Pink Elephant Day...

It seems to be the season of favourites at The Pink Elephant as last week our challenge was 'favourite colouring medium' and this week we have 'favourite colour combo'. It's really hard to choose actually as there are so many gorgeous combinations around, but I went for one I haven't used for some time...

Lilac, white and silver.

Our sponsor for the week is Your Next Stamp who do some really cute stamps in both rubber and digital format. The image and sentiment on my card are from the Christmas Digital package, which is both bargainous and such fun to work with. Watch out for this snowman being around a lot this week - I really must get my Christmas cards done!!

I used the great sketch from this week's Friday Sketchers challenge and my card also fits the challenges at...

• Paperplay - Christmas without red or green
• Crafty Ann's Challenge Blog - Texture
• Stamp Something - Glitzy
• Allsorts - Purple (hope lilac counts for this)
• Crafty Calender Challenges - Winter Sparkle
• Caardvaarks - use digital images and sentiments
• Pile it on - Tinsel Town
  

Thanks for looking and do check out what my team mates have created using their favourite combos.

Ann xxx

Pink Elephant Day and an abundance of challenges...

Yeah, Monday again and time for a new challenge at The Pink Elephant. This week it's a recipe from Ella's kitchen and her ingredients are black, (could be black stamping, black card or maybe black embellishments), distressing and hardware (brads, clips, eyelets, etc).

I decided to have a go at some super simple Halloween treat bags made mainly by using my scalloped and plain circle nesties. The black part of the recipe is pretty easy to spot and on my 'You're driving me batty' bag I distressed the embossing and ripped the sentiment on the tag too. My hardware is the brad holding the tag in place and a some cool paper clips to hold the bag closed.

The circular images - bat - witch's hat and cat are all digis by my super talented friend, Robin, at The Pink Elephant and if you like the look of them pop over HERE and pick them up for free. Thank you so much for these Robin - they are just great.


Now as I am a great believer in combining challenges my treat bags are also for the challenges at...

• Everybody's Art - Halloween
• My Time to Craft - Halloween Colours
• Digital Tuesday - Things with Wings (bats)
• Crafty Creations - All Hallow's Eve
• Creative Inspirations - Halloween
• Rainbow Lady - Halloween
• Cute Card Thursday - Candy Corns
• Stampin for the Weekend - A Haunting Good Time
• Dare You to Digi - No squares allowed
• Stamp Something - Halloween Somethings
• Daring Card Makers - at least FIVE of your favourite things on your project - mine are gems, gem brads, swiss dots cuttlebug embossing, tags, and scalloped nesties. Oh and those jellies are pretty good too, but they don't usually feature in my craft work.
  
• Bubbly Scrumptious - Ghosts, Ghoulies and long legged beasties.

Oh my goodness think that could be taking challenge combining to the next level - phew think I will take the rest of the week off, but then again I need to play with all the fantasitic ideas I picked up at the Sheena Douglas workshop.

Wow Sheena is just so inspirational - Saturday really was a day to remember - so many good ideas and so much craft shopping too. I will be showing my makes, but having said that I don't want to spoil the course for anyone else going so maybe it might be better kept secret.

Oh forgot to add to this post - a little puzzle! For those who follow my blog regularly can you spot the bag of goodies for Laura?

Yep I know it's just tooooooooooooo easy - have a good week everyone.

Christmas in August...

Just a very quick card using Kanban Christmas paper and images. The penguin, sentiment and snowflake design were already packed onto one sheet of card so all I really needed to do was find some matching green card and decide on a layout. A nice easy task which was what I needed as I have so much to do after being away.

I'm entering the card for the following challenges:

Fab's Big Christmas Card Project - make a Christmas card using one of the kits you have stashed away.

The Creative Card Crew - Christmas in August

Dutch Dare Christmas in August

Our Creative Corner - Christmas in August

Favourite Flowers...

At last Joanna Sheen's new stamp range called 'Favourite Flowers' is available on her website. I made this card using the primula stamp from the Wild Flowers collection. It is one of a set of six cards I made as samples for her and I will be showing the other cards after the live show on Create and Craft on Sunday.

