3 Little Birds

Just a quick post today, to share I've a couple of cards  made for the September LO on The Sketch File Blog.
I made the first one because the sketch this time is called "3 Little Birds! and it seemed a shame not to have a project matching the title! 

This is the sketch;

http://kathyswafflesketchfile.blogspot.co.uk/

It's perfectly ok to twist, turn, stretch or shrink it the LO, which is what I did for the second card I want to show. This is one I made for my uncle's birthday last week.  It celebrates his knowledge of the North East and how when I ring them up I love to hear where they've been gadding about to this time!

I promised "short" and I'll keep to my word!

That's it, thanks for looking

With Kids in Mind

It's Zuzana's turn to set the challenge over on the Daring Cardmakers Blog and she's asking us to create  for, or with children.  
When I was teaching Nursery and Primary school children, i was always on the lookout for arty, crafty projects I could do with them but now I don't need to do that, and all the nieces and nephews are getting past the "kids cards" age so Zuz's challenge has a bit of shock to the system!

In the end I made a couple of cards; the first one is made with a little girl in mind, though sadly I've no-one to send it to atm (so if anyone wants it, just shout!)

Materials and Tools

White 14x14cm smooth white card blank, plus extra for embossed panel

Various shades of Bazzill card

Dotty embossing folder

Big Gingham Check Ribbon 

Star and Round shaped gems; Silver and Pink

Tiny Star Punch (EK Success)

Rocking Horse template created from a colouring page and cut with Silhouette Cameo

Sentiment created in Paint Shop Pro, also for Silhouette Cameo cutting

For the 2nd card I had to take a brief step back in time and look for something that would be make-able with a group of youngsters - and hopefully have a bit of extra educational merit - though I really do think creativity is very much underrated in school these days - one of my bugbears, that is!
I came up with this. basically made with different sized strips of paper, some punches, scissors and a bit of wool

Materials and Info

Large circle for Rocker base, folded in half  (I used a die from the Xcut Large Nested Circles die set)

Strip of yellow card for minion,

 I used another die from the same set to draw the domed shape for his head, then cut with scissors

 Black and White card; thin strip, 3 sizes circle punch

Mouth is also cut with circle punch 

Square and strips of blue card for dungarees

Once the minion was all stuck together I glued it in place on the rocker base, overhanging the edge and at an angle, then turned over to trim off the excess using the rocker shape as the guide.

I used wool scraps for the hair, and added a pocket, some doodling and tiny buttons to the dungarees 

Lots of maths involved if you are looking for that sort of thing, plus of course the whole concept of balance comes in to this - you need to work out where to place the weight so that it rocks when you want it to, b
ut doesn't end up sitting on the point of the fold.

There are some cute, clever and very sweet cards over on the BLOG this week, so I hope you'll check them out

Thanks for popping by today, hope you like my "makes"

 

Bubbly Funky

A few years ago I was lucky enough to be part of the design team for Bubbly Funk and had a ball working with the wonderful kits and other goodies that Caroline sold in her fab shop.  The Bubbly Funk shop has now been trading for 10 whole years and Caroline decided it was time for a revamp and a slight change in direction.  Now the shop is specialising in Stencils. Masks and all things connected with using them - not just for crafting, but for home décor too.  You can see the gorgeous, stylish, new-look Bubbly Funk Shop HERE

For me, the best part is that I'm back on the DT, working alongside Caroline and fellow teamie Joanne (aka Angelnorth) to show how versatile, and how much fun these thin bits of plastic can be! I'm definitely a novice when it comes to using them but I'm learning all the time and also finding my own way to make them work for me.  Hopefully my very amateur style will encourage other "newbies" to see that you don't have to be an expert with paints and inks etc to use them and to have a go themselves.

Anyway, I thought it was about time I had a bit of a catch up on things I've been showing over on the Bubbly Blog, so here are the three things I've made so far - working backwards from this week's post.

Poppy Seed Heads

For this week's project I've made a card using a simple layered LO to show off a pretty Seed Heads stencil.  This stencil has the lovely design for adding all your colour through (the pale blue panel), plus a version which you can lay over that to just add the outline as used on the darker pane

Stencil Used: Poppies – Crafters Workshop – 6×6 

I've also used various inks available from the shop including VersaCraft  ones

 More info and pictures HERE, including my High-Tech ink application system!

One Evening in Paris

Last week's project was a mini album page - in my first DT goodie box I found a Paris-themed 6x6 stencil which would work perfectly with photos from our Paris holiday back in March.  

