Interesting Ingredients!

Did you/Do you ever watch "Ready Steady Cook" on TV?  I'm not even sure whether it is still going strong or has been thoroughly trounced by all the other cooking programmes you can whet your appetite with at the moment.
Anyhow, the chefs on that programme were each given a bag of ingredients to use to create a wonderful meal.
On The Daring Cardmakers' Blog today we have challenged ourselves and all those who play along with us to do something similar with our stash!

    This week we have a bit of a recipe challenge for you to try. 
    We don't mind what sort of card you make but it must feature all of these "Ingredients!"

    An Aperture of some kind
    Something beginning with the letter P
    A Die-cut or Punchie
    The colour Blue

Here's my card 

 Materials and Tools

All papers; Bo Bunny "C'est La Vie"

Pearl Sprays, Wired Flowers, Prima Leaves, Blue Braid,

Blue flat-backed pearls 

Die: Memory Box Butterfly

Punch: Woodware Butterfly

Craft Robo: internal Label

Aperture: I used one of the journalling cards from the paper set and hand-cut the aperture

Things beginning with the letter P: Pearl Spray and flat backed pearls, plus a touch of Pink with the paper and the wired flowers

Die-cut or Punchie: 2 x butterflies

Blue: Paper inside the card, Blue flat-backed pearls, Blue braid and a Blue Butterfly

 

Thanks for visiting today, I hope you'll come again soon

Chalks Away revisited

I've really been a bad blogge recently and it seems I've managed to accumulate a few crafty things that I've not got round to uploading on here.  I've also been really bad at getting around to my blogmates to see what they've been up to - so I apologise for that and will try to do better.....

Anyway, first up on my "catching up" list is the second card I made a few weeks back for Nat's   "Chalkboard" themed challenge over on the Daring Cardmakaers BLOG. 
In the end I went with the flowery number for my example on the blog, so here's the other one I made

 

 The problem with not keeping up to date with blogging the things I make is that I completely forget what things I used! 
That's my excuse for not being able to say which papers these are....
I think they may be Echo Park and maybe a few pieces of MME in there too
The blackboard and the test were all done in Paint Shop Pro using a free downloadable chalkboard background I found  on the web HERE, and various fonts I already had plus a few new fabulous freebie new ones from DaFont
The birthday cake is made using a Craft Robo template that I made a while back and has proved quite useful! 
The frame for the chalkboard is also a Robo template - I was trying to make it look like one of those  blackboards with wooden frames that you often see in cafes

That's it for this time - I'm off to hunt out more things I missed blogging!  Have a good day

 


Join in with "a Card a Day Blogging"  by linking up with our Facebook group and our BLOG homepage HERE

It's Child's Play!

Ok, so I was a bit sneaky, and knowing that this challenge was coming up I kept the card I made for my cousin's young son to myself till now before sharing it on here. Naughty huh?
It's Sharon's challenge this week and it's all about children - little ones through to the teens who think they aren't "children" any more!

Child's Play

I'd like to see cards for little people - it can be for a new arrival, 

young child, or even a sulky teenager!

I went for a pirate theme

Lots and lots of Craft Robo cutting for this card; the pirate ship is a template I made a couple of years back and has had quite a bit of use.  New templates made for this card are the waves, the trees on the island and a new version of the skull and crossbones.  The various letter are also Robo cut, with the "Pirate Sam" ones being "dipped in blood" before adhering to the flag.

The papers are (I think) from MME - the wave ones are from the Lime Twist paper pads

I've used mainly Bazzill card for the cut out pieces

Lots of Ink and some White Gel Ink plus Ice Stickles on the edges of the waves

 As I already had my card made for this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge I spent my crafting time this week getting organised and getting down to ticking off lots of the other things on my crafty to-do list..................................OK, I lie :), all I actually did this week was make one card then spend the rest of it shuffling paper and be totally undecided about what to use and what to make.
Must try harder....

Thanks for visiting.  I hope you'll head over to the DCM BLOG to check out some wonderful inspiration for children's cards
Please come back soon...

I Hate Football

....but sadly, lots of the males in our family think there's nothing nicer than kicking a ball around a muddy field or shouting "Ref-er-ee....!" at the TV.  So it happens that I've made quite a few football-themed cards over the year.

I've used the current LO on The Sketch File to make the latest footie fan card.  This one is for one of my BiLs who has a birthday soon.  
I've had this old QuicKutz football die for soooo long - it was one of the first dies I bought when I got my first die cutter - which was one of the old blue QuicKutz ones!  They were hard work, weren't they?  hehehe

Materials and Tools:

14cm square smooth white card blank

Silver-grey card Red card, Black and White card scraps

Various ribbons, Ric-rac braid

Embossing folder: Footballs (Crafts Too)

Die: Football (QuicKutz)

Decal Sticker sentiment on hand cut banner

This is the sketch I used

 That's all for today, thank you for visiting

Any Um-ber-ellas, Any Um-ber-ellas

....to Mend Today?
laalaalaa I don't know any more of the song, you'll be relieved to hear.

One of our newest teamies over on The Daring Cardmakers is Mirjam (Miri) who lives in Germany and this week it's her very first time sitting in the dare-setting hot-seat.
Her challenge is very topical....

 April showers bring May flowers!
It seems that the snowy season is finally over as we 

already have had lots of rain this week.
So, this week I dare you to use raindrops, 

puddles, umbrellas, rainbows … on your cards.

So, this week I dare you to use raindrops, puddles, umbrellas, rainbows … on your cards.

I made a couple of cards - and tbh I'm not particularly  happy with either of them - don't you just hate it when the idea in your mind doesn't transfer to paper in the way you'd hoped?

