Blatant copying!!!

Sometimes you see a card with such a clever technique on it that you can't help but have a go yourself.  Recently I saw a stunning card by Sylvie at Gibmiss where she had used lots of different sized flowers and linked them together across an aperture.  I thought this was a really wonderful idea and just couldn't resist doing my own version.  Thank you so much for the inspiration, Sylvie.

My flowers were cut out of gold mirri card in three sizes using my Cricut machine.  The card is 6.5" by 6.5" which will give you an idea of the size of the aperture.  It took a lot of flowers and a lot of patience too, but I do love the effect.  I matted the heart piece onto white vellum using foam tape to give depth to the design and then matted it onto gold mirri.  A sentiment peel off and gold brads in the corners finish the design.

Do check out Sylvie's fabulous card which is a white on white stunner - just beautiful.

My card is for the following challenges...

• Fab n Funky Challenges - Make your own blooms
• Papertake Weekly - Bloom and Grow
• Paper Pretties - Use flowers on your card

Will be back with my Bah! Humbug! challenge card tomorrow.  This week is quite a tester - it certainly tested me to the limit.

Hugs and Smiles

Ann xxx

Bah! Humbug! Day is here at last...

Today sees the start of our first challenge of the New Year. How excited are we?

This week we have the theme of Holly - Fairies and Magic, which is a perfect accompaniment to our prize giveaway of a Holly Fairy rubber stamp and matching CD by Crafter's Companion.  I've made two cards for the challenge.  One to show case the Holly Fairy and another very simple card and gift tag.

Both the holly die cut on the card and the holly bauble tag were cut on my Cricut machine using the Joys of the Season cartridge.   The gold berries on the card are my own version of card candy.  I used the smallest circle die in my set of original circle dies by Spellbinders (any small circle or waste from hole punch would do the job) to cut a circle.  Then with the circle die cut face down in the palm of my hand I rolled a round ended pen top on it until a lovely indented circle was made.  Attaching these shaped circles to the holly with Pinflair or silicone glue means that the lovely rounded shape is supported and doesn't get flattened.  On the bauble gift tag I used a gem stone, but I wish I hadn't as really I preferred it plain.

To create the inner I used computer generated text and the waste from the bauble die cut to decorate the page.

My card and bauble tag are also for the challenges at ...

• ABC Christmas Challenge - Anything goes for Christmas
• Anything Goes Challenge - the letter C (for Christmas of course)
• Cupcake Challenge - Predominantly white
• Aud Sentiments Challenge - Only have two words (Merry Christmas)

Card number two uses an image and backing paper from Crafter's Companion CD 4 in the Flower Fairy Friends range.  I printed the image and backing paper on to beautiful white paper with a gold opalescent sheen.  Unfortunately in a photo it looks dire, but in real life is quite effective.  Honestly!
The layout uses the fab sketch from the challenge at Sketch and Stash.  I used holly border punch to create the border across the front of the card and also to fancy up the inner.  Yes, I'm still succeeding in sticking to the plan of doing the inners at the same time as cards.  It nearly drove me mad doing them all last December and I decided that no way did I want to face a marathon like that again.

The inner on this card is in two layers with a plain green base and then the white with gold pearl finish paper printed with a sentiment and then punched to give a holly patterned edge.

My card is also for the following challenges...

• Crafter's Companion - sketch (have wavered slightly as I couldn't find my corner rounder punch)
• Papertake Weekly - Anything goes plus lace (punched lace is allowed)
• Flutter By Wednesday - Anything goes but remember your fairy, angel or butterfly.

Well have a great Friday everyone and I hope we'll see you over at Bah! Humbug! sometime soon.  Check out Max's beautiful card and Carol our Guest Designer for this month has created some wonderful works.  Unfortunately, my friend and team mate, Irene is not well at the moment and has been unable to join in.  If you can spare some hugs for her then I'm sure they would be well received.
Ann xxx

Bah! Humbug! Day and ribbons everywhere...

Yeah it's Friday and that means a new challenge at Bah! Humbug!  This week we are focussing on ribbons.  I think it must be very rare that I make a card without ribbon.  My favourite is organza as it always falls so well into bows, whether small or large ones.  However, for our challenge I decided to add loads of ribbon bows and make a ribbon festooned Christmas tree.  

I must admit I was going to tie little bows myself, but then Laura reminded me that there was a whole pack of tiny ribbon bows unopened in the embellishment drawer so I decided to take the lazy way out and use them.
The tree and stand was cut using my Christmas Cheer Cricut cartridge.   Oooooooooh just realised that stand could be very useful for my Clarity corset stamp!  A panel of Swiss Dots Cuttlebug embossing mounted on silver mirri card and border and corner peel offs finish off my very simple card.

