Saturday, Shabby Saturday

So, something new over on the Funky Hand Inspiration blog is an occasional series featuring some of the fantastic paper downloads in the Funky Hand "archive"
The  first time  I ever used Funky Hand papers - in fact the first time I ever used any sort of downloadable stash was when Anice of Funky Hand  first sponsored a challenge over on the Daring Cardmakers - and the collection we used was called "Shabby Saturday" 
It's been a bit of a go-to favourite ever since so I was pretty happy when Anice chose it for our first "Forgotten Funkies Showcase"

I decided to make a cute little gift bag. 

Materials and Tools
Shabby Saturday elements:  All papers, Cut Out Tags, Cut Out Flowers
The paper bow is hand-cut
other stash; small acrylic dewdrop stone, Paper String for handles
Tools: EK Success Border Punch

See our lovely Shabby Saturday Showcase HERE

Here's a little peek at what the Shabby Saturday download includes:

If you popped by here last week you might remember seeing the Scrapling card I made with some of the scraps I had left over from making the gift bag.  I thought I might as well take the opportunity to show it again :)

Thanks for popping by today, I hope you have a great weekend

Spooktastic Birthdays

Well, over on the Daring Cardmakers this week we come to the last challenge for October - and the last challenge in our special 7th Anniversary month of celebrations.  With Halloween looming on the horizon and a fab set of spooky chipboard goodies from Tando Creative for the DT to play with it seemed only right to make this one a Spooky Birthday themed challenge.  Whether you make a Halloween card, or a Spooky Birthday card is up to you.
We have a bumper batch of birthday gifts to share this week - not only a prize from our sponsors "Tando Creative", but also a prize from craft store "Imagine That". 
It doesn't even stop there - we're also having a Birthday Blog Hop and have prizes from Charmed Cards and Craft, Funky Hand and Crimson Cloud to share with those who leave comments on our blogs.  Click HERE to find out more about how to join in.  
Our Blog Hop means that even if you don't join in with the challenge this week you can still get your hands on one of our lovely birthday gifts.

I don't really "do" Halloween - and especially I don't "do" the whole Trick or Treat thing, but I do know a little boy who is mad-keen on all things skeleton!  So I'm getting ahead and have made this card with his birthday in mind

I decided to make an easel card so that some of the spooky elements could be standing out from the card, and started by using some Distress Inks on my card blank to create the background and I also inked some thinner card to use for cutting the birthday bunting and letters.
I'll add a name on the base panel later.
I gently pulled on the skeleton's arms to make them stand out wide enough to "hold" the strings for the banner.  I was a bit worried that the chipboard would break or tear, but it's really strong and held the new shape well

Materials and Tools:

Chipboard Skeleton, Skulls, Tree, Spider, Web,  2 x Bats; all Tando Creative

Various Distress Inks, Gesso, White Posca Pen,

 Silver pen, Black Enamel Accents, Black Stickles, Twine

Craft Robo to cut the bunting and the letters

There are a lot of elements to this card, and there's a lot of inky, painty work involved - but once that was all done it was just a case of assembling it all - which feels a bit of a cheat!

I hope you'll be joining in with us this week - either by sharing your card or by joining our blog hop - or increase your chances of winning our goodies by doing both!

Thanks for looking

Doing it with Digi

week 3 of celebrating the Daring Cardmakers' 7th anniversary and this week it's all about making use of all that lovely digital stash there is out there - or maybe developing your own embellishments  by digital means - I do this a lot to add sentiments, or to make images for cutting out with my Craft Robo.

We have yet more amazing prizes on offer; this week from our sponsor Pink Petticoat who are offering a choice of download collections and also from Craftsite who have some lovely stash to send to our winner - check HERE for more information and to see what our dt have made this week using Digital products, mainly from Pink Petticoat

It all went a bit awry for me - my own fault as I didn't get round to sorting it all out in time, so I had to improvise.

