Kathy's Waffle

Things are Looking Brighter!

2012-01-30T11:57:00.002Z

The new set of Crafty Templates are out so today I'm sharing the first of the things I've made using some of this month's templates.

First though a quick catch up on the kitchen progress because today is Big Kitchen Day - all the new cupboards arrived this morning and I can't even get into the kitchen now unless I go round and through the French doors from the patio. Exciting after all the destruction and then the gradual putting-together-again-ness af the last 3 weeks. Week 4 is really about making proper headway. It's all beginning to look so much better now,

Mark the decorator is here working his way around the lovely smooth freshly plastered walls and suddenly the inner hall area is looking so much bigger and brighter. He'll be painting all the woodwork (apart from the new doors, which will be waxed - eventually!) white which will really make a huge difference to the dark teak stain that was there before. The new arch way looks fab.

I mentioned on Friday that the lights were going up in the kitchen - well that's all done now (the problem with the brackets turned out not to be a problem after all!) So I thought I'd add a photo here today. I've updated my Pinterest board with more photos too.

As always there's a cut mix of images among the Crafty Templates set this month - some fab animal shapes which will be great for little kids' cards and also for fun cards for adults - especially if you're clever with fun phrases/sentiments.

I loved this tiger one and it'll be great for the birthday of one of the youngest of the family members next month.

I used various scraps of card and paper to make the background, then yellow and brown card for the tiger himself. I used some wire wound round the barrel of a thickish felt pen to make a spring to put behind the tiger's head so it wobbles about in a fun way.

You can find out all about Crafty Templates and Crafty Goodies kits HERE

Please do go and check out what Leo has on offer - the various template sets and goodies kits are a fabulous way to build up a stock of images and quirky stuff you won't find anywhere else.

Right off to make the next round of drinks for the "workforce" hehe

Thanks for visiting

All very Wishi-Washi

2012-01-27T12:21:00.000Z

You'd think that, being confined to the study most of the time just now I'd have loads of crafting and blogging time, wouldn't you? Yes, that;s what I thought before the work started too - but it's not working out that way atm.
Things are progressing pretty well, though. The plaster finally finished yesterday after a whole 5 days of work - because so much is being altered there's not much of the area that he's not needed to do, plus we've added an arch between the main and inner hall which previousl looked like a door frame with the door removed.
The decorator started yesterday and is concentrating on getting base coats on the kitchen walls - by home time yesterday he'd put three coats on the ceiling so that today our builder and electrician could get the track lighting up on there - unfortunately 2 of the brackets are shorter than the rest "they don't make shorter ones" said the supplier when hubby rang him this morning, photos were sent - "must be a manufacturing error". I bet those two short brackets were the only ones in the box too! Never mind, they'll send the right ones out and then we can get the rest of the lights up.
Monday is K-Day, when the actual Kitchen people start their part of the job - exciting, eh? Everything arrives then and they'll start by fitting the longest run of cupboards - by this time next week we should have the new appliances in place - at least in a temporary usable fashion. It'll be a while before they are all fixed up properly as they have to template the area first ahead of making the worktops and splashback.

This week's crafting hasn't gone well - I seem to be having one of those periods where the piles of paper and card on my desk are not coming together very successfully. I've started a few bits and pieces that haven't worked out so the only thing I've actually finished is my card for Jo's Wishi Washi challenge for the Daring Cardmakers.

Wishi Washi
I would like you this week to make a card using Washi or Deco Tape, you can use it to create a background, an embellishment or just use it as an accent.
If you don't have any - you can still join in by making your own washi style tape - use double sided tape and tissue paper or printed tracing paper or vellum as an alternative
If you're stuck for ideas, have a look at Pinterest for some inspiration and have a peek at the wonderful cards that the Design Team have created this week!

Jo has a fab little tutorial on her BLOG, HERE which shows a clever way to amke faux Washi tape strips - definitely worth a peek!

I have one roll of real Washie tape in my stash and I did try to use it for my card, honestly! But after a couple of goes I gave up and went down Jo's faux Washi strips route instead.
I used Funky Hand's "Colour Me Happy" CD and printed a few cut-down designs onto tracing paper using the Draft setting on the printer.
In her tutorial Jo uses double-sided tape on the back of her paper, instead of that I cut the strips first then run them through my little Xyron a couple at a time to make four strips that would fit across my card to make a (very) simple background.
Liking the way the designs looked on the tracing paper I printed another sheet with some of the plain as well as the patterned designs from the collection then used these to make a flower, leaves and stem.

The flower is several layers of petals cut with the shabby flowers Tim Holtz Bigz die. The ones in the centre were made by making a circular hole in the centre, cutting down between two of the petals then rolling the resulting strip around - a bit like making a coiled rose.
I added some peachy-pink dewdrops, a decal sentiment sticker and rather too much Stickles (oops).

We hope you'll be joining in with us this week - if you've not used Washi tape before it's a great excuse to try something new - there a re loads of places selling the stuff now and it comes in all sorts of designs - or you can make your own like most of us did!
Thanks for visiting, I'll be back soon with my projects for this month's cute Crafty Templates

Kitchenalia!

2012-01-20T11:29:00.000Z

Needless to say "All Things Kitchen" are high in my mind just now - although I'm also being forced into thinking about cupboard shelving, sinks and toilets which sort of brings it all back to reality somehow!

I suppose it comes as no surprise that with my turn to set the challenge for the Daring Cardmakers popping up a couple of weeks into the building work my dare igoes like this:which I've called

"Kitchenalia"
As we've just started work on remodelling some areas of our house, including knocking the Kitchen and Utility rooms into one space, kitchens, and all things Cookery are very much on my mind at the moment. So these are the things I'd like you to incorporate on your card this week. I'd like to see kitchen and cooking themes - but not just cupcakes, though of course you can add some of those into your design if you wish. We can't wait to see what you'll be cooking up for us this week, so please join in and have some "cheffy" fun with us this week.

As usual when it's my own challenge I struggled to come up with an idea for my own card. decided I wanted to use this fab food mixer template that was one of the January 2011 Crafty Templates set and at first it was going to be a food mixer shaped card - I made the mixer to full size for the card then decided I didn't like it after all, and made a smaller one instead. I thought a cheffy style apron would make a good background so made myself a Craft Robo template and cut it in card and paper from the "Stripey Stripes" Funky Hand download. I found some clipart to use to make a few utensils and chef's hats, then made a £master chef" rosette for the corner.

Materials:

14cm smooth white card blank, Bazzill card; White, Black, dull yellow,

Papers: "Stripey Stripes" Funky Hand download, Bo Bunny "Cambridge"

Crafty Templates food mixer template (Jan 2011)

Tools:

Craft Robo to cut Apron, Utensils, Chef's Hats, Lettering

(happy to share these templates, contact me if you'd like a copy)

Memory Box Rosette die: cut down to make rosette of smaller circumference

Spellbinders Spikey Circles die

Inks: Yellow Ochre, Red, Black (Cats Eye), Platinum Planet (Dew Drop)

Now I'm going to have to think of something to do with a 14cm squarish food mixer now - it'll probably sit on my desk for a week or two then go in the bin!

Just before I go I've one more Funky Hand SteamFunk card to share. I really love these papers!

I used:

Papers: Funky Hand SteamFunk download

Cogs. Cogs Border and Penny Farthing templates cut on Craft Robo (contact me if you'd like a copy of these)

Spellbinders photo corner die, Cuttlebug embossing folder,

Large fancy metallic and Screw Head brads

Hand-folded rosette. Lots of inks and Krylon pen.

Well, I have some things on my to-do list that need doing today and as the plasterer is busy whisking up loads of plaster in the kitchen I don't feel at all guilty about spending the day sitting at my craft desk! It's just like a giant Bamix he uses, really - so even he is getting into the Kitchenalia mood, hehe.

I hope you'll pop over to the Daring Cardmakers BLOG and see what the team have come up with - I love all the things they've made this week and I hope you'll be inspired to join in with our challenge this week

Thanks for visiting today, please come back soon

Late Late Late

2012-01-18T12:23:00.002Z

The new sketch on The Sketch File Blog is up today - it's late, and that's my fault for having such a gross lack of memory cells. Those I do have are all being used to full capacity atm - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. If you'd like to see some photos of how our building work is progressing, I've started storing them on the "Renovations January 2012" board on my Pinterest site HERE. There are some "Before" photos as well as some of various stages of the work - I'll try to keep it updated as time goes on.
This is the card I made using the January Sketch. I've waited ages to share this one as I took the opportunity of using it for a card order way back at the end of November!

Materials:

Burgundy "Stardream" card for base and sentiment mat

Bazzill card in white, plus 2 shades of grey

Burgundy satin ribbon, Grey Card Candy (both Creative Treasures)

Silver double hearts charm, IRock Mirror Accents (Imaginisce)

I'm really happy with the simplicity and versatility of this sketch and I'm sure it's one I'll use often for various projects.

I hope you will also see some possibilities for using it and will join in with us over on The Sketch File - Keryn, Jackie and Carol are sharing the first of their projects using the sketch today and there will be more coming in the next week or two.

The Funky Hand Blog Hop that took place over the weekend was a great success and a fab way to show off the wonderful new Funky Kraft Stash and SteamFunk download collections. Even though the hop is over and the prize has now been won, it's still worth checking out the blogs of my fabulous funky teamies to see what they've been making - it's a great way to see all the papers and other elements that form the two collections.

Here's the second of my cards using the wonderful StetamFunk papers. I was inspired to make this after seeing a piece of Steampunk artwork - I think something like this would make a fab Valentines or Wedding Anniversary card,

Materials:

Papers and letters for sentiment from SteamFunk download by Funky Hand

Cream card blank, Bazzill card for cogs, Black card, Inks and Krylon pens

Tools:

Heart and all cogs cut with Craft Robo (contact me if you want a copy of the template)

Cuttlebug "Swirls" embossing folder, Inks, 2 sizes of small square punches

I've another SteamFunk card to share in the next couple of days....

I'm gradually starting to catch up with my to-do list, so hoping to be blogging, and blog-hopping more regularly soon!

Thanks for visiting today, hope you like what you see here and will come back again soon!

New Funky Stash!

2012-01-14T17:12:00.001Z

Funky Hand have released two fabulous new Download collections today and are showing them off with a Blog Hop around some of the DT's blogs.

Big Sad Face from me as I just couldn't get sorted in time to join in this time. To find out all about the Funky Blog Hop, click HERE where Anice has started the whole thing off with all the info and instructions you need to be in with a chance of winning both these wonderful new colections.

The two new downloads are:

Funky Kraft Stash

Steam Funk

My own favourite is the Steam Funk set - ever since the Daring Cardmakers did a steampunk challenge last year I'vve been meaning to dabble in steampunk stuff again. Now, thanks to these lovely new Funky Hand papers I've got a great excuse.

Although I'm not one of the ports of call on the hop I did get as far as making some cards and thought I'd share one today - plus some sneak peeks of the others which I'll blog over the next few days.

For this Steampunk Cameo lady I've used 4 papers from the download, along with some black and a couple of shades of grey Bazzill.card

Notes: The silhouette, ovals, scalloped oval and the small cogs used to decorate the hat are all cut using my own Craft Robo templates

(contact me via the email link in the side bar if you are interested in having a copy of these)

Materials: Funky Hand Steam Funk download collection,

Bazzill card, Seam Binding *brown, cream), gauzy fabric trim, copper wire to make monocle

A couple of sneak peeks of other cards made with these gorgeous papers

Please join in with the Funky |Blog hop this weekend - its such a great way to see what the new collections are all about, and to see then used for a variety of projects and in the different DT members' styles. Click HERE to go to Anice's blog and her introductory message - don't forget you could be using these papers for free if you are the winner this weekend!

Thanks for visiting, please leave a message if you have a minute.....

Social Networking

2012-01-13T11:53:00.001Z

It's Zuzana's turn to set this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge - and boy! this one is definitely a challenge.

Hi, it's Zuzana here setting this week's challenge.

You know that we are living in the new communication era, so I have chosen a

MIRACULOUS SOCIAL NETWORKS

dare for you. I would like to see Facebook, Twitter, Skype, You Tube ... on your cards.

You can use funny sentiments, colour scheme, fonts, style, layout or PC image.

A difficult one - but what a great idea for a challenge. When you start looking into the subject there are loads of ways you can take inspiration from all these places, and Zuz has pointed out some of them in her introduction - so don't be too daunted - go on, have a try, we'd love to see waht you come up with.

I needed to get my card made quite early in the week so I went with a bit of an obvious one and chose a "tweet" theme.

I had a lovely time making the background - I really really wanted an excuse to use the new Barn Door Distress pad which was one of the goodies sent by my "Secret Santa" from the Charmed Cards and Craft forum and making a sunset background, teaming it with the other red/orange/yellow shades I've gradually been collecting seemed the perfect thing to do.

Materials:

Papers: Beach Babe 6x6 by Fancy Pants (also from my Secret Santa).

Distress Inks: Spiced Marmalade, Barn Door, Worn Lipstick, Mustard Seed,

Chipboard lovebirds, pc generated sentiments, Black Stickles for eyes

Tools:

Trees: Memory Box winter tree die (I hand cut a longer trunk for one of them and just glued the two pieces together).

Leaves: I used the waste from one of the Spellbinders Blossom Tags and Accents dies!

Please pop over to the DCM BLOG and see what the team have made this week - hopefully between us we'll inspire you to have a play with this week's theme!

Our building work is going well and the new layout is almost "there" - though there is still a bit of "destruction" to be done when the bit between the main entrance and inner hall is made less like a door shaped hole without a door in it. I know what I mean, even if it does sound as clear as mud.

Hubby has been taking photos each day of the progress, so I'll sort some out and add a "Kitchen Blog" post on here soon.

There are some fab new download collections on the way from Funky Hand, so I'm off now to finish a few things I started yesterday. If you like Funky Hand goodies, don't forget there's only a couple of days left to join in with the current "Funky Fifteenth" challenge where the prize for the winner is a free download of your choice......

That's all for now, thanks for visiting

Christmas Finale!

2012-01-10T13:19:00.000Z

Thought I'd do a quick "picture-post" round up with some photos of the hearth, tree, parcels etc and a couple of last-minute "makes" - wallets for making gift cards and vouchers a little more interesting to open.

We had a red and gold themed Christmas - I tried to use some of my die cutting goodies to ddecorate my parcels

I used the Memory Box rosette die to make pretty decorations for some of the presents, Spellbinders trees to make tags, or "markers" to show which among all the same coloured parcels were the ones I'd got for Hubby! I even used one of the Deep Edger Martha Stewart punches to cut a border on a long piece of gold paper to add a decorative border to one of the big packages - mind you, the wrapping paper was a pig to cut "cleanly" with the punch! grrrr, why do they never work as well as they ought?

Here's the tree, and then a close up of some of the baubles

The biggest parcel didn't quite fit under the tree hehe - no prizes for guessing what sort of thing was inside, though!

It was this fab super-comfy Aeron chair, I'm sitting on it right now - so much better than my old desk chair!

I decorated the hearth with baubles tied onto a garland, plus lots of candles. On the mantelpiece (pic below) is the canvas I did a couple of years ago - I was really pleased with how it turned out so can't resist taking the chance to put it up on display! Not a great photo but the first one taken with my other "big" pressie - an iphone! yes I finally have one - only beenlusting over ever since hubby got his!

This is a wallet made to present some goft vouchers in

And this last one was for a magazine subscription renewal "notice". I made a tag using an image of the magazine found on the web to fit inside

That's it - you made it to the end - thank you!