In addition to Bah! Humbug! my card is also for the challenges at...

• A Spoon Full of Sugar - Cute and Girly
• ABC Challenge - Unused stash (the ribbon bows must be years old)

Have an amazing weekend everyone and I hope you'll have time to bring out your ribbons and join us at Bah! Humbug! this week.

Pink Elephant Day - Invite to a Bun Fight...

The theme at The Pink Elephant this week is Party Invites.  My card is a combination of both a tea party invite and a Mother's Day Card.  

My daughter, Shelley, wants to invite Grandma round to her new house for tea around Mother's Day and as she has already asked me to make a card for her to give Gran I decided it might be a good idea to combine the invitation and the Mother's Day card together. 

I was thinking along the lines of how we always used to call tea parties 'bun fights' and that led me to trying to create a card around the theme of a cake stand full of buns.

The base of the cake stand was cut using the Celebrations Cricut cartridge and then I added the layers using strips of the same card.  The buns are from a really cute stamp set by Hero Arts.  I'm disappointed with the card as it's not come out quite like I visualised it, but Gran will love it as it has tons of glitter and bling. 

My card is also for the challenges at...

• My Time to Craft - Just for Mum (or Grandma)
• Totally Papercrafts - Mum
• Pile it on - one colour and neutral
• Die Cut Dreams - No flowers allowed.

Have a great day everyone. 

Bah! Humbug! Challenge 4...Baubles...

Well thank everyone who had a guess at my sneak peak yesterday - it was so much fun to see what you were all coming up with.  Colour schemes and fancy corners and all manner of challenges, but the only one to get it right (at the time of writing this) was Ann at Spirit of Creativity, who rightly suggested that our challenge was...

BAUBLES

Well done Ann - you can spend the rest of the day feeling really pleased with yourself now.  Just sorry there isn't a prize for you, but then again you never know what the postie might drop on your mat with all those birthday cards!

To create my bauble card I use some totally wow paper from Dovecraft that already had beautiful baubles on it. Unfortunately these are mostly hidden under the centre piece, but you can see them a little and get the idea.
All the other papers I used are by HOTP and DCWV.  The central bauble was cut on my Cricut and is one of the shapes on the Winter Cheer cartridge, which is full of gorgeous stuff and has been so useful over the last year.  
After matting the bauble onto a white base card I added gemstones (my bargain ones from Poundland) and silver peel offs.  Then I added a bow and a couple of tags to complete the bauble.  As a final touch I added silver border and corner peel offs to draw the eyes in to the centre of the card.

In addition to being my card for the new challenge at Bah! Humbug! my card is also for the challenges at...

• Creatilicious - No stamped images allowed
• A Spoonful of Sugar - Freestyle

Have a fabulous weekend everyone and I do hope you are able to join us at Bah! Humbug! this week.  I don't know about anyone else, but I just feel so smug having all these Christmas cards done and it's not even February yet.  I must get my act together and do the inners as well!

Messy Rabbit in a muddle...

Hmmmmmmmm there is something about Messy Rabbit's face here that either reminds me of Frank Spencer in 'Some mothers do have em' or me trying to do all the things I need to get finished over the next few days.

I love this stamp - sorry I seem to say that such a lot, but stamps are just so addictive. Some people stroke paper - I stroke rubber! Oh my goodness what have I said?

I quite like papers too - especially DCWV ones and I love the red and green pattern on this paper.

I used my Cricut to cut the Christmas sentiment for the final panel on the shutter card. The lights are part of the set that came with Messy. I found some quite thick cord and twined it in a pattern fixing the lights on top to hold it in place and then finally added the sentiment. It was a bit fiddly as the cord kept fighting back, but I got there in the end.

I found this verse somewhere on the internet and thought it was perfect for the theme and the string of lights at the top and bottom of the verse are also from the Messy set of stamps.

Materials used:

• Messy Rudolf stamp set - Joanna Sheen
• red and green card from stash
• patterned paper - DCWV
• Cricut

Challenges:

• Cupcake Craft Challenge - a Christmas Song - It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
• Everybody's Art - Red and Green

Have a fantastic weekend everyone and I really hope your preparations for Christmas are going better than mine - eeeeeeeeeek!

Ann xxx

Pink Elephant Day...