My first card uses a couple of the templates from  Crafty Templates - they are both from the soon-to-be-released set so worth looking out for.
I've used the flower and pot designs from one template and the umbrella  from another to make this card, and a mixture of papers from a couple of recent Quirky Kits

 Materials and Tools:

2 x flower and pot templates, Umbrella template from Crafty Templates

Papers (Various) from Quirky Kits plus a few extras from my stash

Distress Inks for background, Cats Eye ink pads for edging

Green card for plants, scrap of card for layering umbrella onto

Pink and White Polka Dot Ribbon

Umbrella is raised from the background using a box hinge so that it folds down flat for posting

Corner Rounder punch

For the 2nd card I altered one of my old favourite Robo cutting templates. On the original you can only see the hand that is holding the umbrella, and the umbrella itself is in a different position. One of the cool things about using Paint Shop Pro alongside the Craft Robo is that it doesn't take much effort to tweak an existing design.  I added the other hand/arm, and tilted back the umbrella so that there was somewhere to put the potted plant.  The greeting was supposed to be a "thank you" one but I couldn't find a sticker and didn't have time by then to do it on the pc. ;)

 Materials and Tools:

Papers all from Everyday Eclectic 6x6 (Echo Park) 

Flower and pot  template from Crafty Templates

Bazzill card,

Narrow Pink ribbon, Teeny Tiny buttons

Sticker sentiment 

Craft Robo to cut Child with Umbrella, and the Label tab (it's the same label I made for last week's card)

We're having one of those days where one minute it's bright sunshine and the next the rain is pouring down - so being a bit "umbrella-centric" is definitely right for the day.  They say it might get up to about 16 or 17 degrees at the weekend.....about time too....but we won't be holding our breath, will we?

Loads of lovely cards to see over on the Daring BLOG today, so please check them out - and it would be fab if you'd join in and we'd have a deluge (pun - geddit? haha) of cards for Miri's first challenge!
Thanks for visiting

Just 9 Words

 A very short quotation to add to my tiny book this time, but wouldn't the world be a better place if we could all try to live by them?

The LO plan is this month's sketch from The Sketch File 

Materials and Tools

All papers "I Love You Sew" (Funky Hand)

Red metallic thread, tiny clear star gem

PC generated wording

scrap card for adding dimension. Black and red gel pens

Spellbinders dies; Plain and Pinked circles

I've printed the papers to get the chevrons and buttons in  different sizes by cropping and resizing using Paint Shop Pro.  One of the best things about using Funky Hand downloads is that you have the chance to mix up the sizes to suit your project - and to use different sizes on the same project.  You can see that on the chevron designs above.

I did a little screen-shot tutorial on the  Get Funky and Craft Inspiration Blog  at the weekend showing how I do this.
 There's also instructions on how to make the pyramid card base for this card.

That's all for this time. thanks for looking

Coral and Aqua

Gez has chosen a fabulous colour palette for the Daring Cardmakers April Colour challenge and the BLOG looks amazing!

Here's my card for this week, it looks slightly different to the version on the DCM Blog because I couldn't resist adding a few pearls and some glitter late last night!

Materials

Chevrons, flower, lettering;  Bazzill card

3 x Aqua papers are all from the "Yes Please" collection from American Crafts

Resin bird from Tea House Bridge

Pale peach Pearls, Tiny Black Gems ("i" dots) Stickles Glitter Glue

Tools

Craft Robo for lettering, "labels" style background, cutting the chevron shapes

Corner Rounder punch for chevron paper, Circle punch and reverse tweezers for the curled petal flower

I went hunting for a good frame shape using the image search in Google as none of my Spellbinders labels seemed quite what I wanted.  I found this lovely shape and tweaked it a bit so that I could convert it for cutting on Craft Robo.   I'm really pleased with how this shape looks and of course,  because it's now a Robo template it can be stretched either way for a different look.   If you would like a copy of this template please email me and I will send a copy.

Here is the inspiration LO for the colours Gez chose

from The Perfect Palette

 Gorgeous isn't it?  How can that fail to inspire? 
The only problem is that when you get challenges like this you realise that what you though was a pretty good collection of Bazzill and an even larger collection of papers suddenly fails to deliver!  A good excuse to go shopping so that next time these EXACT colours turn up I'll be ready hahaha.
It's when you see all the photos together on the screen that you realise you didn't quite get them right.  ho hum

Thanks for looking in today. don't forget to head over to the Daring Blog and see the fabulous colour-coordinated display we have this week - and there's the announcement of the winner of our prize voucher from Little Blue Button too

Right, now I need to get my post ready for Funky Hand as it's my turn this weekend to try and inspire some Funky Crafty Action!

See you soon

Thursday Already?

Surely it can't be?
Just as I was getting back to the blogging habit a BH weekend comes along to knock it all off kilter....well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it
This week is "new sketch week" on The Sketch File - a bit of a delay from our usual Tuesday postings, but....well. I refer to the above....:)

I'm trying to get organised for the May Birthday Onslaught (mainly "boy" birthdays too, just to make it even more tricksy), so I've used the sketch for the first of the Nephew birthdays

I've used:

http://kathyswafflesketchfile.blogspot.co.uk/

The Sketch File April LO
White card blank
Orange Background paper from
BG "Clippings" 6x6 pad
All other papers;
Year-O-Graphy 6x6 pad (Simple Stories)
Numerals; American Crafts Thickers
Ribbons and braid for stash
"today" letters cut in 2 layers of Black Bazzill using Craft Robo and coated with Enamel Accents
Number 5 and loop also cut with Craft Robo


Got to get on with my card for tomorrow's new challenge over on The Daring Cardmakers now.  
One day I'll be up to date with everything, the house will be spotless and the garden manicured and perfect....... oh yes and maybe Spring will actually arrive.....in my dreams....
Have a great rest-of-day, please leave a comment if you've time ;)