Silent Night Box

Hello, 

It's my turn to share something with everyone over on Funky Hand's Inspiration Blog today, and I realised that I hadn't shown this little box yet.  I made it using papers from the "Silent Night" collection - one of two  wonderful Funky Hand Christmas sets for this year. 

 This box was made in the same way as a heart shaped box I made earlier in the year.  It's much simpler than it looks as all you need are some Funky Hand designs printed on both sides of some Bazzill or other card of similar weight, some Spellbinders dies and some thicker card - such as an old cereal box. I'll do a quick tutorial on how to make it next time I do the Get Funky Inspiration Blog 
but for now, here are more photos of this finished one

All Papers: Silent Night by Funky Hand 

 

I've used the soft creamy coloured design from "Silent Night"  to cut a whole load of different snowflake shapes.  I added some glitter and layered them up on top of the box.  Some cream organza ribbon and some gold and red berries finish this festive gift box.

I hope you like it - it would be fab if you'd pop over and leave a message on the
Get Funky Inspiration Blog -  it's worth checking out the blog as it's stuffed full of lots of ideas, tips and inspiration for all sorts of projects

See you soon.

Saturday, Shabby Saturday

So, something new over on the Funky Hand Inspiration blog is an occasional series featuring some of the fantastic paper downloads in the Funky Hand "archive"
The  first time  I ever used Funky Hand papers - in fact the first time I ever used any sort of downloadable stash was when Anice of Funky Hand  first sponsored a challenge over on the Daring Cardmakers - and the collection we used was called "Shabby Saturday" 
It's been a bit of a go-to favourite ever since so I was pretty happy when Anice chose it for our first "Forgotten Funkies Showcase"

I decided to make a cute little gift bag. 

Materials and Tools
Shabby Saturday elements:  All papers, Cut Out Tags, Cut Out Flowers
The paper bow is hand-cut
other stash; small acrylic dewdrop stone, Paper String for handles
Tools: EK Success Border Punch

See our lovely Shabby Saturday Showcase HERE

Here's a little peek at what the Shabby Saturday download includes:

If you popped by here last week you might remember seeing the Scrapling card I made with some of the scraps I had left over from making the gift bag.  I thought I might as well take the opportunity to show it again :)

Thanks for popping by today, I hope you have a great weekend

Spooktastic Birthdays

Well, over on the Daring Cardmakers this week we come to the last challenge for October - and the last challenge in our special 7th Anniversary month of celebrations.  With Halloween looming on the horizon and a fab set of spooky chipboard goodies from Tando Creative for the DT to play with it seemed only right to make this one a Spooky Birthday themed challenge.  Whether you make a Halloween card, or a Spooky Birthday card is up to you.
We have a bumper batch of birthday gifts to share this week - not only a prize from our sponsors "Tando Creative", but also a prize from craft store "Imagine That". 
It doesn't even stop there - we're also having a Birthday Blog Hop and have prizes from Charmed Cards and Craft, Funky Hand and Crimson Cloud to share with those who leave comments on our blogs.  Click HERE to find out more about how to join in.  
Our Blog Hop means that even if you don't join in with the challenge this week you can still get your hands on one of our lovely birthday gifts.

I don't really "do" Halloween - and especially I don't "do" the whole Trick or Treat thing, but I do know a little boy who is mad-keen on all things skeleton!  So I'm getting ahead and have made this card with his birthday in mind

I decided to make an easel card so that some of the spooky elements could be standing out from the card, and started by using some Distress Inks on my card blank to create the background and I also inked some thinner card to use for cutting the birthday bunting and letters.
I'll add a name on the base panel later.
I gently pulled on the skeleton's arms to make them stand out wide enough to "hold" the strings for the banner.  I was a bit worried that the chipboard would break or tear, but it's really strong and held the new shape well

Materials and Tools:

Chipboard Skeleton, Skulls, Tree, Spider, Web,  2 x Bats; all Tando Creative

Various Distress Inks, Gesso, White Posca Pen,

 Silver pen, Black Enamel Accents, Black Stickles, Twine

Craft Robo to cut the bunting and the letters

There are a lot of elements to this card, and there's a lot of inky, painty work involved - but once that was all done it was just a case of assembling it all - which feels a bit of a cheat!

I hope you'll be joining in with us this week - either by sharing your card or by joining our blog hop - or increase your chances of winning our goodies by doing both!

Thanks for looking

Doing it with Digi

week 3 of celebrating the Daring Cardmakers' 7th anniversary and this week it's all about making use of all that lovely digital stash there is out there - or maybe developing your own embellishments  by digital means - I do this a lot to add sentiments, or to make images for cutting out with my Craft Robo.

We have yet more amazing prizes on offer; this week from our sponsor Pink Petticoat who are offering a choice of download collections and also from Craftsite who have some lovely stash to send to our winner - check HERE for more information and to see what our dt have made this week using Digital products, mainly from Pink Petticoat

It all went a bit awry for me - my own fault as I didn't get round to sorting it all out in time, so I had to improvise.