Yeah it's Monday again and time for a new challenge at The Pink Elephant. This week is sketch week and Lori has designed a really cute circular sketch for us all to try out. Do pop over and check out the amazing samples by my friends on the team - totally stunning.

Materials used on my card:

• Snowman digi image by Robin available from Squigglefly (yep I know I've used this a lot lately, but it's so cute and easy to use).
• Cricut (Celebrations cartridge) to cut large scalloped circle
• Scalloped and plain circle nesties
• Holly punch by Dovecraft
• ribbon and red and white card from stash
• white flowersoft on hat and ultra fine glitter on snowman's body

Additional Challenges:

• Caardvarks - a round card
• Papertake Weekly - Digi sparkle
• Digital Tuesday - Holiday Wishes
• Crafty Creations - Snow
• Secret Crafter - Seasons - winter
• Magical Crafts - recipe - snowman, 1 ribbon, sparkle and holly

Hope everyone has a great start to their week.

Ann xxx

Snowflake sketch - and it's PINK!...

Well Laura will be proud of me with this card (which may be hers at Christmas depending on what else I get done). It's PINK - well it is in real life - what is my camera playing at? I had an awful time trying to get a photo due to the mirri card anyway and ended up taking the photo at a tilt, which is not bad but not perfect.


As you can see I've used Robin's gorgeous snowman digi again - it's just so cute!! This time I wanted the whole card to be be bigger and have more oomph so I used an 8" x 8" base card to matt and layer on to.

The snowflake was cut at 5" using my Christmas Cricut cartridge - I just love the way you can cut variations of the snowflake shape and layer them up decoupage fashion.

Materials used:

• Robin's digi snowman image
• Cricut Christmas cartridge
• Pink glitter card, ice gold card, silver mirri card
• scalloped circle and plain nestie
• gems and silver peel offs from stash
  
• Sketch from Friday Sketchers (last week's sketch)
• Promarkers to colour snowman - touched up with ultra fine glitter
  

Challenges :

• Fab's Big Christmas Card Challenge - Pink Diva (with the bling and pink on this it has to be for a Diva)
• Cupcake Craft Challenge - Snow much fun
• Papertake Weekly - Digi Sparkle
• Digital Tuesday - Holiday Wishes
• Crafty Creations - Snow
• Cute Card Thursday - Glitter me silly
• Allsorts Challenge - Bring out your bling - I certainly did that - check out the size of those rhinestones!

oh uh just gone to schedule my post and have realised today is Friday 13th - eeeeeeeeeeeek stay safe everyone - with the weather as cold as it is and it being 'that day' on the calender maybe it would be a good time to have a 'duvet' day.

hmmmmmm yep it definitely is Friday 13th - spot the error on my card - poor Mr Snowman his carrot nose needs colouring!!!

Snowflake sketch...

I've been wanting to use the amazing sketch at Friday Sketchers all week and I've actually only just made it before the sketch changes tomorrow. I just thought it was such a great idea to have a snowflake frame like this to mount an image on.

The image I've used is from Squigglefly and was designed by my talented team member and friend, Robin Willis, from The Pink Elephant. Isn't that snowman just so cute and I love the words that go all the way around the image - 'Snowmen have cold hands and warm hearts'.

Materials used:

• icy lilac mirri card
• white ice gold card
• snowman digi by Robin Willis
• X-cut snowflake corner punch
• scalloped and plain circle nesties
• snowflake cut on Cricut
• gems from stash

Challenges:

• Cupcake Craft Challenge - Snow much fun
• Creative Inspirations - New or neglected (my digi image is new)
• Allsorts Challenge - Bring out your bling
• Papertake Weekly - Digi Sparkle
  
• Friday Sketchers - sketch

Have a great day everyone and I hope it's not as cold where you are as it is here.

Fancy Folding...

I absolutely love shutter cards - eversince I received a gorgeous one on my birthday (thank you Max - still treasuring it) I have been fascinated by them. I really thought they would be hard to do, but no they are really easy peasy and just so much fun to decorate.

This is a new baby card I made using one of the Lofty stamps from the Lofty Celebrations set by Joanna Sheen. As well as the main character in the set you get the little teddy, some sentiments and the oh so cute teething ring. All perfect for using on a shutter card as it gives you extra bits to fill the spaces.

As well as the stamps I used punched hearts in three sizes and the 'It's a boy' sentiment was cut on my Cricut machine.

The verse on the middle panel is a gorgeous quote stamp from a set by Cloud Nine design - such amazing words...

'The birth of your baby, a gift from above, will bring JOY to your life when showered with LOVE'.

