Treat Yourself

 

Hello

Thanks for visiting. 

 

Today I’m sharing my card for this week’s Daring Cardmakers Challenge, 

It’s Nat's in the hot seat and here's her challenge

The theme for this week's challenge is:

Treat Yourself

Inspired by Donna and Tom on Parks and Recreation, who celebrate the art of  treating yourself in the best way possible, I want you to make a card featuring something that's a treat or using something that you have treated yourself to!

 Here are the treats that the design team came up with:

 

Well. a slice of cake is always a treat isn't it?

I'd added this this die set  to my Amazon Wish List before Christmas and was lucky enough to find it under the tree - I think a 'wish come true' is a treat, don't you?

I used:

A sheet from a lovely old MME pad for the background

Sizzix Cake die set and various shades of Bazzill card

The sentiment was pc generated and glued on Kraft card, with twine added to resemble a cafe style blackboard

 

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself, 

 

Waxing Lyrical

  Hello

Thanks for visiting. 

 

Today I’m sharing my card for this week’s Daring Cardmakers Challenge, 

It’s Joanne in the hot seat and here's her challenge

Waxing Lyrical

This week and I'd like you to find a way to incorporate wax into your project — it might be figuratively (an image of candles, perhaps) or literally (e.g. use a wax crayon or candle to create a resist, try out a technique like this or this with wax paper, get out the encaustic wax and iron if you have them).

This was my second attempt at a card for this challenge, the first didn't work out in the time I had available so I decided to  go with something I could put together quickly - plus use up some of the inky card I'd made for last week!

 

 I used

Black card from some packaging for the large letters and the bunting

(I always keep nice card that comes as packaging or junk mail etc)

Bright inked card scraps from last week's project

A birthday cake candle from my baking drawer in the kitchen 

(I cut it down slightly to fit better)

Black and white twine

All letters are die cut

Bunting is had cut 

The candle is glued in place

The stars are punched

 

 

If I get the first card finished, I'll be sure to post it at some point!

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe, 

Be Mine

  Hello

Thanks for visiting. 

 

Today I’m sharing my card for this week’s Daring Cardmakers Challenge, 

and of course its the time of the year when our thoughts turn to lurrrrve

Its Dawn here with this weeks challenge

ALL LOVED UP

So to this week's challenge and as we are so close to Valentine's Day it's just got to be all hearts and flowers. 

 

I won't go into details about how much time and how many tries I had at making this card - save to say it was rather excruciating.

The only bits that I was sure of were the letters

I chose bright shades of ink and smooth white card then cut a batch of the letters I needed.  Next I cut the letters in black card several times so that I could layer them up and top with a coloured letter.

The smaller letters were cut in red inked card as were the bunting shapes,the various hearts were cut in scraps of the original inked pieces of card.

I've used some black and white twine and silver thread for the bunting and added a couple of red heart gems to complete the card

 Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe,

 

February Elemental Inspiration

 

  

 Hello, and Thanks for visiting. 

 

Today I’m sharing my card for this week’s Daring Cardmakers Challenge, 

 

It's Nat here today and as it's the first Friday of the month it's time for the

February Elemental Inspiration Challenge

 

You need to pick any 3 elements from the photo for your card - remember colours count as one element.  

There are plenty of elements to choose from: hearts, fabric and knit textures, geometric layouts, pastel colours, cups, drinks, socks, landscape scenes, even pink chocolate

 Here's my inspiration photo:

For my card I've used the layout of the rectangles, the pastel colours, cups and saucers and a few hearts

I arranged my cups and saucers in a stack to echo the pile of towels in the top middle image too!

I cut a couple of cams from the edge of a square card to make a fat rectangle

The papers I’ve used are from a couple of digital downloads. My printer’s ink cartridge needs changing so I think 

They’ve printed a bit paler than they should have done, but they are still pretty. 

I couldn’t print again because the printer makes a racket and OH seemed to be on meeting calls every single time I needed to do something a bit noisy!

I resized then printed the designs onto white Bazzill card and used one for the background. 

The rectangles are just cut with the guillotine

I used a Spellbinders die set for the cups and saucers and punches to cut the hearts. 

“Hi” is from another Spellbinders die set 

To add a bit more interest and texture I added some silver twine and a few gems

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe, 

Around the House

  Hello

Thanks for visiting. 

 

Today I’m sharing my card for this week’s Daring Cardmakers Challenge, 

It’s Joanne in the hot seat and she says:

 

 There are two ways to play with this week’s challenge which is

 “around the house”

You can either 

use a household object as part of your creation (e.g. foil from the kitchen, dry wall tape from the tool box, scrape a design into paint with the prongs of a fork) 

or use an image of a household object as your focal point (e.g. a TV, a food mixer, a games console). 

You could do both for extra virtual brownie points if the mood takes you!

 

I went to the kitchen for my inspiration

I've used Bazzill card, Kraft card and silver card 

The larger tools are cut using a Spellbinders die set, everything else is cut using a Tonic crafting kit from last year

I haven't added a sentiment because I couldn't think of something suitable!

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe, 

Viva Magenta

 Hello

Thanks for visiting. 

 

Today I’m sharing my card for this week’s Daring Cardmakers Challenge, 

which is set by Rizwana

Pantone's Colour of the year is

Viva Magenta.

