Alpha's Birthday

Something I'd wanted to do for years, and finally got involved with a couple of years ago was child sponsorship. It's such a good idea as our sponsor money doesn't just help the child, but also their family and their whole community.
We sponsor Alpha who lives in Senegal through World Vision - we pay a small sum by direct debit each month and it's just such a worthwhile thing to do. It's wonderful to get letters and pictures from him and it always makes us smile when we get a photo, I suspect he's not keen on having his photo taken, he always looks as if he's there under suffrance and the only way they got him to stand in front of the camera was to let him hold his football as in every photo the football is there.

Anyway, his birthday is coming up and he'll be 11, and as he's football mad I thought I'd use one of Leo's fab free Crafty Templates to make his card.
The fold is on the top, so it looks really effective when it's standing up. I googled info on the Senegal National Football shirts - though I used a lot of creative license with the design I must admit! I also found their badge, which I printed out to stick on the shirt, then cut the letters for Alpha's name out on the Robo.
It's not a complicated card, just colouring in really, but I hope he'll like it.

If you're interested in Child Sponsorship have a look here I'd encourage anyone to do it, the greatest thing is that you're giving real help to a needy child and his community, but you get SUCH a lot out of it yourself, too.

Tinned Book?

I made this book in a tin for Sue's birthday.
I've been hanging onto a couple of tins that some QK die sets came in hoping they'd "come in useful one day" - well just for once my habit of squirrelling things away came good!
I used Daisy Bucket papers throughout. Mainly from the Garden Date set, along with a couple of pieces from some others thrown in.Other stuff used on the tin: Dunelm Mills blooms, chipboard flower, DCWV posies flower, button, ribbons, fibres, brad, Stickles and Liquid Pearls from stash
The book cover stuff: Fat daisy/other paper flowers, hand made paper flower, DCWV posies flower. Glossy Accents, beads, ribbons, brad, from stash
Name cut from velvet paper with the Robo.

The Pages
There aren't many pages in the book because the tin is very shallow. I've either left them blank for a photo or made a pocket and tag for adding more bits and pieces, or little notes and messages.
You can click on the pictures if you'd like a closer look
I'd planned to make the book inside open concertina fashion, but I got myself in a muddle so it ended up a regular right side opening book instead. ah well, you can't win 'em all
Also, I should have thought more about just how shallow the tin was - I had to flatten the flower on the front of the book in order to close the tin. As you can see, my planning isn't always what it should be!

This week's Little Extra from The Daring Cardmakers is to make a card featuring both big and small sizes of the "bits" used, so if you use a big button then you need to use a little one too, use a big flower shape and you also need a little one.

I made this card using some Craft Robo downloads from the Bosskuts site. I think it's fab that lots of the lovely Bosskutz dies are now available as downloads - obviously you have to pay for them, but it's not very costly and I found it all really quick and efficient.
So here are big and little versions of the two Bosskuts Christmas Trees, cut to the sizes I wanted with the Robo - cool, eh? Wouldn't it be nice if the makers of all our favourite dies were as far-sighted as this?

Paper is from the Daisy Bucket "Wrapped Wishes" set
Green card is Bazzill
Silver card is a bit of a folder that's gone tatty and I've "recycled"
Also used; pink and silver Stickles glitter glue, pink star gems, brad and fibres from my stash.

Please join in - it's fun - honestly! :-)

Tearing Purple Holes for Christmas

It's Friday Dareday again, but before I show my cards for this week's little teaser I just want to take a minute to wish Tracie and Wayne all the best for their wedding tomorrow. I hope the sun shines on them for their special day and their lives together are filled with love and joy.

It's looking like it can't be put off any longer so time for the DCM to jump on the Christmas Card Bandwagon. It's all very hectic on the Design Team - Rhi and Tracie's weddings, Kel's new baby due very soon, and Saffa expecting twins. Gillian and Jane are both poorly girlies at the moment and Lynne lost her internet this week - yep, it's all going on round the DCM! Good job we had a "Team Dare" pencilled in for this week then. Lots of ideas were thrown into the mix and eventually this rather devious little challenge emerged:

Make a Christmas card which incorporates the following:

Some Paper Tearing

The colour Purple

AND

It has to have at least one hole somewhere in the design!

......BUT by "hole" we don't just mean the sort of hole you poke a brad through, or the holes you make for/with stitching - or even the hole you make to put an eyelet in - although you can use all those techniques too if you want.