My card to celebrate the birth of a new baby is for the challenge at Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge and for the challenge of 'folding up' at Daring Card Makers.

Have a great day everyone. Think I'm in the mood for making a Halloween card today, but maybe I should be thinking along the line of flowers and birthdays seeing as my Mum's birthday is only a week away!!

Autumnal Hoot...

This is 'Hoot' the fantastic new charactic in Joanna Sheen's range of stamps. Isn't he cute? There are 12 stamps in total in the range and this is one of the six I was lucky enough to be given to work with.

I decided to go with an autumnal feel and pulled out some leafy paper from one of my DCWV packs for the background. I stamped Hoot on a circle of Bristol board and matted this on to orange card. Then I made a border of leaves all around the circle. These were cut on my Cricut and are in two layers. The orange layer is a whole leaf and the green a sort of half skeleton layer which was matted on top. Yep, it took quite a while to do, but it kept me out of mischief!

I've just realised it's a similar idea to the snowflake card I did yesterday, but I actually did this card way before I saw Sandra's snowflake one.

The ribbon and image are all coloured using Promarkers. I added a 'get well soon' tag and small green brads to each corner for added interest.

With it's autumnal feel my card is perfect for quite a few of the challenges this week...

My time to Craft - Autumn Fest (eeeeeeeeek only just in time and then only if the challenge is late being changed!)
Creative Inspirations - Autumn
No time to stamp - Autumn Leaves
Allsorts - Autumn Days
Secret Crafter - Animal Antics (well Hoot has certainly been up to something to break his wing)

Thank you for looking and for any kind comments. I do appreciate them all and have had many of my days brightened by your really kind words. Thank you so much.

Happy Birthday Tony...

Yeah as well as being Pink Elephant day it's my friend Irene's husband's birthday today too!

Good job the challenge at the Pink Elephant this week is ...

turquoise - brown and neutral

LOL - some colour combinations might not have been quite so suitable!!

Think this ought to be called a 'gadget' card as I've used so many machines on it - Cuttlebug folders - Swiss Dots and the Happy Birthday one and my Cricut to do the star shapes and the lettering.

I used a sketch from my collection and I think this one was a Mojo Monday one from way back. I really love their sketches and use them over and over again. I've added a patch of vellum over the words paper on the left hand side.

I love vellum over writing - it softens it beautifully and makes a great contrast (well not so much in the photo but in real life it does) between the vellum covered and the not covered paper.

Joy...

This is another of my samples for the Joanna Sheen Christmas Messy Rabbit collection. I love this card as I had so much fun (and a lot of hair tearing out) cutting the tags and letters on my Cricut machine.

I love the way you can cut things just a tad smaller - my tags are in three sizes as one is patterned paper, one silver mirri card and one white base card and for the reverse one white, one silver and one white card base tag. How tricky would it be to do that by hand?

I matted and layered each one enclosing a card hinge between the two white base card layers so that the card would fold up to go in a C5 envelope.

The tags are around A5 size so the letters are huge and I ran them through the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder to add some texture.

In the 'O' is the Messy Rabbit angel - so adorable - a lovely stamp. The star is one of the smaller stamps in the collection and I added a gem brad to the centre of this.


This is the card when folded up. I decorated the back too, but forgot to take a photo before posting the card. Silly me, but on the back were two plain white panels edged with peel offs and in the central panel I had printed one verse of the carol 'Joy to the World'.

Having just completed the blog hop at the Cuttlebug Spot I would love to enter this card into their challenge. Like Aymee I love shaped cards.

Rock on...

Well a week away from my craft stuff and the sun shining is still having a very strange effect on me, because not only has this card got a fancy inner it also has a matching envelope. Somebody is getting a bit carried away with herself these days!!

This is a card I've made for my daughter to give her friend Chris (male - into rock music) who is 20 next Monday. It was super easy to make using DCWV paper from the Rockstar pack and my bargain 49p stamp from Docrafts (ordered at the same time as those gorgeous punches I used the other week). The stars were cut on my Cricut machine and embellished with a star brad.

I kept the inside of the card simple, but I think he will be pleased to see his name inside and you can't tell in the photo, but I have attached silver stars to the stamped guitar just to give it a little more oomph.

As I've decorated the inside of the card it is also for the challenge at The Cuttlebug Spot .

Double trouble...

Had to do this card really quickly last night - after my birthday celebrations so please excuse any wobbly bits!

One of the girls at my Slimming World class had asked me for a card for twins and due to other commitments I hadn't had chance to get round to doing it. However, all was not lost as out came one of my favourite Penny Black stamps (thanks for reminding me about this Irene) and a bit of Cricut labelling and of course my favourite Cuttlebug border die.