A quick look at the Pink Petticoat website gave me the help I needed and I came away with a lovely set of free downloads.  The free papers are simply the solid "base" colours - and very usable they are too - especially printed on some textures white Bazzill - my favourite way to use digital papers.

Our lovely Sharon emailed me some sentiments and I was ready to go with my first card.

To start with I printed the sentiment directly onto my card blank.  The layered bunting idea was something I spotted on Pinterest recently - in that case it was all done with stamped images, but I adapted it to be more "me" by using a couple of bunting shapes cut with Craft Robo and some lovely silver twine to "hang" it on.  

I added another digi element with the little gifts - this is another Craft Robo template created from a kids' colouring page found online

I was really pleased with the way this one turned out, but not quite so happy with my second card - which started out fine, and then, with all the fiddly elements done (funny how sometimes the simplest looking designs are the ones that take the longest to put together, isn't it?) I managed to get the edges of the upper white layer mucky - hence the rather heavy-handed edging of Stickles to cover the blunder.  I suppose I could have started over, but honestly, it took ages to get all the trees and circles layered up - and yes! I know it doesn't look like it!  

 I used deeper shades of the Pink Petticoat download for this one.  The little tree is a new template made especially for this card as I didn't have a "curvy" tree one made already.  To make it, I just folded a piece of paper in half, hand-cut the tree shape and then scanned it.  I tidied up the resulting image in Paint Shop Pro and converted it for Robo cutting.  The circles were all cut with Craft Robo too, and the tiny stars are punched from gold glitter card

I hope you'll get a chance to play along with the Daring Cardmakers this week - adding a link to what you've made means you might be randomly drawn as a winner of one of our prizes, so it's definitely worth having a go!

That's it for today.  Please leave a message.....

Sketchy

This is a Scrapling card I've made using the October sketch from The Sketch File Blog.  It's a "scrapling" in more ways than one because I used some scraps left over from another project to make it!

Here is the sketch:

A face-on view of the card:

The Scrapling is a left over strip from a piece of A4 ribbed Kraft card

All other papers are from Funky Hand's Shabby Saturday download collection

The two pink flower shapes and the sentiment panel are from

 the same paper download

Other bits: Acrylic dewdrops, Baker's Twine

2 x flower punches, Circle punches

 

 That's it for this time - short and sweet and no waffle :)

Thanks for visiting

Birthday Banners and Bunting

It's the second week of our month-long 7th Anniversary Celebrations over on the Daring Cardmakers and as 

Banners and Bunting 

are vital for the most festive events, that's what we've chosen as the theme for this week's challenge

We have prizes from two of our lovely "In House" stores this week; "Quirky Kits and Crafty Templates" is our own Leo's fabulous company, and Tea House Bridge is Zuzana's wonderfully eclectic shop.  The dt were each sent a little packet of buttons from Tea House Bridge to show off on our cards this week. 
 
If you're feeling a bit less than excited by the "same old, same old" stuff that all the craft shops sell, take a look at  Tea House Bridge and "Quirky Kits and Crafty Templates" - you'll not be disappointed as they are very far from run-of-the-mill!

We've got a lovely "surprise" Guest Designer this week too - the lovely and talented Enfys Cashmore.  Now I'm sure Enfys was a Guest Designer of ours from way back - but with seven years of challenges to check through, I can't locate when atm!  If I do, I'll come back and edit.

Anyhoooo  Here's my card for this week
I wanted to use two embossing folders for the background of this card, I didn't want to use them "straight" but try and use them in a more "wonky" way - it would have been good to get a bit more of an angle than I achieved, but even with a A4 machine there wasn't quite enough room to get more than this.  I got as much as I could with the Petite Dots one, but I had to do the naughty thing of cutting the words one apart along the seam to get it to fit the space on the card.  Actually, I don't feel at all naughty - I think its good to experiment and make things work in different ways and to get the result you want.

 I've used the "Bubbles and Banners" sketch from The Sketch File for the layout.

