Two Crafty Templates

There's a fabulous new Template set available now from the Crafty Templates WEBSITE. Lots of lovely new designs from the wonderful Leo and most of them are so adaptable that they'll not just ve good for Christmas but othertimes too - and of course they're not only for cards.

The Add-on Goodies kit this month is a download of printable papers that are really pretty and lovely to use.
I used some of them for these two cards

First is a little Snowflake Cupcake card
My second card uses the more Christmassy set of papers, but I also added in some Kraft and red card from my stash as I thought the heart design had a lovely "homespun" look about it

I'll be back tomorrow with my favourite template from this set.

Sorry this is a bit on the short side - just like me, then really lol

K is for......

Not a lot as it happens. Something I discovered when Rein set the challenge this week for The Daring Cardmakers.

It's Rein (or Rika) here today and my,dare this week is:
"The First Letter"
I'd like you to put things on your card which begin with the first letter of your name.
You can use other things too, but see if you can use at least 3 things that share their initial letter with your own name.

For example my name is Rein so I could use rose, robot, radio, raven...

hmmmm. I managed to come up with Koala, Kangaroo and Kitten - not a great start.
Thanks to my fab Teamies and some ideas from Hubby things eventually started to look a bit more positive. Mind you one of Hubby's favourite ideas was Klaxon, but we won't say any more about that. I also rejected the idea of Knickers - no surprises that it was our lovely Lythan who came up with that one.

Anyway in the end I made a card with Kisses, Knots and Kraft card. Sorry Rein, I just couldn't think of any more to fit on!

Supplies for this card were:
Kraft card base
White card & MS hearts border punch
Papers are from two different sets both by My Little Shoebox
Red satin ribbon, pink & red brads from stash
Letters are cut on the Craft Robo from red gloss card
The little hanging sentiment was just printed via the pc, I handcut the heart shape and punched a red gloss card circle to mat it on and used eyelets and knotted red fibres to attach it to the card

Oh yes, the kisses are mine - made by plastering my lips with loads of lipstick and "kissing" some white card - I did feel silly doing it but it worked really well.
Obviously, there's only one person I could give this card to - my lovely Hubby who tolerates my ever increasing stash collection and doesn't grumble too much at the mess I make or even the state of my desks - which must be really hard for him as he's an "empty desk" sort of person. He has a huge desk too - what's the point of a huge desk if you don't fill it all up with stuff? hehehe

This dare certainly got us thinking - and we hope it'll give all the DCMers a good challenge too - after all that's what it's all about, it was easy it wouldn't be a challenge, would it?
Well, that's our excuse anyway!
If you've not already been there, please pop over to the DCM BLOG and see what the team have come up with using their own initials. We'd really love it if you'd join in too, and have a bit of fun with this one.

Paddling Against the Tide

Today on the Bubbly Scrumptious emag I've gone against the Christmas Flow (should that be Torrent?) and made something which isn't for Christmas but still uses the wonderful "Christmas Magic" kit from Bubbly Funk. Does that make any sense at all? Too many "Christmases" in there I suspect, but what else could I say lol!

Anyway, what I mean is that instead of making another Cword project I've made a Birthday one instead. Mil's birthday is right at the start of December so it was time to start thinking about making a card for her. The Prima Poinsettias which form one of the Kit Add-Ons have been sitting in my DY kit box looking enticing and just waiting for me to come up with the right project to use them on.
No way was I using more than one though, so I've used some velvet leaves from the kit plus flowers from my stash, and I've made some coiled paper ones from scraps of the papers to fill it all out a bit.


So what do you think? Does it shout "Christmas Stuff" at you, or have I got away with it?
You can see more of this project and many, many others by clicking HERE and you can have this kit for your very own by clicking HERE and choosing some or all of what's available this month

If you're up for another little challenge - how about seeing what non-Christmas project you can come up with using Christmas stash - go on, I dare you!

Happy Crafting!

Workdesk Wednesday and a catch upand more Cword Cards

I really am a rubbish blogger just now. I'm not great at posting and even worse at blog-hopping! This is mainly down to two things, one is that Cword thing and all it entails, the other is Bejewelled Blitz - which I've got to stop playing if I am to stand any chance of getting my generally self-imposed Cword commitments met!

