Always Check Before you Stick

It's Nat's turn to set the cahllene for the Daring Cardmakers this week, and she's chosen the theme

"New Beginnings"  

"... today happens to be the day that one chapter of my daytime career ends and another begins. So, inspired by "New Beginnings" and everything they entail I challenged my fellow teamies to create a card on this very theme.

and everything they entail I challenged my fellow teamies to create a card on this very theme.

Whether new beginnings in work, love, family, life in general or in celebration of a new adventure, or simply sharing inspirational and uplifting words of wisdom - the choice is yours!"

Before I share my card I just want to wish Nat every success in her new endeavour - it's a scary and exciting time setting up on your own, and I wish you all the luck in the world xxx

It's our wedding anniversary today, and all week long I've been trying to make a card for hubby -I don't know where my inspiration has gone to, but it's certainly not been here this week.  I finally finished it yesterday lunchtime, which meant my New Home card for the DCM was very last minute and of necessity,  simple to put together. 

Mind you I still made a hash of it by discovering that I'd stuck everything on, not with the fold at the top as planned, and not even on the left side, which would have been ok - but on the right edge - what a numpty!  

Luckily I was able to pull the yellow layer and everything on it off the card and stick it all on a new one.  

"More haste, less speed" in action, I suppose

Materials and Tools

Smooth White card blank plus extra for upper layer (PDA)

Yellow, Green, Turquoise and Peach card (Bazzill)

Ribbed Kraft card (PDA) 

Petite Dots 6x6 embossing folder (Crafters' Companion) 

Circle and tiny heart punches

Tiny red pearls

pc generated sentiment

Hand-cut pennants tree trunk and house

That's it for this time, thanks for looking

It would be great if you'd leave a message - feel free to share your own mistakes - it would make me so much feel better to know I'm not the only one who makes them!

 

Rock-it Ruby, Baby!

We crafters love new stash, and if it's free new stash, well so much the better!
Over the last few weeks we at the Daring Cardmakers have been playing with a load of lovely new goodies from Aussie company "Ruby Rock-it".  A few weeks ago we used some of their gorgeous goodies to make Baby cards and gave away a great prize to one of those who joined in the challenge.  This week is Round Two, and another chance for a lucky, randomly chosen joiner-innerer (I made that one up, did you guess?) to get their mitts on another prize pack of Ruby Rock-it lusciousness

Once again, we're playing with the words in the company name, but this time it's all about Birthday Cards - but we'd like to see some Ruby Colours, and some sort of nod to the word Rock - so could be rock music, rocks as in precious stones and bling, cards that physically rock, or maybe you'll use rock salt to make one of those clever inky backgrounds........

Here's my card

Materials and Tools

From Ruby Rock-it:

Kraft paper with Glittered designs (chevron patterns, Silver stars)

Tiny Alphabet and Word stickers

"Happy Birthday" sticker

Pale Pink layer of a rosette decorative element, plus deeper pink scalloped circle cut from one of the ready made pocket elements 

Other stash:

Cardstock; Ruby Red, Silver, Diamond White, Black

Various Gems, ruby ribbon,

Silhouette Cameo to cut guitar (own template)

Chevron Emnossing folder

Small stars from Nested Stars set

Various Small, even smaller, and Tiny star Punches

I loved the Glittery Kraft papers I found in my pack from RR-I, but I wanted to use it more as an element of my design, so I cut out parts of the glittery chevron paper to use almost as ribbons or banners across the card, then added a few stars cut from another of the papers

I wanted to keep to the colour palette, but I also wanted to use the gorgeous rosette from one of the embellishment packs - so I was a bit naughty and pulled the pink lower layer off and bravely disassembled one of the sweet little pocket (they really are so cute - each has a little card inside so you can add a secret message) embellishments to die cut a deep pink scalloped circle from.  The pockets are printed on both sides, so I cut extra stars in different sized from the remainder.
I still have several of the cute pockets and inserts to use later, and of course as I only used the bottom layer of the rosette, the rest is still there too.