Materials and Tools

Papers from a couple of the "Find Your Wings and Fly" 6x6 pads by MME

All Buttons from Tea House Bridge 

Baker's Twine, Dewdrop acrylic accents

All banners and Bunting is hand cut

Circles cut with punches or Spellbinders dies 

Embossing Folders: "Petite Dots" (Crafters Companion), Birthday Words "Cuttlebug" 

LO from  The Sketch File

Here's a close up so you get a better view of the gorgeous buttoney bits, and hopefully can pick out the different embossing patterns

it would be great if you'd help us celebrate by joining in with the Daring Cardmakers this week - and those prizes are up for grabs as etra incentive, of course.....
Thank you for visiting, I hope you'll come again soon

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

whoa oh oh oh oh oh

It was actually really hard to stick to adding one "Ruby" to the banner on this card.... hahaha

This is a big card to welcome the new-born daughter of one of Hubby's work colleagues

It turned out not as planned, because even though it's huge, I realised that if I made the shaped card with working wheels that I initially wanted to do there wouldn't be enough room inside for a whole "officeful" of people to sign their congrats.  So not as much fun as the shaped version would have been, but simpler in the end (as made on short notice) and easier for everyone to sign

Materials and Tools

Papers: "Hey Baby Girl" from Funky Hand's "Wishes and Kisses" CD. 

printed onto white Bazzill card

Plain pink card x2 also Bazzill

Lace, Seam Binding, Pearls and Gems

Tools; Lace  Border die (Crafters Companion), Flower punch, Heart punch

Craft Robo to cut pram, Lacy circles on wheels

pc generated sentiment on hand cut banner

That's all for now, thanks for popping by

Party Time!

 All through October we'll be celebrating The Daring Cardmakers Challenge blog's 7th Anniversary 

Yes! the Daring Cardmakers team has been bringing you card making ideas for the last seven years, and there are still members of the original team  regularly contributing seven years later! 
So we're having a bit of a party and have a whole month of special challenges and loads of gifts to give away - there'll also be the occasional special Guest dropping by to share a card with us on the blog

The first challenge each month is always a colour combo and this time we have a wonderful Rainbow Cake full of colour to use as our inspiration and we'd like your cards to be birthday themed to celebrate our birthday.
Our special birthday sponsor this week is DoCrafts and they kindly sent us some presents - 2 lovely border punches (Poinsettia Border, and Ribbon Bow Border) for each of us....and another set  to give away as a prize.
We also have a £10 voucher  from The Ribbon Girl - pop over to our BLOG for more info.

Just for an extra bit of a challenge we thought we'd see if we could make 2 cards this week - one a birthday themed one, and another a card for another occasion - but using the first as an inspiration in some way

 I'd seen this "Z-fold! card idea a couple of weeks ago and thought I'd try making a Birthday and a Christmas card using the same fold, and the rainbow colours - but one in pastels and the other in brights.

 I'm not going into too much detail as this post is quite long enough already
The papers are a right old mix of 6x6 end 12x12 from different collections and different suppliers
I've also used seam binding, pearls, a pretty brad, and a rosette die
I edged the pieces for the "rainbow" panel using the Poinsettia Border punch from DoCrafts.

For my Christmas Brights card I just went through my card scraps box, used the DoCrafts  Ribbon Bow Border Punch on the strips of card for the rainbow panel.

I embossed the back section and the front folded piece with a Holly embossing folder, and cut the larges of the Fir trees from the set of 3 (folder and dies from Crafter Companion).  I embossed the tree too and swiped over with a bit of dull-gold ink  The pot and gifts are hand cut.

This die is especially fun as you can use the cut out bits from the bow as tiny embellishments - as on the pot and a couple of the gifts

Also used: pearls and "dewdrop" stones, Circle and 2x Star punches, gold brad. red twine

Nat found this gorgeous photo to add to the blog and use for our Rainbow Cake Inspiration:

Remember to be in with a chance of winning one of these lovely prizes, you just need to join in with this week's dare - as usual our prize-winners will be chosen at random from all who join in with us this week. We'd love to see you at our "party" and helping us celebrate 7 fab and fun years of the Daring Cardmakers

"Boys Will Be Boys" Blog Hop

The "Boys Will Be Boys" Blog Hop finishes at 12 midnight GMT today (Tuesday 1st October) so there are still a few hours left to join in
"Boys Will Be Boys" is the brand new download collection from Funky Hand  and to show everyone just how great these papers are we're inviting you to take a tour of our blogs where we're showcasing some of the things we've made so far- to add to the fun, leave a message at each place on the list and you might win this new collection for free!

