I Forgot my Forgotten Funky

The last Friday of the month is the day all the Funkettes post something on the Get Funky and Craft blog, all of us using the same Funky Hand CD or Download - so how come I nearly always forget to have something ready?

On Thursday afternoon when Anice issued a friendly reminder of the date I had a little panic, but found some pieces of the right papers actually in one of the piles of stuff on my desk, because I used the "Sleigh Ride" a while back  to make a gift bag.

I grabbed them and made a quick card to add to the blog post.  It was a bit of a pig's ear to be honest, so when OH rang to say he was going to be a bit late home I went back to my desk and had another go.
Well, that didn't go well either!
So the card I put  on the blog on Thursday night had to do for the Friday morning launch.

Well, with a little more time and feeling a bit less frazzled I sat down at my desk this morning and made something I like much more - and it gave me the chance to try out another of my "home made" sentiment panels = you can see another on my Daring Cardmakers card if you scroll down to the post before this one

I really love the "Sleigh Ride" download and often use it for my projects as the colours and lots of the designs are just great for all year round crafting

Funky Hand "Sleigh Ride"

The sentiment panel is created using Paint Shop Pro using fonts and dingbats. For this card I added colours to the dingbats to match the colours in the papers before printing out.

The stars were cut with some of the dies from a nested die set (Taylored Expressions) using  more designs from the  "Sleigh Ride" collection along with a few in glitter paper for a bit of festive bling

I'm going to have a look at the two rejected cards to see if I can save them, so watch this space!

Thanks for looking. please leave a message.....

Cottoning On....

Another Friday another Daring Cardmakers day and this time it's Jo setting the challenge

It's Jo here with this week's dare;

Cottoning On!
This week, I'd like to see some cotton on your cards, cotton thread, cotton wool, cotton yarn...
The DT have created some beautiful cards to inspire you; and you can see them all by clicking HERE

A couple of years ago I bought a pack of beautiful fabric "trims" which were part of a Websters Pages Christmas range.  I will admit that I've not really used much of them so this challenge was a great opportunity to hunt them out.
With the lovely, quite wide and rather opulent piece of fabric as a starting point there didn't seem much point in half measures, so I threw all my favourite card-making "excesses" at this one - ribbon, lace, a big flower, some glitter and lovely rich shades - this was fun to put together

 
I've been playing around with Paint Shop Pro on the pc using different fonts and quotations etc to make some sentiments for my cards.  This is one of those I've made - having worked out the layout and which font to use for the words I then added the little holly motifs which are from a Christmas dingbat font (found on DaFont) - I just "coloured" them in later with the "fill" tool.  
What you end up with is something along the lines of a stamped sentiment, but with the added bonus of being able to resize it, or even change the font or icons if you want

Tools and Materials:

Cream, ribbed card blank

Cream card, lightly inked for printing sentiment panel

Dark red glitter card,  Dark red Stickles glitter glue

Red, Yellow and Green Bazzill card for flower

Gold card

Wide Christmas fabric "ribbon" (Websters Pages)

Cream cotton lace (Charmed Cards and Craft)

Very narrow Red stain ribbon

Gold lurex ribbon (under the lace)

Border punch (Martha Stewart)

Poinsettia die (MFT DieNamics) 

Tiny Holly die (Memory Box) 

Although there's lots going on in this card and quite a few "processes" involved this all went together really easily.  Funny how things do that sometime

Thanks for coming by, I hope you like my card

Something Old, Something New

It is Lythan's turn to set the challenge for the Daring Cardmakers this week:

"I have gone for one that allows for "seasonal" choices but is also something fun if you have either smugly made all your cards or are still in denial about what happens near the end of December...
Something Old, Something New
Most paper crafters have something in their stash that they have bought but never got round to using. If that isn't you - well done! But you can still play along as the idea of this dare is to combine a new and unused/ fresh out of the packet and only used a little product with something that has been hanging round in your craft space for a while."

You can see all the cards we've made using our Old and New stash by visiting the BLOG, here.

OK so I may have indulged myself a little and bought a few new dies in the lead up to the Festive Season, but I've already used some of those for cards I've shown on here, so in the spirit of the dare, I actually chose to use the brand new, as yet unopened pack of nesting star dies to make my card this week. 
My "Something Old" is pretty much everything else, but especially the papers, which I bought a couple of years ago but haven't really used much at all

Tools and Materials

Kraft Square card blank

Papers: Bazzill "Believe" 6x6 paper pack

Strip of  Dark Red Bazzill card

Dark Red and Gold Glitter card

Gold Vellum

Gold cord

Decal sticker sentiment

Ink: Rhubarb Stalk dewdrop (Memento)

Nested Stars Die set (Taylored Expressions)

Tiny Stars punch - punches 6 at once (EK Success)

At first I only had the glitter card and "music paper stars, but it looked very dull, so I added another star cut from gold vellum and it's amazing the difference it made in brightening up the whole thing
The small stars are hanging loose on the cord strands so there's a bit of movement in the finished card too.  I hope you like it

 Thanks for visiting, please leave a comment

In a Flap for November

With hardly any Christmas cards made yet I'm definitely in a bit of a flap in that regard!
"In a Flap" is the name of the November LO idea on The Sketch File Blog and I've used it to make a couple of  cards so far - Christmas cards, so that's at least 2 in the box!
The sketch actually went live a couple of weeks ago but I completely forgot to blog my cards here