Now I need to go and make some new stuff so that I have something else to blog about!

Thanks for popping by today - please leave a message if you can, I do love to read them.

Long Time No Blogging!

2012-01-06T10:49:00.001Z

We'll call my total lack of blogging over the last couple weeks a Christmas Holiday I think!

With the DCM taking a couple of weeks break over the festive season, I didn't even have that to push me to updating my blog at least once a week. I have still been doing the odd bit of crafting and have Christmas photos to share too, but what with one thing and another blogging was way down the to-do list - so there's a bit of catching up to do.

Our next lot of building work starts on Monday so I'll be hiding away in the study for a few weeks - so my blogging (and my crafting) output should improve! This is the big one - remodelling the downstairs areas of the extension added by previous owners - so it includes an inner hallway, utility room, shower/cloak room and the kitchen! As soon as our visitors left on New Year's Day it was a case of clearing their rooms, clearing away "Christmas" and making a start on emptying those rooms affected by the work. We're getting there slowly, but there's still a way to go and only a couple of days left before Keith and his merry band of builders move in!

Keep tuned for updates.......

Anyway, the Daring Cardmakers are back after our Christmas break which gave me the push I needed not only to do some crafting, but also to blog it!

We have a fab new year-long series which we hope everyone will enjoy and feel inspired to join in with. This year, the first dare of each month will feature a Colour Combo Challenge, with each of the DT taking a turn at choosing the colour palette we use. January's colour palette has been chosen by Fran - her choice of colours is indicated by the photo and shown below it

Aquas and teal shades are often quite "cool" colours - but the gorgeous creams and creamy-browns really take away that chilliness and make them feel much warmer and cosier, don't they?

Having sorted out a great big pile of possible papers that might work, I ended up finding that pretty much everything I needed was in the gorgeous "Breeze" 6x6 pad from MME's Lost and Found series.

Materials:

Brown 14cm sq card blank, light beige dots textured cardstock,

Mid-shade teal Bazzill,

Patterned papers and Sentiment; MME's Breeze 6x6 pad

(from Lost and Found collection),

Cream and teal papers for rosette are textured handmade Lokta paper,

Cream lace, Cream velvet ric-rac, Aqua satin ribbon,

Prima sequin flower centre

Tools:

Memory Box rosette die, Spellbinders "Floral Doily Motifs"

*I made the rosette by cutting the shape in the two Lokta papers, then sticking one on top of the other, I didn't want my rosette to be as wide as this die cuts, so once the two papers were suck together I cut the strip down to about 3cms wide, then made the folds and formed the rosette.

*Ribbon flower centre is made by twisting and coiling a length of satin ribbon fairly loosely around from the centre of a card circle. I use bookbinding glue for this, but Cosmo Cricket make "Gloobers" (I think that's what they're called) if you want the "ready-to-use" option!

Sometimes it's hard to find the mojo after all that intensive Christmas Crafting, isn't it? Well there are some gorgeous cards using these colours to see on The Daring Cardmakers Blog this week - please pop over and have a look - hopefully it'll be just the thing to inspired you to join in and get started on a brand new creative year.

Thanks for looking

Funky Thanks

2011-12-18T11:41:00.000Z

Today it's my turn to post my stuff for this month's Thank You challenge on Get Funky

With Christmas so close, it's a great opportunity to get some of those Thank You cards made and ready to go saying Thank You isn't just about Christmas, and it's not just for cards, you can say Thank You for anything and in any way you fancy.

I've made a set of teeny Thank You cards - they measure less than 8cm square

To make these I've used one of my favourite images from the "Happy Happy Birthday" CD to make some shaped cards, and I'm so chuffed with the way they've turned out that I'm sure this design will be appearing in other guises from now on!

Materials:

Shaped card made using Gift image from Happy Happy Birthday" CD

Papers "Blue Magic" set from "Dreams Come True" CD

cardstock, inks for edging, silver thread, pc generated sentiments for tiny tags

We would LOVE for you to join in with us this month - you can read all about the challenge and catch up on the DT's projects (which appear every few days over the month). The only rule is you must include at least ONE Funky Hand product in your creation or you won't be in with any chance at all of winning the prize (a Fubky Hand download collection of your choice).

To make it easy there's the most fabulous freebie paper this month - which I completely forgot about when I made my little cards - doh! So here's a little snippet of what Anice has made especially for you this month.

If you've never tried Funky Hand papers before this is a great way to try for free and maybe even win yourself some more!

You can find out all about what Funky Hand make and sell HERE

The Get Funky challenge blog is HERE

Have fun and Happy crafting!

Spots,Stripes, Wonky Trees and some Parcels!

2011-12-16T10:56:00.001Z

Not a happy bunny to wake up to see my garden covered with snow. At least hubby isn't driving to the office today, but my folks are due down from Northumberland during the week and I know my uncle will be getting into a right old state about the drive. Fingers crossed it goes away before they are due to travel.

For this week's challenge on The Daring Cardmakers, Keilly has asked to see

Spots and Stripes

- phew! there's a nice simple one to do in the middle of all the last minute Christmas panic, I thought. So why was it that at 3pm yesterday afternoon I still hadn't a clue what to do?

Until then it was always going to be another Christmas card, but I just couldn't think what to do. So I changed tack completely and decided that I might just be able to do a "two birds with one stone" and make my card work for a 90th birthday card order that's just arrived and needs to be with my customer quite soon.

To make life easier the obvious paper choice was one of the MME 6x6 pads and the one that leapt out was the gorgeous "Sunshine" set from the Lost and Found collection. What a breath of fresh air after all the Christmassy stuff!

I might still tweak this a bit and add some pieces of pearl or crystal spray above the big flower as that bit looks a tad bare.

As well as the spots and stripes papers in this pad there's also some manuscript paper which works beautifully for the lady concerned as my customer told me she has been their Church organist for many years

Materials:

All papers: MME "Sunshine"6x6 pad from the "Lost and Found" series

Gorgeous daisy lace and Brown Seam Binding from Creative Treasures

Handmade large rose and coiled roses,

Brown flatback pearls, Yellow dewdrops, Crystal Ice Stickles

Tools

Spellbinders Nesties Lables die, EK Success edging punch

I'm hoping that I now have enough Christmas cards for everyone on my list. I've been really slow at getting them all written out and in the post this year but I'm going to try and get the rest done and into the post today. It will be such a relief when they are gone and I can get on with everything else.

I feel as if I've been in a Christmas card Bubble for the last couple of weeks - it's fine once I get stuck in to making them but the writing and labelling and posting seems to take forever - after a while even writing my own name seems difficult to do!

Here are a couple of photos of more Christmas cards

I made a new version of my good old Wonky Tree design this year; using my Craft Robo to cut them out instead of scissors meant I could have a slightly more intricate shape

The parcels are another of my own Craft Robo templates

Papers are from one of last year's Bo Bunny sets

More Craft Robo parcels, this time using non-Christmas papers (just because I felt like it) - Echo Park's "Times and Seasons"

The kitchen man is coming to do the proper survey ahead of the actual work starting in January (eek!) this morning, but I'm going to get some cards written out while I'm waiting for him to arrive. I am not going to browse the internet. I'm not, I'm not!

Have a great day, stay warm

Memo Block for Dec Sketch File

2011-12-14T09:55:00.000Z

I've used the December Sketch over on The Sketch File to decorate the front of a memo block which I've made to give as a Christmas present.

As a few people have asked how I make these I thought I'd add a tutorial on how it's done. They are really easy and fairly quick to make but end up looking much more impressive and complicated, which is always good, isn't it! :-)
This is the SKETCH I used for the top cover:

The memo block I've used was Wilkinsons, I actually divided the block into three pieces ready to make three memo blocks Mine has pages measuring 8.5cms sq, but you can easily alter the measurements to fit any memo block you buy.

To make this I used

Patterned Papers (Fancy Pants "Lilac House"), Matching mauve Bazzill (for "notes"), Silky Crush ribbon, Large Jewel brad, Imaginisce i-rock gems, Spellbinders flower die, Small square punch

Inks

You'll also need:

an empty cereal packet or chipboard for the covers,

Square of thicker chipboard or use 2 pieces of cereal packet glued together

Memo Block, optional pen/pencil.

As mentioned above I split my memo block into three equal pieces.

The pages measure 8.5 cms square so the measurements I give are based on that.

Here's how to make it

1. Cut two pieces of chipboard/cereal packet 1cm bigger than your memo block. For mine that meant cutting two pieces measuring 9.5x 9.5cm. Now cut a strip of card measuring about 0.5cms more the depth of your memo block and the same length. For me this was a piece 2.0 x 9.5cms, This piece forms the spine of the block

2. Cut a strip of patterned paper which measures about 3cms wider than your card pieces Leaving 1.5 cms at one end of the paper strip and a 1.5cms margin at each long edge arrange and glue the card pieces in place, with the spine piece in the centre, leaving a small gap (about 3mm) between each piece of card. You need to make sure the pieces are level or it won't fold up properly. If it helps, use a ruler and draw a pencil line on the paper to use as a guide.

3. Cut off all but a 1.5cm margin off the spare paper. Mitre the corners and then turn in all the edges so that it looks like this

4. Use a bone folder between the sections to help the folds take on the correct form. Ink the edges.

7. Cut a piece of another paper which is about 1cm smaller than the whole of the cover. Ink the edges and adhere to the reverse, covering and concealing all the raw edges, draw your bone folder down the crease lines again to form the creases - doing this before the glue has a chance to dry makes sure the two layers of paper that form the "hinges" stick together properly.

**I sometimes only stick down this inner paper to the back and spine of the cover, leaving the piece loose for the front until I've finished decorating the cover - this way any ends of ribbon, stitches or brad prongs etc will be concealed when I adhere the rest of the paper inner to the cover - you can just about tell on the photo below that one side is still unstuck

This is the time you get to do the pretty stuff and add the decorative elements to the top cover.

If you've left that Inner Flap loose to hide brads etc, don't forget to stick it down firmly before you move on to the next stage.

To Make the Base

8. Cut a square of heavy chipboard which is 1cm larger than the cover of your memo block, if you don't have a heavier chipboard you could stick two pieces of cereal packet together.

Cover the chipboard square with a square of paper 3cms larger, fold in the margins and mitre the corners.

Cut another square of paper slightly smaller than the card square, ink the edges and adhere in place to neaten the other side of the card square.

9. If you want to add a little loop to hold a pencil, this is the time to do that. You can simply use a length of ribbon or twill tape, or make one with paper as I've done here.

You need a strip of paper about 3cms wide and about 12cms long, the diagram shows how to fold and stick. Form the loop by wrapping it around a pen, then stick the two ends of the paper strip together. Glue this to the bottom edge of the memo block cover centrally. It will be quite thick, so cut a square of cereal packet just smaller than the memo blog itself, cut out a rectangular shape where the ends of the pencil loop will lie and stick in place, this will

even out the thickness caused by the loop.

10. Glue the bottom of the cover to the base square, leave a slightly wider margin at the end that opens to make room for the pencil.

11. Finally, glue the memo block itself into place and you're all finished.

I've decorated this with a flower made using Silky Crush ribbon (Creative Treasures) and used some of the same ribbon to cover the two narrow card strips on the centre decorative panel. I've punched lots of tiny squares for the other "lines" on the sketch.
"notes" is cut using my Craft Robo and the background to the ribbon flower is made using a Spellbinders die

I'll probably add a bit of Glittery stuff and some Glossy Accents to the tiny squares on my block as they don't really show up at the moment.

I'd love to know if you use this tutorial and see what you make so please come and let me know how you get on

Happy Crafting

Big Wooly Jumpers

2011-12-09T11:20:00.002Z

You can't help thinking of them when the topic of the "Lands of Ice and Snow" comes up, can you?

It's Fran's turn to set the challenge for the Daring Cardmakers this week and she's chosen a fabulous

Nordic Christmas

theme. She's provided this fab photo just in case some extra inspiration was needed

Every time I turn the TV or radio on there seems to be someone talking about "The Killing" - or more precisely the craze for thick knitted sweaters in the Scandinavian style that the series has inspired. I think that's why I had a pattern of rows of motifs in my head when I was thinking about what to do for my card this week

I actually made the dangly tree ornament a week or two ago when we heard what Fran's dare was to be, but it's been sitting on my desk since then waiting for an idea to present itself as to how to use it.

My Grandma used to knit "Fair Isle" pattern jumpers - those where there seemed to be hundreds of different coloured balls of wool attached to her knitting. As I was a great disappointment to her on the knitting front I remain in awe and not a little bamboozled as to how it all works and how you can possibly know what you're doing with these patterns.

So my pattern is a simple red and white one....and it's in paper, not wool of course! It looked a bit dull so I've added a wrap of fine gold thread to the base card, then lengths of various white, red and gold trims to brighten the basic border design

I started off by using the "shapes" options in my graphics program (Greetings Card Factory) to make the motifs, repeating and aligning them until I had a pattern I liked. I saved and then converted it to cut on Craft Robo (there's a surprise!) in red Bazzill then matted it on to some white card and a Kraft card blank

Materials:

Kraft 15cm square card blank

Bazziill (red, white), Red Glitter card. Gold card

Red satin ribbon, red/white patterned braid, white plaited braid, gold lurex crochet thread, fine gold thread, red gems, KandCo glittery snowflakes, Crystal Ice Stickles

Tools:

Craft Robo (Nordic Border Design, Bauble "hanger")

Memory Box Bauble base and Bauble upper dies

If you have a Craft Robo or Silhouette and would like the GSD file for this Nordic Border design, please email me and I will send a copy to you.

I'm now thinking that I can use this border design for some fairly quick and easy Christmas cards - especially for those I don't need to put through the post so can make as "fat" as I want without worrying about the mean old Royal Mails 5cm thickness allowance for regular postal prices.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Here's another card using that fab little Santa image from Funky Hand's "Twelve Days of Christmas" CD. He's so darned cute!

Materials:

Simple Stories Christmas 6x6 pad,

Funky Hand (Twelve Days of Christmas) Father Christmas image converted for cutting on Craft Robo

Lettering; Craft Robo, Red twine, Crystal Ice Stickles

Bazzill card; Red, Black, White, Yellow

If you've not already visited the Daring Cardmakers BLOG, then please go and check out all the Super-Fabulous cards the team have made this week - what a treat for the eyes!
That's all for now, hope you enjoyed your visit and will come again soon

Beady Wreath Tree Ornament

2011-12-08T11:09:00.000Z

I thought I'd pop this tutorial on my blog - having just spent the last hour looking for it on my pc it will be good to know I can find it more easily next time, won't it?

I hope you like it and feel inspired to have a go - it doesn't really matter what beads you use and any scraps of wire that you can curl into a circle can be used as you don't see the wire once the ornament is finished.

Bead Wreath Tree Ornament

I made this tree ornament in about 15 minutes. Because I didn’t have much time I made it easy for myself by using the same size Swarovski crystal beads, but any beads will do and they don’t really need to be all exactly the same.

For the pictures for the “how to” I’ve used bigger beads and my finished ornament is about 6cms.

Materials:

Wire

Thread

Ribbon

Beads of your choice

Tools:

Wire cutters

Fine tipped pliers

1. Cut a length of wire about 24cms long. If you have a tub or something near to hand that looks about the diameter of the circle you want to make, use that as a guide - wind your wire around it and give yourself a few cms extra before cutting the wire.

2. In one end of your wire make a small loop. To do this hold the end in your fine-nosed pliers and twist the pliers and wire around on itself.

