Not just for Christmas

  

On the Daring Cardmakers this week we have a challenge to make 2 things, one a Christmas card and the other "something else" - not necessarily Christmas relates, but still using Christmas Stash!
This is because we have Funky Hand sponsoring us this week and as they've very kindly given the dt not one but both of their gorgeous 2013 Christmas collections to play with we thought it would be good to make something with each of them.

http://www.funkyhand.com/

I may be a bit biased because being a member of their design team I work with Funky Hand stash on a regular basis - but even after a few years with them, I'm still finding new ways to use the wonderful downloads and CDs.  You know how you can look at a sheet of paper and think hmmm this is nice, but I would love that bit of pattern smaller...or bigger.....or just that little bit of it....?  Well using digital stash means you can make the design do what you want - and you can print it on all sorts of media too.
I'll stop lecturing now and give you a peek at the two collections - one lucky person will get both of these for free at the end of the week!  Thank you Funky Hand.

Silent Night

 

Sleigh Ride

I love both of these sets and will be using them, plus some of the older Christmas collections for most of my cards this year.
I decided to make my Christmas card for this week using Silent Night 
papers, the plan was for a vintage-grungey sort of card, but the grungey bit didn't really happen, and it's not that vintagey either!  But I am quite pleased with how it turned out  

Materials and Tools

All designer papers Silent Night by Funky Hand

Gold card, Cream satin ribbon, Wired Holly "berries", Gems, Dewdrops, White Flower stamens inked yellow (because I couldn't find my yellow ones ....), Glamour Dust glitter

Gold "label" background cut with Craft Robo from my own template

Dies: Spellbinders D-Lites "Sprigs", MFT Die'Namics Poinsettia 

2 x snowflake punches

Printing Info:

Card Blank - cream design resized to print directly onto the smooth white card

Green background - this was my newest experiment - I resized to print A5 and printed the dark green design onto ribbed Kraft cardstock, I love the way it turned out so rich and textured. On the other end of the card I did the same with he holly design which I'll use another time as I wanted the holly paper on this card to have the normal creamier colour.

Holly, Spotty, Red, Cream, Lighter green designs all printed onto Bazzill twhite to use for other parts of the background and embellishments

Cream snowflakes were covered with glue and dipped into Glamour Dust glitter

 My Sleigh Ride project is a pillow box

Materials and Tools

All designer papers Sleigh Ride by Funky Hand

Narrow ribbon: gold, red, turquoise, Cream leaf, cream rose, Red Wired flowers, large pearl brad
EK Success border punch, 2x SU Flower punches, Spellbinders D-Lites "Sprigs",

 Printing Info:

Spotty design was printed on a sheet of A4 pale cream ribbed cardstock.  I also printed the green chevron design on the reverse so the inside of the box looks pretty too. I used an offcut with the chevrons uppermost on the bad that goes around the box

Red and Aqua designs printed on White Bazzill.

You can see how well the designs print on ribbed card and what a lovely effect it produces on the photo below:

That's it for this time, I hope you'll head over to the DCM BLOG and see what the others have been making - and be inspired to join in and win these fab downloads for yourself!

November Sketch

Last week I completely forgot to show the card I made for the new LO idea on The Sketch File - so this week I'm blogging two cards.
First of all, here's this week's card

Materials and Tools

Little Princess papers; Funky Hand

Birthday Georgie image; Funky Hand

Baker's Twine

Spellbinders plain circle die to cut the aperture

*Sentiment printed directly onto the card blank

MFT Die'Namics bunting die
Sketch from The Sketch File

I created the sentiment in Paint Shop Pro using ding-bats for the scroll designs, then resized it for the circle I wanted to us.  A little bit of guesswork used for where to print it, then cut the circle aperture on the upper paper
Georgie is coloured digitally as that's the only way I can colour in fit to use on a card!
Here's the sketch:

For last week's card I turned the sketch upside down

and made the bunting shapes into Christmas Trees!

Materials and Tools

Stylish Tree papers;Funky Hand

Glitter card, Clear Rhinestone

Dies: Tree (Crafters Companion), Large snowflake (Spellbinders),

Sentiment background is made by separating the snowflakes from a snowflake border die - I think it's by Poppystamps, but can't confirm

Snowflake Punch, Small star punch

Sketch from The Sketch File

As you can see I've used fabulous papers from Funky Hand for both of these cards.  For the first card I printed them on textured Bazzill white card, for the second I've used a medium weight smooth white card to match the heavier card stock used for the base.
if you are quick you can take advantage of this:

Funky Hand are offering a 15% discount on all downloads from Saturday 9th until Tuesday 12th November.  Just add this code DT9NOV (all capitals) when you check out, to claim your discount

That's it for this time, back soon with more catch-up crafting!
Thanks for looking

For All Princesses!

The gorgeous new Funky Hand download collection may be called "Little Princess" but honestly, it's far too pretty to keep just for the Little Princesses in your life!  I absolutely adore these soft and pretty colours and I know this will be one of those go-to sets of designs I can rely on for a mojo-boost when inspiration is lacking.
For the un-princessly price of just £2.99 you'll get 20 different designs that you can play with to your hearts content.  Resize to make the images smaller, or print full size, print on paper, card,vellum, canvas or anything else that will go through your printer - be adventurous and find out just how versatile Funky Hand downloads can be.  It doesn't matter if something doesn't work, or if you find you need more of that design because you can just go back and print more.
Do you still need a bit more incentive?  How about this, then?