The actual Cword cards are going fine - I think I've made enough to cover my send-out list, my card box is looking nicely stuffed!
Here are a few more of the ones I made on Sunday.

I made the stocking template and cut them out with Mr Robo. A layer of thim card, then the stocking shape, then the twiddly bits on top. They don't really take long to make then the cards are easy to put together. The papers are MME Merry Little Christmas and as usual the cards are pretty simple - I try to let the paper do most of the work. The only extras are the sentiment and a few blobs of gold Stickles.

If you check the card and scrapling combo on the post below this one you'll recognise the design I used for putting these together! I really liked the way it worked so used it again for these cards.

Wednesday comes around pretty quickly and about half an hour ago I remembered that Wednesday means WOYWW and I hadn't done my photo. Just made it before it got too dark.


When I look back I do wonder if my desk is really boring to look at - nothing much changes from week to week, it's always a whole lot of mess surrounding a teeny bit of green mat to work in ah well, the goof thing is that thanks to Julia I know I'm not the only one who works like this!

Show & Tell Monday

Well, with the horrible wind and rain we had over the weekend, it seemed a good idea to spend as much of it as possible indoors playing with paper!

Actually we did go out on Saturday, but yesterday I settled down at my desk and made another big batch of Cword cards, I've not counted them yet, but I think I must have made it to 100 which should be plenty, and will hopefully mean that I'm not still making the blessed things during Christmas week when I discover I didn't have enough for the neighbours.

Anice and Funky Hand released her brand new Christmas Digi Stamps at the weekend. The Funky Hand Gang have been playing with them for a couple of weeks or so already and have made some fabulous cards. Check out these great downloadable/printables HERE
As I seem to be having a bit of a "snowflakes" year, those are the ones I homed in on. I converted them to cut on the Robo and have had a great time making up a batch of cards using the snowflakes along with the Blue Christmas download paper collection. This is the first card I made, using different snowflakes in different sizes and papers all layered up onto squares cut from the Blue Christmas papers and a little bit of silver and glitter for seasonal bling.


For some reason the colours haven't photographed particularly well, the papers are much more like the colours on the next set.
For these I resized the designs and cut lots of small snowflakes from plain white card, then made "tiles" from some remnants of paper left over from the one above to make this one with lots of snowflakes

I still had lots of snowflakes, and lots of scraps of the papers, so in the end I made these too.
You can click on them for a better look - I thought you might start feeling chilly if I made them all full size!























I enjoyed last week's DCM challenge so much that on Friday afternoon I ended up setting myself a secondary challenge - actually it would be great if anyone reading this would have a go at this.

The idea is to use a sheet of A4 to make a "big" card and a scrapling in the same style.
Here's my twosome


I wish I'd ordered more of this gorgeous dark green card now, it works really beautifully with the MME Merry Little Christmas papers, doesn't it?

Today I have vacuumed up the mess under my desk so it's all ready to mess up again. I failed to find the bag of glitter card scraps that I've mislaid - I've even tidied a couple of boxes while looking for it. I wonder where it could have gone?

Anyway, that's it for today, I'll show the rest of yesterday's haul next time - yes, there's more AND they're not snowflakes - how about that then!

Hope you didn't get blown away at the weekend

Scraplings

This week on the Daring Cardmakers it's Paula's turn to set the dare and it's her first time setting the challenge. She's come up with something both practical and unusual. Practical because it's a chance to use up scrap cardstock and unusual because of the shapes and sizes of the cards we're been making.

My first challenge is all about

SCRAPLINGS

Scraplings are little narrow cards made from scrap cardstock. You know how when you make a card from a a piece of A4 or Letter sized cardstock you're left with an off-cut? Well that's the basis of a Scrapling. When folded in half, the Scrapling's card front will measure roughly 2 1/2" x 4 1/4" , though this depends of course on the size of card you were making in the first place!

Paula set the pace when she gave as examples not one but THREE little beauties to admire. They looked so pretty grouped together that a few of the team followed her lead - or it maybe that they were just showing off lol lol
So when you head over to the DCM BLOG you'll find lots of Scraplings to admire and inspire/ there are solos, duos and trios to see, so please check them all out - more info on them all will appear on our personal blogs too.


