Understated

It's the first dare of the month and that means a Colour Challenge for the Daring Cardmakers.
This  time it's my turn to choose the colour palette.  I really wanted to add an extra challenge by avoiding my favourite pastel aquas and peachy shades, and I'll tell you something,.....it wasn't easy!
I now have a lovely little(large) stock of beautiful photos with those pastel palettes hidden away for future reference ;)
After a happy hour browsing the interweb I found a lovely palette of mauve, black and neutral shade which I think is beautifully understated and elegant - just like me, really..... hahahahahahaha - that'll be the day.




Here's what I made

 ....oh what a surprise - another paper peony! Are you bored with these yet? I'm not bored with making them, and have others I've not shared on here yet, so be warned!

I made a card base made from some pale mauve pearlescent card, then as so often, I turned to my Funky Hand stash to help me out with the other colours, printing out papers from various downland collections; mainly "Hearts and Flowers" and "Salt and Pepper", plus some Bazzill card scraps to match the colours on my inspiration photo. 
It must have been something subliminal that made me choose the black and white spotty design paper!

The LO is based on the June sketch from The Sketch File

I forgot that I was going to add some ribbon, but maybe that would have been "too much" anyway

The twirly, swirly bits are cut using flourish dies from Spellbinders, Memory Box and MFT-DieNamics, the border Punch is by EK Success

As usual the DCM design team have created some beautiful cards, which you can see HERE

That's it for today, thanks for looking in - it would be fab if you'd leave a message ;)

Paper Peony

Last Friday there was another  "Forgotten Funky" showcase over on "Get Funky"  - this is an inspiration blog for the Funky Hand shop and there are at least a couple of new ideas posted each week. 
Mostly the DT take turns at showing what we've been making with our own choices of goodies from the Funky Hand website, but every now and then one of the older collections is chosen and we all make something new to share on one lovely big post.

The current "Forgotten Funky" is a real stunner!  It's called Summer Wedding and its one of four on the same theme - you can probably hazard a guess at what the other 3 are called.
It's one of my favourites because the colours are so gorgeous - and it's not just for weddings

I used lots of layers of papers, some raised up on dimensional glue.

The paper peony is made from layers of petals cut from a couple of different papers

Papers: all Funky Hand; "Summer Wedding" download

Bazzill white card to print on

Satin ribbon tied in a double bow

Border punch; EK Success

Swirl Die; Spellbinders

The peonies in my garden are all starting to open out - they've been in bud for seemingly ages, just waiting for a few nice sunny days before they open properly.  There are masses of buds - I think all the rain we had during the winter may not have been great for us, but the plants LOVED it!  Climbers have climbed higher and things I'd forgotten I'd planted have flowered at last!

Anyway, enough of the waffle!
I have more crafting to do and I must send the BFoP (Bad Fairy of Procrastination) on her way....Honestly, she is such a pain in the derrière .....

Thanks for visiting

On Yer Bike!

 It's New Sketch Tuesday on The Sketch File and this is the first of my cards using the June sketch

Over the last few weeks I've been busy making cards using the current  Quirky Kit from Crafty Templates including this one.  I've been saving the gorgeous metal bicycle that came in the kit box for something like this.

 

June Sketch

The papers are all from the current Quirky Kit, as are the wire bicycle and

the fab chipboard letters. 

 I've a feeling that the narrow grey striped ribbon and even the bakers twine on the 

bunch of flowers are also from old kits

If I'm right, then the only non-kit bits are the tiny flowers

I've blogged this and a couple of other Kit cards over on the Quirky Kit blog today - I will get round to blogging the others here too, but don't wait - click HERE to visit the Quirky BLOG and check out the fabulous LOs, tips and ideas that Leo and Lythan have been sharing - it's a little goldmine of inspiration!
Go straight to the Crafty Templates/Quirky Kits Website by clicking HERE

Thank you for visiting today, back soon (well, that's the plan) with more.

Seeing Stars!

Zuzana is the hostess for the Daring Cardmakers Challenge this week:

  'Wish Upon A Star' 

Do you like watching the stars in summer? I believe everyone does! My favourite are meteor showers. You don't need any special equipment. Spread a blanket on the ground and look up into the dark night sky.