You can also buy it from the shop now of course and start using it straight away - instant gratification is just one of the benefits of downloads!    

I thought today I'd show another of the cards I've made - this time I've been "playing" with some of the designs by doing a bit of resizing.  If you scroll down a bit and look at the blog hop announcement picture you'll see a little snippet of the paper I made my robot from.  I just cropped it right down then made the robot figure about 6,5cms tall.  I printed one copy, then clicked the button to "mirror" it and printed again to make a back and front for the robot.
The arrows were cut from another of the paper designs - the paper is fab on it's own, but just brilliant to cut up and make into embellishments.  The same goes for the "Boys will be Boys" sentiment - it's another of the paper designs (I resized it some fit 4 papers on one sheet of A4), with just one set of the words cut out to make the sentiment.  I added some tiny buttons,  a silver glitter helmet and some childish scribbly outlining

So, back to the blog hop

Here are the links for all the blogs you need to visit - you'll see loads of lovely projects and get a really good look at "Boys Will Be Boys" and you'll met the latest Funky Hand character "Bot" along the way.  Leave a comment on each blog and you could be the winner.

Anice.

Allison.

Debbie.

Kathy.

Lou.

Ruth.

Sam.

Tabbatha.

Get Funky inspiration blog.

That's it - now just leave a quick message and you can head off to the next blog on the list.  have fun on our Funky Blog hop, and good luck!

The Thing About Boys....

It's the launch day for the fun new "Boys Will Be Boys" download collection from Funky Hand - so to celebrate - and to let everyone see how fab the papers are we're having a Blog Hop.

You can buy it from the shop from 9am today  - but a few minutes blog-hoppng and comment-leaving might let you own it for FREE!

To make it nice and easy, all you have to do this time to be in with a chance of winning the "Boys Will Be Boys"  collection for free all you need to do is hop around, leaving comments at each "stop".  You'll see what the DT have made using the new download and you'll get to meet the new Funky Hand character "Bot" while on your travels, too.
Just remember to leave a comment at each stop and you'll be in with a chance of winning - no tricky anagram or other puzzle to solve - it's Monday, adter all, so we don't want to tax ourselves too much, eh?

To make it even easier, here's a list of all the links you'll need to comment at

Anice.

Allison.

Debbie.

Kathy.

Lou.

Ruth.

Sam.

Tabbatha.

Get Funky inspiration blog.

The Hop starts at 5:00am GMT on Monday 30th September and then you have tilll 12 midnight GMT Tuesday 1st October to join in and leave your messages.
The winner will be announced at 8am on Wednesday 2nd October.

Sooooo, here's my project for the blog hop (though if you scroll back a bit to Friday's post you can see something else I've made with these great papers).

I thought I'd make my card  something that would be suitable for boys, or girls as I think these designs and colours work for anyone.  I'd seen some cute little wire and button bike jewellery pieces around the old interweb recently and saved some pictures to see if I could make one.  Finding two "bicycle" designs among the "Boys Will Be Boys"  collection gave a great excuse to have a go.

It's not perfect, but I'm hoping a bit "rough around the edges" adds to the charm hehe, anyway, I hope you like it!


That's it - now just leave a quick message and you can head off to the next blog on the list.  have fun on our Funky Blog hop, and good luck!

Rosettes, Sneak Peeks and Birthday Party News

Ooooooh Look what October will be bringing!