I made two - because I had two pieces of the Kraft card lying on my desk from last week's dare. Somehow they were different sizes, which is strange as both the cards I made last week ended up the same 14cm square that I prefer....
That's really why I made one portrait and one landscape style card, they'd have looked rather odd otherwise.

I used MME "Merry Days of Christmas" papers for these two little cards.

I knew I wanted to use those papers but couldn't decide how to use them on the little cards - you know how it is when you're having one of those days, nothing goes according to plan, does it? Even something as simple as sticking a couple of scraps of paper on a card is difficult!

Then it took me ages to make the sentiment because I was trying to be clever (I should know better by now). Hubby was working from home yesterday but was soooo busy and looked so stressed that I didn't like to keep asking for help, but in the end I had ask how to to get the ampersand behind the words as I'd got in a right muddle with layers and backgrounds and Heaven knows what (I'm so not techie!).

But it was the snowflakes I think that really slowed me down and ended up with me adding my cards well after 10am this morning!
I wanted to achieve something similar to the K&Co layered snowflakes you can buy - but they are in whites and blues and I wanted creams and reds because I'm awkward.

I knew the smaller dies in both Spellbinders sets weren't going to be much help and the Cuttlebug ones weren't what I wanted either.
I have a couple of punches but I wanted more variety. That's when I ended up searching the web for clipart snowflakes and converting them to Robo templates.
It took ages to get them into template form, and then the templates took ages to cut etc etc - any other day I'd have asked Hubby for advice, but I muddled on because he was so busy and I didn't like to bother him again! I just know that he'd have got them sorted out in a quarter of the time and they would have been more streamlined and quicker to cut.

Never mind, I got there in the end and actually even though I got myself in a right old pickle I did enjoy working with these Scraplings, they are a lovely way to use up off-cuts and a really nice size to work with. I've just been thinking that it would be fun to make little envelopes to fit them, too. Not sure whether I actually will or not mind!

Right. I'm going to take my coffee over to the other desk now and investigate the contents of the parcel that's just arrived from the lovely Karen at Charmed Cards and Crafts - then I plan to do some more crafting - and please, please let it not be as much of a struggle as it was yesterday!

Thanks for popping by and for leaving such wonderful messages which are always such a thrill to receive

Journalling Christmas, and a late WOYWW

I just adore the gorgeous Bubbly Funk November Kit which is based around the Fancy Pants "Christmas Magic" paper collection, I love the muted colours of the papers and as usual Caroline has added in some fabulous embellishments to go with them. So, over on Bubbly Scrumptious today, I'm continuing working on the Christmas pocket journal I started last week.
This week I'm showing how I decorated the front cover of the book

The Inside cover or Intro page

And believe it or not I've even managed to do the first page (it's nothing complicated mind!)

I've also done the first side of the first tag
Are you impressed? No, I thought not!
I'll be impressed myself though if I actually manage to fill all the pages and tags. Whether that'll happen we'll just have to wait and see!

I was so busy yesterday - finishing that page and tag plus writing it all up for the BS EMAG that I didn't get to post my WOYWW, even though I did actually do my photo. So here you are - you can see the album on there, the box in the foreground is the November kit.
There's plenty of mess to tut-tut over as usual

Maybe, once I've got my DCM card done for tomorrow I'll get a chance to have a mooch around all the other craft desks and see what everyone is up to this week.
That's all for now, back tomorrow with DCM - if I ever get my card made that is!

Getting Funky

Last week I had an exciting email!
I then spent a few days trying not to blurt out the secret, but it's all official now so at last I can tell!

My email was from Anice of Funky Hand inviting me to join her wonderful design team. Now, I've seen the work of those girlies and it's fantastic so I did have a bit of a gulp, wondering if I could do anything half as good as you can already see on there.
However, you never know unless you give it a try, do you, so I've grabbed this chance to play with the fab papers Anice designs and fingers are firmly crossed I can deliver!
Thank you for inviting me, Anice, and thanks too to the other members of the team for making me so welcome.

Lately Sunday has been my "C-word card making day" but yesterday I only managed a grand total of two - pathetic, eh? But, I was trying to come up with cards using some of the Funky Hand papers, and I did cut lots of little bits out ready to make up some more, so eventually that number should look better!
So here are my first two cards for the Funky Hand Gang, made with designs from the "Tis the Season" download, which I love.