 For my first card I used the sketch the "right" way up and used my new star die

 Tools and Materials:

Cream card, Red card

Red and Gold Glitter card

Gold ribbon

Homemade sticker sentiment

Dies: Spellbinder scalloped circle

Sweet Dixie star

Various star punches

The little hearts around the scalloped edge are waste from the 2 star die cuts

Here is the sketch:

For this week's card I turned the sketch upside down to make a snow "hill" for the tree to stand on

 Tools and Materials:

White card

Dark Blue card embossed with "Petite Dots" (Crafters Companion)

Green and Silver Glitter card

Silver cord

Homemade sticker sentiment

Dies: Spellbinder plain circle, Sweet Dixie Tree, Cheery Lynn snowflake plate

Small and tiny star punches

Well, that's it for this time
Thanks for looking

Light a Candle

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

 "Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."    ~Buddha
So this week I'd simply like to see some candles on your cards, whether its just one candle or lots of them - and for any reason you want.

It always takes me a while to get into "Christmas card mode", and I try to keep the bulk of my Christmas cards fairly simple to put together (which isn't usually the case with my cards). so it's nice to use the DCM challenges to have a bit more fun with embellishments, dimension and lots of layers!

The main trouble this week was that it's my challenge - and most of the team will tell you that making something for your own challenge is the hardest of all.  Why that should be the case is a mystery, but that's the way it is!
Thus, it shouldn't have been a surprise when  this one took most of the day to make - and  I'm not happy because I wanted to use red ribbon  but didn't have enough of the right shade to do it. maybe  I should have planned ahead....haha, that'll be the day!

This one involved lots of die-cutting, making and cutting templates for the Silhouette and some ridiculously fiddly sticking of tiny berries which I could have done much more quickly and easily with blobs of Stickles....but by that time my brain was frazzled!
I bought the holly border last year and find it quite handy as because the very fine strand that joins the leaves  allows it to be quite pliable for bending into different shapes - like a circle for instance....

Tools and Materials

Cream card blank

Papers: Sleigh Ride download by Funky Hand

Bazzill card: white (for printing papers on to), dark green for larger holly

Dark Red Glitter paper (Best Creations)

Green ribbon, Srickles (yellow, dark red)

Candles and flames are handcut

Sentiment is pc generated

 Silhouette Cameo:

Frame with circle in it, plus the turquoise mat behind it

Petals for the poinsettia

Dies: 

Large holly; Crafters Companion

Holly border die (Memory Box), I've used 3 of the strands to go around the circle and to make the wreath and add some extra strands to fill it out, plus a 4th  on the side panel at the right

Mini Holly Leaves and Berries ( Memory Box) for extra leaves

Slellbinders Labels 34 to make backing for sentiment 

Snowflakes cut using a Cheery Lynn plate of tiny snowflakes

There  are some fantastic ideas on ways to use candles on cards from our fab Design Team over on the blog, so please check them out HERE
I hope you'll join in and play along this week
Thanks for visiting

Forgetful

I'm not sure how it happened but I've completely forgot to update my blog for the last couple of weeks - I even forgot to add the card I made for last week's Daring Cardmakers challenge - which is really bad as DCM Fridays are usually the ones I remember to blog, even if I don't add anything else during the week.

So today I've a Daring Double to share

First up is this week's challenge, set by Leo and as it's the First Friday of the Month it's our November Colour Palette Challenge.
Leo chose Gold, Rose-Gold, Silver and Linen White as the colour combo and I made this card

I didn't have anything I felt met the "Rose Gold" shade, so I opened a new document in Paint Shop Pro,  hovered my mouse over the Rose Gold squares on Leo's inspiration board to get the RGB colour match and used the "fill" tool to cover the page.  I then printed it onto an A5 piece of Bazzill Bling in  "Diamond White" which meant the printed piece of card has texture and a lovely soft sheen.
Here's a screenshot of how to get the RGB codes, just in case you are interested

Here is Leo's inspiration picture

Tools and Materials:

Smooth White square card blank, plus scrap for snowflakes

Bazzill Bling Diamond White card for printing with colour

Bazzill Bling Diamond White card left white for embossed panel

Plain Gold card for sentiment

Silver and Gold glitter card (Best Creations)

Pearls and tiny silver gems

"Christmas" cut from my own Silhouette Cameo template 

Baubles cut with a Memory Box die, Snowflakes with a Cheery Lynn die plate of small snowflakes

Last week, Bat asked us to use some googly or whacky eyes on our cards - this was such a fun challenge and I absolutely loved seeing the cards the team made - so may inspiring ideas on how to use them!
I used a template I made for my old Craft Robo a few years ago and now cut with the Silhouette

Tools and Materials:

Smooth White square card blank

Deep Blue card (Bazzill)

Snowflake background is a digital design printed onto Diamond White (Bazzill Bling)

Blue-grey and Green glitter card (Best Creations)

Red, white, peach card scraps

Googly Eyes, Stickles Ice crystal glitter glue

Father Christmas cut from my own  template using Silhouette Cameo

Holly die (Crafters Companion)

Fancy Scalloped Circle die (Spellbinders)

Last week was Dare 52 of Year 8 for the Daring Cardmakers - a full 8 years of setting challenges - which is amazing.  Leo's colour choice for this week is perfect for celebrating  Dare 1 of Year 9 and  the start of a whole new year for us.   I hope you'll pop across and see what the team have made this week.

Thank you for coming by today