A quick look at the Pink Petticoat website gave me the help I needed and I came away with a lovely set of free downloads.  The free papers are simply the solid "base" colours - and very usable they are too - especially printed on some textures white Bazzill - my favourite way to use digital papers.

Our lovely Sharon emailed me some sentiments and I was ready to go with my first card.

To start with I printed the sentiment directly onto my card blank.  The layered bunting idea was something I spotted on Pinterest recently - in that case it was all done with stamped images, but I adapted it to be more "me" by using a couple of bunting shapes cut with Craft Robo and some lovely silver twine to "hang" it on.  

I added another digi element with the little gifts - this is another Craft Robo template created from a kids' colouring page found online

I was really pleased with the way this one turned out, but not quite so happy with my second card - which started out fine, and then, with all the fiddly elements done (funny how sometimes the simplest looking designs are the ones that take the longest to put together, isn't it?) I managed to get the edges of the upper white layer mucky - hence the rather heavy-handed edging of Stickles to cover the blunder.  I suppose I could have started over, but honestly, it took ages to get all the trees and circles layered up - and yes! I know it doesn't look like it!  

 I used deeper shades of the Pink Petticoat download for this one.  The little tree is a new template made especially for this card as I didn't have a "curvy" tree one made already.  To make it, I just folded a piece of paper in half, hand-cut the tree shape and then scanned it.  I tidied up the resulting image in Paint Shop Pro and converted it for Robo cutting.  The circles were all cut with Craft Robo too, and the tiny stars are punched from gold glitter card

I hope you'll get a chance to play along with the Daring Cardmakers this week - adding a link to what you've made means you might be randomly drawn as a winner of one of our prizes, so it's definitely worth having a go!

That's it for today.  Please leave a message.....

Sketchy

This is a Scrapling card I've made using the October sketch from The Sketch File Blog.  It's a "scrapling" in more ways than one because I used some scraps left over from another project to make it!

Here is the sketch:

A face-on view of the card:

The Scrapling is a left over strip from a piece of A4 ribbed Kraft card

All other papers are from Funky Hand's Shabby Saturday download collection

The two pink flower shapes and the sentiment panel are from

 the same paper download

Other bits: Acrylic dewdrops, Baker's Twine

2 x flower punches, Circle punches

 

 That's it for this time - short and sweet and no waffle :)

Thanks for visiting

Birthday Banners and Bunting

It's the second week of our month-long 7th Anniversary Celebrations over on the Daring Cardmakers and as 

Banners and Bunting 

are vital for the most festive events, that's what we've chosen as the theme for this week's challenge

We have prizes from two of our lovely "In House" stores this week; "Quirky Kits and Crafty Templates" is our own Leo's fabulous company, and Tea House Bridge is Zuzana's wonderfully eclectic shop.  The dt were each sent a little packet of buttons from Tea House Bridge to show off on our cards this week. 
 
If you're feeling a bit less than excited by the "same old, same old" stuff that all the craft shops sell, take a look at  Tea House Bridge and "Quirky Kits and Crafty Templates" - you'll not be disappointed as they are very far from run-of-the-mill!

We've got a lovely "surprise" Guest Designer this week too - the lovely and talented Enfys Cashmore.  Now I'm sure Enfys was a Guest Designer of ours from way back - but with seven years of challenges to check through, I can't locate when atm!  If I do, I'll come back and edit.

Anyhoooo  Here's my card for this week
I wanted to use two embossing folders for the background of this card, I didn't want to use them "straight" but try and use them in a more "wonky" way - it would have been good to get a bit more of an angle than I achieved, but even with a A4 machine there wasn't quite enough room to get more than this.  I got as much as I could with the Petite Dots one, but I had to do the naughty thing of cutting the words one apart along the seam to get it to fit the space on the card.  Actually, I don't feel at all naughty - I think its good to experiment and make things work in different ways and to get the result you want.

 I've used the "Bubbles and Banners" sketch from The Sketch File for the layout.

Materials and Tools

Papers from a couple of the "Find Your Wings and Fly" 6x6 pads by MME

All Buttons from Tea House Bridge 

Baker's Twine, Dewdrop acrylic accents

All banners and Bunting is hand cut

Circles cut with punches or Spellbinders dies 

Embossing Folders: "Petite Dots" (Crafters Companion), Birthday Words "Cuttlebug" 

LO from  The Sketch File

Here's a close up so you get a better view of the gorgeous buttoney bits, and hopefully can pick out the different embossing patterns

it would be great if you'd help us celebrate by joining in with the Daring Cardmakers this week - and those prizes are up for grabs as etra incentive, of course.....
Thank you for visiting, I hope you'll come again soon

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

whoa oh oh oh oh oh

It was actually really hard to stick to adding one "Ruby" to the banner on this card.... hahaha

This is a big card to welcome the new-born daughter of one of Hubby's work colleagues