The stamps are just beautiful to work with and were inspired by the beautiful work in The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. On this card I used a sketch that I particularly like that originally came from The Next Level challenge blog (oh I so miss that blog). I used Promarkers to colour the primulas and dragonfly with a touch of Sakura Stardust on the dragonfly's wings.

Of course the cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder and my favourite DCWV papers had to get in on the act too alongside nesties, peel offs and organza ribbon. I know other people have said this on their blogs, but seriously how did we make cards before cuttlebug folders and nesties?!

As I love to enter challenges I'm adding my card to these challenges:

Creative Inspirations - Tags

Pollycraft - Favourite Things (mine has got to be DCWV papers and the Swiss Dots folder)

Tanda Stamps - Tag it!

No time to Stamp - Birthdays

Allsorts - English Country Garden (Primula's are a favourite cottage garden plant)

Oh and before I forget if you loved the images in the book The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady dash over to Joanna Sheen's website and check out her latest CD. Just gorgeous - can't wait to see the show on Sunday to see the cards made using it and the images on the CD. It looks as if it's going to be absolutely wonderful.

Pink Elephant Day!!!

This week Ella at the Pink Elephant has a recipe for us ...

One flower - three brads and one patterned paper.

My flower is again one of the beautiful flowers from the Elusive Images set 'Ruby Tuesday. This time I stamped the flower several times onto card and once onto the purple background paper. I coloured the images using promarkers, cut them out and layered them up.

I added some enormous jewelled diamonds that I bought recently at Poundland. There was 124 sticky backed diamonds for only £1 and unlike some expensive sticky gems they actually peeled off the sheet easily! Isn't that shop just brilliant?

My patterned paper has a very distressed look about it and I'm quite distressed myself that the butterfly design on it is not showing up too well in the photo. It was yet another rainy day in England - I'm just so glad we're having a heatwave this summer as the weather forecasters promised. Does anyone know when it's going to start?

Last but not least my three brads are in the bottom right corner.

Over the last few weeks we have been overwhelmed by the number of amazing entries at the Pink Elephant. I do hope this will be another bumper week of fabulous talent. Really looking forward to seeing everyone's work.

Floral decoupage...

This is a card for my friend's mum, who has been having a really bad time lately. She has had a melanoma removed from her face and a skin graft which has involved a lot of pain. As she is not a well woman anyway it's been and still is a lot to go through.

I'm hoping this will cheer her up - I certainly enjoyed making it and even made a box to protect my decoupage in the post. Think someone is getting a little carried away after their break!!

The layout is from the sketch at The Next Level where the challenge is to use the sketch, but also make a card with a decoupaged element on it. If you haven't heard about The Next Level yet you really must check it out. It's amazing - full of really interesting stuff - I love it.

yeah I'm back and...

it's Pink Elephant day!!!

I so missed blogging and looking at the amazing creations that we have entered at the Pink Elephant while I was away last week. I was in York and had a lovely stay, but it was really tough leaving all that fabulous new birthday craft stuff behind.

This week, at TPE, is our colour themed challenge. I always find this one a toughie, but I'm sure everyone will come up with some amazing creations. The colours this time are mid blue, dark blue and red - so we're going bold, bright and beautiful - well hopefully we are.

I used one of my favourite layouts and one that I have used with this set of MFT stamps before. I really wanted to see how the design worked in a different colour combination.

My original pink and brown version is here - I'm not sure which I like best, but I do like the Promarker colouring on the latest one. I can't seem to stop using those pens now I've finally got the hang of them.

My Favourite Things stamps are just wonderful - I love their images and really must treat myself to another set sometime soon. The sentiments that come with each set are just amazing. On this card I've used 'Rain or shine' stamped on the front and inside I've stamped 'I'll be your umbrella'. How cool is that? The umbrella is part of the set too.

So get out your red and blue papers everyone and join in the fun at the Pink Elephant - we would love to see your designs in this colour scheme.

Celebration Time...