She was really pleased with the card - she should have been - have you noticed how many diamonds I stuck on? Sheesh it must have been birthday fever or the heat getting to me!

Talking of birthdays thank you for all the lovely messages - I really do have some great internet buddies.

The summer blog candy draw winners will be announced later this evening - good luck to all of you.

A Birthday for you...

A birthday card for my box and for quite a few challenges. I actually coloured this image the other week, but put it to one side because I wasn't happy with the hair. I thought I'd got it way too dark, but having bought a white inkssentials pen this week I used it to add a couple of highlights. I'm much happier with the effect now.

Challenges:

• Pollycraft Challenge - 3 embellishments (the buttons), two papers (green and check) and one image.
• Everybody's Art - Birthdays
• Simon Says - Celebrations - Birthdays
• One Stop Craft Challenge - add some sparkle (added sparkle on the wings and gems)
• Sketch and Stash - sketch and new item (inkssentials white opaque pen)

Materials used:

• Pollycraft stamp
• Paper by DCWV
• Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder
• Cricut - flowers
• Green card, buttons, gems and peel offs from stash

You hoo!!!...

I have always loved Craft Stamper magazine, but since the revamp it has got better and better. This month's magazine is superb - crammed full of things I want to try and the best thing of all a free covermount stamp. How cool is this owl? I just love it!

My card is for the challenges at...

• Passion for Promarkers - this week's colours are pumpkin and cinnamon
• One Stop Craft Challenge - Embossing

Materials used:

• Owl covermount stamp from Craft Stamper Magazine
• Hero Arts sentiment stamp
• Tag cut using Cricut
• Promarkers - pumpkin -cinnamon and cocoa for shading
• DCWV - paper from 'Pocket full of posies' paper stack
• Core'rdinations cardstock
• Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder
• ribbon and brads from stash

More Graduations...

Well I just had to show this card as a follow up to yesterday's girlie graduation card. This is the other graduation digi stamp I have by The Greeting Farm. If you would like these digi stamps (and who wouldn't?) join in at The Pink Elephant challenge this week. Thanks to the generousity of The Greeting Farm we have two of these cute dig stamps available for one lucky winner.

Challenges:

• The Secret Crafter - 'Bling' - check out those huge rhinestones
• One Stop Craft Challenge - 'Embossing' - the panel behind the nestie frame is embossed with the Swiss Dot folder.
• The Pile it on Challenge - enter as many challenges as possible and sentiment cannot be stamped - my sentiment is DCWV paper

Materials used:

• The Greeting Farm - Grad Ian digi stamp
• black card and silver mirri card
• DCWV congratulations paper
• Swiss Dots embossing folder
• Nestability scalloped and plain circle
• Cricut to cut stars
• rhinestones and star shaped brad from stash.

Hope everyone noticed the new challenge site on this posting. The Pile it On challenge - love it - at long last a challenge blog that actually challenges you to enter as many challenges as possible. That just tickles me!!!

Pink, brown and white at the Pink Elephant...

This week at The Pink Elephant we have a colour challenge and our colours are PINK - BROWN AND WHITE! A great combination.

We are being sponsored by The Greeting Farm who produce the most amazing rubber stamp designs (have you seen the oh so cute Miss Anya range?) and cool digi downloads too.

There are digi downloads on a Graduation theme for the winner of our challenge so if you haven't joined in before or haven't had time to enter for a while this would be a great week to play along with us.

Materials used:

• The Greeting Farm - Grad Anya - digital stamp
• Cardstock by Making Memories
• Cuttlebug Swiss dots folder and border bar
• Circle Nestabilities
• CD
• Sentiment and star peel offs

Have a perfect day...

It's Monday and that means it Pink Elephant Day again - oh my it doesn't seem two minutes since we were all so excited to start the new Challenge Blog and now we're on week 17!! I really can't believe it.

This week we have a Recipe Challenge and the recipe is...

3 buttons

2 papers

and 1 sentiment!!!

I've used Royal Blue and Orange for my two papers, tiny orange buttons (2 round + 1 heart shaped button = 3) and one 'Have a purrfect day' sentiment.

A cute image of a cat with the fish bowl sneaked in on the act too - I'm hoping that's okay with the bosses! The cat is one of two cat images, accessories and sentiments from a clear set by Woodware.

Pop over to the Pink Elephant to see what the rest of the DT have come up with and I hope everyone will have time to play along with us this week.