 I do  like a bit of "over the edge" action - I think it adds even more dimension to a project, but it does mean you need a bigger envelope! My final, last minute "extra" was to add some ribbon tails to the rosette for an extra pop of Ruby Red

Here's what you could win this week from the Daring Cardmakers and Ruby Rock-it

You'll find stamps, tags, embellishment packs, a host of different stickers, Alphabet and word stickers, and some fabulous little wooden bits and bobs which I just couldn't manage to get on my card - some of the team did, so don't forget to click HERE to have a good look at the different things we used and you could win!

That's it for this time, thanks for looking - I hope you'll leave a message :)

Seeing Stars

Another card using the July sketch from The Sketch File today.  I needed a fairly quick to make masculine card, so turned to my usual go-to motif of stars.  I really should make an effort to find something else to use for a change!

I thought I'd have enough suitably coloured bits in my Funky Hand scraps box to match up with the stars on the background I'd already stencilled in the blues and browny shades - yes, I know I should plan these things first, but where's the fun in that.......Luckily it all worked out okay, the "celebrate" was a bit of an after-thought. but does bring it all together nicely

Materials and Tools

Smooth white card blank with extra for stencilled panel

Papers from various Funky Hand collections 

Brown Bazzill card

Printed Twill ribbon, Inks by Versamagic 

Stencil: 

Stars (Memory Box)

Dies: 

Nested Stars (Taylored Expressions) 

"celebrate" (Tim Holtz)

LO July Sketch The Sketch File

The Sketch File

That's if for today, thanks for visiting I hope you like what you see :)

sshhhh! I don't want to talk about it

What is with this mania for making Cword cards in the SUMMER!?
You are all bonkers!
Everywhere I look, crafters are sharing the Cword cards they've made over the last few weeks and it's so not funny ;)  Don't you know that the end of September is quite early enough - maybe even a week or two too early.............

On the Daring Cardmakers this week our lovely Dawn has also asked for THAT sort of card, and as it happens, I was also making some of them for another reason (more of that at a later date though), so {shock, horror} I've actually made 4 Cword cards over the last week or so.  I'm going to have to make lots of pretty flowery cards now just to wash the taste away hahaha

Ah well, I can be brave when I have to be......
I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, braced myself and came up with this

Materials and Tools

Smooth cream card blank, plus more for the embossed panel (PDA Woodward)

Red and Green card (Bazzill)

Papers; Various 6x6 sets  (Simple Stories, Bo Bunny)  

Gold twine

Gold Gems (Anita's)

Embossing Folder "Xmas Elegance" 6x6 (Crafter's Companion)

Poinsettia Die set (DieNamics)

Silhouette Cameo to cut smaller sizes of the poinsettia petals

It's based on the July LO from The Sketch File, but  looks really different from the last card I shared using the same LO - scroll down to see that one.

I knew I wanted to make a poinsettia as the focus part of my card (couldn't quite get my head around using trees, stockings and snowflakes!), so I made that first, then had to find my Christmas stash - of which there isn't much because I didn't buy much last year and I had a bit of a clear out too.
I made the flower centre by cutting a circle of red card, gluing 3 sizes of gold gems on to it, allowing to dry and then sticking a few more on top to get some dimension and a better finished effect

That's it. I hope you like my card - please pop across to The Daring Cardmakers BLOG to see the fab cards our talented team have made for Dawn's challenge - hopefully you'll even feel inspired to join in with us!

Thanks for looking, please leave a message

Summer Roses

I decided to shrink the LO for my latest card using The Sketch File's July sketch - and thought I'd try a bit of "selective" embossing too
 Hopefully you can see that there's a plain, un-embossed square there, under the flowery section

 Materilas and Tools

Smooth white card blank, and extra for embossed panel

Patterned Papers: "Yes Please" 12x12 pack (American Crafts)

Embossing Folder: "Floral Frenzy" (Crafter's Companion)

Roses: Tea Rose Medium (Cheery Lynn)

Banners: from "Build a Scene, Hot Air Balloon" (DoCrafts XCut)

I made the embossing "mask" using one of the squares from the DieNamics stack ea few layers of card, then taping them together to keep the centre square aperture neat and even.  I've made masks like this before and glued the layers together - but actually, taping is quicker and also means it's easy enough to remove a layer if the sandwich is too thick to go through the machine.