Happy First Birthday to the Penny Black Saturday Challenge - one whole year of great challenges and stunning work by the Design Team.

Penny Black stamps and this particular challenge blog are my favourites so I certainly wasn't going to miss out on their birthday celebrations.

It's a very special week over there so do check it out if you haven't already. Gorgeous work by team (as always) and fantabulous prizes for some lucky people. So much candy you'll probably put on weight just looking!!!

My cards for their 'Celebrate' challenge are actually very simple ones made using Stickaroos that I had bought as a present some time back. They have been hiding in one of my many folders and came to light during yet another tidying and sorting session. Who is it that sneaks in when we turn our backs and messes all our craft stuff up? We really do need to find this person and put a stop to it.

Stickeroos are great when you want to make some quick cards. As I've volunteered to make some cards for my friend Cynthia to sell to raise money for Bob's Bikathon they were ideal. If you would like to find out more about this do visit Rainbow Lady's Challenge Blog.

Materials:

• Penny Black Stickaroos
• Nesties large circle plain and scalloped
• Cuttlebug Swiss Dots
• Letraset rub ons (these were a free sample and are the best rub ons ever - I really must check out what you can buy)
• gems and card 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!!!

Happy Birthday Laura...

Yes today is my daughter Laura's birthday and it's also Pink Elephant Day so the card I made for her is also for our challenge.

This week is recipe week and the recipe is to use...

circles - scallops and punches!

I used a nestability circle, a the heart shaped punched frame and billions of scallops created by nestability dies.

The Art Deco image of the glamourous lady is a stamp by Hearts in Touch. It is actually part of a whole sheet of unmounted stamps everyone of which I absolutely love.

To accompany Laura's card I've also made her a wall hanging of 'love' quotes on decorated circles as a little extra for her birthday.



I made one of these before when she was at Granada Uni and she loved it, but when she came home she left it for one of her friends who was staying on and since then has pestered me endlessly to make her another.

I'm not keen on doing the same thing twice so I guess I put it off for a while. However, I think this one is the new improved version as I now have the circle nestability die and I've added so much bling you need dark glasses to look directly at it!!

The gold hanger at the top is actually part of some earrings that Laura gave me last week. Beautiful earrings that wouldn't hang properly, but oh wow they are superb for pulling to bits to use on cards 'n' stuff.

The sentiments are all computer generated and then centered and cut out using the nestability largest scalloped circle. Check out the bling - wow!

I actually have some packs of gemstone letters (bought in a sale), which I now wish I had bought more off, because I've found that by carefully cutting between the gemstones you can use each stone individually and on each sheet of letters you get thousands of gems (well alot!).

The pink central frame is made using a corner punch. I saw the technique for this explained on Becca Feeken's blog Amazing Paper Grace quite some time ago. Becca made some stunning cards using corner punches to make frames and was kind enough to share instructions for how to do the frames with visitors to her blog. If you have never seen Becca's work do pop over there - you will be amazed at her talent.

Well have a fantastic day everyone and I do hope you'll have chance to join us this week at the Pink Elephant. All the DT love visiting everyone's blogs and seeing the amazing samples everyone does - there is just so much talent out there.

Graduation Card...

Oh I have so many cards to do this week and this is not really one I need to make desperately, but when my new Leere Aldrich stamp arrived from Crafts U Love I just had to have a go at making a card for Laura's graduation in June.

I'm embarrassed to say that my daughter is a Paris Hilton Pink Person - yuk! She will love this image of a girl graduating with lots of bling, pink accessories and perfect pooch! Well at least I hope she will!

The card is also for the ABC challenge where we have reached the letter J and the team are focussing on 'Jagged Edges'. I hope my punched jagged edge counts - I must admit my first attempt at this card was more jagged as it had a few different punched layers, but sad to say it had a fatal accident in the trimmer and was sent to a better place.

Oh alright then it went in the bin, but don't tell anyone I'm wasting good card.