3. Start threading your beads onto the wire however you fancy, don’t fill up the whole wire, you need to leave enough wire to make the second loop and its much harder to do this if you’ve only left a small free end.

4. Keep checking to see how big your circle will look when you pull the wire ends together. You may find that it looks better smaller than you thought – this depends on the size of your beads. My crystals are 6mms and I found that a finished diameter of about 4.5 looked just right, but with bigger beads a larger circle would probably look better.

5. When you’re happy with the number of beads and size of circle make the second loop.

Keeping the beads fairly close together – but not so tight that the circle is distorted,and using the pliers take hold of the wire quite near to the final bead and twist the spare wire around to form the loop.

Cut off the excess wire.

3. Pull the two loops together by twisting or tying with finer wire or thread.

4. Thread ribbon through the two wire loops and make a neat bow in the front.

5. Thread some thin braid, crochet cotton, or another length of fine wire through the loop at the back of the bow to make the hanger,

That’s it, all done

Now you just need to make enough for the rest of the tree!

Thanks for visiting - don't forget to let me know if you make one of these.

A Notebook A Sketch and a Bit of Excitement!

2011-12-07T16:23:00.001Z

I've managed to get behind with blogging the things I've been making again. Needless to say, it's Christmas cards I've mainly been making but before I share one I've made using the new sketch on The Sketch File, I'll break away from Christmas and show you the notebook I made as part of MIL's birthday present a couple of weeks back. I used a cheap notepad from Wilko's then created a spined cover from cereal box chippie to wrap around the notepad. I made a loop inside to hold a cut-down pencil to finish it off.

Materials:

Papers all SEI (Juliette, I think),

Cereal packet cardboard,

Seam binding (grey and pink0 and pink card candy from Creative Treasures

Tools:

Memory Box rosette die, Spellbinders labels 18

I was quite pleased with how it turned out so I may make one or two more for Christmas presents

- I've bought a stack of 18p notepads and a pack of 30 pencils from Poundland just in case hehe

On Tuesday the December sketch was posted over on The Sketch File

I decided to give the sketch a bit of a rotation for my card, and used the sketch like this:

Here's my card:

Materials:

Papers|: Simple Sroies 6x6 Christmas pad

Father Christmas is a Funky Hand image from Twelve Crafters Crafting CD, made inot a Craft Robo template,

Card: Bazzill (red, white, yellow, black), Stickles glitter glue: Black, Red

Narrow gold lurex ribbon (John Lewis)

Tools:

Craft Robo, Circle punch

Do you get the magazine "Simply Homemade"? I was thrilled to bits to find out that this blog was mentioned on their Inspiring Blogs page.

Exciting huh? It was a lovely surprise when my crafty forum friend Janice said she'd seen it - I had the mag added to my groceries order pdq, I don't mind telling you!

Well that's it for today, I've completely failed to go near my craft desk for the best part of two whole days so I'm going to go there now and see if I can figure out what to do for my Daring Cardmakers offering this week.

Thanks for visiting

Jolly Holly

2011-12-02T16:52:00.001Z

Well, I'm late posting again - not as late as the last couple of weeks, but still late - this time it's not entirely my fault as we had an internet hiccup this morning and I feel I've been playing catch-up on the day ever since. It's caused a load of hassle for my poor hubby who should be working from here today but ended up having to go to the office - long tedious story (aren't they always), Eventually it turned out that the problem wasn't here after all despite the "it's not at our end, we'll have to get an engineer out to you", that said engineer would not be needed and we wouldn't have to wait till Monday (agghh!) for him to come anyway - and hey presto! the internet came back. phew!

Daring Day today, and we've reached the last of the Flowers of the Month series of challenges. December's flowers are the Holly (not sure this is actually a "flower" in the normal sense of the word) and the Narcissus.

We have a new Guest Designer who is going to be playing along with us from now till the end of January and I have to say I'm thrilled to bits about this as I've wanted to ask her for ages - pop over to the DCM BLOG to see who it is.....

Despite the allure of something sunny and Springlike as the narcissus I stuck to my Cword card-making task and used holly for my card.

The garland of holly, mistletoe and other leaves was cut using a Craft Robo template I made last year. I found it a bit fiddly to use, so this time I edited it to separate a few of the different "branches" to cut individually - then I just arranged them across the top of the card - it was much easier to use than the original version and meant I can also use the bits to make other cards - so maybe there'll be a holly wreath or a candle arrangement along later....or maybe not.

Materails:

Dark red card base, white card, Various shades of green card,, Burgundy Stickles, Crystal Ice Stickles, Different sizes of red gems, White pearls for mistletoe, Papers: Fancy Pants Saint Nick and Simple Stories 25 Days of Christmas, Gold Ice Stickles, Glossy Accents, Gold Card, Gold thread, Burgundy satin ribbon from Creative Treasures

Tools:

Craft Robo, Circle Punches, 2 x Spellbinders die sets

To finish today I thought I'd share a varioation of the "hang up your stockings" cards I showed on here a few days ago

As before I've used the fab image from Funky Hand's "Twelve Ctafters Crafting" CD, but this time I've cut them out from papers in the MME Lost and Found Christmas 6x6 pad. I just adore those little dolly pegs!

Back soon with more Christmas crafting - please pop over and see the gorgeous cards the Daring Cardmakers are sharing this week - it's such a beautiful blog with all the lovely holly and festive colours on show!

Thanks for visiting, hope you have a wonderful weekend

Dressed for Winter

2011-12-01T09:19:00.000Z

I've been meaning to do this Crafty Templates Update all week - but the Time Thief stole in and pinched most of the week, yet again!

The Templates Set for November had a "dressed for Winter" feel, with lots of cute "Winter Pals" wearing their woolly hats and scarves to keep out the chill. From these I chose the polar bear to make this card, and kept it really simple with a red, white and blue theme on a Kraft card base

Materials: Bazzill card in red, white blue and black, Tiny white button, Red and white Bakers Twine, Black brads, Black Enamel Accents

Tools:

Bear Template, Spellbinders Holey Scalloped Circles Dies

Craft Robo for greeting and plain red circle

Next I made a shaped card using the cute Snowman Template

Materials:

Snowman shaped card template, White, red, orange and black card, Black brads, Silver Stickles, White Ice Stickles, Red fibres, heart button and Bakers Twine, Sentiment home-made rub on

I thought the idea of a Garden Gnome wearing a Father Christmas suit was too cute not to use, so I made this card, giving the Santa Gnome a little flag to hold

Materials:

Santa Gnome Template, Red, White and Black card, Paper from Simple Stories 6x6 Christmas pad, Bakers Twine, Stickles; silver, red and white, Flag (Nikki Savills), Sentiment home-made rub on

The November templates are fab - and fun too! I love that they so adaptable for not just Christmas projects but for other winter-themed things too.

I've not used a Goodies Kit this month, but as usual Leo has put together a lovely collections of goodies to help inspire for these templates and for other crafting projects too.

You can find out all about Crafty Templates and the Crafty Goodies Kits HERE, and don't forget to check out the BLOG too!

Back to the Christmas card making for me - why am I so bad at getting them done?

Mo-vember

2011-11-25T10:51:00.000Z

November is being touted as Mo-vember - the month of the moustache, or maybe its just an excuse not to bother with the shaving gear and have that saved time for an extra few minutes snooze in the morning.

Now, Facial Topiary really doesn't do it for me at all, but each to their own, eh?

So anyway it's Samm's turn to set the dare over on the Daring Cardmakers and this is such a fun one - as you might have guessed from my intro we've a Moustachio challenge this week - and I reckon that "on a card" is just the best and most fun place to see a moustache!

The BLOG looks fab, so please check out what the girls have been doing this week.

I've had my card made for a few weeks.....no I'm not really a Mrs Swotty-Knickers, its just that I'd spotted and saved an image ages ago that would be perfect for my pizza-loving cousin's birthday card, and then Samm added her challenge to our calendar and Bob's your uncle, or Colin's your cousin....

The image is from a free colouring page I found on the net and converted in PSP to cut on my Craft Robo. Contact me if you'd like a copy of the template.

By chance I'd just taken delivery of a paper pad with the moustache paper in - how fortuitous was that then!

Materials:

Brown 14cm sq card blank Papers all from Echo Park "Times and Seasons 6x6 pad, White, Peach, Brown and Black card, Glossy Accents

Tools:

Craft Robo, Promarkers, Nesties Circles die

I had a great time making this and its such a fun idea for a challenge - just the thing to have a bit of a laugh with, so I'm hoping lots of people will join in and have some Moustache Madness with their cards this week.

Anice of Funky Hand is celebrating her birthday with a 43% off sale today - I'm sure you can guess why that odd number! Check out the Fabulous Funky Bargains HERE


http://www.funkyhand.com/

This time last week we'd just arrived at the venue for our Segway Rally Racing "experience". It was fun! I didn't bother with the "racing" bit and just concentrated on getting round the twisty, bumpy circuit safely - round and round I went - apparently all of the others fell off at least once but I stayed on. And then as we were just standing around at the end I got too close to hubby's segway, wheels met and off I fell. We set off again this time going as fast as we could back over the field to where we'd left our stuff, and blow me if I didn't come a cropper again, this time landing flat on my face. Oh the indignity of it all! hahaha

I'm going to try to catch up on my blog-hopping over the weekend as it's been ages since I had a good old ramble around to see what everyone is up to, but for now, I can't put it off any longer; back to my Christmas Card Making week I go, thanks for visiting today

Stockings and an Experiment

2011-11-24T15:23:00.001Z

I'm deeeeeep into my week of dedicated Christmas card making but thought I'd take a break this afternoon and update my blog with a couple of ideas I've been trying out.

The first I'm happy enough with to have made a few of and it's a good chance to also mention that tomorrow is Funky-Anice's Birthday and to celebrate there's a Birthday Sale at Funky Hand with some really fab offers....

For instance you could grab for a bargain price the Twelve Crafters Crafting CD - I used the "Xmas Presents" papers and the cute "2 Stockings" image from the CD to make this card

Materials:

Papers and Image by Funky Hand

Silver crochet thread, homemade decal sentiment, Silver Stickles

This second card was a bit of an experiment as I finally received the Memory Box dies I've had on pre-order for a couple of weeks ....oh the thumb-twiddlingness of waiting..... :(

I've used the tiniest of the Spellbinders Nesting Baubles set and it's oversized for the tree die - but does it look like a mistake or does it look cute in it's oversizedness? It does actually look better in the real than in the photo.
What do you think?

Materials:

MME Stella and Rose papers,

Gold Ice Stickles, gold card, homemade decal sentiment

Tools:

Spellbinders Nesting Baubles, Memory Box Winter Tree die, Craft Robo to cut hangers and circles for sentiment

Maybe I'll see how it looks using the even tinier Cuttlebug bauble or maybe I should cut out some with one of my Craft Robo templates - I guess I was just being lazy by not doing that in the first place.

Thanks for visiting - a message would be fab if you've time to leave one :)

Get Funky at the Double

2011-11-21T10:44:00.000Z

I'm really playing catch-up today! Not only was I late to blog my DCM card, but Friday was also my turn to share my project for the latest Get Funky challenge. I thought I'd make a separate post for each - hence two posts on the same day (and probably none for the rest of the week hehehe)

Our hostess this month is Jackie and she announced the new challenge on the Funky 15th November - so it's pretty new and there's a nice long time to go if you fancy having a go at winning yourself a prize - now that would make a lovely little Christmas present for yourself, wouldn't it?

The challenge this week is to share TWO projects:

1. A Christmas project using "Traditional colours" meaning red, green, gold, silver etc not the lilacs or blues etc which are around at the mo
2. A non Christmas card or project using Christmas papers please.

The DT will all be using the latest CD "Twelve Crafters Crafting" for BOTH our projects. We're trying to show that this collection is not just stuffed with Christmas themed stuff, but has plenty to offer you for the rest of the year too.

If you've visited my blog recently you'll know that I try to keep my Christmas cards fairly simple so that I can soon see a nice big batch sitting on the windowsil, glitter drying!

So I stuck with that idea for the first part of the challenge and shared a few of the cards I've been making using the "Vintage Christmas" sett from the CD :

I've made a belated birthday card for my non-Christmas card using Christmas papers - I've used EIGHT different papers on this one - so that's proof that there's a lot of designs on this CD that you'll be able to use at any time of the year - this fab colour-way is the "Xmas Presents" set and I absolutely adore these rich, vibrant shades - so expect to see them on some Christmas cards soon too!

We're hoping you'll join in the fun and make those two projects for us this month. The only rule is that you must use at least one Funky Hand product to qualify - it sounds simple but every month we get several people linking who haven't bothered to read the post - what can you do, eh?

There's always a Funky Freebie you can use just in case you haven't any other Funky Hand stash yet. Although I've not used it on my projects, the colours are the same as those on my cards and it's a gorgeous paper covered with tiny Christmas trees.

The fabulous Get Funky! challenge blog is HERE

Twelve Crafters Crafting and all other Fantastic Funky Hand products can be found HERE - including the wonderful brand new Funky Freebie.

So far on the blog you can see my projects along with those from hostess Jackie and the latest post from our Fab Debs, but the rest of us will be along every couple of days over the month with lots of new ideas so it's worth popping by often to see what's new.

Right, time for a coffee and them to get on with adding a few more cards to my Christmas Card box.

Have a great day, thanks for visiting

Late Again!

2011-11-21T10:01:00.000Z

Friday was a bit hectic and I'm not entirely sure what happened to the weekend, so once again I'm late with my Daring Cardmakers post.

Our challenge this week is to use, or portray WATER on our cards and there are some fabulous ideas to see on our DCM BLOG - lots of watery inspiration!

I decided to go down the "use water" direction and started off by giving all the papers and ribbons I planned to use a darned good soaking and crumpling and leaving them to dry overnight.

For the background I used various inks and a watery brush - I rather like the way this turned out. All the water made the painted card piece less than flat, but I couldn't be bothered to get the iron out so instead I used an embossing folder and ran it through the Cuttlebug instead.

I'd added a little PVA to the water I soaked the ribbon in as an experiment and this resulted in a slightly stiffer ribbon. Although I didn't actually end up making a bow this time, I think it would make a lovely crumply bow for another project. This time I just loosely twisted two shades of the "treated" ribbon together.

Materials:

Smooth White 14cm sq card blank, All papers are MME Breaking Free, soaked and crumpled, Backing piece made from white card, several turquoise and green inks (Versamagic, Cats Eye, DI) and brushed with water. 2 shades of seam-binding soaked in a mix of water and a little PVA (and a small amount of Glamour Dust), Scrap of satin ribbon inked to match, large jewel brad,

Imaginisce hot fix i-rock turquoise gems

Tools:

Cuttlebug Distressed Stripes embossing folder,

Spellbinders "Blossom Tags and Accents" die set, Bosskutz mini tag die

Thanks for looking

2 for the price of1

2011-11-15T12:11:00.000Z

Over on The Sketch File Blog today, I've shared a couple of different ways to use the current Frames Galore sketch. I thought I'd add the cards here too, plus a couple of extras for good measure!

If you visited yesterday you'll know I've been using these gorgeous Stella and Rose papers, they aren't Christmas papers but the colours and patterns just seem to work really well with my collection of Christmas dies - and using them has helped me get into the Christmas card-making groove big time!

The first card uses the sketch just as it appears in it's original form

Here's a reminder of the sketch:

This works fab for the little trees, but as I was working I realised that if I twisted it around the three lines would be perfect for "hanging" my tiny Spellbinders bauble on.