  Now, I would like to see stars on your cards. Create a project with a universe or astronomy theme, fairy-tales, sports, birthday stars, music rock stars, stars on the flag ... whatever you fancy!  

  There are some fabulous and inspiring designs from our Design Team - visit the BLOG to see them. 

Even though I quite often choose stars for those tricky male cards for some reason this time I found it quite hard to see beyond Christmas themes.  So I turned to my trusty Funky Hand stash and in particular the Papercraft Factory CDs - oh how fab these CDs are with so many paper choices, images and even templates for making all manner of things - all resizeable in the built-in workspace. 

The papers I've used are from the "Happy, Happy Birthday" CD and I've mixed the "Just for Men" and "Birthday Boy" colour sets to make this card

Papers all from "Happy, Happy Birthday" CD by Funky Hand printed on white Bazzill

large and small bunting is handcut

Large star punch, stars folded for dimension*

Inks, Bakers Twine

* to make the 3D stars, use a punched or die cut star then fold (wrong sides and crease on all the lines shown - try to avoid creasing too hard at the centre point (you might end up with a hole, or a "scuffed" patch if you do)

Open out and now form just the bits of the lines marked red into valley folds

 

Now just squeeze in on the folds on the pointed sections until you get the shape you like.  

I used Collal 3D glue to fix my stars to the card

That's it for this time, thanks for visiting - please leave a comment

Origami Challenge

It's Leo's turn to set the challenge for The Daring Cardmakers  this time:

"This week we're turning to Japan for our inspiration and more specifically to the art of paper folding,
Origami
I'd like you to use either something inspired by Origami on your card or to have a go at making your own Origami embellishment. There are lots of online tutorials to look at with lots of different origami designs perfect to use in paper crafting so it's well worth having a go. If you need more inspiration to kick start your imagination take a lookat the BLOG to see what the design team have cooked up, (and folded up!) this week"

Quite a few years back I had a phase of doing a bit of Origami, thanks to a little paperback book I had.  I remember making things like an elephant and a bird which, when you pulled it's tail, flapped its wings.  I didn't really get much further with my paper-folding though, and probably moved on to another of my Crafty Dabbles - lace making...candle making..or whatever else took my eye!

So, when I read Leo's dare, I thought it would be fun to revisit the craft and hopefully, with the (new) help of the t'internet with all those video tutes etc maybe I'd actually manage to get a bit further and have less squares of crumpled paper.......
Hmmm. or maybe not!
I must have looked at LOADS of tutorials, and even sat with my squares of paper and followed quite a few of them.   Some were really good and some started off fine and then got to a tricky bit and no amount of scrolling back and looking again helped show what the person was doing.
So, my bin is full of crumpled squares of paper - good job that in most cases I used squares cut from scrap paper. 

In the end though, I found Leyla Torres' "Origami Spirit" blog and things started to look a lot brighter.  Her videos are so clear and she explains carefully and at a lovely, slow pace what she is doing at every step.  From here I made this flower - taking her advice to use a supple, malleable paper so that tearing isn't so likely.  I used some handmade paper that matched the other papers I wanted to use.
Do you like the paper designs?   They are a sneak peek at a brand new, "coming soon" paper collection from Funky Hand..... gorgeous, aren't they?

Tools and Materials

Origami flower

"Hollow Petal Flower" - tutorial is HERE

Handmade Mulberry paper

Bacground

All papers Wash It All Away Download coming soon from Funky Hand 

(printed on white Bazzill card)

Spellbinders Leaf Swirl dies (top left and bottom right), Butterfly

Crafters Companion Leaf 2 (behind flower)

XCut Tiny circle punch to make "card candy" pink and aqua embellishments from scraps of the papers - shaped with an embossing tool

Ice Stickles (Crystal)

 It would be fab if you'd take a look at what the The Daring Cardmakers team have made this week for Leo's unusual challenge - and better still if you'd join in and fold some paper too!

