Ready, Steady, Craft...

As a member of the Joanna Sheen forum I was really lucky to have been chosen for the September 'Ready, Steady, Craft' Challenge.

This is a challenge based on the TV programme Ready, Steady, Cook, but instead of food it's craft! Each month Joanna chooses choose four people from her list of volunteers and provides them with some “ingredients”. These ingredients are craft items from her website.

The volunteers then have to make a card using these items plus anything from their “larder” which is a list of items they may have at home.

This month we were given:-

• Craft UK - no scissors required decoupage book 10·


• Mars Stardream Card·


• Mini Tassels in brown (a gold colour)·


• Self adhesive pearls - dark grey (almost black)

How lucky were we?

My 'larder' additions included gold mirri card and gold peel offs.

Thank you to Joanna (and Tina for original idea I believe) for being kind enough to organise this for your forum members. It was great fun and very much appreciated.

Buttons...

The challenge at http://www.dutchdare-cardchallenges.blogspot.com/ is to use buttons on your cards. Here is one I made for a good friend of mine.

Materials used:

• purple and lilac pearlescent card
• fiskars embossing board in swirl pattern
• lilac patterned paper by English Paper Company
• purple embroidery cotton
• buttons
• stamps by Stampin up
• plastic canvas mesh circular grid and rectangle to create stitching holes

Gifts...

This post is purely for fun - well aren't they all?

As you can see Paris Hilton absolutely loved her new fridge magnet and as the challenge at http://abc-challenge.blogspot.com/ is to make a gift for someone I think this counts. LOL!!!

Scroll down to see a proper photo of her gift.

I found this link to a site that enables you do all sorts with your photos of cards, etc on another blogger's blog and couldn't resist using it...

http://www.photofunia.com/

Animal Antics and Alter it...

The fantastic thing about doing challenges (well for me anyway) is that they encourage you to do things that maybe would have been pushed to one side and then never really got round to.

The challenge at http://artygirlzchallengeblog.blogspot.com/ is to alter something. I have been having a major sort out at my house and lots of things have come to light that I had completely forgot about including a set of naff fridge magnets (10 for a pound at Poundland). As you can see from the picture below of just one of them the original was not something I would want on my fridge - but then I'm easily scared!!

I decided that triple embossing would be a good idea for this project as being a fridge magnet the finished item needed to be strong. The image I used is one from an unmounted set by Tanda Stamps and is called Cats. I stamped the image on to mount board and then triple embossed it. The theme at http://www.mytimetocraftchallenge.blogspot.com/ is animals so my work also fits their challenge which is great cause I want to enter everything and there just aren't enough hours in the day.

I matt and layered the finished image onto the magnet finishing it off with a metal tag from my stash that has the word 'dream' embossed on to it. Sheenie friends already know where the narrow black ribbon came from but are keeping stum - I hope!

Materials used:

• white mountboard


• black versefine ink


• triple embossing powder


• small scrap of paper from vintage paper pad by DCWV


• metal tag from stash


• narrow black ribbon (source not admitted to!)

Beach Babes from a sketch by Katharina...

At http://papertakeweekly.blogspot.com/ Katharina has created this 'stripey' sketch to challenge crafters.

I tried really hard to follow the map carefully but somehow my card ended up 'landscape' rather than 'portrait'. Same sketch though - just from a different angle!

I am going on holiday soon with a really good friend and am going to send her this card just to say 'Are you excited?'. There will also be a little note inside to say that I'm the sexy one in the chair on the left. LOL!

Materials used:

• Papers by English Paper Company
• Pink Cat Studio Rubber Stamp Set
• Studio G Clear sentiment
• white base card
• Lyra aqua crayons

More words of wisdom...

These are some more cards I created for our challenge at Ooh-la-la-creations this week. I would love to say that I created the background papers from scratch but I didn't! I used one of the papers from the DCWV vintage collection which I then stamped with a fern rubber stamp.

Materials used:

• DCWV paper from 'Olde Worlde' paper stack
• gold mirror card
• brown card
• gold brads
• fern rubber stamp by 'Make your mark' at York
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad in Mahogany
• clear rubber quotation stamps from the 'memories' collection by Cloud 9 design
• cream organza ribbon
• scalloped circle punch

Words of Wisdom...

Our challenge at http://ooh-la-la-creationschallenges.blogspot.com/ this week is to use a quote in your work.

I used an image from the CD 'Silhouette Magic' and a quote from the Quote Garden to complete my card.

My quote reads...

'There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colours are brighter, the air softer and the morning more fragrant than ever again by Elizabeth Lawrence'.

Do visit our challenge blog and take part if you have time. It would be great to have lots of entries.

OCC Birthday Challenge...

Luckily the challenge at http://ourcreativecorner6.blogspot.com/ is to make a birthday card and gives me the ideal opportunity to add this card to my blog. It's the card I made to give James from me and Shelley.

The frog and pocket stamp I've used are from a fantastic set by Stampin up. I bought them on ebay a little while ago and have been looking forward to an excuse to use the pocket stamp to make a money holding pocket on a card.

Materials used:

• pocket and frog stamp by Stampin up
• computer generated 'Hoppy Birthday' background paper
• green and white card
• green and white background paper by DCWV (I think!)
• denim paper

Sorry the photo is a little dark and slanted!!!