In fact as I seem to prefer my focus being on the right of a card, as well as rotating the sketch I mirrored it too - so it now looks like this:

Here's one of the cards I've made using the "new" layout

I'm not very good at making a lot of cards all the same - so although I make the bits and bobs in batches, the cards all tend to vary from each other in some way - even if it's just the shape of the card, or gold instead of silver thread, or a different shade of Stickles!

Here are a couple more cards using the same stuff:

Materials:

Papers all My Minds Eye; Stella and Rose collection (mix of 12x12 and 6x6).

Gold card and thread, Silver card and thread, Gold Ice Stickles, Crystal Ice Stickles, Turquoise regular Stickles, Turquoise and Silver Glitter paper,

Homemade sentiment stickers

Tools:

Craft Robo to cut all the oval shapes and the little silver and gold "hangers", Spellbinders Nesting Baubles (smallest size),

Cuttlebug Trees die, Tiny star punch

Please join in with us over on The Sketch File, we'd really love to see what you can make with our sketches - they don't have to be cards, anything goes over there!

Thanks for visiting today, please come again soon

A Late Friday Post!

2011-11-14T16:00:00.000Z

I'm very very late with my Daring Cardmakers post - I hope Sharon will forgive me ;-)

Our challenge this week, set by Sharon was to make a card inspired by a piece of jewellery. I chose to use a pair of silver and dichroic glass earrings I bought at a craft fair a couple of years ago as my starting point. I've also managed to work this dare into another commissioned card.... woowoo!

I "drew" a swirl pattern in PSP for cutting on Craft Robo, and made the jewels from blobs of a couple of shades of Stickles which I left to dry before cutting out with a Cuttlebug die and then coating with Glossy Accents

Materials:

papers: MME 6x6 Stella and Rose, Silver card, Imaginisce mirror gems, Tiny gems (Anita's),

Stickles, Glossy Accents, White lace, PC generated sentiment.

Tools:

Craft Robo, Spellbinders Coiled flower die, Cuttlebug leaves (from quilled flower set)

EK Success Border Punch

Here's a cloe up of the earrings

I hope you'll visit the Daring Blog this week - the cards are stunning. If you visit the personal blogs of the team members you'll find out about their inspiration too. It would be fab if you'd join in with us too, we'd love to see what you make for Sharon's challenge.

While I was making this card I got to thinking they'd be lovely for Chrtistmas cards - never mind that I have bought loads of new Christmas papers to use......

I think they worked really well and they really looked pretty all lined up on the windowsill while the glitter was drying! I've used the fabulous Ice Stickles on these cards - it's much thicker and chunkier than the regular stuff and really catches the light.

OK, back to it, then! Thanks for visiting, I'll be back to share some more Christmas cards soon as I think I'm finally "in the groove" hehehe!

Chrysanthemums for our New Year!

2011-11-04T11:31:00.000Z

The flower associated with the month of November is the Chrysanthemum, so as it;'s the first Friday of the month those are the flowers the Daring Cardmakers are using as our inspiration for this week's card challenge.
This week's challenge is the first in Year 6 for us - for a full 5 years we've been setting a new challenge each week. There were scrapbook challenges before we came along, but we believe we were the very first of the challenge blogs specifically for card makers. Just look how many there are now - no wonder we're proud of what we started hehehe
I have a few cards on order atm so was very pleased to double up one of them with my DCM card this week. Especially as the Cword card making is still not happening!

I used some free clip art to make the flower template, then cut it several times in different sizes to make my multi-layered chrysanthemum.
The small coiled flowers are made from the same paper and have tiny touches of glitter to bling them up just a bit.
The three flowers on the left, and the gorgeous copper coloured card candy are all from the lovely Tracy at Creative Treasures. I'm definitely in a "Autumn Colours" mood just now and these papers are all from an old Bo Bunny set - gorgeous aren't they?
I mad a pleated paper strip, then fluffed up the pleats with my pointy proddy tool (technical term ;-)) to make the "tubes" - I'll have to add some tissue paper in those before I send it to my customer or they'll just be flat again hehe.

Materials:

Bo Bunny papers and card stock

Various wired flowers, Card Candy (Creative Treasures), Tiny gems from Anita's gem wheel,

Yellow Stickles

Tools

Craft Robo for large flower, Scoreboard for paper frill

Spellbinders Labels 18, pc generated sentiment

We'd love you to join in with us this week - it would be fab to celebrate our "New Year" with a whole bouquet of gorgeous chrysanthemum cards! Pop over to the DCM BLOG and see the fabulous cards the team have been making this week - they are sure to brighten your day.
Thanks for visiting today. I suppose I'm going to have to get into Cword making mode now....oh dear - the number of times I've said that and totally failed to make any at all - I even cleaned my desk the other day rather than make something on it!
Not good, is it? haha

Crafty Templates October

2011-10-31T12:17:00.002Z

The latest set of Crafty Templates came out recently and as usual (it's getting to be a habit oioops!) I forgot to pop my DT projects on here.

So here they are:

Most of the papers, the lace and some of the embellishments are from the Crafty Goodies Kit that you can add to your stash collection via the Crafty Templates SHOP. Leo always manages to gather together a lovely eclectic mix of goodies that work well with the current Templates and will come in handy for all sorts of future projects. I have a box I keep them all in and it's grown into a bit of a treasure trove - it's usually the first place I go to when I need something a bit out of the ordinary!

Well it's been a hectic weekend, what with MIL staying, other outlaws visiting and the fab Funky Blog Hop - thank you sooooo much to everyone who left a comment, I'll try to get round to all the blogs as soon as things settle down - I'm looking forard to catching up with friends "old" and new!

Today though I want to try and get stuck in with my Cword card making. Now that things have calmed down I stand more of a chance of actually getting somewhere - at least, that's the plan!

Thanks for visiting

Funky Hand's First Blog Hopitty Hop

2011-10-29T09:00:00.004+01:00

Thank you for visiting my blog today, it's fab to have you popping by!

If you've hopped over from Katina's -as part of your Funky Hand Blog Hop journey, then you probably know what it's all about already, but if not, then you can find out what is going on by visiting Anice at
Funky Hand Blog Hop Central HERE

The Blog Hop is all about introducing the fabulous new Funky Hand CD

TWELVE CRAFTERS CRAFTING

It's not released till the 5th November, but you can pre-order as from today from the website HERE.

As we each took one of the TWELVE paper collections to work with, our blog hop is just the PERFECT way to get a preview of what's on the new CD. By visiting all the blogs of the Funky Gang's twelve crafters crafting you will see all of the colour-ways, lots of the paper designs, and many of the images and templates you can expect to find on

TWELVE CRAFTERS CRAFTING

I've been using Vintage Christmas, a fabulous red, green, golden-yellow and silvery grey colour-way, with some gorgeous neutrals such as creamy browns thrown in for good measure. The reds and greens are subtle and easy to use and I just love the feel of this set.

Here is my giant Sleigh card using these papers

20 paper designs in each colour collection and I've used 6 of them on this card.

The sleigh is one of the digital images on the CD and you can print it at any size from teeny tiny to this giant one. This card is made from a sheet of A4, folded in half and cut down to about 8cm deep, so that the sleigh stands above the fold. The sleigh measures about 18 x 11cms and the finished card is about 20x14cms

This sleigh digi is perfect for layering - and especially easy to do when you make the image BIG!

Here are some tiny sneak peeks of other projects I've made with the Vintage Christmas set of papers and a bit of a hint of some more digi images and templates (don't tell anyone I showed you though)

By this point on the Hop, you've seen lots of the fab collections - so, would you like your own FREE copy of
TWELVE CRAFTERS CRAFTING?

Well, there's one up for grabs just for joining in with our blog hop.

You'll need to travel around the blogs of all the Funky Gang who are taking part in the hop, leaving a comment on every single blog and collecting a letter from each. The hop begins and ends with Anice's BLOG - so if you're not already following all the links from blog to blog, then do head over to Anice's and begin your tour there!

The letters you'll collect are an anagram and you'll need to solve that to be in with a chance of winning the prize. - but all the info you need is on Anice's blog so I'll stop wittering on and give you your next letter.... just don't forget to leave a comment here and on all the blogs you visit or you won't qualify for entry.

The letter I'm giving you is:

"N"

and your next stop on the Funky Blog Hop is up in Scotland at Allison's place!

Hope you're having fun and liking what you see

You Win Some, You Lose Some

2011-10-28T10:06:00.000+01:00

Here's my card for Nat's Daring Cardmakers "Felties" challenge this week and I think this one falls into the later category in the post title!

I've already pulled it apart once and I ran out of time to have another go.

This week I want to see you get creative with felt.
I just love the stuff but seem to always do the same old same old with it... so I'm really looking forward to seeing what creative ideas you come up with.
You can use felt to make your own handmade embellishments (even include some threading and beading if you're feeling energetic), use some pre-made felties, or even raid the accessories sale bins for something unique to add to your project!

Hey ho, you can't win them all, can you?

I quite like the big felt stocking, I love the papers and I like the little cut-out paper stockings on the gold thread - but put the whole lot together and it's a mess.

Maybe I can salvage something later, but not in time for today's post!!!

Materials:

Red, Green and White felt from my fabric stash,

Papers: Fancy Pants - a mix of 12x12 and 6x6 (Charmed Cards and Craft),

Gold card, Glamour Dust, Glossy Accents, Gold Stickles, Tiny gems (Anita's Gem Wheel), Tiny clothes peg from my stash, Gingham ribbon from the scraps box, red and white twine (Creative Treasures), Gold crochet thread,

Tools:

Spellbinders Stocking die and Snowflakes die sets, small star punch,

Cuttlebug Snowflakes and Stars die

You can see some really fab felt creations on the Daring Cardmakers Blog - so please go and have a look. We'd love you to join in with us this week

It's a busy weekend in the wafflezone - there's a meet-up planned with various of the Out-Laws, so they can hand over MIL to stay with us for a couple of days (no comment), but there's also Funky Hand's very first Blog Hop going on over the weekend - this is the first Blog Hop I've ever been involved with so I'll probably muck it all up somehow hehe!

Anyway, it's all to show off the brand new CD "12 Crafter's Crafting" (to be released on 4th Nov) which has a Christmas theme - lots of fab new papers, some wonderful Christmassy images and sentiments and some new templates too - plus the wordbooks, Alphas and Numerals you'd expect to find on a Funky CD.

Visit Anice's BLOG to find out more - it all kicks off tomorrow morning at 9am and there's the chance to win a fab prize by joining in with us on the Big Funky Blog Hop

I'm a bit peeved tbh, because having visitors will mean I can't stay glued to the pc for the whole two days - but I couldn't miss the chance of joining in so I hope you'll pop by tomorrow or Sunday to see what's going on!

Right, back to the dusting and vacuuming I suppose,,,,,,,

Thanks for visiting,

Sketchy Friday

2011-10-21T12:16:00.001+01:00

Even the best laid plans go wrong sometimes - or just have little glitches along the way. Usually we're pretty organised on the Daring Cardmakers team and know what is coming up for us. This week though it didn't go so smoothly so we had to have a little re-shuffle, which left us with a gap in the timetable and only a couple of days to go before the new challenge went live.

So we're using the October sketch "2Circles2Go" from the Sketch File Blog for our cards this week and we hope you'll like what we've made - keep checking back to the DCM BLOG though as the short notice is sure to mean there'll be late additions!

I couldn't resist using the Silky Crush ribbon flower I made the other day as one of the circle elements for my card, with the sentiments tag as the second. I've used satin ribbon for the crossing lines, and beaded some pins to make the 3 little "bars" on the left side of the sketch.

The aperture echoes the rounded rectangle background for the sketch:

Here's a closer look at the flower embellishment.

The Silky Crush ribbon is quite wide - about 5cms, so I cut a length of the ribbon about half as much as I needed then cut along lengthwise leaving about 1.5cms at the end uncut, this worked really well as any raw edges are easily hidden as you twist the ribbon around the circle of gluey card. I've added a lace rosette at the back and a big pearly brad in the centre.

Materials:

MME "Dwell" 6x6 papers, Bazzill aqua card

Silky Twist ribbon, gathered lace, satin ribbon, Card Candy, Pearl-headed pins, Pearl Bead butterfly and spiral all from Creative Treasures

Beads, Pearl brad, Decal sentiment

Tools:

Spellbinders Nesties Labels 12 dies and Large Scalloped Circles die

Craft Robo for small circle

That's all for now - I'd better get back to making samples for the brand new, soon to be released "12 Crafters Crafting" CD from Funky Hand - if this doesn't kick-start my Cword card making, I don't know what will. I might end up buying cards to send this year!

Please visit the Daring Cardmakers Blog to see what the team have made using the sketch - and to see who won our fabulous prize from The Ribbon Reel of course!

Thanks for looking,

Challenging

2011-10-18T12:13:00.000+01:00

I'm going to keep this short and try to avoid wffling on for once - the blog has that title for a reason, you know!

I'm trying to catch up a bit with two challenge projects today.

First is the page I made last week for my mini album using the October "2Circles 2Go! sketch over on my Sketch File Blog and forgot to blog on here. There's a fab Christmas card idea from Keryn on the update today so please go and check it out - it might inspire you to get going with your own Christmas cards.

Anyway, here's my page - I've managed to get rather behind with the journalling pages that go with my last two photo pages so I must try and get those done soon.

This page is about the Rievaulx Terraces and Temples which feature pretty Grecian style "temples" and a lovely walk along the ridge where cunningly designed gaps in the trees, hedges and shrubbery give wonderful views of the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey below.

"The site was created in 1758 by Thomas Duncombe III who had inherited it and the adjoining Helmsley estate some 10 years previously. His desire was to complement, and perhaps even surpass, the more formal terrace and temples laid out in about 1730 by his grandfather at Duncombe Park a mile away. It is thought that he may have planned to join the two terraces by a scenic drive along the River Rye ." (Wikipedia)

I was quite pleased with the idea of using the large photo as the background and adding the crossing lines and circles for the details. The round temple was perfect for the larger circle and I had planned to use another of the temples for the second circle - but couldn't get it to fit the shape nicely. Hey ho, I just had to use a flower instead then hehe! I loved the way the flower worked, it's made from some gorgeous white Silky Crush ribbon which was in my last pack of DT goodies from Creative Treasures. I've made a aqua one too but haven't actually made a project to put it on yet,

Maerials:

MME papers Lime Twist 6x6 pads

Bazzill card, Silky Crush Ribbon, leaf ribbon trim, tiny gems

, large blue pearl flat back (Bo Bunny)

Tools:

Craft Robo for cutting the photo turns and tiny flower embellishments, large circle punch, Zutter Round-it-All to shape the ends of the straight border pieces.

Today it's my turn to share a project for Amanda's "Autumn" themed challenge over on Get Funky!, the challenge blog for Funky Hand. As usual there's a free download on offer for one lucky winner, and also the most gorgeous Autumnal freebie download paper - which I haven't used on my project, but will definitely be making use of sometime soon!

You can see a sneakie peak of the freebie paper on the left.

Here's my project - it's another of those note-blocks which I can't seem to stop making! I think there'll be a few on my to-do list to make for little extra Cword presents too.

This one uses the perfect Autumnal "Orange October" collection from the Craft the Year Away CD

You can read all about this month's challenge and how to join in - and how to grab that freebie download over on Get Funky!