We want you to be a bit/lot more inventive and creative than that, and we think you'll be able to come up with some wonderful ideas for making cards to fit this recipe. We'll leave it to you to guess which team member said "if I put Baby Jesus on my card, will that be "Holey" enough?"

We're very happy to welcome Paula aka Mini-book Pixie as our Guest Designer for the next couple of weeks. Paula has joined in pretty much every dare since the DCM started, and it's especially fab that she's agreed to come and be our GD as we're now in the run up to our first anniversary.

I had a really tricky time photograohing these - the little camera I use forcrafty photos really struggles with anything purple - in the end I had to call in reinforcements ie Hubby, to do some photo editing and get the colours of the pictures to match the vellum I'd used - the downside is there are pink tones on the rest of the card which aren't actually there!

I had various ideas for this dare, but most of them only got a couple of the criteria in - it was generally the torn paper that I forgot. In the end I came up with this one:

I cut the star shaped holes directky into the card with my Robo - I wasn't sure Robo would cut through the 280gsm card I like to use, but with a couple of runs it managed pretty well and I just needed to use a knife on a few tiny bits. It wasn't a "scientific" cut - I just "drew" a square in a Robo doc where I was pretty sure the face of the card would be, plonked in some stars of various sizes then removed the square and did the cuts. I used a piece of purple vellum wider than the card and tore the edge so that the torn edge would show on the fron of the card and the rest would cover the inside of the card and show through the holes.
Other details: silver thread and eyelets. stars punched from silver glitter card, stamped & embossed greeting

This is the other card I made using the rest of the purple vellum, I like the basic idea, and I might use it for some of my Christmas cards this year but I think it would be better without the torn edge.

The "holes" are the snowflakes at the bottom, cut with the Robo from a strip of card, an offcut of the vellum stukc behind then the strip was mounted onto the card with foam pads.
I tore the main piece of vellum before putting it through the Cuttlebug as trying to tear it after embossing means your tear tends to follow the pattern - a bit like having perforations, and not such a nice neat edge - if you can have a neat torn edge!
Other details: Cuttlebug Snowflakes embossing folder, tiny silver brads, inking, silver pen stitching, silver Krylon ink, white organza ribbon

Looking forward to seeing what all our wonderful darers come up with for this one - it's not as easy as it sounds and there was a bit of foot-stamping among the design team :-), but there are some fab ideas on the DCM blog to get you thinking, so please check them all out.

Stuff and Nonsense

The weather has picked up - a bit late, but iy's nice to see the sunshine and feel some warmth, too - a couple of weeks back the heating was actually coming on because the house was so chilly!
One of the fun things about this house is that we have blackberry bushes in the garden, so every couple of days I've been out there picking the next batch of ripe berries. So far I've got 2 bagfuls in the freezer and on Sunday we took a third bagful over to my bro and SIL. Picking them reminds me of going out blackberrying when we were kids, then the house smelling of jam-making as mum and Ann, who lived next door made loads of jars of jam to sell at the Churxh Bazaar.

I heard from Leo yesterday that my very first Crafty Templates design team pack is all ready for me, so I'm doing that excited/nervous shuffle thing again. I'm sure my first month's stint will be the hardest as I don't really know what to expect. I wonder if it'll arrive tomorrow?

My birthday is coming up soon, and as we'd fully expected to be in the throes of the building work by now we hadn't planned anything. Well since the planning permission was delayed, and in consequence we lost our "slot" in the builder's schedule, we've booked a couple of nights B&B in what looks to be a seriously cute little cottage in the middle of nowhere - but actually not far from Southwold - which I love - mainly because of the very long prom and it's long row of the prettiest beach huts I know of! Please let the skies be blue so we can get some good photos!

I've been pretty busy with the cutting & glueing this week, but yet again I can only show some more of those fiendish sneaky peeks, so here goes
















DCM day tomorrow, finally got my card made today, but I'm having trouble getting the ........... colour to show correctly in the photo. Hopefully Hubby can sort it out for me or it's going to look ......... instead of ..........

Soft and Fluffy Little Extra

Time for another Tuesday challenge from the Daring Cardmakers
As always it's been great to see people having fun with Lythan's challenge for this week's "main" dare - we love to see all the cards you show and there's always room for more players.
The Little Extra this week is :

"You Big Softie"
We want you to use something soft on your card
feathers, velvet paper, fluffy fibres
all that soft, strokable stuff counts for this one and that's it,
easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy!