That's all for this time, thanks for visiting

Fine Feathers

We've been away on a little jaunt and it's hard getting back into the regular routine, isn't it?  I've a few photos to share in a minute, but first as it's another Friday it means it's time for another Daring Cardmakers Challenge.
This week Sharon is in the Dare-setter's chair and her challenge is:

  Light as a Feather
As feathers seem to be on trend at the moment I'd like to see feathers on your card somewhere - and you don't have to take it too literally - you could think a bit beyond the feather and feature a whole bird!
As an extra bonus this week we have a fabulous prize to give away!   All you need to do is join in with the dare and we'll pick someone randomly next week to receive the prize.
This week's prize is generously donated by Sarah Keerie, an independent Stampin' Up Demonstrator.  She's offering the Hip Hip Hooray card kit to one lucky winner (or a stamp set to the same value).

Well, I knew it was a good idea to grab all those lovely freebies that are given away on the Silhouette shop site - you never know when they will come in useful! I didn't really need to use it - I do have various other feathery themed things I could have used - but I wanted to see how it cut as it looks quite fiddly, and fiddly things don't always work so well when cut small enough for cards.

 

Included in the cut file is the "membrane" bit (I'm sure there's a proper word for it) that goes up the centre of the feather shape.  Whilst the feather cut pretty well at about 7cms long, that extra piece was so skinny it would have been a right pain to stick in place so I didn't even bother trying!
It would have been good not to have to cut that piece at all, but if it's possible to separate the pieces on a cut file, well I don't know how to do it.  
When I make templates myself, I always save the component parts as separate "bits" so that I can use the ones I want.  
But hey, this was a freebie after all!

Materials and Tools
Papers: all from MME "Find Your Wings and Fly" 6x6 pads
White, Black and Orange Bazzill card
Silhouette machine to cut the feathers
Spellbinders scalloped and plan circles for the bird's body
Eyes: XCut punch white circles, black circles cut with Cropadile, white dots added with Posca pen
Feet and beak are hand cut from card scraps
The body and head of the bird are mounted on "box" hinges so they fold down for posting

I think I lowered the rather lovely and serene tone of the Daring Cardmakers blog this week haha with my rather flustered-looking birdie - do pop over and see the beautiful cards the rest of the team have made!

Anyway, back to our trip
We headed up to Yorkshire for a little holiday recently - we drive up and down the A1 fairly regularly,  but as it was a lovely day, we veered further east into "new pastures" to visit  Gainsborough Old Hall.

 This is the Great Hall

We didn't head back to the A1, but continued our journey north on quieter roads - which meant we could get the roof off and enjoy the sunshine (if not the pollen).  Our new route took us via the Humber Bridge - another "first" for us - you can see it snaking across this first picture

 And an attempt at an artyish shot ....

I'll get some photos of where we stayed sorted out and post those next time - so be warned!

Thanks for popping by today

Family Favourites

If you saw the "Tool Shed" programmes on Create and Craft this past weekend you might have seen some of the things I made using a couple of the Crafters Companion "Create a Card" dies.

These dies are just fab!  What they don't do is cut any sort of outline shape - instead they cut all the little shape details and a centre piece out of the card stock, then with a second pass through your machine they emboss more of the pattern.  This means that you can actually cut the pattern anywhere you like on a piece of card, with the only limitation being the size of card your machine will take.

For instance, if you have a machine that takes A4 card, you can put the design in the centre of an 8x8 card blank just be leaving the card blank open then carefully placing the die in the centre of  what will be the front of the card ( a few bits of washi tape will help to keep it in exactly the right place) and running through your machine.
Fold the card and it's ready to embellish - though if you like a clean and simple style, it won't take much of that  as the designs are so pretty and intricate already.

I wanted to try something a bit different with the dies, and as the centre apertures make the perfect frames I thought a zig-zag album might work.  I'm lucky enough to have quite a big collection of old family photos through some family history research I've done and I thought they would be perfect for using in this album

The book is constructed from folded and die cut pages which are overlapped and then inserts of coloured cards are slipped between the layers.  I assembled the book leaving the upper layers unglued so that I could just slip the photos in and then seal the edges. 
As the book folds out completely and there are photos on both sides, it is all kept together with a ribbon that is fixed on the back cover then tied at the front

 










 
I used Centura Pearl with a Hint of Silver card for the cover pieces and white Bazzill for the pages.  The coloured inserts behind the pages, and the extra coloured die cut "pages" are Coredinations card.

