The Thing About Boys....

It's the launch day for the fun new "Boys Will Be Boys" download collection from Funky Hand - so to celebrate - and to let everyone see how fab the papers are we're having a Blog Hop.

You can buy it from the shop from 9am today  - but a few minutes blog-hoppng and comment-leaving might let you own it for FREE!

To make it nice and easy, all you have to do this time to be in with a chance of winning the "Boys Will Be Boys"  collection for free all you need to do is hop around, leaving comments at each "stop".  You'll see what the DT have made using the new download and you'll get to meet the new Funky Hand character "Bot" while on your travels, too.
Just remember to leave a comment at each stop and you'll be in with a chance of winning - no tricky anagram or other puzzle to solve - it's Monday, adter all, so we don't want to tax ourselves too much, eh?

To make it even easier, here's a list of all the links you'll need to comment at

Anice.

Allison.

Debbie.

Kathy.

Lou.

Ruth.

Sam.

Tabbatha.

Get Funky inspiration blog.

The Hop starts at 5:00am GMT on Monday 30th September and then you have tilll 12 midnight GMT Tuesday 1st October to join in and leave your messages.
The winner will be announced at 8am on Wednesday 2nd October.

Sooooo, here's my project for the blog hop (though if you scroll back a bit to Friday's post you can see something else I've made with these great papers).

I thought I'd make my card  something that would be suitable for boys, or girls as I think these designs and colours work for anyone.  I'd seen some cute little wire and button bike jewellery pieces around the old interweb recently and saved some pictures to see if I could make one.  Finding two "bicycle" designs among the "Boys Will Be Boys"  collection gave a great excuse to have a go.

It's not perfect, but I'm hoping a bit "rough around the edges" adds to the charm hehe, anyway, I hope you like it!


That's it - now just leave a quick message and you can head off to the next blog on the list.  have fun on our Funky Blog hop, and good luck!

Rosettes, Sneak Peeks and Birthday Party News

Ooooooh Look what October will be bringing!

Celebrating 7 years of  the Daring Cardmakers

All that starts next Friday, but this week Nat is the hostess's chair on The Daring Cardmakers' Blog and has a fab challenge for everyone.  All she wants is to see lots and lots of lovely ROSETTES on our cards this week.  It doesn't matter whether they are paper, fabric, ribbon or anything else you could think of to make them with - they all count.
it was a bad move to leave my card to the last minute.  I made a lot of rosettes - that was the easy bit, but it would have been a good idea to have something in mind to use them for.  Well, I did have a vague idea, but having made the rosettes I realised the plan wouldn't actually work. So I chose 3 of the rosettes and made something that's supposed to look like flowers in a window-box.

Don't tell anyone, but the papers I've used are so new they haven't been released for sale yet......

They are from a collection called "Boys Will Be Boys" and are from Funky Hand.  As you can see, they're not just for "boy" cards - but join in the Blog Hop for the launch and you'll be able to see more of the collection and maybe even win a prize.  Which is always good, eh?
I hope you'll join in with the hopping on Monday

Anyway. getting back to The Daring Cardmakers and my Rosette card.
I made the rosettes in a couple of different ways, I used a Memory Box die for the ones with the fluted edge and just folded paper strips for the others. The window-box is a plain edged, accordion-folded strip of paper - just like you fold to make a rosette.
Although I have a Memory Box tiny rosette die too, it's the fiddliest little wotsit in the die box and I didn't have the energy or willpower to do battle with it.  Instead I used the big one and trimmed off the straight side after cutting to make the finished rosettes a more suitable size. 
***Wherever possible, always look for the line of least resistance*** hehe

Materials and Tools:

Papers: Boys Will Be Boys download by Funky Hand

Flower stems are twisted ribbon and ric-rac scraps

Flower centres: Glittered brad, Blue flat-backed pearl, Fabric covered brad 

Bunting is hand-cut

Memory Box Rosette die. Scor-pal

That's all for this time.  Please pop by on Monday to see what I've made for the Funky Hand Blog Hop.... and don't forget about the DCM's Big Birthday Bash.  Gosh, such a lot going on!

Harvest Home

Friday again and time for another Daring Cardmakers challenge.

 Although in some parts of the world Spring is now on it's way, over in this bit we're at 

the end of Summer and heading for Autumn. 

But not before we give thanks for all the Summer produce with our own
        Harvest Festival
 We'd love to see your Harvest inspired creations this week, so please get crafty and join us as we celebrate the  "Season of Mists and Mellow fruitfulness"

I used to love Harvest Festival when I was little.  All the Sunday School children would carry their decorated baskets and boxes of produce in to the main Church, where they'd be received and placed on tables decorated especially for the occasion.