Funky Hand are offering a 15% discount on all downloads from Saturday 9th until Tuesday 12th November.  Just add this code DT9NOV (all capitals) when you check out, to claim your discount

I have really enjoyed crafting with "Little Princess" this week - I thought I'd share one of the cards I've made. 
There are a few colours of these gorgeous "skinny stripes" designs, and that spotty paper is divine.
It was a shame that I couldn't "force" one of the multi-coloured stripe patterns in but I was trying to keep in clean and simple - well if I'm allowed to include that rather large  flamboyant flower on a CAS card

Here's a peek at more of the designs you can be crafting with TODAY if you go and download this collection from HERE

And also new this weekend are three digital image downloads featuring Funky Hand's own little princess, aka Georgie

So, lots going on at Funky Hand - the dt will be sharing more of the things we've made with these new collections over the next few weeks - and there are still more new goodies to be released!

That's me for today though
Thanks for visiting

Lots of Reasons

maybe it's just a Cword Card-making avoidance tactic, but this week on the Daring Cardmakers we're concentrating on non-Birthday and non-Christmas cards.  Any other reason or occasion except those two is fine - and there are lots of good reasons for making and sending a card - even just a "hello" card for someone you've not seen in a while.
As luck would have it I had a Golden Wedding Anniversary card to make something - a timely commission and good chance to to that 2 birds with 1 stone thing :)

 
I think a 50th wedding anniversary definitely deserves the full froth and flower treatment - a good excuse to use all my favourite things in one place!
I made a Craft Robo template using the SU Blossom punch design as a guide - the actual punch was a bit too big for what I wanted to do, plus you're stuck with one size of flower anyway.  But the shape is lovely, so I tweaked an existing 6 petal flower template to hae wavy edges to the petals then cut 3 different sizes of the petals with my CR machine.
The largest flower was cut in thick gold vellum
The middle-sized flower is cut in a yellowy-cream Bazzill
The 2 small flowers are cut in a kraft paper which is old-gold on one side - in real life it's less brown than it looks on the photos

 

Materials

Smooth cream card balnk, plus extra of the same card for die cut shapes

Gold card, Prangey Yellow organza ribbon,Browny-gold pearls

Card and paper as mentioned above for flowers and die-cut swirls

Gold Ice Stickles

Tools

Base card embossed with Corner Swirl Embossalicious (Crafters Companion)

Spellbinders Label 25 -the large die cut is embossed with Tiny Hearts (Cuttlebug)

2x Flourish dies (Memory Box and MFT Die'Namics)

Sentiment is pc generated

Flower petals all cut on Craft Robo

That's it for this time.
Thanks for visiting, please come back soon :)

Catching Up (or trying to)

I've made various things in the last few months that I've not got round to blogging yet, so I thought I could maybe do a series of short (not promising sweet though) posts and try to catch up with myself!

I made this for my uncle's birthday as he bought a new car recently.  I used one of Leo's fab Crafty Templates for the car and added moving wheels and a little cut out photo in the window for a bit of fun

Materials and Tools:

Bazzill card; Blue, Black, Grey

Silver pen to add colour to the wheel hub caps and lights

Brads to attach the wheels (they're hidden under the silver hub caps)

Craft Robo to do the hard work of cutting out all the shapes

That's it.
I told you it would be a short post!

Thanks for popping by

First of Year 8

Over on the Daring Cardmakers Miri is  our hostess for the  first challenge of our eighth year.  It's our usual First Friday of the Month Colour Combo and Miri has chosen a beautiful colour palette of [ale blues, browns and silver grey.
I had a vague idea for what my card would be - but it all went horribly wrong and card 1 is now residing in the bin.  I'm not especially happy with the second attempt - but time ran out so it had to do.  My feelings toward it weren't helped by my attempts at getting a decent photo of it.  It looks a lot better in real life but despite several attempts at photographing nothing worked - I'll admit I got bored and gave up
You know what they say about winning some and losing some.....

The embossed panel at the top doesn't show up very well - I inked the inside upper section of the embossing folder before adding a piece of card and running it through my machine. I should have added more ink, it's very very subtle!
 Note to self; invest in a brayer
The blue papers are from an ancient set by Lasting Impressions - I'm not sure they even exist any more - I've been hoarding the remnants of a couple of sets of their papers as they were so gorgeous and too lovely to use.  Madness, I know

Materials and Tools:

Smooth White 15cm square card blank with a strip removed from the side (so that the 

snowflake could extend over the edge)

2x blue papers; Lasting Impressions

Glitter card in Brown, White and Pale Blue

Off-white bobble trim, Sable coloured lace Pale blue ric-rac

Silver and Pale Blue gems

Crafters Companion Christmas Elegance Embossing Folder; I used only the lower section 

Dies: Memory Box Gothic Rosette, Snowflake Border

Various Spellbinder Snowflake sets

Snowflake punches; EK Success and Martha Stewart  

I nearly forgot the inspiration photo!

 That's it for this time, have a great weekend

Silent Night Box

Hello, 

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

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

All Papers: Silent Night by Funky Hand 

 

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

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

See you soon.

Saturday, Shabby Saturday

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

I decided to make a cute little gift bag. 

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

See our lovely Shabby Saturday Showcase HERE

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

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

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

Spooktastic Birthdays

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

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

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

Materials and Tools:

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

Various Distress Inks, Gesso, White Posca Pen,

 Silver pen, Black Enamel Accents, Black Stickles, Twine

Craft Robo to cut the bunting and the letters

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

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

Thanks for looking

Doing it with Digi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sketchy

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

Here is the sketch:

A face-on view of the card:

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

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

The two pink flower shapes and the sentiment panel are from

 the same paper download

Other bits: Acrylic dewdrops, Baker's Twine

2 x flower punches, Circle punches

 

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

Thanks for visiting