Stencils Used

 Paris Holiday 6×6  (Claudine Hellmuth) 

I experimented with using a layer of (PVA) glue through the stencil over the black inked Eiffel Tower, which I then covered with Glamour Dust to get the sparkling effect of the lights just being switched on that we were there at the right time to see.

More info and pictures HERE

"Celebrating 10"

My first project for the Bubbly blog was the large, papier mache  numerals decorated to celebrate the shop's tenth birthday

Stencils Used:

 Garden with Watering Can (Tando)

6×6 Mariposas Crafters Workshop

You can see more information and more photos for this project HERE

It would be great if you'd visit us over at Bubbly Funk Blog  to see all our projects - don't miss Joanne's gorgeous makes too - she's the one who's really clever with all things inky and painty, and is always happy to share her know-how.

Bubbly Funk Forum

The Bubbly Funk Forum is also a great group to belong to.  I think it's a shame that more people don't use the craft forums nowadays - FB is OK, but can feel a bit "anonymous" with people coming and going all the time, and it's just so darn difficult to keep up with things on there.  We would welcome you with open arms to our little forum HERE - we talk about craft and just about anything else, so this is a shout out for members to join up (we'd love to meet you) or to come back (we miss you)!

Thanks for visiting and wading through this rather long post!

 

Watercolours

 We have a challenge from Sharon this week on The Daring Cardmakers
 Sharon says:

"I'd like to see a watercolour style to your cards.  It doesn't have to be watercolour paints, you can create the effect with anything you like - papers with a watercolour style, distress inks, watercolour markers, Twinkling H2O's, Gelato's, etc.  The list is endless!"

I made a watercolour background using Gelatos for the colours with a gorgeous stencil inked over the top 

I used:

White card blank

Black Bazzill card

Watercolour card

Gelatos

Stencil Multi Birds of a Feather  Crafter's Workshop 

Colorbox black ink

Turquoise satin ribbon

Silver gems in various sizes

EK Success border punch

 I was really pleased at how the colours in the background worked and how the birdcage silhouettes look as though you're looking out at the sun going down on the sea - it was all a bit of a happy accident to be honest!

Thanks for visiting - please pop over and visit The Daring Cardmakers Blog to see the beautiful cards the DT have made this week

Gridlock

This week's Daring Cardmakers challenge is another in the Elemental Inspiration series, and this time it's Beckie's turn to choose the picture we draw inspiration from - she's chosen a wonderful Autumnal "Mood Board" style photo, full of warm colours and Autumn-themed images.
I loved the actual layout of all the little photos into one sort of frame and thought I'd have a go at using that as one of the (minimum of) three elements I needed to take away to make my own card, I also wanted to use the stars and of course the gorgeous colours.
It didn't all go quite to plan, but in the end I came up with this:

To begin with I used several Distress Inks, and a couple of other ink pads (for the blue shade) and swooshed them over a sheet of card to get an all over background that I liked - I cut down to size and adhered it to my card.
I also used a Prima Stars stencil with silver ink mixed into texture paste on another piece of card, then sprinkled glitter all over , shook off the excess and left it to dry.  As you can see, none of that made it onto the card!
My plan was to make a "printer's tray" style frame, based on Beckie's image to lay over the top of the coloured background, using some of the star piece in some of the holes, and use a sentiment sentiment in one of the holes as in the photo.

I made a template for the frame and cut it on my Cameo.  I sat it over the inky background and it looked awful, I tried adding some starry pieces, but in reality the stars were too far apart  for this and didn't work at all.
I thought maybe there was too much black, so I re-did the template and cut the new one in white to make a double-frame

It still looked wrong, so I ditched them!  Maybe I'll  think of a way to use them, but maybe they'll go in the bin.
So what to do?
In the end I cut down the front of the card, turned it over and drew the LO plan of the grid on the reverse, then cut up into the smaller pieces,  After inking the edges I glued them onto a new card blank - even them in wasn't right as although I'd carefully numbered all the rectangles before cutting them out I must have had a brain-freeze because the panels were all wrong.  Sometimes you just have to go with it, so instead of being in the original inky pattern the design is more random!
Instead of filling the "holes" with stars or whatever as planned - and having no holes now anyway, I made another inky piece using the same colours as before and randomly cut the stars using a Taylored Expressions Nested die set, and arranged them in a sort of star-burst over the edges of the tiles.  I punched a few small stars from the left over inky card, and some glittery gold card for highlights.

So, quite a lengthy process for what is really a simple card - I just don't want you getting the idea that this was as quick and easy as it looks! haha  This one was painful!
Oh, I nearly forgot to show you Beckie's picture:

The BLOG looks amazing with all the Autumnal themes this week, I hope you'll take a look and maybe join in with us - we have a rather nice give-away on offer this time :)
Anyway, thanks for sticking with it and making it through to the end!  Please leave a message....