Materials:

Cereal packet to make the base and cover, cheapo note block from Wilko's

Papers: Funky Hand Craft the Year Away CD

Bazzill card, Ribbon, buttons, Stickles and Glamour Dust Glitter, Glossy Accents, Prima Flowers, Wired Roses, Imaginisce I-rock gems

Tools: Craft Robo to cut title

So much for keeping it short, eh?

Thanks for visiting, please leave a comment if you've time

Where did the week go?

2011-10-14T11:41:00.000+01:00

All I know is that it went past in a blur, it went so quickly!

So I find myself on Daring Cardmakers Day again and no blogging since the last one. Must try harder....

This week it's Rein's turn to set the dare and she's chosen the lovely, popular theme of BIRDS.

It's an extra=special challenge this week as we not only have a lovely ribbon-y prize to give away, but are also able to offer everyone who joins in with us this week the chance to buy the same pack of gorgeousness at a special price - more of that in a minute.

This is my birdy card - I decided to go for 2 teeny-tiny little birdies.

Materials:

Papers are MME - from 2 of the Lost and Found 6x6 pads

Brown Bazzill card, tiny black gems, red gems, red twine

Tools:

Spellbinders dies for circles, flower and doily shapes

EK Success border punch (it's new so I had to try it out)

Craft Robo for tree and birds

The tree shape is based on a swirly tree clipart I saw, but I "hand drew" the trunk shape using the paintbrush tool, then added a long branch and circles of different sizes (with smaller circles inside) instead of swirls. To make the circles I just used the paintbrush tool with the the circular shaped "head" selected and changed the size of the paintbrush to get bigger or smaller circles. I always start by decreasing the colours so that I'm using only black and white.

The bird is a simple circle for the body, I used the "draw" tool to make any straight line sections (legs, feet, beak), then drew the shape of the tail feather piece, which I cut several times

Click here to visit The Ribbon Reel Online Shop

Here is a photo of the lovely Ribbon Reel prize we have to give away this week

Keilly is also offering everyone who joins in with Rein's challenge this week the opportunity to order the same gorgeous goodie pack at a special Darers Only price.

Please pop over to visit the Daring Cardmakers BLOG to see the lovely birdy cards and find out more about our fabulous Ribbon Reel prize and offer.

Right, I am running soooooo late this week and really must try and tick some things off my list. I'll try and catch up on my blogging and blog-hopping soon though as I've been really really bad over the last few weeks - put it down to holidays, visitors and being ill!

All for now, thanks for popping by

October's Flower Power

2011-10-07T10:42:00.001+01:00

It's the first Friday of the month and this year that means the Daring Cardmakers look to the flowers associated with that month for their inspiration.

This month's birth flowers are

Calendula and Cosmos

As always there are lovely cards to see on the blog so please click HERE and see what flowery fabbiness the team have been making.

I love having cosmos in my garden, they are so colourful and pretty; and their feathery leaves are so delicate.

Here are a couple of photos from my garden this summer

As usual I googled for an image I could use as a starting point to make a Craft Robo template, then used it to make 2 variations. One to cut in a single piece the other to cut in two layers. I'm not sure cutting two layers makes much difference though . For my card the white flower was cut in two layers and the coral ones in just one piece each

Materials:

14cm sq Kraft card blank

papers: MME "Lost and Found" 6x6 (I cut around the end of the "dream" ticket on the pink striped paper to slot the gingham one underneath)

Card: coral pink, white, yellow, green Bazzill

Loopy seam binding "bow", brown twine and black card candy
from Creative Treasures

tools: Tim Holtz distresser, Nellie Snellen stamen* and leaves punches

*I'm a bit disappointed at how this punch cuts - it struggles with even the thinnest card and I have to use a paperweight to push the button as I can't manage just using my thumb

I think that at last my cold is getting better. Not sure having visitors to stay who then end up looking after you is the right way round, but that's how it goes sometimes. I lost my voice for a few days so I guess they quite liked that! What a fab weekend we had though with the weather - having a barbecue and sitting out on the patio all day is a bit of excitement for October - in fact it was so hot that I had to come indoors for a while. I have a feeling that little weather anomaly is well and truly over now though....

....And my excuses for not getting started on my Cword cards are running out too.

Hey ho!

Thanks for visiting today,

ooh la la and wunderbar

2011-09-30T10:56:00.000+01:00

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

Well, this weeks dare is a little bit retro. As it is the European Day of Languages today I would like your card to feature a foreign language.

This takes me back to one of the very first Daring Cardmaker Dares (November 10 2006 to be precise) which was a similar challenge. So why not also see if you have any cards to show from 5 years ago to see if your style has changed?

I didn't see the second bit of that till this morning, so I'll have to scroll back and see if I can find my card for that one - I do remember the challenge, but I don't remember what I made.

Here's my card for this time though

I couldn't resist another chance to get frilly and flowery. could I?

All the following from Creative Treasures:

Cream Lace, black "Mystery" ribbon, rolled piece of Pink Silky Crush ribbon across the middle

Flowers: large pink flower made from Silky Crush ribbon with a pink wired rose in the centre, Pink tulle rose cut for a length of ribbon roses, 2cm Black wired rose

Other supplies:

All papers: GCD's fabulous Paris Nights (8x8), some flowers made with scraps

Cream Stardream card for sentiments pieces,

EK Success border punch, Spellbinders fancy tag from "Blossom Tags and Accents" set (Charmed Cards and Crafts), Spellbinders plain small oval die

selection of black and grey gems and pearls, Black hearts and swirl accents Kand Co, also Charmed Cards and Crafts

Prima Artful flowers je t'aime is cut on Craft Robo

I hope you'll visit the Daring Cardmakers to see the other fabulous "foreign language" inspired cards the team have made this week - it's a great challenge and it would be fab if you'd join in too, I wonder how many languages we could manage to feature?

So, what did I do for my card back in Nov 2006 - well, as the challenge was just to feature "another language" I was a little bit sneaky and chose "The Language of Flowers" for my card. Here it is:

Well, it's time I wasn't here - I think my cold is starting to improve, but it's really knocked the stuffing out of me, so my kitchen is only going to get "a lick and a promise" - I don't have the energy for much else atm.

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

Wedding

2011-09-29T11:06:00.003+01:00

I may have thought I had a cold a few days ago, but yesterday I realised that now I really did!

In this Blame Culture we live in, I'm blaming a poor little 1 year old baby who has just started going to a day nursery for a day a week. Such a lot of new germs for a baby to pick up and take home to his daddy who then took said germs to his office and shared them around among his colleagues - who of course then took them back with them to their own homes and so on and so forth. And this bug is a real humdinger, I can tell you!

I suppose it's not really Baby Ps fault, but I'm blaming him anyway, because I can!

Here's a wedding card I made a few days ago to send away for a customer. What a fab excuse to break open the MME 6x6 "Lost and Found" paper pad! Naughty really as I do have a huge lot of these papers in the 12x12 size, but somehow the little ones are just so cute and easy to handle

Lots of gorgeousness from Creative Treasures here too: the lovely minty coloured Card Candy, the deep aqua rose, the creamy brown Apple Blossom flower, the pretty white lace, the pearl sprays and the seam binding

Shockingly (hehe) I didn't have exactly the right colour of seam binding - but I did have the right shade of ink pad so I used it to dye enough white seam binding to make the ribbon for the bottom of the card and a rosette flower.

Also used: organza circles to make backing for flowers, Prima Artful flowers, coiled rose (scrap of MME paper) Spellbinders Nesties Labels 18

I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out - it's ages since I made a paper frill like this and I always love the way they look.

That's it for today, I hope the sun is shining on you wherever you are

Challenges:
Charisma: LOVE
Stampavie and More: LOVE

Album Pages

2011-09-27T12:24:00.000+01:00

Do you have those days when even something simple takes a couple of goes to get right? I had one of those yesterday - it's probably more to do with my concentration levels being affected by this rotten cold that Hubby's so kindly shared with me than anything else, but there you go.

My trach record for completing book projects is really bad - I love making books and albums but they are soon relegated to the bottom of the pile as a new whim takes hold.

Anyway, I'm determined to see through my project to make a mini album of the various places we visited during our year's membership of the National Trust - this was an anniversary present to ourselves which finished at the end of July this year. So I'm really hoping that I will end up with a complete album just for once!

It was starting to slide a bit as I'd almost finished the picture page for Anglesey Abbey and then there it sat on the desk for weeks and weeks waiting to be completed. I refused to allow myself to start a new one with the September "Sketch File" sketch until I'd finished the other set.

So I sat down and finished the picture page AND made the journalling page - and then I did another picture page. wow!

This is the picture page for Shaw's Corner in Ayot St Lawrence, using the current September Simplicity sketch

I used:

Papers: Basic Grey

The little squares were punched from a second photo of the same place, which had lots of flowers in the foreground, then matted onto pale lilac card squares

Pink Seam Binding (Creative Treasures)

Tiny yellow buttons

2 x square punches

Next is a LO using the August "Going Round in Circles" sketch - as it's only just been completed it never actually made it onto the Sketch File Blog! oops.

Anglesey Abbey, nr. Cambridge

I used:

Papers and stickers: Echo Park, most of the flowers are cut from the same papers

I used several dies )swirls, Nesties Plain circles, Lacey circles, Labels)on these pages, all from Spellbinders

Lettering and circles for matting all cut on Craft Robo

gems all Imaginisce I-rocks

Please visit The Sketch File and see what the design team have been making over the last few weeks. You've a week left to link a project using this sketch.

Thanks for looking today -please come back soon

Green Eggs and Ham

2011-09-23T17:19:00.001+01:00

I'm having one of those days when things won't go right - even my pc isn't playing nicely today. Or maybe its the network - I know that trying to do anything on tinterweb is either really really really slooooooooooow, or doesn't happen at all - I wonder what will happen when I try to publish this?

Hubby says he'll reboot the network later and see if that solves it.

Today it's Jo's turn to set the challenge over on the Daring Cardmakers and she's sending us all off to look at those bright and colourful Dr Seuss books all kids (and adults) love:

"I loved reading Dr. Seuss books when I was little and my children love them now so this week, I would like to see Dr. Seuss inspired cards - whether they feature Green Eggs and Ham, The inhabitants of Whoville, The Cat in the Hat or are inspired by the colours, font or rhyming phrases, it will be brilliant to see what you make!"

As usual I didn't have a clue what to do for this one, so headed off to do a Google Image Search in the hope of finding inspiration. Scrolling through the pictures that came up I saw a photo of a "Cat in the Hat" cake and as cakes seem to be a feature of my card-making just now I thought I'd stick with the theme and do some "baking"!

I used a simple version of the hat as a starting point and Paint Shop Pro to get the template I needed to cut this with Craft Robo. I rotated the image so that the brim would become a plate, then used the paintbrush tool to make the top stripe look more like icing on a cake. I drew in some icing drips and some candles, and then converted my picture to a Robo template and cut the various sections

My card base is supposed to give a nod to the bright colours on the front of the books. I used Distress Inks direct to the card blank - I actually (shock horror) did that post-it note masking technique that "real" stampers do - what do you reckon to that then? hehehe - Joanne (Angelnorth) will be sooooo surprised!

I cut some really skinny lengths of black card to create the border and again suing the Craft Robo I cut the sentiment in black card also. This font is one my lovely DCM teamie Sharon put us on to, a free one called,, conveniently Dr Seuss

A bit of Stickles for some glitz and that was it all done.

I hope you'll go over and visit the Daring Cardmakers today - the cards are just fantastic!

It's taken me all day to get this far so I'm going to stop now and hopefully it will publish!

Thanks for looking, please leave a comment :-)

Sweet Treats

2011-09-22T09:53:00.000+01:00

Two more of my cards made with the latest set of Crafty Templates - there's a bit of a theme with these two!

The first one uses the 3 Scoops template

I've used the template to make a shaped card, with the folds behind

the tops of the "scoops" of ice cream

Patterned Papers from an Echo Park 6x6 pad

Bazzill card: red, cream, yellow, brown

EJ Success border punch, Glamour Dust glitter, Glossy Accents,

Lettering is cut with my Craft Robo

For the 2nd card I've used the Cupcake Ticket template

I've used the large size cupcake template for the main part of the card,

4 of the ticket templates cut in a small size, and topped with

some tiny versions of the cupcake.

Papers are all Lime Twist 6x6 (MME). Yellow Stickles

Green seam binding (Creative Treasures)

The new set of templates has the usual mix of great templates, there are foodie things like I've done here, some lovely vintage dresses, plus a couple of other quirky ideas for you to try.

All the Info about Crafty Template Sets and the Crafty Goodies Kits is HERE

I've once again got a list as long as my arm of things to do so I should rally make a start. Daring Cardmakers tomorrow and I've been struggling to think what to do - I think I've got a bit of an idea now, but whether it'll work is something else altogether - I'm thinking that it might be wise to go with a Clean and Simple design this time.

Firt port of call must be the kitchen because that's where the kettle is and nothing is going to happen till I've had another coffee!

Thanks for visiting, see you soon

Sofa, So Good!

2011-09-21T10:44:00.000+01:00

Morning!

I've a "doubling up" card to share today! This was the first of the cards I made for Crafty Templates this month because I knew as soon as I saw it that it would work for the current sketch idea on my other blog "The Sketch File". You can see the sketch on the right, and if you pop over to The Sketch File you'll find lots of ways that my lovely teamies have found to use it.

For my Crafty Templates projects this month I optd to try and make a dent in my own stash rather than use one of Leo's fabulous Goodie Kits - this is something I do from time to time, even though I have to fight the urge to say "yes please" to the offer of more of Leo's wonderful and eclectic mixes of papers and embellishing goodies. You can find out all about the Templates Sets and the optional Goodies Kits HERE

Here's my card using the Vintage Sofa template

Sofa Template: Crafty Templates September release

Sketch; The Sketch File Blog

Papers: MME "Stella and Rose"

Small square punch, Hand cut cushions, Letters cut on Craft Robo, Ranger Enamel Accents (black)

The flowers are all cut from the same paper set

I'll come back with my other Crafty Templates projects tomorrow

I just wanted to add a quick reminder about this week's Daring Cardmakers' challenge "How Many Candles" - It was my turn to come up with our dare for this week and as it also coincided with my own birthday and the release of Funky Hand's Happy Happy Birthday CD Rom I thought a good old birthday card challenge was perfect. There's a fabulous prize on offer too - a chance to win that very CD Rom from Funky Hand - so please click HERE to visit the DCM and find out how easy it is to join in.

That's all for now, Thank you for visiting

Just a bit more Funky!

2011-09-19T15:51:00.001+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I realised that I'd got totally muddled as to the date I should have added my project on the Get Funky blog - I was so embarrassed! For some reason I was so convinced that my day was near to the end of the Seaside themed Funky Fifteenth challenge and made my little card ready for then - only to check the actual date and find that I'd already missed it - and Anice and my teamies had been too kind to point it out!

Anyway, it seems a shame not to share it as I was really pleased with what I'd made!

It's this little Beach Shack shaped card:

I used:

Papers from Craft the Year Away CD (August Holiday set) plus the matching August freebie paper for the stripes, the sun image and the little fish images

I used one of my most-used Craft Robo templates to make the shack, then made a

new one for the surfboards.

I used the cut out Beach Hut to create a shaped card, using the slant of the roof for the fold line

After messing up with the August challenge, I made sure I didn't do the same this month - my card was made, blog post scheduled and all ready to go ahead of Jenny even doing her own introductory post!

This month Jenny's highlighting the new "Happy Happy Birthday" CD and simply want to see any sort of project with a birthda theme - as long as you use at least one Funky Hand product on your project you'll be in with a chance of winning a free download of your choice at the end of this challenge.