Here's the sketch I used 

I like this one, it's quite a handy little LO, I think.  Next time though I need to try twisting it round to see how that works :) 

 I noticed that the "waste" from cutting the little banners were just the right size circles to use for the coloured "sprinkles", so I used them instead of the pearls I was going to add - lazy, or what?

 

Hope you like this one,

Thanks for looking

No Neutrals, No Black

I completely forgot to post my Daring Cardmakers card on Friday - not sure why, but these things happen when you're me hehe
Svenja issued a rather tricky challenge for us: "No Neutrals, No Black".  She did allow us to use a little white though.
I spent a good while just pushing papers around - you know that one, I'm sure!  
My first attempt at an actual card went in the bin. 
So, for my next try I thought I'd try a different approach and see if changing the card shape would help get over the mental block.  I don't make them often, but for some reason, scraplings work when all else fails - there must be some weird magic in that skinny shape, that's all I can think
Having spent ages with the binned card, this Scrapling didn't take long at all - though I did rip the flower off after I thought it was finished to add the doilies behind it

Materials and Tools

Scrapling (7cm x 15cm)

Papers MME 6x6 Stella and Rose

Narrow orange Ribbon, DecoArt foil, Imaginisce gems

Beads for flower centre

Hand-cut banner

Blossom Punch for flower

Memory Box Doily Die

Tim Holtz "hello" doe

That's it for today.
You can click HERE to visit the DCM blog and see all the colourful cards the team are sharing this week

Thanks for visiting

All in One Corner

We got back yesterday from a few days on the Isle of Man, where Hubby comes from.  As usual for this rock in the middle of the Irish Sea, the weather was mixed - I don't think it's ever managed 2 whole days of Summer in a row when we've been there, and this time was no exception, but there you go.  If you spent last weekend in baking hot sunshine, spare a thought for is and our one day of "warm", half day of "sun but chilly breeze", and then the "varying degrees of grey, damp and chilly" we had the rest of the time.  hahaha

Anyway, time to get back in the swing of crafting after a few weeks of travelling - before the IOM we were down in Dorset - where the weather was much kinder and we enjoyed a lovely holiday,exploring the coast and gorgeous countryside - might even get round to blogging a few photos eventually!

As it's new sketch day on The Sketch File  I've some crafting to share here today, this is my first card using July's "Corner Cluster" Layout

 

Materials and Tools

Smooth white card blank plus extra for embossed panel

Papers by Echo Park (I think) 

Black card for sentiment and butterfly bodies

Enamel dots, pearls. gems

Chevrons Embossing folder  (Crafters' Companion)

Butterfly dies (both Memory Box)

"Thanks" is from a plate by Cuttlebug

This is the sketch I used:

I used the butterflies where the ovals are and substituted the sentiment in place of one of the narrow rectangular panels

That's all for today thank you for visiting, please leave a comment - I do appreciate it!

July Elemental Challenge

As it's the first Friday of the month, over on The Daring Cardmakers blog we have another fab picture to use for inspiration.  The idea is that you choose at least three elements (colour combo can only be counted as one of them) and use them to inspire your own crafting/

This time it's our lovely Jo who's doing the picture-choosing and she's found a fantastic image for everyone to use.
Here's the card I made

I've used;
Chevrons, Cameo,  Peony flowers, Leaves, Colour Combo and Black Script from Jo's Inspiration Piece:

There are so many little details in this picture, it was hard to select which ones to use!

Materials and Tools

Smooth White card for base and stencilled panel

Thin card in White and Pink

Bazzill Black card, Gold card

Fresco Finish Pink Paint, Colorbox Black Ink

 2x ready made rosebuds, 1x ready made flower

2x hand made peony flowers, tiny handmade roses 

Pink Organza, Gold Stickles,

ticker Sentiment

Chevron Stencil (Prima) 

Qulling flower die - I used the petals individually (Crafter's Companion)

Pansy Punch for second flower

Leafy Sprig die (Spellbinders)

Other Leaves cut with "Build a Flower #2" (Cheery Lynn)

Cameo is my own template, cut with Silhouette Cameo

I hope you'll pop over to see the cards the rest of the Team have made {HERE}, and that you'll feel inspired to join in this week
Thanks for looking, please leave a message :)