I had the idea that feathers could be used as "petals" for a multi layered flower and I'm not sure it's worked tbh - still, nothing ventured, nothing gained!
Paper is from the July (I think) SA Kit
Flower is made from feathers, a big blue "fat" daisy, a felt flower and a turquoise "splat" flower.
Metallic turquoise eyelets are from Impress in the US

That's the card that was put on the DCM blog when the LE was launched - but then Nice Postie came bringing a box of new goodies, so I sat down and made another card and have changed the blog to show this next one instead!

So - my new stash is a pile of Daisy Bucket papers, and some velvet paper too - perfect for a Softy challenge.
Papers are from the Garden Gate and Wrapped Wishes ranges. The red circles and flower are velvet paper. I cut all the bits with the Robo and added some ric-rac for the stems.
I think I might add some sort of greeting eventually.

Please check out the DCM blog for nore fantastic cards, and do join in with a bit of soft stuff of your own - it's fun - honestly!

A Trio of Welsh Barbers.....(3 Dai Cuts, geddit?)

It's Friday, it's 10am (in the UK anyway!) and it's time for the Daring Cardmakers latest challenge....

This is our 101st post!
Da, da, da, Daaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!
Most people would have made a big thing of the 100th but we like to think that we are a little bit different. (It is not that we failed to notice it, oh dear me no!) So this is a great opportunity to once more thank you for making this such fun! You are all so talented and stretch our dare challenges in all sorts of inspirational ways.

As a reward for all the brain power that went into the Little Extra this week, this is a simple one. From simple Lythan
With a cryptic clue.
Which, as I discovered to my embarrassment, when I laid it on the team, is only really possible to understand if you live in the UK. And even better, are Welsh.
So... a trio of Welsh Barbers means that on your card you need to have 3 die cuts!
( Dai is a common Welsh nickname for David and as there are a lot of Dai's around they are known by their jobs so a Welsh barber would be known as Dai Cuts. I'll get my coat.)

The team roused themselves from their bafflement and came up with these brilliant cards - can't wait to see yours!
Here are Lythan's "simple" rules:
If you don't have access to die cuts in any shape or from, you can still play along. You can then use punches. And if you don't have punches then you can do hand cutting. See how nice I am?
BUT no cheating now! No reaching for the scissors if you have a machine to hand - or even some old die cuts you bought ages ago (that would be me then!) You CAN use punches and scissors etc as well as die cuts though. See, very nice!!

Yesterday morning I had no cards ready to show. I had a reject pile instead.
So, I went back to what's been my comfort zone of late and got the flowers out. I've been meaning to open (yes, I know....!) the packet with this cuttlebug set of a simple flower shape in graduating sizes for, oooh about a month now I think.
Papers are another comfort zone element - the gorgeous Vintage Brass ones came out yet again.
I built my flowers up using Primas some are the new ones I got yesterday from Artcards (thanks Karen for all the trouble you took sorting out my order) and some from my old favourite Essentials Lucid box, I also covered some of the DCWV Posies flower shapes with some of the VB paper, I've found they are fab for making nice curled petal shapes. I used 3 of the c-bug flower shapes for the centres of my flowers - I stuck the paper on some cereal-packet "chipboard" let it dry then cut through the lot - wow, it's so easy! And, I discovered that the waste also left me with a neat little template so I used those to draw some little flower shapes on the backing paper too.
The tag was cut with the Robo and the flowers in the corner were just handcut from some of the VB paper - so lathough it looks like there are loads of die cuts, there really are only 3

Now that the"Oh no, I've got NO cards for the blog" panic had subsided, I picked up the first effort - my plan had been to use this dare to make a card for Nephew Charlie's birthday but it had very nearly gone in the bin!
But now that the heat was off, suddenly I figured out that adding a bit of green chalk ink to that background paper would help, and how I could make the name tag work (that stripey border made all the difference) - and where to put those 3 QK footballs - and that if I just added a bit more B&W stripey paper at the top and bottom - and then I remembered the footballs ribbon and the gorgeous B&W striped ribbon and well, don't you just love it when out of what seems a disaster comes good?

You can see what the Design Team made of Lythan's cryptic challenge over on the DCM blog, and hopefully there'll soon be lots of 3 Die Cuts cards in our Links List to click on and view. We do love seeing all your cards, and we try to get to visit the blogs of everyone who leaves a message so please join in - it's fun - honestly!