My OH grows a few vegetables in our garden and it's always good to take the trug and fill it with beans,  courgettes, tomatoes etc.  I've got loads of beans prepared and stored in the freezer and have been making tomato sauce ready to use in the coming weeks.

We have loads of blueberries and blackberries too - just a shame I'm the only one who lijes them!

We don't have an apple tree though.....but I decided to make a little one for my card this week

Materials and Tools

Bo Bunny "Apple Cider" 6x6 papers

Tiny red buttons. Ombre Ribbon

Various inks for the leaves and sky, Glossy Accents (on apples)

Petite Dots embossing folder (Crafters Companion)

EK Success border punch

memory Box "Twiggy tree" die

Spellbinders plain circle die

Scalloped circle cut with Craft Robo

pc generated quotation

It's an easel card, so jolly awkward to photograph, sorry!

I used inks with cotton buds and tapped down on all the raised dots on the embossed card to make the tree shape, filling in the rest with pale blue dots for the sky.  

The "apples" were cut from one of the papers and raised on chipboard to form the ledge for the easel to rest against.  I covered them with a layer of Glossy Accents and added a bit of white to highlight.

The quotation is another part of the Autumn 1820 John Keats' poem with the famous line "Season of Mists and Mellow fruitfulness" in it.

 It would be great if you'd join in with us this week and share your Harvest creations.  The team have made some lovely cards to help inspire and you can see them all HERE

Thanks for visiting

Same, but Different

It's my turn to post on The Get Funky Inspiration blog today and I've made a

 of cards using the wonderful new Christmas downloads

 I will never be the sort of organised crafter who decides on a Christmas card design and sets up a bit of a production line to make them all - it would make my life easier I know, but it's never going to happen!

Anyway, I thought I'd have a go at making the same card, but using each of the two collections to give them a slightly different look - a little bit of a challenge for me, but an interesting experiment too.

I've used an embossing folder for the background, and as I've been playing around with an "embossing resist" technique I thought I'd add that to my design- so there's an un-embossed oval shape behind the trees.

The first card is made with papers from the "Sleigh Ride" collection and is on a white card base.  The  second uses "Silent Night" and I've used a soft creamy coloured card for the base

Materials and Tools

Sleigh Ride Download

Silent Bight Download

"Christmas Elegance" Embosiing folder and

 Fir Tree Die, both Crafters Companion

Silver and Gold Glitter card for stars

Tiny Star Punch

Scraps of ribbon to match papers

I do love these new Christmas collections from Funky Hand - I'm planning to use them for as many of my Christmas cards as possible - I can print these gorgeous papers out direct onto my cards, or paper, or my favourite way; on to white Bazzill.  I'm going to try printing some of the older paper collections on textured cardstock too - there are plenty of others in the Funky Hand catalogue to have some fun with!

Over the next few weeks there will be lots of new inspiration on the Get Funky Blog - we'll all be trying our best to show you how fab the papers and images are and how versatile they are too, so please pop over and take a look.

Tea Time Treat

For my "Birthday treat" we went to Fanhams Hall near Ware in Hertfordshire yesterday for Afternoon Tea.  This is our third AT so far this year hehe.  The first was via a Last Minute.com gift voucher.  There were only a few places we could go so we went to the nearest; a place called Barnsdale Hall Hotel and quite honestly, their idea of an Afternoon Tea was a disgrace. What a disappointment and a waste of money, even if it wasn't our money!

Anyway, once bitten, twice shy as they say and when we decided to celebrate our anniversary in the same way we chose very carefully and went to the lovely Attingham Hall  (Shropshire) for a really delightful afternoon's grazing through the sandwiches, home-made scones and lots of tiny cakes.  It was delicious.

It was a really lovely treat and we enjoyed it so much that we looked around the places nearer home for somewhere to do it all again for my birthday.  Despite living in the area for donkey's years I'd never heard of Fanhams Hall - the photos on their website looked lovely, and they were soooo quick to answer OH's emails and so accommodating about  our "picky" food requirements; we don't like fruit scones, fruit cake, salmon sandwiches - staple AT fodder which some places just say "it's that or nothing" about.  We booked. 

What a lovely place.  I wish the day had been prettier so that we could have explored the gardens more and taken a nicer photo than this one;

Afternoon Tea is taken in the lovely, peaceful Drawing Room.  The staff were attentive and helpful and our food requests were all sorted without us needing to go over it again.  Isn't it great when things work like that?

The sandwiches were all lovely.  We really just expected more plain scones as we didn't have fruit ones, but instead of the fruit ones there were some lavender ones - really delicious they were too!  Freshly made and still warm.

And at the top of the cake stand an assortment of delicious little cakes and pastries - we couldn't eat everything so the extras were boxed up for us to bring home - that's a treat for this evening, then!

