please leave a message....

The Colours of July

If "wet" was a colour then the start of July would be painted in it.  Hard to believe that our water company still hasn't lifted the hosepipe ban - talk about taking the mick!

Rein has chosen a beautiful colour palette for the monthly Colour Combo challenge over on The Daring Cardmakers.  One of the fab things about our First Friday theme this year is exploring the stash looking for the shades you need - it's such a great way to rediscover forgotten paper collections and those "that might come in useful one day" bits and bobs!

In the end I didn't have to look far to find good matches for Rein's colours as the Bo Bunny Gabrielle paper pad was near the front of the box

I used:

Paper:  Bo Bunny Gabrielle 6x6 paper pad for all (including cut out butterfly) except the green strip which is from Kaisercraft's  "These days" 6x6 pad

Seam Binding from Creative Treasures

Stick on pearls in brown and aqua

Die-namics Doily die set

Next I thought I'd have a little play with the new July sketch over on the Sketch File Blog and some papers from the new Funky Hand "Wishes and Kisses" CD to make another card.  This time I used more of the dark sage green shade on Rein's inspiration photo

This is what I came up with:

I used:

Sketch from Sketch File Blog

 All papers from Funky Hand's  "Wishes and Kisses" CD 

 I printed the papers onto a pale cream pearlised paper and used leftover scraps to make the little coiled roses

Seam Binding, gems and pearls from Creative Treasures

Prima Artful Flowers, Other petals from stash. Turquoise Ice Stickles

Spellbinders Moroccan Accents border die

"Ticket" background for sentiment made using a small circle punch on the basic rectangles

That's it for this time, I hope you'll pop over and see the gorgeous cards made my the Daring Cardmakers team this week, it's such a pretty colour combo - I hope you'll be joining in with us and sharing your own creativity

Thanks for visiting