Just a Quickie

I've been out blackberry picking this afternoon....in my back garden!
Last year we had huge amounts, I put bagfuls in the freezer and gave loads away too. Not so many this year, but they are starting to ripen up nicely and I've already put one pie sized bagful in the freezer. Mind you the weather was a darn sight better last year so I'm not really expecting as big a crop. I might make some muffins tomorrow with the latest bowlful.....

Today I've finally managed to make my card for tomorrow's new DCM dare - it was touch and go for a while as the card I eventually finished was my THIRD effort! Then, all the bits for the first of the rejected ones just fell into place, so now I have two and I'm no longer feeling the panic that was beginning to set in back there.
Anyway, one card to show today, it's another teddy card, this time to say "well done" to Niece Aimee for doing so well in her GCSEs

"Take a Letter, Ms Jones...."

Ooooh have we got a Super-sneaky Daring Cardmakers Little Extra for you this week

"Take a Letter, Ms Jones...."
OK, it's not about monograms, we've already done that.

This time the challenge is to pick one letter and see how many things you can use on your card that begin with that letter.

Now then, you can't choose "P" and just have pink paper, pink brads, pink ink, pink ribbon - oh no no no, that's not the way it works!

You could however, use

A pink card blank, paper, petals, plasma, a monogram P, something Purple, a Flower Pot...

Or how about B?

brads, buttons, birthday, banana (well, you never know..) blue, black, brown, blooms, buckles, bows

Or S

spots, stripes, string, sandals, Stickles, sunshine, stars, snow

I've done these:
In case it isn't obvious (haha) I chose letter "R" for this one.
So my list is:
Red card, Robin, Ricrac and ribbon, oh and the font is called Ryan BT if I can squeeze that one in under the wire....
EDIT - Thanks to the wonderful Debbie for reminding me that I can add ROBO to my list....

I know it's only a short list, but it's all I could manage!
I used the snowflakes Cuttlebug embossing folder for the background and I made the robin using my Robo.
I am sorry to admit that I have now made TWO Christmas cards, thus going totally against my own rule of not mking the little beggars till after my birthday. I blame all these way-too-organised crafty bloggers for making me do it!

Another teddy card (thanks again to Jo for coming up with this fabby little fella).
My chosen letter this time is "T"
Teddy, tag, tie, textures flowers and paper tearing
Papers are all sei Hippy Chick
Texture is fmade by the "Spots & Dots" C-bug embossing folder

Now it's over to you - we'd love to see what you can come up with for this challenge, it's a tough one so - Do You Dare?

More Sneaky Stuff

Shockingly, we've had TWO sunny days in a row!
I should probably be out gardening, but instead I've been crafting. Hubby is ensconced in the Guestroom with lots of paint pots for company. Yesterday he gloss-painted the picture rail and the windowsills. This morning he went to examine his handiwork only to be heard yelling "Right.........now I'm REALLY angry....." he'd discovered the tiny tracks of a spider, then the now dead spider stuck on the windowsill, minus a couple of legs - which had been left further behind in the still damp paint.... not a happy hubby oooops!

And that's why I've been stying right out of the way and only going as far as the door to deliver cups of tea and bottles of water!

I can't share most of the stuff I've been busy with on here, so thought a few more sneak peeks might be in order - just to prove I have been working (a bit, anyway)

Bank Holiday Inspiration

Well, here in the UK it's Bank Holiday weekend, and hopefully we'll all have some sunshine - and maybe the chance to do some crafting too.

The new "Main" dare for The Daring Cardmakers was announced yesterday - it's nice and easy, all you need to do is add a button or two to your card - any sort of button you like, there's lots of inspiration from the Design Team on the DCM blog, and already loads and loads of Fabulous Darers' cards to see via the Links List.
Remember too that the Little Extra midweek challenge runs right through till Tuesday, so you've still got time to join in with the "dots and dashes" theme there too.

If you're still looking for more then maybe the carrot of a lovely prize will get you crafting?
Well there's a competition running on the Crafty Templates blog!

So what can you win?
How does a pizza box FULL of the new Basic Grey Periphery with buttons and ribbons sound?
PLUS a guest spot for one month on the Crafty Templates DT where you'll receive templates and more goodies to play with? And here's how you enter; Basically all you have to do is make a birthday themed shaped card. You can pick any shape (except a square or rectangle, come on that would be toooo easy!) and it can be as complex or simple as you like.
Check out all the competition information here

On the Button (updated!)