Everything was so well done.  The Hall is a fabulous building.  The Drawing room was elegant and nicely furnished, with plenty of room between the groups of people.  The waitresses were helpful and attentive and the food was beautifully presented and tasted wonderful.  I'd definitely be happy to recommend Fanhams Hall as a venue for your nest treat!

If anyone would like to "employ" us as Afternoon Tea venue "testers", then I'm sure we'd be more than happy to accept hehehe

Sadly, it's back to the reality of me doing the "catering" today - which didn't get off to a good start because yesterday I forgot to make bread for this morning's breakfast toast  :(

Thanks for popping by, I hope your mouth is watering now.....

Signature Style Crafting

Friday, as always is Daring Cardmakers Day and this one set us all a right old challenge!  I don't think there was a single DT member who didn't struggle with Lythan's dare.  Hopefully other people won't feel the same hehehe

    "I (Lythan) sometimes wonder if my cards are all rather repetitive and boring.
But I have decided to embrace the fact that there are certain elements that I have 

to include on my cards and call it my signature style (sounds soooo much 

 better than samey samey!).
 And being the nosey type I thought it would be fun to make you analyse what 

are the go to features that you like to add to a card - what is your,,,,
    Signature Style"

I definitely should have started on my card before yesterday,  Yesterday turned out to be rather fraught.  It was a bit like Friday 13th coming a day early, But in the end I managed to cobble together this card;

i think there is actually more to my "signature style" than you can ever see on the finished card. 
The main criteria for my Signature Style seems to be "Now how difficult can I make it for myself this time".  No-one ever sees just how complicated and time-consuming a crafting project is, do they?
Look on my desk and you'll see a stack (stack sounds far too organised for the mess) of punched out, chopped up 12x12, punches, dies, discarded bits of card.  Look in my bin and you'll find a whole load of  torn, gooey and discarded petals and flowers that were rejected.  So much wasted paper! 
Then there was the embossing - that didn't go well either, this card is actually the fourth attempt just at that bit!.
Hey ho, never mind - let's move on....

Well, what is my style? Well, don't ask me; it changes all the time, I think - maybe YOU are the better person to ask.
So I thought about the things I like to use most and the way I like to arrange them.
Obviously it had to have handmade flowers on it, I use a lot of dies and punches, I'm not good at "white space" but add some embossing and all that emptiness takes on a whole new "feel" - in more ways than one ;), I like a bit of pretty ribbon, some swirls and pearls, and I really love to go "off page" by cutting a few cms off the edge of a card then extending the embellishing over the edge.  A whole new "dimension" but it still fits in the regular envelope.. And speaking of dimension, I like adding that...a LOT!  Which makes it not fit in that regular envelope anymore, of course!

 

Materials
15cm sq smooth white card, top fold, 2cms removed from side. Embossed with "Corner Swirl" folder
Extra smooth white card for upper "Petite Dots" embossed panel
 WMRK "White Out" Promenade papers
Wired Pearls, Wired Acrylic flowers, Flat-backed blue pearls, Ribbon
Tools
Embossing Folders: "Corner Swirl"and
"Petite Dots", both Crafters Companion
Dies:  Spellbinders Labels 18,  MFT Die-Namics "Fancy Flourish"
2x SU flower punches 

The WRMK papers are some of my favourites. I used mainly plain ones for this card, but the patterns on the other side are soooo pretty - I hardly ever use them because I doubt they are still around to buy more.  However, I was covering some boxes to store paper pads in the other day and decided that as they were so pretty I should use them for something I'd be keeping!  Having them out on the desk reminded me how Summery and pretty the colours were - perfect for some flower making.

I've tried to get a better photo of the gorgeous swirly embossing on the card blank - failed pretty much, but hopefully you can get the idea

I hope you like my card for this week - I very much hope you'll give some thought to your own "signature style" and share it with us over at The Daring Cardmakers - do check out the fantastic cards my Teamies have made this week and see if you agree with what we all think of as our signature style.
Thanks for looking, please leave a message.....

Funky Hand Blog Hop

hello!

A huge and special WELCOME to you if you have found your way here from Debbie's blog because you're taking part in the Funky Hand 2013 Christmas Launch Blog Hop!

As usual with these things, you can find out all you need to know by visiting our Launch Pad - in this case it's Anice's BLOG which you can find HERE

Anice will give you the first letter of an anagram, and will direct you to the next Blog you need to visit to get the next one.  In a minute I'll give you "my" letter and direct you to your next port of call, but first, here's the project I want to share with you today

You can see quite a lot of tiny examples of papers from the Sleigh Ride set on this card, Created from lots of little rectangles of  papers left over from making my other projects, just cut to size then rolled around a bamboo skewer  - I had loads of fun making this one, and I hope you enjoy seeing it!