All the dies used are from Crafters Companion - I've used:

Create a Card Precious
Create a Card Extravagance
Chantilly lace Stamping Frame
Also from Crafters Companion: 

Centura Snow White with a Hint of Silver
Coredinations card in two shades of purple

Collal Glues

I wish I'd checked the photos before I sent this off - I'd have taken better photos - or got OH to do them for me ;)
I should probably have set up the bigger photo cube to do them in as the one I usually use is a bit small to show off the album and all the folds.  Hey ho, maybe one day I'll remake it for myself and learn from my mistakes........yes, I can hear you saying it....."that'll be the day"!

Thanks for popping by, I hope you like my album - please leave a message, it's always lovely to hear from you!

Kickin'

This week Jo is in the  The Daring Cardmakers 
challenge-setter's hotseat! 
Now Jo and her boys love football and are no doubt getting nicely excited about all the football-craziness coming up this summer.  I do not like football, but grew up in the sort of family where if there was football on the telly, it was on the telly.  Full Stop.  Like it or Lump it.
I lumped it

However, with a lot of football fans in the family I do make quite a few themed cards for birthdays each year and in May particularly!  So Jo's dare was just the ticket for getting one of our nephew's cards done and dusted.

Here it is, a rocker card with a giant football and net.  This card is about 20cms "square"

I've used;

Black, white, green and red Bazzill card

Football, net, banner and lettering all cut from my own templates using the Silhouette Cameo

Punched stars
Large circle base is an Xcut die

Will you be playing ball with us this week?  There's plenty more inspiration over on our Blog, so please pop by and have a look

Thanks for visiting

May Colours

Miri has chosen the palette for this month's colour combo challenge over on The Daring Cardmakers and there's a gorgeous inspiration photo to go with it

Here's my card:

I've used;

Papers from the current Crafty Templates/Quirky Kit

Embossing folder from Crafters Companion

Coredinations card for the flowers, which I cut on the Silhouette cameo

Leaves are cut with a Spellbinders die

Ribbons, trims, lace and inks from my stash

This is Miri's inspiration photo:

The DCM blog looks stunning this week - please pop over and see what everyone has made using these gorgeous colours, and it would be fab if you'd join in with us this week

Thanks for looking

What Sherlock Said.

....as in "It's Elementary my Dear Watson"

It's Nat's turn to set the Daring Cardmakers challenge this week and she's found a fab  "mood board" Inspiration Photo full of trinkets,  ideas and colours - the idea is that you choose at least three of the elements from the photo to use on a card - with the colour combo being just one of the three should you choose to use them - ie you can't get away with saying "I've used pink, green and blue so that's my 3 things" - sneaky, eh?

Actually, we were spoiled for choice as there are so many usable elements on the photo.  I managed to get a fair few onto this card:

 

Here's Nat's photo - can you see which things I chose to use?

It did take 3 attempts before I got everything I wanted to use on there in a way I was happy with.
 I seem to have lost the knack of using backgrounds - whenever I add papers, or inkiness the finished project looks a right old mess.  

So rejecting a card with a paper background, and then one with an inky background I just bunged all the bits onto a plain white card instead!

It's vaguely based on the April LO from The Sketch File - there's a bit of license used, but it's my sketch and I'm not offended at myself for giving it a tweak.  haha

Materials and Tools

Fancy Pants "Simplicity" pack for flower, butterfly, "label" and monogram sticker

(the grid on the label is supposed to  echo the graph paper on the Insp. photo)

Ribbon and braids from stash - the green seam binding is twisted around

 like some of those on the photo

Red Bazzill for heart (cut on Silhouette Cameo)

Buttons and Thread 

Handmade Flower created using SU Blossom Punch

Butterfly and Leaf Swirl die cuts are both Spellbinders

I had a lot of fun putting this together - OK, so it wasn't much fun when the first two were binned, or torn apart, but I did enjoy checking out the photo and spotting all the things I could use - and of course, when you finally get it to work, it's always good....or at least, a relief!