Celebrating 7 years of  the Daring Cardmakers

All that starts next Friday, but this week Nat is the hostess's chair on The Daring Cardmakers' Blog and has a fab challenge for everyone.  All she wants is to see lots and lots of lovely ROSETTES on our cards this week.  It doesn't matter whether they are paper, fabric, ribbon or anything else you could think of to make them with - they all count.
it was a bad move to leave my card to the last minute.  I made a lot of rosettes - that was the easy bit, but it would have been a good idea to have something in mind to use them for.  Well, I did have a vague idea, but having made the rosettes I realised the plan wouldn't actually work. So I chose 3 of the rosettes and made something that's supposed to look like flowers in a window-box.

Don't tell anyone, but the papers I've used are so new they haven't been released for sale yet......

They are from a collection called "Boys Will Be Boys" and are from Funky Hand.  As you can see, they're not just for "boy" cards - but join in the Blog Hop for the launch and you'll be able to see more of the collection and maybe even win a prize.  Which is always good, eh?
I hope you'll join in with the hopping on Monday

Anyway. getting back to The Daring Cardmakers and my Rosette card.
I made the rosettes in a couple of different ways, I used a Memory Box die for the ones with the fluted edge and just folded paper strips for the others. The window-box is a plain edged, accordion-folded strip of paper - just like you fold to make a rosette.
Although I have a Memory Box tiny rosette die too, it's the fiddliest little wotsit in the die box and I didn't have the energy or willpower to do battle with it.  Instead I used the big one and trimmed off the straight side after cutting to make the finished rosettes a more suitable size. 
***Wherever possible, always look for the line of least resistance*** hehe

Materials and Tools:

Papers: Boys Will Be Boys download by Funky Hand

Flower stems are twisted ribbon and ric-rac scraps

Flower centres: Glittered brad, Blue flat-backed pearl, Fabric covered brad 

Bunting is hand-cut

Memory Box Rosette die. Scor-pal

That's all for this time.  Please pop by on Monday to see what I've made for the Funky Hand Blog Hop.... and don't forget about the DCM's Big Birthday Bash.  Gosh, such a lot going on!

Harvest Home

Friday again and time for another Daring Cardmakers challenge.

 Although in some parts of the world Spring is now on it's way, over in this bit we're at 

the end of Summer and heading for Autumn. 

But not before we give thanks for all the Summer produce with our own
        Harvest Festival
 We'd love to see your Harvest inspired creations this week, so please get crafty and join us as we celebrate the  "Season of Mists and Mellow fruitfulness"

I used to love Harvest Festival when I was little.  All the Sunday School children would carry their decorated baskets and boxes of produce in to the main Church, where they'd be received and placed on tables decorated especially for the occasion.

My OH grows a few vegetables in our garden and it's always good to take the trug and fill it with beans,  courgettes, tomatoes etc.  I've got loads of beans prepared and stored in the freezer and have been making tomato sauce ready to use in the coming weeks.

We have loads of blueberries and blackberries too - just a shame I'm the only one who lijes them!

We don't have an apple tree though.....but I decided to make a little one for my card this week

Materials and Tools

Bo Bunny "Apple Cider" 6x6 papers

Tiny red buttons. Ombre Ribbon

Various inks for the leaves and sky, Glossy Accents (on apples)

Petite Dots embossing folder (Crafters Companion)

EK Success border punch

memory Box "Twiggy tree" die

Spellbinders plain circle die

Scalloped circle cut with Craft Robo

pc generated quotation

It's an easel card, so jolly awkward to photograph, sorry!

I used inks with cotton buds and tapped down on all the raised dots on the embossed card to make the tree shape, filling in the rest with pale blue dots for the sky.  

The "apples" were cut from one of the papers and raised on chipboard to form the ledge for the easel to rest against.  I covered them with a layer of Glossy Accents and added a bit of white to highlight.

The quotation is another part of the Autumn 1820 John Keats' poem with the famous line "Season of Mists and Mellow fruitfulness" in it.