Keryn is our Daring Cardmakers Darer of the week and she said:

I know you've all got buttons stashed away somewhere, whether they've been purchased at a cardmaking store or you thriftily snipped them off DH's old shirt. I'd like you to find those buttons and use them somewhere on a card. They can be real buttons, craft shop buttons, die cut buttons, faux buttons or another type of button, surprise us all.

Don’t forget to come back when you've made your card to leave us a comment and your Blog link and we’ll come over to check out your creations. You can still join in the fun if you don’t have a Blog. Just send a pic/scan of your creation to the team at daringcardmakers@hotmail.co.uk and we’ll add it to our gallery for all to see.

There are some gorgeous cards from our fab design team to see on the blog, and we're very happy to have not only the usual NZ, Aussie and UK contingent, but also cards from Germany - from our latest, very talented Guest Designer , Rein, and from Sylvie who's kindly stayed on for another week and adds a French flavour to the blog. Please pop along and see the cards, and visit our personal blogs for more info.

I use buttons quite a lot in my cardmaking so I like to make things a bit harder for myself and think beyond the obvious when this sort of dare comes in.
I had a couple of ideas but somehow managed to leave it till the last minute so idea 2 didn't quite happen as I'd have hoped.
Here's the first card I made

For my extra complication I decided that my buttons should actually work to open the card. So first I made a card with folds on both sides, the left side is narrowerer than the other and the right side overlaps it a little.
I added the buttons on a seperate narrow piece of card, tied on with various fibres.
Another seperate strip of card hides the tatty ends of the button-loops on the left hand side.

Papers are Chloe's Closet
Ribbon, fibres and buttons from my stash
Lettering is made on the Robo

I think I've managed to get a better pic of how the card works now:


Card 2 - got there eventually!
My second plan to make life more difficult was to make some buttons from shrink plastic. Not only that, but I decided to see if I could cut them out with the Robo! Well, I was already planning to buy a new blade so thought it was worth a go. It works, you do need to cut through twice, and use the red nobbly thing, and I think that really only simple shapes would cut properly, but how fab to be able to cut flowers, squares and circles without my usual wobbly-scissor technique! I made these buttons from one sheet of plastic, they are all quite big as you can see. I wasn't happy with the colours though and didn't really have time to muck about making more. So I had to go BRIGHT yet again. As usual I cooked my SP in the oven then as I'd been using up some of the frosted SP - I don't like this stuff and won't buy it again, the finish is really quite dull-looking so I added some glittery embossing powder and UTEE and took the heat gun to it - the big round button and the square one next to it on the photo were treated this way, the other square one is the one on the card.

These papers are from one of the Prima paper packs that I've really struggled with - I think this may be the first card I've managed to make with any of the Prima papers. All the ribbon from Ribbon Oasis, the flowers are from Dunelm Mills and the chipboard one is from Caroline the Chipboard Queen at Bubbly Funk.......

I won't be able to use this card as I was in such a hurry and a tizz trying to get it done that I managed to fold the blank inside out - so my printed details are on the inside.....not only that but I stuck it all on the wrong way round too!

oooops, where's the roll-eyes, I'm a noggin emoticon when you need it?

Look what I've got!

How exciting is this then?
I've been asked by the amazingly talented Leo to join her design team on Crafty Templates and I'm pretty excited too! I've been looking at the work these girls have been doing though, and I'm just a tad scared - they are FAB! Check out the link and you'll see what I mean.

These shaped cards are so different and such fun and guess what? I've never made anything "shaped" before - so really it's a wonder Leo asked me! Ah well, nothing ventured, nothing gained and she can always kick me off again if I'm rubbish!

What it will be is a new challenge, which is always good - and it's big-time exciting too, I'm excited and apprehensive at the same time. keep your fingers crossed for me please!

I can't believe just how much has happened in the months since Jane came up with The Daring Cardmakers idea, it's been an amazing journey. It's not just me, it's all the girls, we are all having such a blast with our cardmaking and papercrafts in all sorts of ways - long may it continue, I reckom!

Thanks Jane (yet again) for starting this ball a-rolling

Right, now I've got to get back to cooking some stuff for tomorrow's dare...............