As always there's a Funky Freebie to use if you want to - if you don't already own and Funky Hand products you can download that one straight away and use it for your project. This month's freebie matches the "Sunshine Birthday" set on the new CD and if you check out the Get Funky Blog you'll find out how I made my card

Well, we got back yesterday from a few days in Bruges - a surprise trip organised by my lovely Hubby. We travelled all the way there and back by train - a first trip on the Eurostar and actually, the first long train journey I've done in years. I was quite relieved when I found out that we would be travelling "somewhere" by train as I've really grown to hate airports in the last few years - I used to love not just the flying part of a trip but the whole being at the airport thing too. Now it just seems that they make it more and more unpleasant at every chance they get. I still love flying though - how nice it would be to be so rich that you'd just be whisked through the whole process without having to deal with the queues and all the other horrible mess.

I loved Bruges - obviously the chocolate features quite heavily in that feeling of love, but it's just so pretty with all the lovely old buildings, canals, squares etc. We had good weather and spent most of the time out wandering around, seeing the sights and soaking up the atmosphere. It's the sort of place which is compact enough to see without having to spend valuable time travelling between the "must-sees". There will probably be sm=ome photos to share eventually, but for now.....

Honestly - I would share if I could..............

Thanks for visiting,

How Many Candles?

2011-09-16T10:15:00.001+01:00

On the Daring Cardmakers this week it's my turn to set the challenge, and I'm tempting you to join in with the chance of winning a fabulousoooo prize!

We are joining in the celebrations for the launch of Funky Hand's latest

Papercraft Factory CD and our lucky random draw winner will receive a copy of this wonderful, brand new CD rom

"Happy Happy Birthday"

Click to visit the unky Hand Website
Funky Hand design and supply a fabulous range of digital papers, images and templates for crafting projects. Visit the Funky Hand website and you'll find the fabulous Papercraft Factory CDs and also, for more instant gratification - downloadable paper and digi image collections.

Here's my challenge:

How Many Candles?

I'd simply like you to make a Birthday Card with at least one candle on it this week

The DCM team have all used Funky Hand papers from the "Happy Happy Birthday" CD to make their cards this week, but as you may not have any FH stash (yet!), you can use anything you like to make your candles card..

If you would like to try using a Funky Hand Freebie, visit Get Funky! where you'll find this months new Funky Fifteenth freebie available to download right now.

I've only got one candle on my card!

From the "Happy Happy Birthday" CD:
all papers, Birthday Muffin digi image (one of loads of images, sentiments and craft templates on there) - I used it to make a Craft Robo template and cut two sets of shapes - the second one a mirror image of the first so that it looks the same whichever way it twirls.

Other materials/tools:
Craft Robo to cut the aperture, Stickles to decorate the cake,
Baker's Twine for the bunting

I hope you'll help me celebrate my own birthday by joining in with us this week - I'm looking forward to seeing what you make! Don't forget to check the BLOG to see the cards the DT have made and to get all the details about how to be in with a chance of winning our prize.

Thanks for visiting

Create and Craft 15th September

2011-09-14T16:55:00.000+01:00

The brand new Funky Hand CD rom "Happy Happy Birthday" will be showcased by Anice on September 15th at 9am and repeated at 4pm

The Funkettes have all been very busy for the last few weeks making lots of things for Anice to take with her - and there are some absolutely stunning things to see - and lots of ideas for using all the new goodies on the CD

Here are a some of the samples I've made for the show.

And now you know why I've been such a bad blogger lately! Had my nose to the crafting grindstone, you see!

Thanks for visiting today - please pop back on Friday to see another Funky project :)

Flowers and Flutterbyes

2011-09-09T10:51:00.000+01:00

A lovely first dare from Keilly for the Daring Cardmakers this week.

Well, its Keilly here this week with my very first dare!
I've chosen an inspiration photo and would like you to use the colours from the photo and to also include butterflies!

So, apart from the butterflies (I'm not sure why I find them such a struggle to use, just me being weird, I expect!) it's a happy "back in the comfort zone" opportunity for me this week, with a great excuse for lots of flowers and ribbon to be strewn across my desk.

The cards the team have made are stunning and look especially beautiful all grouped together on the DCM BLOG, so please take a look - we hope you'll be tempted to join in this week!

Materials and Tools:

Papers from "Happy Happy Birthday" by Funky Hand for the background, the coiled flowers, circles and tiny butterflies,

3 shades of pink Seam Binding from Creative Treasures. the green *cherry blossom" flower and it's green ruffled edge ribbon rosette also from Creative Treasures

Large green flower (top left) made from 6 circles of white crepe paper inked with versa magic chalk ink and dipped in glue and Glamour Dust.

Coiled pink flower (bottom right) is coiled crepe paper, edged with pink ink and glittery stuff as before

Pink flower (top right) is 2 soft pink gardenia flowers with a coiled paper flower in the centre

Large butterfly is made from a 6-petaled white Prima, with 2 of the petals folded in and glued at the back. The body is made with glass beads, wire and a glittery heart bead

Tools: Craft Robo for lettering, tiny butterfly punch, small circle punch

It seems a long list of stuff to put together, but in reality it was fairly quick and easy to put together as once the background is done it's just a case of adding flowers until you think it looks right!

Our kitchen plans are plodding on, we're now on the 4th draft of the plan and the layout is looking good, so we've moved on to looking at the elevations - which of course means there are bits we're not sure about - 2 rows of wall cupboards doesn't look right, the height needs to be divided into 3, but then I kept saying that and no-one listened...... hehe Now the builder has hit a huge problem with the job ahead of ours so it's not really looking like he's going to get here at the end of the month after all. Unless the problem at the other place is sooooo big that he has to leave it till after Cword. oh the joys of getting work done on your house.

Well, I'm off now to make a cup of coffee, give me a shout if you want one....

Thanks for visiting

It's Nearly Here...

2011-09-07T11:15:00.002+01:00

The new Funky Hand crafting CD "Happy Happy Birthday" is released soon. 20 brand new paper designs in each of 12 coordinated collections, masses of brand new digital images, and a fun new set of templates for great projects. And of course I mustn't forget those famous wordbooks. This CD is part of the Papercraft Factory series, which is a breeze to work with

More info HERE

I thought I'd blog a couple of sneak peeks today to give a glimpse of some of the things the new CD has to offer.

Materials and Tools for both projects

All papers Funky Hand's Happy Happy Birthday CD

Wordbook pages, cake images also from

Funky Hand's Happy Happy Birthday CD

Coiled roses and flat blossom layers made with scraps of same papers

Wired Roses, Seam binding from Creative Treasures

Glamour Dust, Stickles, Cats Eye ink pads

Tools: Bind-it-All, various Spellbinder shapes, motif and flower dies, EK Success border punch, Craft Robo for lettering on photo 2

Lastly, here's the card I made for my nephew's birthday last week

Materials and Tools

The referee figure and the large football are Craft Robo Templates I've made using free clipart, small footballs are made using an old Qucikutz die

Wobble card template from
Funky Hand's Craft the Year Away CD

White lines are hand cut from card scraps

White base card coloured with Versa Magic green ink pad,

Bazzill card: yellow, red, green, white, dark grey, peach, black

That's all for today, more crafting to get on with....

Thanks for looking

September Flowers

2011-09-02T10:37:00.000+01:00

Daring Cardmakers Day again and as it's the first challenge of the month we're looking to the flowers associated with September for our inspiration.

Sadly even though the flowers are lovely this month - Asters and Morning Glory - I didn't feel at all inspired. I think the old mojo is off somewhere taking a break. I hope it comes back soon because I have masses of stuff to get done in the next few weeks!

Thankfully, my Teamies didn't have the same sort of issues though, so there's lots of lovely crafting to see over on the DCM BLOG today!

I thought tasters would be perfect for one of these fun pop up cards where a (relatively) flat card that will fit in a regular envelope pops out to form a box base with "bits sticking out" - that's a technical term, don't you know? hehehe

In my head it looked ok, but I think maybe a different choice of papers would have been better. Never mind, you can't win 'em all.

I used:

Echo Park "Springtime" papers and stickers

Craft Robo to cut all the pink flowers, Hand cut leaves, Stems are wire covered with strips of paper

Punches for white flowers and the yellow centresYellow Button, Yellow Stickles,

Turquoise seam binding (Creative Treasures)

Spellbinders labels die

Not happy with this card, I then made another - which I like even less! but thought I might as well share anyway as I like the idea of the bowl of asters - I think I should definitely have used the KISS (keep it simple, stupid!) theory with this one - it would have worked so much better - mind you I don't like that shade of yellow either, even though it's from the same set of papers as the rest..

I used:

Fancy Pants papers, Tobo template for flowers, punch for centres

Spellbinders dies (I used a plain circle cut down for the bowl), Tiny letter stickers

Clear and Yellow dewdrops

Flower Lace, Pale Blue and Pale Pink seam binding all from Creative Treasures

With a bit of luck I won't make as much of a pig's ear of the crafting projects I need to do today - please wish me luck!

Thanks for visiting

Ooops!

2011-09-01T11:29:00.000+01:00

Honestly, I don't know where the time goes - yet again I'm late getting around to blogging the cards I made for the last set of Crafty Templates. This set are particularly lovely and it was quite hard to decide which to use. Usually I have a favourite among the templates, but this time I couldn't choose which I liked best! So in no particular order :-), here are my cards made with the August templates and lots of the gorgeous stash that comes in this month's optional Crafty Goodies Kit

Baby Bottle Template

I've used two sizes of the bottles for my card, papers and card from the Crafty Goodies Kit, Spellbinders Circle die for the edge of the bib, Craft Robo to cut the

plain large circle and a punch for the inner circle

Turquoise seam binding from Creative Treasures and a button from my stash

Girls Bicycle Template

This is such a cute template and I'm sure I'll use this again and fill the basket with

shopping bags, books, flowers etc.

I hand cut the little presents using scraps of the papers in the kit

adhered first onto card scraps

From the Crafty Goodies Kit I've used: papers, flowers, peach and lemon card

Other stash: button twine, brads

flower punch

Lighthouse template:

I love this template! Leo's added a few sentiments to the templates this time, including one especially for this one, but as you can see, I forgot to add it!

From the Goodies Kit I've used: papers(background, little yachts),

lemon card, seagull pin (it's soooo cute!!!)

Other stash: card (grey, fawn, red, white)

Corner punch from a MS PatP set

The yachts are hand-cut

All info about Crafty Templates and the Crafty Goodies Kit can be found HERE . The templates are always fun and great to use and build up into an amazing library of inspiration for every occasion!

Right, I'm off now to try and get some things ticked off my ever-growing to-to list, which never seems to become a "done" list....

Hopefully I'll also get time to go and do some blog-hopping too as it seems ages since I had time to catch up with what my crafty friends have been up to lately.

Thanks for visiting today, I hope the sun is shining wherever you are

Squash Book Tutorial

2011-08-27T15:49:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd add the instructions for making a "Squash Book" on here. This is a book I made a couple of years ago as a class for a cyber crop

Ingredients for the basic album

3 sheets of card, Bazzill is good

thicker card for the covers

Ribbon

Selection of toning patterned and plain papers

Tools etc

Good quality glue

Double sided sticky tape

Bone folder

Use a bone folder to get good creases on all the folds

1. Cut 3 perfect squares of card. I made mine 8.5inches (21cms) square. It’s important to make the squares accurately so that the book folds properly.

2. Make just one diagonal fold on each piece of card

3. Open up and fold edge to edge (like folding a card) but do this both ways. When you’ve made all three folds each piece should look like that in the second photo

4. Lay the three pieces of card as shown in the photo below with the diagonal folds going vertically and the middle card overlapping one corner-square of each of the other two.

5 Apply glue to the whole of each of the two corner-squares where the sheets of card overlap. Stick down carefully so that the squares match. Take care here or the book won’t fold properly.

6. Squeeze in the corners of the outer pieces of card as shown.

Just push the top and bottom corners along the diagonal fold lines and press down firmly

7. Keeping the folds tucked in, turn the whole thing over and now squeeze in on the remaining diagonal lines.

Press down on the whole lot and you should have a square book – put something on top of it to stop it all springing out again!

Next make the covers.

I used mountboard, but you could use something thinner – or maybe stick two pieces of card together to get a more sturdy cover

1. Cut two pieces of thicker card that are a bit bigger that the book you’ve already made – I made mine just under 0.5cms bigger on each edge. If when you’ve cut the squares they seem a bit too big, you can shave off some more.

2. Cut 2 squares of whatever paper you want to use for your book which are about 2cms bigger all round than the covers, stick one of the squares in the middle of each paper square.

3. Pre-fold all the edges and make the mitred corners – it’s easier to form the shapes before you apply the glue.

4. Stick down all the corners and edges as shown

5. Cut a long piece of ribbon. There needs to be enough to around the whole book and have enough to tie a bow, so be generous, you can discard the extra later.

Decide which is to be the back cover and make a line just under halfway down where the ribbon will go. Use double sided tape (DST) to fix the ribbon in place.

6. Put DST just inside all the edges of the back cover – remember the actual book pages are slightly smaller than the covers. Add a bit more DST over the ribbon just to make sure.

Carefully line up the cover and the back of your book and stick down firmly.

7. Repeat the sticking process with the front cover – this time you don’t need any ribbon as the piece you’ve already added goes right around the book and holds everything in place.

Remember that if you are using a paper with a “one-way” design you’ll need to match up the patterns nicely on the 2 covers.

8. Bring the ribbons round to the front and tie a bow to close the book, cut off any excess ribbon.

Now it’s ready to decorate and fill.

Here's what my completed book looked like with photos added

Here's another example of the Squash book. This was made as a gift with spaces for the recipient to add their own photos and journalling:

I hope you like this book idea and will want to have a go at making one for yourself, they are fun to make and fun to share.

I'd love to hear what you think so please leave a message - and if you make one of these books do come and let me know where I can see it!

Thanks for visiting

One I Made Earlier!

2011-08-27T15:03:00.003+01:00

I made this card some time ago as a possible project for Funky Hand's page in"Simply Cards and Papercraft" magazine's

"Best of British" supplement which came out a few weeks ago. In the end I went with a handbag card using the fab wobble card template and papers from the "Craft the Year Away" CD, shown right.

Whilst I loved the handbag card, and chose to use that for the magazine, this flowery one is probably more "my" style - whatever that is, and I loved putting it together - flower, ribbons, lace and lots of pretty papers - it can't get much more fun than that.

I'm blogging it now because Funky Hand has a Bank Holiday Sale on atm, with 25% off Funky Hand branded products and because for this card I used a download collection that had completely slipped my attention until I was looking for something for this card - and these papers are absolutely beautiful - a gorgeous, dreamy mix of cream, brown and soft pink.

The download is called "Huge Funky Love" and you get all the papers you need to print out and make one of Funky Hand's famous Word Books, plus full sheet paper designs too - which of course you can resize to get smaller versions of the designs if you like.

The Rundown:

All papers printed from "Huge Funky Love" download by Funky Hand

Most flowers are made from the same papers:

2 hand made roses, several coiled roses. large, layered flower made with Spellbinders dies

Additional flowers: "flat" Prima flowers; pink, brown, cream, 2 wired roses; pink, cream

Brown Seam Binding, White Lace, Imaginisce i-rock pearls and pink gems, fancy jewel brad.

Spellbinders dies. EK Success border punch, pc generated sentiment

Funky Hand Shop

Hope you like the card. Have a fab weekend - even if the weather looks mucky!