 It would be great if you'd join in with us this week and share your Harvest creations.  The team have made some lovely cards to help inspire and you can see them all HERE

Thanks for visiting

Same, but Different

It's my turn to post on The Get Funky Inspiration blog today and I've made a

 of cards using the wonderful new Christmas downloads

 I will never be the sort of organised crafter who decides on a Christmas card design and sets up a bit of a production line to make them all - it would make my life easier I know, but it's never going to happen!

Anyway, I thought I'd have a go at making the same card, but using each of the two collections to give them a slightly different look - a little bit of a challenge for me, but an interesting experiment too.

I've used an embossing folder for the background, and as I've been playing around with an "embossing resist" technique I thought I'd add that to my design- so there's an un-embossed oval shape behind the trees.

The first card is made with papers from the "Sleigh Ride" collection and is on a white card base.  The  second uses "Silent Night" and I've used a soft creamy coloured card for the base

Materials and Tools

Sleigh Ride Download

Silent Bight Download

"Christmas Elegance" Embosiing folder and

 Fir Tree Die, both Crafters Companion

Silver and Gold Glitter card for stars

Tiny Star Punch

Scraps of ribbon to match papers

I do love these new Christmas collections from Funky Hand - I'm planning to use them for as many of my Christmas cards as possible - I can print these gorgeous papers out direct onto my cards, or paper, or my favourite way; on to white Bazzill.  I'm going to try printing some of the older paper collections on textured cardstock too - there are plenty of others in the Funky Hand catalogue to have some fun with!

Over the next few weeks there will be lots of new inspiration on the Get Funky Blog - we'll all be trying our best to show you how fab the papers and images are and how versatile they are too, so please pop over and take a look.

Tea Time Treat

For my "Birthday treat" we went to Fanhams Hall near Ware in Hertfordshire yesterday for Afternoon Tea.  This is our third AT so far this year hehe.  The first was via a Last Minute.com gift voucher.  There were only a few places we could go so we went to the nearest; a place called Barnsdale Hall Hotel and quite honestly, their idea of an Afternoon Tea was a disgrace. What a disappointment and a waste of money, even if it wasn't our money!

Anyway, once bitten, twice shy as they say and when we decided to celebrate our anniversary in the same way we chose very carefully and went to the lovely Attingham Hall  (Shropshire) for a really delightful afternoon's grazing through the sandwiches, home-made scones and lots of tiny cakes.  It was delicious.

It was a really lovely treat and we enjoyed it so much that we looked around the places nearer home for somewhere to do it all again for my birthday.  Despite living in the area for donkey's years I'd never heard of Fanhams Hall - the photos on their website looked lovely, and they were soooo quick to answer OH's emails and so accommodating about  our "picky" food requirements; we don't like fruit scones, fruit cake, salmon sandwiches - staple AT fodder which some places just say "it's that or nothing" about.  We booked. 

What a lovely place.  I wish the day had been prettier so that we could have explored the gardens more and taken a nicer photo than this one;

Afternoon Tea is taken in the lovely, peaceful Drawing Room.  The staff were attentive and helpful and our food requests were all sorted without us needing to go over it again.  Isn't it great when things work like that?

The sandwiches were all lovely.  We really just expected more plain scones as we didn't have fruit ones, but instead of the fruit ones there were some lavender ones - really delicious they were too!  Freshly made and still warm.

And at the top of the cake stand an assortment of delicious little cakes and pastries - we couldn't eat everything so the extras were boxed up for us to bring home - that's a treat for this evening, then!

Everything was so well done.  The Hall is a fabulous building.  The Drawing room was elegant and nicely furnished, with plenty of room between the groups of people.  The waitresses were helpful and attentive and the food was beautifully presented and tasted wonderful.  I'd definitely be happy to recommend Fanhams Hall as a venue for your nest treat!

If anyone would like to "employ" us as Afternoon Tea venue "testers", then I'm sure we'd be more than happy to accept hehehe

Sadly, it's back to the reality of me doing the "catering" today - which didn't get off to a good start because yesterday I forgot to make bread for this morning's breakfast toast  :(

Thanks for popping by, I hope your mouth is watering now.....