Cherry Ripe!

It's Jo's turn to set the challenge for The Daring Cardmakers this week and as the orchard at the bottom of her garden is brimmimg with produce she's set this theme for us:

Feeling Fruity!

There's lots of fruity goodness to be harvested at the moment so this week, (we've been eating lots of crumble!) I would like to see a card with some fruit featured.

The DT have as ever created beautiful cards, and don't forget that there is still time to enter our joint blog hop with Ruby Rock-it, all the details are here.

 I was a bit stumped on what to do for this one as I don't have much fruity-themed stash.  Eventually decided to go with a cherry theme as I remembered I have an embossing folder with cherries on it from my time on the Die'Sire DT.  I did wonder if it was something I'd ever use again!

Info:

Smooth white card blank embossed with "Cherrylicious" 6x6 embossing folder (Crafter's Companion)

Extra white card, plus cherry red Bazzill for focus panel

Wording is PC generated and cut into tabs

Cherry Pie:

I inked over some creamy-pale brown Bazzill card with a slightly deeper Distress Ink using a baby wipe to move the colour around

I hand cut narrow strips (abt 5mm) and inked the edges of them with a reddish-brown Versamagic pad.

The strips were woven together to make a piece large enough to cut the oval top of the pie and glued onto red card.

Oval shape them cut at an angle from the woven card using a Spellbinders Nested Ovals die - the oval was a bit "fat" so I trimmed round with scissors till I got the shape I wanted

Pie base cut free-hand from more of the inked card and the various pieces adhered to the focus panel

Cherries are cut from red card using a Tiny Circle Xcut punch, then dots of white ink added for highlights

The stem is just hand cut from brown card and the cherries and stem glued in place on the pie

When the white ink was dry I added Glossy Accents to the cherries

Quite simple really - I like the way the pie crust worked out, and just for once I managed not to prod the Glossy Accents before it was dry, so that looks good too!

It would be great if you'd pop over to the DCM BLOG to see the other cards - it really looks fab this week.

Plus of course we have the Blog Hop with Ruby Rock-It going on - comments close 8am UK time Saturday 29th, so if you want to win the gorgeous prize from Ruby Rock-It, you need to get cracking 

Thanks for visiting

Ruby Rock-It and Daring Cardmakers Blog Hop

Hello!
Thank you for visiting! I'm so proud to be the first "port of call" on this blog hop.  Before I show you my project, here is all the info you need to join in with the hop, and maybe win some fabby new stash just for checking out all the lush projects we've been making: 

Hello Ruby Rock-It and Daring Cardmakers Fans!  

We are so excited to be teaming up with this fabulous group of crafters!

We have a fun blog hop that we are kicking off today!!

Yes, that’s right, you can sit, relax, and hop through the blogs of our Creative Team members as we show you what we have been creating!

Here’s your blog hop order…

Kathy

Erin

Lythan

Pattie

Jo

Christine

Nat

Alicia

Leo

Beck

Sharon

Teresa Horner

Miri

Jenifer

Beckie

Teresa Abajo

Svenja

Shannon

Dawn

Ruby Rock-It

Here’s the details:  Enjoy the hop and leave a comment for each of our fabulous designers along the way, and be sure to leave one on your last stop the Ruby Rock-It blog!  For those that follow until the end leaving your sweet sentiments along the way, will be entered to win a fabulous prize from us!  We will announce our winner the first week of September!

So, what have I been making with my Ruby Rock It goodies?  Well after having a great old time making cards for the Baby and Birthday themed challenges we've done on the Daring Cardmakers over the last few weeks, I thought I'd mix up all the lovely stash and see how I could put it together to make something a bit different.
What I ended up with was this 21st Birthday, pink, purple, fluffy and flowery cracker, and pocket gift tag to go with it

From Ruby Rock It I used:

Mulberry paper flowers. Sentiment Sticker, Tag and Pocket, Wooden Numerals

I hope you like it - don't forget to leave that all-important comment and then....

It's time to head on over to Erin's blog

Happy Hopping!

Boy Trouble

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

".... as I am in the middle of lots of male birthdays the theme is
Let's hear it for the boys
Its time to see some of those cards for men.
What are the things you add to a card to make it more pleasing to the masculine eye? (Yes, I want to shamelessly steal some ideas!)"