I made the tree template in PSP then cut them on Mr Robo, first in card then I cut them again in some of the FH papers. One of the special things about printable papers is that you can resize the designs - of you look at the trees on the first card, you'll see that the spotty design in the middle tree is much smaller than spots on the other two trees. It's the same design, I just resized it to get some contrast, I was really pleased with how well it worked.
I got a bit carried away inking the hanging sentiment on the second card so I think I might change it for a rather less murky-looking one!

That's it for now, I must try and make inroads on the "to do" list today, it's starting to get out of hand - again! Obviously I need to go and get me a coffee firt though. lol

Hope everyone had a great weekend
Thanks for visiting

Krafty Cardmaking

Do you ever have a period when getting to sleep at night isn't a problem, but staying asleep is? All week I've been waking way too early, I reckon I must have lost out on at least a couple of hours sleep every day this week - and believe me, that's not a good thing. I need my sleep! So if I'm grouchy - that's why, ok? lol

It's Jo setting the challenge on the Daring Cardmakers this week and this has been a tricky one for me. Ahhhhh, maybe that's what was waking me up - stressing over what to do.
Nope, I can't blame Jo, because I was awake before any hint of daytime this morning too and yesterday I made two cards for the dare.

I thought that it would be fun to use a product that seems to be 'Bang on Trend' so this week my dare is....

Using Kraft cardstock :) Either as a card base or somewhere on the card - if you don't have any you could use some card board such as corrugated or even a brown kraft envelope...

You know, I'm not convinced by this whole "Kraft" thing (why do they spell it that way, does anyone know? It bugs me in the same way as using a 'z' instead of an 's' at the end of a word, makes me grind my teeth it doez!) - I love the things other people make with the stuff, but when I try to use it myself it just looks dreary and dull. I made a card for my uncle's birthday in September and it was sooooo dreary I was embarrassed to send it - but obviously I'd left it too late to make something else, you know how it is!
So anyway, this is the card I finally came up with yesterday morning
I thought I'd try to brighten the "Kraft Kuts" paper (Fancy Pants) up a bit with some white doodling - but I think I overdid it rather. lol lol
I don't know why the sight of a paper or chipboard owl makes me absolutely have to use a pun, but it happens - you can see one of my favourites HERE - I've not been able to send this one and it makes me chuckle every time I come across it - it's sooooo sad laughing at your own jokes though, isn't it?
Little owls cut from one of the paper designs holding flowers from another on spirals of pink wire. A line from the Beatles song with a couple of extra owls as the beribboned backing vocals, some small Prima flowers and a few blobs of glitter.
Inside, another of the papers for the background, then an offcut turned the other way over with the MS Hearts border bunch used on the long edges/
It looked ok in my head, and not too bad in the real, but on the photos it looks a right dog's dinner.
After lunch I took more photos using different backgrounds - the dark blue was the best of the bunch but by then I'd gone right off the card!

So I started over and made this one

Took about half the time of the first and I'm much happier, the colours are stronger and I think that looks much better against the Kraft background
Background paper is from Bo Bunny's Kitchen Spice range, inked up and distressed with the Tim Holtz distresser tool. As it's Jo's dare I "made a nod" in her direction with the corrugated card from a cardboard box and the big button.

My current favourite design of lace, the vibrant red apple charm and the sweet filigree "cup" that the little orange rose sits in are all from the lovely Tracy at Creative Treasures - you can find all sorts of interesting and unusual things for you projects over there - definitely worth taking a look.

I hand-cut scalloped edges on a strip of black Bazzill to go behind the lace and card - it helps pull it all together. Small brads in Autumn shades for the centres of the lace flowers
The large flowers are a mix of Bo Bunny and Primas and there's some heavy patterned twill ribbon and a scrap of raffia in there too.

We'd love it if you'd join in with this week's dare - there are some wonderfully inspiring ways to use the Kraft papers and cardstock on the DCM BLOG this week, so please check it out.
We waved a fond farewell to our lovely October Guest Designer, Janice (thanks for working so hard this last month, Janice, it's been great) during this week and today we welcome Vicky (aka Dolly) who's not only going to be our November Girl, but our December Girl too - you'll find her first card, and the link for her fabulous blog on the DCM blog too.
That's it for today.