This rich and exuberant colour promotes
joy and optimism.
This moodboard has lots of magenta ideas to inspire you. 

You can use lots or just a hint of this colour
when you create your card this week

 

I found this really hard!  

Apparently Magenta doesn't really exist - or it's got such a complicated make-up that no-one can really give a definitive answer to what it actually is!

I made the background using at least 6 different ink pads to try and get something I thought could be called 'magenta'  As the colour varies across the piece you can take whichever shade you think is most correct!

'Tufted' embossing folder from Spellbinders

Silver thread sewn through the card

Random flat-backed pearls glued on the crossovers

HAPPY letters; Altenew alphabet die set

Birthday die by Creative Expressions

Rose from an old Craft Box

Pearl strands from stash

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe, 

 

New crafty things

 Hello

Thanks for visiting. 

 

Today I’m sharing my card for this week’s Daring Cardmakers Challenge, set by Miri:

New Year – New crafty things

 

Use a piece of your craft supplies (stamp, tool, stencil…) that you have never used before!

Give it a new chance or a beautiful beginning in the new year.

Maybe you even got some supplies for Christmas? Or, like in my case, the weeks before Christmas were just too busy to try out your new things.

I was lucky to have a few craft related gifts at Christmas and

 quite a few were die sets so I've chosen one of these 

to use for my card

This cute die is from Spellbinders and is absolutely adorable!

I also used inks and Nuvo mousses for colouring the birds, the

 leaves, the background and the frame

 

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe, 

DCM January Inspiration Challenge

 Happy New Year to you

 

  I've been truly appalling at keeping my blog up to date in the last few months so I'm going to try harder this year.  

I've not been well for quite a while, but am gradually starting to feel brighter and more 'with-it', but at least for the time being I think that I need to keep it simple so I'll share some photos and maybe some basic info about what I've made and not much else!  

At least it keeps the blog alive

 

 Daring Cardmakers January 2023 Elemental Challenge

 

It's Shabneez here and as it's the first Friday of the month it is an 

Elemental Challenge.  Here is the inspiration photo:

You need to pick any 3 elements from the photo for your card - colours 

count as one element.  

There are plenty of choices: wood, spoon, key, patchwork, foliage, 

rectangle, layers etc.  

You can see lots of inspiration from the Design Team below and we 

look forward to seeing your creations!

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 Here's my card using the pinked edge, layers, colours and foliage

I've used 

quite old papers, mainly My Mind's Eye, 

Corrugated card from some packaging 

Various die sets for the foliage and butterflies

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe, 

 

Be HAPPY

 

Hello

As usual I'm trying to catch up with blogging! 

Keeping my blog posts short while I try to get back in control! 

As ever Friday is Daring Cardmakers challenge day and this week it's our lovely Shabneez in the hot-seat.

 Be HAPPY

It's Shabneez here and I would like to thank those of you that joined in with our challenge last week.  I've chosen an easy one this week:

Happiness is so important to us all and I'd like to see the word 'HAPPY' on your card.  It could be for a birthday, anniversary or anything that makes you happy!

There comes a point when I have to stop making excuses and start making Christmas cards! I never like making them until after my birthday, but that was a couple of weeks ago, and even if I do have a rotten cold which seems to be hanging around for ever I still need to bite the bullet and make a start on the Cword cards

 

I made a simple stencil just with a piece of scrap card by drawing the rough shapes of the apertures and cutting them out with scissores

 

I used washi tape to attach it to the card front, then rubbed a couple of shades of Nuvo Embellishing mousse with some bunched up scraps of old wet wipes and also coloured more scrap card with some lime green mousse for the letters

The trees are cut in black glitter card using one of my new Spellbinders Christmas die sets.  The HAPPY letters are from a Memory Box set of three versions of the word 'Happy' I used 3 layers for this card, but if I make more of the same style I probably won't be faffing around with that!

I had to make a new set of White on Black sentiments because I can't find the leftovers from last year.  

They'll be in a safe place....

To finish I punched a few tiny stars from card coloured to match the Coral, Rose Pink and Green I's already used and I was done 

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe, 

 

Standing with Ukraine

September's Elemental Inspiration challenge

 

Hello, 

And yet again I've fallen behind with blogging so I'm going to keep posts short and to the point in the hope that I can keep up with new stuff and catch up on my unblogged bits and pieces too/

We'll see how that goes!

 

This week its time for September's Elemental Inspiration challenge over at the Daring Cardmakers. 

 Our lovely Miri chose the mood-board this time

With these challenges you need to choose a minimum of 3 elements from the picture to use when making your card - and we don't mind a bit of 'artistic licence!

From Miri's picture I've gone with the rectangles and circles, leaves, shoelaces and all the lovely texture'

I chose some printed Kraft paper plus some corrugated card to cut the rectangles for the background.  The piece of corrugated card still had a little bit the brown paper upper layer stuck to it, but I liked how it looked so left it there.

To echo the crosses on the shoelaces I used some thread down the side and made a couple of cross stitches too

For the circles I used my Tonic nested circles set with some white and deep blue Bazzil card

The flowers are made using a craft punch and the leaves are die cut

I've not added a sentiment yet as I'm not sure what it will be, or where it will go either! Maybe on the circles, or perhaps under the corrugated rectangle

 

Thank you so much for coming by

 

 Happy Crafting, Stay Safe, 

 

 

Standing with Ukraine