It turned out not as planned, because even though it's huge, I realised that if I made the shaped card with working wheels that I initially wanted to do there wouldn't be enough room inside for a whole "officeful" of people to sign their congrats.  So not as much fun as the shaped version would have been, but simpler in the end (as made on short notice) and easier for everyone to sign

Materials and Tools

Papers: "Hey Baby Girl" from Funky Hand's "Wishes and Kisses" CD. 

printed onto white Bazzill card

Plain pink card x2 also Bazzill

Lace, Seam Binding, Pearls and Gems

Tools; Lace  Border die (Crafters Companion), Flower punch, Heart punch

Craft Robo to cut pram, Lacy circles on wheels

pc generated sentiment on hand cut banner

That's all for now, thanks for popping by

Party Time!

 All through October we'll be celebrating The Daring Cardmakers Challenge blog's 7th Anniversary 

Yes! the Daring Cardmakers team has been bringing you card making ideas for the last seven years, and there are still members of the original team  regularly contributing seven years later! 
So we're having a bit of a party and have a whole month of special challenges and loads of gifts to give away - there'll also be the occasional special Guest dropping by to share a card with us on the blog

The first challenge each month is always a colour combo and this time we have a wonderful Rainbow Cake full of colour to use as our inspiration and we'd like your cards to be birthday themed to celebrate our birthday.
Our special birthday sponsor this week is DoCrafts and they kindly sent us some presents - 2 lovely border punches (Poinsettia Border, and Ribbon Bow Border) for each of us....and another set  to give away as a prize.
We also have a £10 voucher  from The Ribbon Girl - pop over to our BLOG for more info.

Just for an extra bit of a challenge we thought we'd see if we could make 2 cards this week - one a birthday themed one, and another a card for another occasion - but using the first as an inspiration in some way

 I'd seen this "Z-fold! card idea a couple of weeks ago and thought I'd try making a Birthday and a Christmas card using the same fold, and the rainbow colours - but one in pastels and the other in brights.

 I'm not going into too much detail as this post is quite long enough already
The papers are a right old mix of 6x6 end 12x12 from different collections and different suppliers
I've also used seam binding, pearls, a pretty brad, and a rosette die
I edged the pieces for the "rainbow" panel using the Poinsettia Border punch from DoCrafts.

For my Christmas Brights card I just went through my card scraps box, used the DoCrafts  Ribbon Bow Border Punch on the strips of card for the rainbow panel.

I embossed the back section and the front folded piece with a Holly embossing folder, and cut the larges of the Fir trees from the set of 3 (folder and dies from Crafter Companion).  I embossed the tree too and swiped over with a bit of dull-gold ink  The pot and gifts are hand cut.

This die is especially fun as you can use the cut out bits from the bow as tiny embellishments - as on the pot and a couple of the gifts

Also used: pearls and "dewdrop" stones, Circle and 2x Star punches, gold brad. red twine

Nat found this gorgeous photo to add to the blog and use for our Rainbow Cake Inspiration:

Remember to be in with a chance of winning one of these lovely prizes, you just need to join in with this week's dare - as usual our prize-winners will be chosen at random from all who join in with us this week. We'd love to see you at our "party" and helping us celebrate 7 fab and fun years of the Daring Cardmakers

"Boys Will Be Boys" Blog Hop

The "Boys Will Be Boys" Blog Hop finishes at 12 midnight GMT today (Tuesday 1st October) so there are still a few hours left to join in
"Boys Will Be Boys" is the brand new download collection from Funky Hand  and to show everyone just how great these papers are we're inviting you to take a tour of our blogs where we're showcasing some of the things we've made so far- to add to the fun, leave a message at each place on the list and you might win this new collection for free!

You can also buy it from the shop now of course and start using it straight away - instant gratification is just one of the benefits of downloads!    

I thought today I'd show another of the cards I've made - this time I've been "playing" with some of the designs by doing a bit of resizing.  If you scroll down a bit and look at the blog hop announcement picture you'll see a little snippet of the paper I made my robot from.  I just cropped it right down then made the robot figure about 6,5cms tall.  I printed one copy, then clicked the button to "mirror" it and printed again to make a back and front for the robot.
The arrows were cut from another of the paper designs - the paper is fab on it's own, but just brilliant to cut up and make into embellishments.  The same goes for the "Boys will be Boys" sentiment - it's another of the paper designs (I resized it some fit 4 papers on one sheet of A4), with just one set of the words cut out to make the sentiment.  I added some tiny buttons,  a silver glitter helmet and some childish scribbly outlining

So, back to the blog hop

Here are the links for all the blogs you need to visit - you'll see loads of lovely projects and get a really good look at "Boys Will Be Boys" and you'll met the latest Funky Hand character "Bot" along the way.  Leave a comment on each blog and you could be the winner.

Anice.

Allison.

Debbie.

Kathy.

Lou.

Ruth.

Sam.

Tabbatha.

Get Funky inspiration blog.

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!