Check out the DCM BLOG to see how the rest of the team used the picture, and please join in - it would be great to see what you make

Bend Me, Fold Me

On the Daring Cardmakers blog this week, it's my turn to set the challenge:

Another Dimension 

  not Time Warps, Little Green Men from Mars, or anything else "other-world"

  I just don't want to see any flat, regular sort of cards this week - instead I'd like to see lots of interesting folds and shapes; Stepper cards, Card in a Box, Pyramids, Flip-it type cards..... Anything goes as long as the finished, standing-up card is more 3D than 2D. 

This is your chance to try out all those techniques and tutorials for unusually shaped and folded cards that you've been saving!  Yes. we all do it, don't we?

My first thought was to do another "card in a box", but I had a feeling someone else might go down that route (and I was right) so then I was all set to do a pyramid card - but I've done those before and although they are fun to make and I've not done one for ages, what I really wanted was to try something new.
So, searching through my "must try this sometime" list I came across a Bendy-fold" tutorial from Splitcoaststampers.
I love cards that stand out all over the place when on display but will fold at least relatively flat to go in an envelope - it makes it so much more fun, doesn't it? The card-in-a-box, and the pyramid ones do that, and this curvy card does it too - although how flat depends on how much "stuff" you stick on hehe
The magic bit is all done with slits and tabs.

I used a whole raft of odds and ends of card and paper for this so I'm not even going to try and list that sort of stuff
The little summerhouse is all just hand cut,with the "wood" planks drawn on - it's supposed to look a bit ramshackle, honestly!
The bushes, some bits of grass and stems were also hand-cut
For the flowers I used a few ready-made flowers plus quite a lot of punches  (Tonic) and dies from Spellbinders, MFT Die-Namics, Memory Box and Marion Smith. The tree is by Memory Box
Also used: Stickles, Card Candy, Liquid Pearls

You can find the tutorial for making a bendy-card HERE

This took far longer to make than it should - I got a bit carried away with the flowers - not helped because the little flower-shaping gadget and new dies from Marion Smith arrived on Wednesday and were screaming "play with me....NOW"  so, some of the flowers were made with those.
Anyway, that's my card for this week and you can see some fantastic fancy folds and dimensional cards over on the BLOG

That's all for this time - except to wish you a Happy Easter
Thanks for visiting

Up the Flagpole!

Soooo, Lythan came up with a fascinating idea of the Daring Cardmakers to play with this week - Although simple on one level, which was just to use a National Flag as inspiration, when you get to thinking about it there are LOADS of possibilities!
Anyway, here's Lythan's Intro: 

Flag it up!

By which I mean I want you to make a card inspired by a national flag. You can use the flag elements as a sketch, or the colours or a motif (stars and stripes for example) You can be patriotic and use your own flag or show your love for all nations by choosing the flag of a different country.

One of these days I'm going to hunt out a really good website for National Flags and see what I can steal from their layout. colours, images etc, but I found myself short of time this week so kept my card simple.  Plan A was to do something based around the English flag and our Patron Saint as St George's Fay comes up later this month - but the phrase "An Englishman's Home is his Castle" popped into my head, and with it the image of adding little flags to sandcastles on the beach - so that's the story of my card for this week

I used masking tape to keep the lower section white, then used a couple of Distress Inks directly onto the card blank to make the background, the words on the little flag were pc generated then the flag shape cut by hand, but otherwise pit was the Silhouette Cameo that did the rest of the work

Th sandcastle template is one I made for another project so that was a result.  I used clip-art to create the two kinds of flags - straight ones for those on the border and a "fluttery" shape and flagpole for the one on the sandcastle.
The big black sentiment is also SC cut - the font is called "Hobo medium" and is one of my go-to favourites 
So the materials list is pretty simple this week, all I used was ink and card!

I really hope you'll head over to the DCM BLOG and check out what the others have done - they were far more creative in their thinking than I was!
Thanks for visiting