This was a good opportunity to tick off my list one of the male cards I need to get done soon.  I've made this for my nephew - a break away from the usual football-themed cards I make for him, mainly because I'm bored to the back teeth of trying to do football in different ways! Now he's a grown up 23 he can put up with the occasional "grown up" card.  That's my excuse anyway

This sort of "grew" in the making!  It was going to be a simple plain white card with the panel of die cut stars just being the blue upper layer and the striped lower layer. 

Then the sheet of corrugated card left over from last week's challenge caught my eye and one thing led to another....as they do!

Materials and Tools:

Papers: "Man's World" from "Now That's Funky" (Funky Hand)

Corrugated card panel, inked dark brown 

PC generated sentiment tabs

Star Nested dies (Taylored Expressions) 

Tiny Star punch

 

I quite like the LO I finally came up with for this so I may use it again!

Pop over to the DCM BLOG and be inspired by the rest of our Male cards this week - so many fab ideas for those tricky chappy cards :)

Thanks for visiting

Lumpy and Bumpy

This week it's my turn to set the challenge for the Daring Cardmakers and I've asked for lots of Touchy, Feely Texture on this week's cards.  The idea being that the cards feels as good as they look because it has so much interesting texture on there
I used some corrugated cardboard from some packaging as the base part of my card.  When I removed the upper brown paper from the cardboard I left just a few small pieces of the paper on there for a little extra interest.
The basket weave piece is made using a mix of acrylic paint and texture paste wiped thickly over a stencil 
I've also added some metal elements and some lovely soft velvet to the Texture medley ;)

Materials and Tools 

Smooth White square card blank

Materials and Tools

Corrugated card from packaging

Green Pink, White and Diamond White Bazzill card (flowers)

Acrylic paint (Fresco Finish)

Texture Paste

Velvet ricrac trim, Green sating ribbon

Dragonfly metal charm and circular metal clip

Homemade sentiment sticker

Basketweave Stencil (Crafter's Workshop) 

Flower punch (Xcut)

Dies: 

Tiny Butterfly from Butterfly Trio (Memory Box) 

Leaf Swirls (Spellbinders)

Do you like the flowers? On the picture below, the 2 flowers on the left are some of the ready-made cherry blossom flowers from my stash, the group of 5 on the right are ones I've made.

I love the cherry blossom style flowers that came in a DT box ages ago - but my supply is dwindling now.  I had a hunt around on the web and found large packs for a pretty good price - if you wanted 60 of a single colour. then I found small packs but not so much colour choice and in packs of about 10 for around half the price of the 60s!  
So I wondered about making my own, and realized that I had the right shapes flower punch (though very slightly smaller) and also some stamens - though they were bright white and pearlised which I don't particular;y like so I dipped a load of the stamen ends in some Vanilla Acrylic paint and left them to dry,
A bit of inking and shaping with ball ended embossing tools and here's what I ended up with


I'm quite chuffed because now I can have whatever colour I want to match my project.  I'll probably make a template to cut very slightly bigger petals on my Silhouette, then cut a batch in white and one in pale cream so that I can just ink them to the colours I want.  If I can source some nicer stamens I'll be able to make these really quickly - I'm not keen on hanging around waiting for stuff to dry! 

Our fabulous Design Team have made some stunning cards this week - they always do!  You can check them out HERE.  I hope you'll join in with our challenge this week, I'd love to see what you make - even if I can't test the touchy feeliness of it!

Thanks for visiting, please leave a message :)

Anniversary LOVE

Today I'm sharing the card I made for my hubby for our Wedding Anniversary at the end of July.  He's not a great one for anything too fussy, so no ribbons or flowers on this one.  I did manage to sneak in a nice red pearl heart though ;)

Materials and Tools

17x21cm card white blank, edges inked dark brown

All paper designs "Now That's Funky!" CD (Funky Hand), printed onto Diamond White Bazzill card

PC Generated sentiment

small red pearl heart

LOVE letters cut on Cameo; 4 times on black card, 1 in patterned for top layer

Hearts cut using Die-Namics Nested Hearts die set

Sentiment panel; "selective cutting" using Spellbinders Labels 26

Versamagic Chalk inks for edging

Cereal-box chipboard for adding dimension

 

 I love the effect you get when you print on the Diamond White card - it really adds an extra lustre to the designs.  I added a bit of a curved edge to the hearts by rubbing a large embossing ball tool around the edges on the wrong side, then using scraps of chipboard to adhere them to the card

To celebrate our anniversary we went out for an afternoon jaunt, eventually heading for Newmarket where we'd booked a Afternoon Tea at the Bedford Lodge Hotel
We'd not been there before, but the reviews were really good so it was worth a try.  We arrived early, but this was no trouble to the friendly, helpful staff, even though it was a race night at Newmarket and the hotel was really busy when we arrived. We were seated in a quiet corner of the lounge bar, which was really pleasant
With our booking we'd checked that likes and dislikes could be catered for and this was fine with the catering staff - you'd be amazed at how unhelpful some places are though.
Tea and coffee arrived first and were refilled throughout the meal.  If anything could be improved on it would be the drinks as they were a bit weak and not as piping hot as we'd have liked.  
The food arrived in stages, and always beautifully presented, the first two courses on pretty, tiered stands.  You can click on them for a better view ;)
First came tasty, freshly made sandwiches. 