Thanks for looking

Naturally Krafty!

2011-08-26T12:08:00.000+01:00

Oh dear - I seem to have got another dose of bad-bloggeritis! hehehe

So before I get on to this week's DCM, here's a tag I made using the August sketch on The Sketch File blog.

I thought I'd make a gift tag big enough (about 8cms diameter) to keep and use as a little door or wall hanger rather than just throw away with the wrapping paper so used a thick card circle to build the layers onto.

I used:

August Sketch

Echo Park "Spring" papers,

2 widths of fuchsia-pink grosgrain ribbon,

Various Prima and wired flowers, Brads, Imaginisce i-rock gems

Craft Robo to cut the three largest circles and to cut the name,

Punch for small circles

I'm so far behind with my blogging that I still have this month's Crafty Templates projects, the box I made for Emily's gift and some cards that I've made but not blogged yet - I'll get round to it eventually though, I'm sure.- I'm afraid there won't be a photo of the Chocolate and Courgette cupcakes I made at the weekend though, because they've been eaten!

Today on the Daring Cardmakers it's "new girl" Fran's turn to set her first dare and it's a really lovely one too!

This week I'd like you to be...
Feeling Krafty
I'd like you to use 'natural' items on your projects, ie. wood, leaves, kraft card, balsa wood, cork, burlap, rope, natural twine etc. The choice is endless, you just need a bit of imagination!
There is a catch though -
you must use 3 natural items not just a bit of kraft card!

There's a real feast for the eyes over on the DCM blog - everyone seems to have gone soft and romantic this week, maybe it's because all the frothy lace and flowers contrast so well with rather stark look of Kraft card. Whatever the reason, the cards are just gorgeous so please go and check them out.

I resisted the urge to use a Kraft card blank as my base and went for smooth white instead

The Rundown:

My "natural" items are: Kraft card, raffia, shell button, real pressed flowers, natural twine coloured with pink ink.

I retrieved the corrugated card from some packaging to make the backing piece, damped some distressed and crumpled Kraft circles and split the layers to make the circles flower (it was tedious to do so I only made one!), used more Kraft scraps to make the coiled flowers.

The pressed flowers came from a pack that has been in my stash for years

The ribbon embellishment is made from 2 shades of pink Seam Binding (from Creative Treasures),
Raffia from the garden centre, pearly shell button from stash,
Sentiment is a Cosmo Cricket sticker - I scanned the sticker so that I could make a template for the shape then cut it slightly larger using my Craft Robo

I spritzed over a lot of the card with a pinky-red Glimmer Mist - which came out a bit "spotty", but I quite liked the effect so phew..... I didn't end up throwing my arms up in total horror and panic!

Not sure what the Bank Holiday will bring - more rain by the looks of it, but there's nothing new there. It's hard to believe that in April, May and June we'd had so little rain that the grass was completely brown. Needless to say, it's not brown anymore hehe

Have a great weekend

Congratulations!

2011-08-22T12:11:00.000+01:00

I spent the early part of last Thursday morning willing the phone to ring, or a text message to pop up! It was A level results day and I was waiting to hear how my nephew Charlie had got on. Well, he did brilliantly and to say I'm proud of him is an understatement - he'll be heading off to Sheffield Uni next month to study Accountancy and Finance - now that sounds like my worst nightmare hehe, but his choice doesn't surprise me - at 2 he already knew the number of the checkout we'd paid for our shopping at, and which junctions of the motorway went where, and his first pet hamster was called "Hundred Million" hehehe

Obviously, the rest of Thursday was spent making a card for him:

I used:

Black and White striped paper: Funky Hand "Stripey Stripes" download

Kraft card blank

Bazzill card: yellow, orang, white, red

Blue Pearlised mirror card for backing the stars and for the lettering,

Black and White Bakers Twine

My Craft Robo had a really good work out for this card:

The Stars, Smiley Icon, hands, boots, Banner and Lettering is all cut on the Craft Robo

Thanks for visiting today

The Writing's on the Wall

2011-08-19T10:52:00.003+01:00

After last week's cutesy "so kawaii" challenge with Leo, this week the Daring Cardmakers were issued with quite a different challenge by Samm:

'Inspired by Banksy'
If you're not aware of who he is, then pop on by Banksy.co.uk and take a look at some of his amazing street art across the world.
You could also try a Google Image search on "Banksy" to find lots of fabulous ideas for your card.
So now is your chance to dig out those stencils, use that paint, throw in a few ironic sayings and give your card some 'street life' and show us what you've created.

My first feeling about this was "PANIC"

Anyway, a challenge is a challenge so off I went to check the link that Samm suggested - by the time I'd looked at all the artwork there I was feeling more comfortable and wanted to see what else I could find. A google image search is always a good place to start so I just put "BanksY" in to the box and, well, I found myself spending absolutely ages looking through all the images I found there. Funny, ironic,clever, witty, meaningful, thought-inspiring, cynical - all of these words and more come to mind when you look through the vast array of artwork and street art you can see. Don't say "I can't do this challenge" until you've had a look because I reckon there is something there to inspire everyone - either through the pictures themselves or the materials used to create them.

Here are some I nearly used:

But in the end I chose this one:

I used my Craft Robo to make a template for the furniture and then chose a photo of Uluru to put in the "window", the idea of sitting on one of these comfy "old lady" chairs looking out at a view of the Aussie outback icon amused me for some reason.

I started with a Kraft card blank and inked the whole thing with a series of my driest cream, ochre, brown and black Cat's Eye ink pads. I then drew in the lines for the planks and the nails, and embossed the card with the "Distressed Stripes" folder from Cuttlebug - I had to run it through twice as the card is 14cm sq.

Once I'd made the furniture templates and cut then out I used the pieces to work out where to cut the aperture.
I think I'll add a "New Home|" or "Home Sweet Home" message to this - but as I haven't made up my mind yet, I've left it blank for now

I used:

Kraft card blank, lots of Cat's Eye chalk inks, Black pen, Cuttlebug "Distressed Stripes" embossing folder, Craft Robo template for chairs, curtains and table, White card, Spellbinders doily die for chair-back covers cut in pink, tiny mulberry paper flower Uluru photo (from our visit)

From being really apprehensive at the start of the week, t found myself really enjoying this one, I learnt a lot about Banksy's artwork and I enjoyed thinking about how I could put my own spin on it. You can see how the other girls have found and used his inspiring artwork by heading over to the DCM BLOG, We hope you'll like what you see and feel inspired to join in this week.

Thanks for looking

so kawaii?

2011-08-12T12:29:00.000+01:00

Gosh, I've been a rubbish blogger this week - and for that matter, I'm not entirely sure where the week has gone! So before I get on to this week's Daring Cardmakers stuff I'll share the project I meant to blog a couple of days back and didn't!

The new August LO idea on The Sketch File went "live" last Tuesday and.this sketch is a bit different from the usual thing, maybe even a bit more challenging! However the DT have risen to the challenge and come up with some fab ideas for using it. Carol and Jackie shared their ideas last week and this week's Tuesday Update it was Lynda and I showing what we've been making. You can see them all over on the BLOG.

This is my circular easel card

I've used papers from the Bo Bunny "Gabrielle" 6x6 paper pad. I wanted to show that just because the sketch has flowers on it, the project doesn't mean you have to use flowers, so I thought cutting out butterflies from the Gabrielle papers and attaching them so that they stood out from the card would work well for this. I added layered paper flowers, wired rose and a glittered brad, plus some highlights of Stickles and Glossy Accents. Here are a couple of close-ups so you can click on them and see those lovely butterflies!

This week it's Leo, another of our newest Daring Cardmakers teamies who is setting her first dare:

Now, I love anything kawaii so this week I want you to travel to Japan to get your inspiration and create a card that is
so kawaii!

Kawaii means anything that is lovable, hug-able and basically cute! Think Hello Kitty and food with smiley faces. Most of the colours in kawaii are sugary, fun and bright so I want to see a little fun bright pop colour too.If you're totally stumped this week check out my favourite kawaii blog for some super cute inspiration, http://www.supercutekawaii.com/

I think we all enjoyed this one, I know I had a great time hunting around the web for zany kawaii images and ideas. In the end I couldn't resist using these little dolls as my starting point,

Card 1 was a disaster - I think I just chose the wrong papers to use and the colours were far too washed out looking so I pulled it apart, gave the dolls a change of clothes and made this:

Papers: Echo Park "Summer Days"

Dolls, sakura flowers and "birthday" all cut with Craft Robo

Bunting hand cut from same papers

Heart, star and "Happy" all stickers from Fancy Pants "Wishful Thinking" project pack, the "Wish" card label is also from the same pack.

Ribbon, tiny flower brads, glitter spot, pink button-twine, mulberry paper for tiny coiled flower in doll 3's hair all from stash

Now I just have to think of something to do with what's left of the original card!

We hope you'll join in and have some fun with Leo's kawaii dare this week - it's a wonderful world to explore, full of fun, colour and inspiration. Check out all the cards we made HERE

Right, how did it get to lunchtime already? It's a Work From Home day so the "What's For Lunch" cry will be on it's way any minute now....

Have a wonderful weekend, thanks for looking, please leave a message before you go....

August's Flowers

2011-08-05T12:09:00.000+01:00

Throughout this year the first challenge of the month for the Daring Cardmakers is to use the flowers associated with that month as the inspiration for our cards. August's flowers are Poppies and Gladioli and as it doesn't seem so long since I made a poppy for a card I thought I'd have a go at something using the Gladioli

For my background:

I used Distress Inks and my ink blending tool/pads along with yellow, orange and a couple of pink shades directly on to the card blank

Swirls Cuttlebug embossing folder on the right side of the card

Swirls then highlighted by swishing the ink remaining on the (Fired Earth?) blending tool ink pad over the raised bits.

For the flowers I added extra punched and inked blossoms to some of the "Star Lily" stems I have in my (teeny weeny) flower collection. I couldn't bear to cut any up to make the stems fuller, but fortunately my kikyou flower punch is exactly the same size as those on the stems. I added tiny gems to the centres and hand cut some leaves to add to the spray

The Vase: I made a new vase shape and used my Craft Robo to cut 3 shapes from blue card. The first was glued onto the card and I added the flowers. The other two were glued together to make a stronger piece for adding ink, Glossy Accents and some swirls of Glamour Dust, - at this point I left it to dry, then added another layer of Glossy Accents to seal in the glitter, plus 3 pink DewDrops (from Sarah's Cards) - I think blue or clear might have worked better, though. Once dry I adhered the vase over the one already on the card.

The journal piece was pc generated, I added some gorgeous Creative Treasures lace down one edge, then added another piece of card to make the whole strip the same thickness.

I tied a bow with green seam binding (also Creative Treasures) around the lower edge

A plaited length of pink button twine (The Ribbon Reel) was threaded through the loop and tied in a bow.

The strip was adhered in place and more pink DewDrops added on the lower edge

before adhering it to the side of the card

As usual there are some really lovely ideas for using these flowers over on the Daring Cardmakers BLOG so please head over there to see them. I hope you'll join in and play along with us.

That's all for today, I'm struggling to get things done this week and I have a bit of a list to get on with. I think it's because I've had some really lousy wakeful nights - it makes it hard to settle down to things in the day time, doesn't it?

Anyway, fingers crossed things get better soon because I'm not a nice person when I'm lacking sleep!

Thanks for looking in today, please cheer me up by leaving a message :-)

A Message from my friend Nicki....

2011-08-03T10:05:00.011+01:00

Good morning 
Hope all is well in your corner of the world. 
I wonder if I could ask a favour .... as you have a blog and I don't! 
Two chaps I know are setting off this weekend on an end-to-end charity cycle ride and I wondered if you could put a link to their Blog on yours?
Here is theirs:

http://dominicwright.blogspot.com/

LINK for More Info and Donations

I know one Dom quite well (the one on the right of the photo) - he's the Art Manager at Kids Company and a really lovely bloke. The other one is his old school friend who I just met very briefly when I was over at the beginning of July.  As he said he's "just along for the ride!"
They will both have handmade Kids Company pennants on the backs of their bikes but I don't know what else they are doing publicity-wise. 
If you know anyone else with a Blog who may be willing to help, please do forward this message to them as well.  Every little helps .......
Love, hugs and sunny sewing
Nicki xxxxx

Nicki is an Englishwoman living in Switzerland who is a firm supporter of UK organization Kids Co.  She uses her fabulous sewing talents to make the most wonderful, usually personalised cushions and quilts for the sick and vulnerable children that Kids Co seek to help.

You can see some of the beautiful things Nicki has made for these children HERE - please do visit!

Last week I discovered something which made the world seem a very small place.  A year or two ago Nicki brought to my attention the remarkable story of THIS little girl and showed us the gorgeous cushion she'd made for her, along with photos of Gabrysia with it. During our recent trip to Northumberland my aunt started talking about an amazing little girl in the family of some family friends and it all sounded very familiar!  As a small girl still living up there, I played with one of Gabrysia's Aunties - my immediate family moved south, we grew up, all the younger generation moved on and away.  You know how it is, I'm sure - you just hear snippets about what's going on with all those families you grew up with but that's all the contact you have with your "past life".  But sometimes connections are made when you least expect them and between people and events that you'd never thought would have any connection with each other.

Kids Company is a fantastic organisation and if you could lend your support by publicising by adding something (and the link) on your your blog about this bike ride, that would be fab.

Thanks for listening

Playing with Paper on a Saturday Afternoon

2011-07-30T19:05:00.000+01:00

I saw this paper folding idea somewhere on my web-wanderings the other day. It was actually to make a "ball" from these shapes but I thought it would make a great idea for paper flowers to stand in a vase, and maybe with a bit of adaptation they would make an embellishment for the top of a box or even a *very bumpy) card.

So I've been playing this afternoon and thought I'd share the photos on here to see what my fellow crafty bloggers think about them.

The first version is the "original" and is a sort of cone shape at the back. I glued a piece of wire into where all the petal pieces join to make a stem

These next ones are my "flatter" versions, which would work as an embellishment. They are still about 1.5cms deep so quite bulky, they measure about6cms across. I'd need to cut a matching petal shape to use as a backing piece, I think, or maybe just a circle of contrasting card would do the job.

.I hope you like them - I'd be interested in hearing what you think

Buttons and Bows

2011-07-29T11:28:00.000+01:00

This week it's Sharon's first time to set a challenge over on The Daring Cardmakers:

Cute as a Button
It's Sharon here with my first ever dare - how exciting! My challenge for you all this week is to create a card using buttons - but hold on, it's not that simple, oh no. I'd like you to use buttons in the main feature of your card, not just as an added embellishment in the corner.

As usual there are some fab ideas and wonderful cards on the blog, so we're hoping lots of people will feel inspired to join in this week.

For some reason I couldn't get the phrase "Buttons and Bows" out of my head - I think maybe it's a line from some old fashioned song, but I haven't got round to googling it so I don't know.

So I decided to go with a ribbons and buttons theme and make a New Baby card. This idea looked better in my head, I think I should have gone with the "less is more" rule, but once I'd covered my desk with my ribbon and button stash I got rather carried away!!

I used:

Smooth white card blank, Pink card, Turquoise card, White card,

MS Doily Lace border punch,

Rbbons, Seam binding, Pink twine,

Buttons from stash and from THIS pastel mix pack pastel

from Creative Treasures

The top section of the sentiment was pc generated, the "buttons and Bows" part is cut on the Craft Robo.

I used the same "Curlz" font for both, but welded the letters together for the cutting version - there is a tutorial HERE on how I do this.

