Bah! Humbug! Day ... acetate ...

Yeah - acetate -one of my favourite things to use in card making.  I love it.  I know it can be hard to work with and you have to be careful to ensure the back is as neat as the front, but I guess I just love the magic of images suspended in air which is something you can do with acetate so easily.

Having said all that I do not like the way acetate cards are so hard to take a good photo of.  Sheesh I tried so hard with this and I'm still not that happy, but at least this photo hasn't got a reflection of the camera on it.  Think there might be a bit of my T-shirt, but oh well it will do.

To create the card I used one of the 'seconds' sheets I bought recently at the Kanban outlet shop.  I love the night time buildings and Santa in his aeroplane.  
The design of the card has sort of evolved from a style Sheena Douglas demonstrated at a course I went on.  I hope Sheena isn't reading this (highly unlikely), but her original design didn't really work properly as the trees on the back of the card sort of fell over when the card was stood open.  It just didn't look perfect somehow.

I've finally solved that problem by creating a card that is not a single fold at the top, but a double fold that creates a gusset and allows the scene at the back and the image at the front to be viewed properly. 

As you can see the 'gusset' at the top also allows for the scene on the rear of the card to be decoupaged - clever - huh!  Making this card was such fun and now I've worked out the style and measurements I will be trying out all kinds of ideas.  This is a 6" x 6" card and will need a box to send it in.  Not good!  However, the gusset will fold flat so in future to avoid the dreaded box making I would make my card 5" x 6".  The card could then be folded flat to go in a 6" x 6" envelope.

As well as Bah! Humbug! my card is also for the challenge at...

• ABC Christmas Challenge - lights (the windows on the buildings are glowing)

Hope to see some fabulous cards at Bah! Humbug! this week and Sheena if you are reading this - yikes - I didn't mean it!  The card you showed us how to make was super stunning - honest!

Huge hugs for all.

Ann xxx

Another footie card...

Seem to be on a roll with these - I do hope there will be loads of footie fans at this Summer Fayre or I will be in big trouble.  As you can see I've used the same Papermania stamp and coloured it with Promarkers.  This time I used some Kanban card with footballs and football boots on to provide the back drop for my image.  Again I split the page into two and used the divide to place a birthday sentiment embellished with metal star brads.

Today's card is also for the challenges at...

• Magical Crafts - Metal Magic - use something metal either something small or huge (my star brads)
• A Spoonful of Sugar - Celebrations (birthday card)
• Simon Says Challenge - A male card (2nd entry - hope this is allowed)
• Crafty Creations - Black, white with a touch of red (also 2nd entry)

Off to work soon and won't be around till tomorrow when of course it's our new challenge at Bah! Humbug!  Yeah, can't wait as the theme this week is one of my favourites.   That is as much as I am giving away!!!

Football crazy...

Well, actually I'm not, but I do think football cards may sell well at our fund raising event so my new Papermania footballer stamp is being used quite a lot recently. 
I decided to go for making some tall DL cards as I always find them pretty quick and easy to do plus I happen to have loads of the clear card bags in this size so it will be nice to get some of them used up.  I used black ribbed card on top of the red base card and Cuttlebugged the bottom half using the Swiss Dots folder for extra texture.  All the images were coloured using Promarkers.  The fab football boots are part of the Papermania set.  Love them.  Both tags are die cut and the sentiment is a gold peel off coloured black using a peel off marker pen.  Black organza ribbon seperates the two halves and the tags are attached with a black brad rather than a bow seeing as it's 'man' card.

My card is also for the fab challenges at...

• Crafty Creations - Black, white and a splash of red.
• Simon Says - Male Card
• Tuesday Taggers - Touchy feely texture (ribbed card, cuttlebugged and organza ribbon)

Hope everyone is having a fab day.
Huge Hugs
Whoops forgot to say - watch out for something really cool starting next Monday.  It's not another challenge blog, but something really cool that might interest some of us addicted to entering challenges!! 
Another whoopsie - thanks to a comment from one of the DT at Tuesday Taggers I've realised I should have put a link to Tanda Stamps, who are sponsoring Tuesday Taggers this week.  Love Tanda Stamps - bought loads a little while back - hmmmmmmm maybe it's time to search them out.  If you haven't seen/heard of Tanda they do some cool stamps do check them out.
Ann xxx

Yet more fund raising...

and these book marks were so much fun to make.  
I took these three samples to work - tons of stickers (kindly donated by card making forum buddies) and precut scalloped circles.  The ladies I work with had a ball and we ended up with 50 or so book marks to sell at the Mencap Summer Fayre.
Must get back on track with those football cards.

Happy Birthday Amanda and The Promarker Challenge Blog too...

Oh my goodness I cannot believe it's a whole year since The Promarker Challenges began.  I remember being so excited as I had just started to collect the pens and had made a list of the ones needed for the first challenges.  Sheenie friends may remember me joking on the forum that the 'Apple Green' was an awful colour.  LOL - I was teasing them and also trying to stop it selling out when the pens arrived at Joanna's Sheen's store. 

Oh my - think I have most of the colours now and absolutely love using them.  The theme chosen to celebrate at The Promarker Challenge is a super easy one-Anything Goes!  My trouble is whenever there is such an open theme I struggle to decide what to create.  However, I needed to make a birthday card for my daughter's friend, Amanda so this is what I came up with.  Amanda loves big cards, which is perhaps as well as the Popcorn Bear stamp I've used on this card is enormous!!  I really didn't realise it was so big when I bought it.  I had to cut a 6" oval on my Cricut to stamp on and although I followed a sketch from one of my favourite sketch challenges I couldn't fit some of the detail on.  Hope they will forgive me at Sweet Sketch Wednesday.

The tag and embellishments were cut using Cuttlebug dies and I used the Swiss Dots folder to emboss the purple panels.

Hope everyone is enjoying the lovely long Bank Holiday weekend.  I worked most of the weekend, but now have a few days off to catch up with everything hopefully.