Next came four delicious scones, with not only the usual jam and clotted cream, but with home made lemon curd too

 












It was probably these scones - they're much bigger than ones  we've had in other places, and far too delicious to leave - that meant we didn't manage to make much headway with what came next - a pretty plateful of gorgeous little cakes and two fruity, creamy, crunchy concoctions with edible cute chocolate spoons!

 

Oh My!  we were so stuffed!  Fortunately the staff are used to this and all the cakes we failed to eat were presented in a gift box for us to bring home. 

I'd definitely recommend this place if you're in the area; you're made to feel really welcome, the staff are just lovely - so friendly and helpful, and the food tastes as good as it looks!

 

Just looking at the photos has made me feel peckish, so it's probably good that it's lunchtime!

Thanks for popping by, please leave a comment, I love to read them :)


 

Random Thoughts

When I first saw Svenja's choice of picture for this week's "August Elemental Inspiration" Picture challenge I thought, "Lots to work with there, shouldn't be too tricky....".  But no! although there are loads of things to work with I really struggled to come up with something.  So in the end I went with the Chuck Everything In method :) - sometimes I do this with flowers, lace, ribbons et al and get a surprisingly soft, pretty effect, but this time I came up with this Steampunk-inspired card, which once I'd actually started I had a huge amount of fun with, and made a huge amount of mess all over the room as I hunted out treasures to use

Before I try to record all the stuff I used, here's Svenja's Inspiration photo - click for a closer look at everything in the display

There are loads of "layers" on this one I'll go through it from the card blank up!

Smooth White card blank

Smooth White card square for next layer

Blue background Element:

2 colours Distress Inks, direct to paper, then "moved" around with a wet wipe

2 colours of Spray Mists, deep blue and turquoise-blue

Ink Splodge stencil (Tando) with Black Ink

RubOn borders (Imaginisce), they are old but I think called "off the edge"

RubOn "Random Thoughts" from a booklet of monograms and headings like this (old, can't remember where from)

I stopped using RubOns because they were so unreliable and rarely transferred properly, but for grungy stuff like this they are perfect as it doesn't matter if some bits don't transfer well ;)

At this point I trimmed down the square slightly, inked the edges and adhered to the card blank

Next

wood element;

Tore across strip of brown Bazzill card and embossed with "Distressed Stripes" (Cuttlebug), Inked over for depth of colour 

Monopoly Element;

Resized and printed out onto card an image of the board from Google, then grouped this together with a miniature postcard (Fruit Pixie) and some die-cut cogs (Tim Holtz)

Upper Layer

Cream Lace, Buttons (hessian covered one from Nikki Sivills), 

Pen Nib, Clock Face, Thermometer (all from The  Fruit Pixie) 

Top Hat cut from a miniature postcard (Fruit Pixie) 

Wooden arrows inked black (Ruby Rock-It)

Candlestick Telephone Element;

I used a "colouring page" image found on the web to make a cutting template to use with Silhouette Cameo

Even with all that "stuff" it seemed to need something more so I added a shot of colour with the cherry blossom flower and a black-inked leaf

My other "element" is the general array of eclectic bits and bobs in the photo - you could spend ages in there, sifting though all those treasures, couldn't you?

I do like a bit of arty-farty-steampunky, but I'm not sure I know anyone I send cards to who this would appeal to so I'm thinking I'll probably keep it for my shelf - maybe "tweak" it a bit to make it more of a picture or canvas sort of thing.

It would be great to see you join in with us this week, you can check out the other fantastic creations HERE

Thanks for visiting, I hope you'll leave a message  

Always Check Before you Stick

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

"New Beginnings"  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Materials and Tools

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

Yellow, Green, Turquoise and Peach card (Bazzill)

Ribbed Kraft card (PDA) 

Petite Dots 6x6 embossing folder (Crafters' Companion) 

Circle and tiny heart punches

Tiny red pearls

pc generated sentiment

Hand-cut pennants tree trunk and house

That's it for this time, thanks for looking

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