So, why join in with our Blog Hop? 

Well, there will be this fab prize from Funky Hand for someone.....

a complete set of downloads (backing papers and wordbook) from either Sleigh Ride or Silent Night and all four Christmas digital image downloads

to qualify and be in with a chance of winning that little lot, you need to visit and leave a comment on the blogs of all who are taking part, collect the letters and solve the anagram - when you reach the final destination you'll find out what to do next.  On the way round all the blogs you'll get a sneaky peek of what to expect from the new Christmas downloads and hopefully get some great ideas and inspiration along the way!

If you've never tried digital crafting, let me tell you why I'm a convert! 

I love that all those wonderful Funky Hand papers are at my fingertips and I'll never run out! 

I love that the choice is mine as to what sort of paper, card, vellum, canvas etc that I print them onto - and what size I print them at can be chosen too - even the specific bits of each design I want to use can be selected with a bit of cropping and resizing - you don't get that with a paper pack!

I don't do much stamping so digi images are perfect for me - they are always there for those occasions when I need to use something like that - and I don't need to embarrass myself with my lousy colouring skills as I can take a bit of time and colour them in my graphics program on the pc {wink}

Okay, that's enough of the waffle - it's time for you to leave your message for me here, pick up my letter 
"P" 
for your collection and then hop on over to Lou's blog to see what she has to share with you

Thanks for visiting and for taking part in our Big Blog Hop

Hope you are having a lovely weekend, thanks for visiting, Please come back soon - it would be just fab to see you again :)

Summer Berries

Beckie has chosen a beautiful, Berry-licious colour palette for our September colour combo over on the Daring Cardmakers - and the blog looks absolutely stunning!  It definitely works for the season - these colours match the juice on my fingers after I've been out in the garden picking blackberries and blueberries!
It's been a busy week craft-wise as there's a Crafters Companion show coming soon, with new goodies to make samples for....{wink}.  I was nearly down to the wire for getting my DCM card done, but it went together as quick as can be - which is always a such shock whenever it happens because it's so rare!

I had a feeling my luck was in when the first piece of card I grabbed - the deep pink one - was such a good match, next I pulled out the pale lilac one and that worked too - so I quit while I was ahead and shut the cupboard, knowing I could be sure to find plenty of flowers and ribbon etc to make something for this colour palette:

 

Ohhhh! I've just realised that the pink "gladioli" type petals are a great match for the flowers in the photo!
I used "Petite Dots" my absolute favourite of the growing stash of Crafter's Companion embossing folders I now have on the shelf.  It really adds light and shade to what I think would be a rather over-the-top expanse of  deep pink card!
The sentiment was printed onto thin card and slotted into place. I would have just printed direct onto the card base and then cut the oval if I hadn't already sliced the edge of the card blank having decided to make it a bit less square.
I made a sort of rose flower using another of my new punches - it's a bit of a hybrid as I used techniques from different places and flower tutorials

Materials and Tools

Smooth White card blank

Bazzill Card Shoppe card, Bazzil lavender 12x12 for  rose

Various pre-made flowers, Gems and Pearls,

 Ribbon from November Rain collection by Funky Hand

Embossing Folder "Petite Dots" 6x6 Crafter's Companion

Spellbinders Plain Oval Die

 SU Flower punch;

That's it for now, I hope you'll click the link to head over to the Daring Cardmakers BLOG and check out all the fabulous cards this week - it really is quite a treat.

Thanks for visiting, please come by again soon

Salt and Pepper

I've made a card using fabulous Funky Hand papers and the new LO on the Sketch File this time.

This is a gorgeous paper download called "Salt and Pepper" - I love this set and it's always good to find a good excues to use them.
To start with I printed 8 designs to fit 4 on either side of a piece of a4 white Bazzill card.  This way the designs are nice and small for using on small images.
All the cutting out was done on Craft Robo from some templates I made quite a while ago - it makes the work of making templates worthwhile when you can trot the same ones out again....and again, especially as it's easy to slightly alter the shapes and sizes to get the smae shape looking a little bit different.
Here's my card

Materials and Tools:

All patterned papers "Salt and Pepper" download from Funky Hand

Kraft card blank, Smooth white card

White Bazzill for printing on to

Bakers Twine, Black cord, Natural Twine

Craft Robo for Gifts, Balloons and Zig-zags etc

Crafters Companion Petite Dots embossing folder used on the diagonal

September LO from The Sketch File

That's all for today, I've got to get on because it's Daring day tomorrow and I've not started my card yet .....panic.....

Thanks for visiting - hopefully there'll be something new here tomorrow too.....