Maybe one day I'll have another go and see if I can get something along the same lines that I'm happier with.

It's definitely worth visiting the DCM blog to see what eveyone has come up with, it's such a colourful blog this week

Tomorrow we'll be seeing the people we hope will be designing our new kitchen to see the first ideas they've come up with - scary stuff! It would be lovely if, once we've decided on everything a nice little Kitchen Fairy would come and wave her wand and everything was done. I'm really not looking forward to having the builders in knocking down walls, building walls etc etc again. It's going to be even more chaos than when we had the bathrooms done a few years ago. The good thing is that, having decided to do the whole kitchen/utility/cloakroom/inner hall area in one go it will mean that most of the internal renovation stuff will be finished.

Right, I suppose I should stop this waffling and do some work.

Thanks for visiting

Ovally Holey

2011-07-28T10:50:00.000+01:00

I've done another card using the July sketch on my Sketch File blog.

For some reason I always find it hard to get back to making stuff after I've had a break - even though I'm looking forward to messing about with paper, glue, buttons and ribbons nothing seems to come together the way I want it to.

I knew that what I really wanted to do was get stuck in to the lovely DT bundle that arrived from Creative Treasures the day before we left, so eventually I kicked the BFoP out of the room and made this card.

Unfortunately she wasn't happy and cast some sort of nasty spell which made getting anything to work a real battle! I'm sending the BFoP off to bother Kaz now, as I'm fed up with the little minx being here. Sorry Kaz, but she's already on her way....

So, here's what I used:

All these from Creative Treasures: Seam Binding (purple, turquoise). Lace, Purple Flower, Buttons, Black and White Baker's Twine

Other Stash: Purple card. Stripy paper (MME), Spellbinders Nesties Ovals die set, Medium Flower punch

Notes:

July Sketch rotated 90deg right

Aperture cut with Oval die, spare piece added to inside of the card

2 pieces of seam binding glued together with book binding glue to get double width pieces

Twisted lengths of seam binding for the bows and purple trim

Flower stem was twisted using a cocktail stick

Frame cut with 2 sizes of the Nesties and adhered in place to cover rough edges

Please visit Sketch File blog to see Carol's latest piece using the same sketch, and if you've not checked out the other DT work this month, scroll down to see what we've all been making with the July sketch.

Right, time to get on with my DCM card for tomorrow - fingers crossed the idea I have will actually work :-?

I promise I'll get round to some blog-hopping soon, it seems ages since I managed to visit my favourite blogging places. Thanks for visiting today.

Been to the Sea....

2011-07-25T16:32:00.002+01:00

We're back from a week in Northumberland with my folks - the weather wasn't too bad and we were able to get out and about for at least part of every day. It's just lovely to spend time in my "home" village with my Aunt and Uncle really - that it's less than a five minute walk to the prom from their house is a bonus!

The photos haven't even been put onto the pc yet so if you want to see where I was, scroll down a couple of posts to Friday's Daring Cardmakers "Wish You Were Here?" challenge and there's a photo of the bay there!

The excitement I had while I was away was hearing that the latest issue of "Simply Cards and Papercraft" magazine was out along with it's "Best of British supplement - exciting because the card I made using Funky Hand products is in there - and it's on the cover too.

The card template and all papers are by Funky Hand and the instructions on how I made it are in the magazine

As my Aunt always comes to visit armed with boxes of home-made goodies, we decided to do a bit of baking ourselves so we could return the favour. We made another batch of those wonderful Rhubarb and Custard Cupcakes and also tried out a new recipe for Chocolate Chip Woopie Pies. Sorry about this rubbish photo but you'll get the idea, I'm sure!

Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of crafting, blogging and blog-hopping soon, but now I must get back into "cooking dinner" routine - I'd forgotten that food wasn't just going to appear in front of me courtesy of Aunt and Uncle or via a waiter/waitress today. Oh the shock of being home!

Thanks for visiting

Wish You Were Here?

2011-07-22T10:10:00.000+01:00

Well I'm not sure what's happened to the weather, but even if it doesn't feel particularly Summery, the holiday season is in full flow now and that's what Lynda has based her challenge for the Daring Cardmakers around.

It's Summer now in the Northern hemisphere so lets see your holiday creations - Beaches, Tropical Paradises, Camping/Caravanning, Countryside or even a City Break - what takes your fancy?

It had to be a seaside theme for me and I managed, for once, to resist digging out my favourite Craft Robo Beach Hut template, along with the photos of Southwold ; my favourite beach-hut viewing place!

Summer is about the garden, sunshine (well, sometimes), holidays, seaside, colours - both bright and sea-faded, ice-cream, and all sorts of other things, so I thought I'd do something more collage-y this time and use the 6x6 Websters Pages set I bought a few weeks ago and haven't touched since. I'm not really convinced about this as a card, I think it would be better as a canvas, and as I have some 8x8 canvases lurking somewhere I might just see if I can do something with it later.

I used:

papers: Websters Pages (background, striped lower edge, yachts, signpost, lighthouse - I coloured on red and white stripes for a more UK version of a lighthouse) ) ,

Fancy Pants "Beach Bum"(bunting, tree, flip-flops), Echo Park Summer Days (ice cream)

Suticases - same Craft Robo template as for the Suitcase challenge of a couple of weeks back

I made the top one deeper to look more like a vanity case, and used a gel pen to draw in the details as these were all quite small.

Flowers: large red and blue flowers are made with circles of organza (using the tea-light technique), centres are "Sheer Blooms" from Creative Treasures, Lime green "Aster" and red wired rose, plus turquoise seam binding for the twisted bow also from Creative Treasures.

Shell - which doesn't show up very well, sorry! - is made from paper clay.

I love to be at the seaside. I was born and lived in a seaside village till I was 10, My mum would meet us out of school on nice days and we'd go straight to the beach, then for years after we moved away, we returned every summer to spend time with the rellies so the beach on the photo below has a huge place in the summer-times of my memory.

Maybe one day I'll get to live at the seaside again.....

Please visit the DCM Blog to see the wonderful cards the team have made for Lynda's fun dare this week - and hopefully you'll be inspired to join in with us, I hope so.

Thanks for visiting

Carry on Camping, Caravanning, Glamping.....

2011-07-20T10:05:00.000+01:00

It's Crafty Templates time again and this month the templates have a lovely Summery feel to them. There's a tent, caravan and camper-van and lots of other summery images to play with, along with another of Leo's lovely cupcake ideas.

This month there are downloadable papers to go with the templates and they have a soft and summery feel to them with pretty spotty, flowery and "textured" designs.

Here are my cards using the templates and papers

I used:

Campervan Template, Grass template, download papers

Bazzill card; yellow, orange, green,, white

Hand-cut balloons covered with Glossy Accents, daisy punch, Spellbinders "big scalloped circles" die, Cuttlebug "tiny hearts" embossing folder, Prima Athena Flower (yellow), Orange Stickles

Butterfly and Bakers Twine from my Crafty Goodies stash

I used:

Caravan Template, Grass template, download papers

Bazzill card; blue, orange, green, black, white

Daisy punch, Orange seam binding for curtains

Butterflies, tiny letter stickers, flower shaped journal spots

I used:

Cupcake on a Stand template, download papers

Bazzill card; blue, bisque, brown

EK Success Border Punch, large button, Green Seam Binding

"Made with Love" sticker. Bakers Twine

This is a really fun set of templates - you always get about 8-10 different templates in a set so plenty to choose from. I hope you like the things I've made using these three!

Click the link to find out more about Crafty Templates

Thanks for visiting

Pinteresting

2011-07-15T12:37:00.001+01:00

Wow, posting two days running, maybe I should go and have a lie down once I've finished this!

It's Daring Day today and we've had a wonderful week sharing inspiring photos and then using them to create our cards. It's all down to Nat:

".........something a little different!
we're looking to Pinterest for some inspiration!
I am a relatively new convert to Pinterest - I only joined a month or so ago, but it is definitely my favourite place to hang out at the moment and get instant inspiration - plus I can keep track of all the wonderful inspiring pics and cool techniques I've bookmarked over the years in one handy place.
If you don't know what Pinterest is, check out the blurb here for more info.
We want to spread some Pinterest love this week - because the joy of Pinterest is discovering new sources of inspiration!
So the dare this week is to create a card using a "pin" for inspiration. "

So, the basic idea is to find a photograph on Pinterest, or elsewhere on the net and use it as the starting point for making your card. There's lots more info over on The Daring Cardmakers Blog, which will help make it seem less complicated!

I've made a couple of cards this week - the problem with Pinterest is that there are just sooo many wonderful, inspiring photos and it's too easy to get diverted - I've been dipping in for a while but this week I took the plunge and joined up so that I could start making my own pinboards.

This is the photo which was the inspiration for the first card I made:

Source: curbly.com via John on Pinterest

I used:

Red, turquoise and lime card, All circles cut with Craft Robo. I made the inverted scallop frame using a graphics program then converted it for Robo cutting in PSP.

I punched a circle in the base card and the green and red circles so that the glittered button couldbe adhered to the inside of the card and show through the holes.

Red Organza flower and red seam-binding flower are handmade, Small wired roses, Prima "flat" flowers, Glittered brad, seam binding bow, Button, glittered with Stickles then a coat of Glossy Accents, All gems I-rock hot-fix (Imaginisce), Green and Turquoise Dew Drops

Then yesterday I saw this other photo and I loved the tile patter, the colours and the composition, so just had to make another card!

Source: 4.bp.blogspot.com via Kathy on Pinterest

I made the curvy diamond tile by combining a couple of images in PSP then converting for cutting on Craft Robo - I think there's a similar Spellbinders shape - but imagine cutting all of those individually - sticking them on the white panel was tedious enough!

I used:

White card blank and matching card for the tiled panel, Black card, Paper (Fancy Pants "On a Whimsy"), ink for edging,,

White seam binding double wrapped around the panel, Lace adhered around panel

Flowers: large flower hand-made with white Seam Binding,

Top flower made with a rosette of lace and a medium sized Prima rose,

Right-hand coiled rose made with heavy crepe paper (thank you Joanne :))

Stickles glitter glue on each flower.

Yesterday morning the postie brought a lovely DT pack of new goodies from Creative Treasures - What timing!! The white seam binding and beautiful lace I found in my parcel was just perfect for this card! I've already been suing some of the other things Tracy sent too, but I'll share those another day! It's hard to beat Creative Treasures for tempting embellishing treats!

Right, I think that's me done for today - do please check out the Daring Cardmakers BLOG, and all the personal blogs to see the cards and the inspiration behind them - if you are ever in need of inspiration, a little Pinterest browsing is sure to kick start your mojo! If you do, then please join in and play along with us this week, we'd love to see what you come up with.

Thanks for visiting, please leave a message, it's always good to read them!

Still Here...

2011-07-14T10:05:00.000+01:00

I've been an even worse blogger than usual lately, but these things happen from time to time, don't they?

So I thought I'd have a quick catch up this morning before I get diverted by anything else - oh, hang on a minute, I'll just go and grab a coffee first ....hehe....

Right that's better.

Yesterday it was my turn to share my project for June's Funky Fifteenth over on Get Funky (challenge blog for Funky Hand). It seems a bit weird doing the June project on the 13th July, but I'm the last one before the new July Funky 15th is announced (by Ruth, tomorrow).

This time Anice has been our Hostess and she gave us this sketch to work with. It's a good one, isn't it? You've still got today to enter and maybe win the prize of a free Funky Hand download of your choice - so if you're quick....

I turned the sketch around and made this card using papers and an image from Funky Hand (you have to use at least one FH product for your entry to count).

I used:

spotty papers from "Hearts and Flowers" download collection, Plant in Pot image from "Dreams Come True" CD and flowers cut from the current Funky Freebie paper (today is the last day to collect your copy...); All Funky Hand

Other stash: Bottle Green card, White card, i-Rock green gems (Imaginisce), Button covered with circle cut from Funky Freebie paper.

I've made another card using the sketch too, but when I photographed it the colours didn't look right (although they are fine irl :-/). I might see what I can do to fix the problem and add it later.

Anyway, as I said, it's the last day to get your entries in and the last day to grab that Funky Freebie - so better get busy if you want to join in this time.

Over on my own Sketch File blog we've got some fab news about a new teamie. The sketches there aren't aimed at cards, or LOs or any one specific area - they are there for any sort of crafting at all and we think Carol is the perfect person to inspire people to look at how they might use them for whatever crafting they like to do - visit Carol's blog and you'll see why!

You can also see the first piece that Carol has made for The Sketch File on yesterday's July Update 1 - it is just gorgeous.

Finally for this bit of my catch-up, here is the little cheque holder I made for nephew Dan's birthday at the end of last month (see, I really do have quite a bit of catching up to do!)

I used:

Orange Bazzill card,

Papers from a couple of the MME LIme Twist paper pads

Star, Circles and Lettering all cut with Craft Robo,

"Homemade" decal sentiment sticker

It would have been better, and less puzzling for Dan if I'd actually put the cheque in it before sealing it up in the envelope and giving it to him...ooops!

hey ho, Mad Auntie Kathy strikes again!

Well, I must away and get started on my DCM card, so that I can tick something else off my ever-growing to-do list. The Time Thief is around again, methinks hehe

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

Suitcase!

2011-07-08T11:44:00.002+01:00

Our lovely Rein has set the Daring Cardmakers' challenge this week and her instructions are very simple - just to use a Suitcase on our cards

"SUITCASE"
I'd like you to use a suitcase in any way you like on your card
It could be what you put in your suitcase when you're off travelling, or you could incorporate any sort of suitcase; old, new, shiny or battered into your design.

......"hmmm now then, where is my trolley case......''

We had problems getting our Linky thing to work properly last week and lots of people were unable to leave their links, so as we were offering a prize it seemed only fair to do a "roll over" and give everyone another chance to win , the prize donated by online store Crimson Cloud, will run for this week's challenge too.
They sell a lovely range of crafting goodies, so if you're looking for a little temptations, maybe you'll find it there. hehehe

I wanted to do something with a pile of suitcases (why is it that a pile of different sized suitcases is such a pleasing image?), so my first port of call was a good old Google Image search, where up popped a fab "colouring page, just perfect for converting to a Craft Robo template. The best thing is that although the original image has 3 suitcases, I only needed to actually make a template from one of them then tweak the size on my Robo page to make the others.

I couldn't decide whether to make a big, shaped card or a card using the suitcases small-size as the focus piece - so I made both.

I used

For both cards; Craft Robo template (email me if you would like a copy)

MME Stella and Rose 6x6 pad "Mabel", brown Bazzill card

For shaped card;

pc generated sentiment, twine

For Little Cases card;

Spellbinders Big Scallops die and photo corner die,

Inner circle is Robo cut,

EK Success border punch, pc generated sentiment,

Brown Seam binding (Creative Treasures)

I really enjoyed making these cards, and they show how versatile Craft Robo templates are. As well as making the 3 sizes of suitcases I could have altered the shapes to make, say, the top one deeper as well as smaller - a bit like a hat box or vanity case. I did make two different handle styles in case I wanted to mix them up in the stacks but in the end I just used the curved ones on the shaped card and the angular ones on the little cases.

As always our DT have come up with some wonderful ideas and a great variety of styles, please go and see what they've all made {HERE}, they are sooooo lovely. We're hoping lots of people will join in this week and we;re hoping we've got the code right this time (ooops!).

Rightie-hoo, time I wasn't here, but hopefully I'll get time to have a blog-hopping and catch-up session later.

Thanks for visiting
Suitcases template for Craft Robo is HERE