I'm determined to have a good blog-hopping session this weekend - I do miss it when I can't get around to see what my crafty blog-mates are up to, but this week has been busy - and in the evenings I've been taking my lenses out early because by then I'm too tired to cope with them!

Thanks for visiting and for your lovely comments - they really are appreciated

Pigs Might Fly

My project on Bubbly Scrumptious today is the first stage of a new mini album.
Basically it's formed from a series of pockets held together on an accordion strip. I saw a little book which was made from those small brown "wage" envelopes a while back and made a "Kathy" version from scrapbook paper (I didn't have the envelopes and had to improvise) for the recent Bubbly Funk cyber crop.
Mind you I'm not sure anyone actually went ahead and made one..... tut tut!
They were easy too!

The envelope version doesn't open up fully as the pockets are glued together - so you only get to play with the tags inside the pockets - great for making shopping lists and keeping in your bag, but I thought that the idea could be adapted to make a book that would open fully and therefore give loads more scope to use as a mini album.

So, I've designed this next version. It's a bit bigger and now there's two sides of each pocket to decorate as well as the pockets themselves to fill with pull-out pages or whatever else you can think of.


I know it looks a bit boring atm, but my plan is to journal the run-up to Christmas in here, so hopefully I'll remember to do photos at various times and add them as I go. My track record for actually managing more than a page to two in things like this isn't great (I managed about 5 of the Emily Falconbridge 52Q tags that I started back in January....) - hence the title of this post.

I don't respond well to nagging either......gentle weedling sometimes works, but it's not guaranteed. lol
We'll just have to see what happens, I think!

Here's a memo block I made the other week. I had an apology to make for a late birthday card - I got the dates completely wrong and was sooooo cross with myself, so I made this to say "I'm sorry"
That's it for now. I still have my DCM card to make for tomorrow - you'll realise I'm procrastinating yet again.
I've fallen behind with my blog hopping again too. I've not even had time to check out the craft desks from WOYWW yet. boohoo

Ah well, maybe if I get all the relevant DCM dare bits and pieces out onto my desk inspiration will strike - I'm certainly not getting anywhere just thinking about it. All that's doing is making my head ache.

catch you soon

WOYWW and a Glittery Forres

Thanks for all the lovely messages that have been left over the last few days - I'm really glad you liked my Doc Martin card especially - I had great fun making it so it's good to know other people like it too

Finally getting around to loading photos of Sunday's C-word card making session. It was back to a Trees theme this week and I've used a couple of Cuttlebug Christmas Tree dies and also the smallest of the Spellbinders Nesting Trees set to make this little forest.
I had the idea in my head of using a Nesties circle in the corner of the card with a glittery tree on top. I thought it would be easy to make quite a big batch of cards like that, but I soon got diverted.
The first photo shows the first card I made with that idea in mind. Black glitter card and silver glitter tree, some doodling around the edge. I'm never happy with my doodling. The other card on this photo I really like - the dark panel is a really deep blue and the silver trees look fab on it

I thought I'd do something similar but with gold trees on a dark red background
These four are the ones I'm most pleased with from Sunday's session.

It's fumy how changing the colour scheme makes such a difference. I had some scraps of turquoise, purple and blue paper and glitter card lying around my desk so I used them aong the same lines - but I'm really not so keen on the next four

So, another 8 cards done and that means I've got 80 in my box. I think I need to up the workrate a bit now though as suddenl;y December isn't so far away!

On to that time of the week when we all get to satisfy our inquisitive streak and have a good old nose around fellow crafter's craft spaces. This is WOYWW - or "What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday! If you head over to Julia's BLOG you'll find out all about it and find lots of links to those of us brave enough to participate!
There's not much actual crafting going on on my craftdesk today - doesn't prevent it being a right old mess though

I've been writing up a project today, and after I'd finished I had some Robo cutting to do - I took this next photo while Mr Robo was busy doing his stuff. I thought I'd show you that not only do I have one messy desk - I have two messy desks!

Mr Robo on the right, My Cuttlebug on the bookcase at the left and Mr Bind-it-All lurking under the desk. There's a plastic crate full of stuff I don't use very often under there too - that's mainly to rest my feet on though!

I wonder what's on your workdesk today? Are you brave enough to share?
Oh go on!
It's fun,
honest!

Thanks for visiting