I would have entered this for another challenge, but discovered that they have restrictions and only accept cards done exclusively for them. How do you feel about that? I find it annoying and tend not to enter at all. I really can't see the point of not being able to combine challenges, but hey ho that's just me.

Chocolates hmmmmmmm...

Yeah - the challenge at Cute Card Thursday is marshmallows and chocolate (pink and brown) - a yummy combination and one that gave me chance to use some more of the chocolate box card I bought on my last visit to Kanban. Think I bought too many of these but not to worry only another 100 cards or so and I will have used it all up.

I used the fantastic chocolate selection backing paper and matted and layered it on to brown and pink card. This was finished off by using the pink chocolate box topper matted on a brown nestie scalloped circle as a centre piece.

Then surprise, surprise look at the hidden bit!!!


The chocolate box flap opens to reveal the birthday message!

At Daring Cardmakers the challenge is 'Hide and Seek' so I think my card is well suited to their challenge too.

Happy Birthday Carol...

Today Carol, one of the DT at the Pink Elephant is celebrating a rather special birthday. I'm not saying which one, but look at the card for a huge clue!! Sorry Carol - I do hope I'm not in big trouble for this!

To make Carol's card I experimented with the idea of using shredded paper again in a similar way to how I used it on one of my Easter cards. This time I wanted to create a sort of gift bag card with stuff spilling out of the top.

I hope Carole likes it and anyone else visiting my blog does too! If you'd like to find out exactly how I made the card pop over to the Pink Elephant as it's Tu-Tu Tutorial day over there. This week it was my turn to do the tutorial and I based it on this 'Gift Bag' card.

And here comes the matching bag...

Well as I made a pink card and gift bag for my daughter Laura and the Pink Elephant challenge last week I would be in big trouble if younger daughter, Shelley only received a card.

World Wars have started for lesser reasons than this so here is my little gift bag to match Shelley's card - all ready to be filled with eggs.

Making it has also helped me to catch up with quite a few challenges too! Brilliant stuff I love it when plans come together like that - it doesn't happen often!

The challenges are:

Easter at Creative Inspirations
Easter Treat Containers at The Cuttlebug Spot
More than two folds (there are loads needed in this bag) at the Cupcake Craft Challenge
Get Eggy at No time to stamp
Easter Somethings at Stamp Something

The bag was cut using the Plantain Schoolbook cartridge and my Cricut and the cute stamp is one I have used loads this Easter and is from a clear set by Woodware.

Pink Elephant Challenge 8

Yeah it's Monday and it's Pink Elephant day!! This week our challenge is to be creative with Easter in mind - so we're hoping to see lots of bunnies and chicks and all manner of Easter Creations.

My card and gift bag are for my PINK mad daughter - if it isn't pink it doesn't count. She is even wanting a PINK lap top!!!

The large flower mounts were cut using my Cricut (Plantain School book cartridge) and then embossed using the Swiss Dots folder. The rabbit in a choccy box image is a Penny Black stamp.

The bag was also cut using my Cricut machine and the same cartridge. It was cut on A4 size card at 6" which was the largest size the machine would do on that size of paper.

My Cricut is still fairly new to me and it took 3 pieces of card before I realised that any card with a coating needs to be set at a higher pressure. I do love the way it cuts out though - it's like magic!! I absolutely love it!! Hoping to install the Design Studio to use in conjunction with it next week - that should be fun!!!

Ribbon Holder...

A little while ago I made a present for my dear friend, Irene. It was a ribbon holder. I put pictures of it on my blog, like you do and had my socks blown off when I was picked out by the team at Inspirational for the holder to be featured on their blog.

They show such amazing work on there and to be picked out is just so special.

I was also shocked because although I liked the holder and I know my friend loves it I felt, like you do when you try something like this out, that I could have done it better!

Well here is the new improved 'all singing and dancing' version and the exciting thing is that the holder is being featured at The Pink Elephant this week as our very first tutorial!!

Isn't that just fantastic? So if you would like to know how I put the ribbon holder together do pop over to The Pink Elephant and check out the tutorial.

Thursday is going to be Tutorial day twice a month and I really can't wait to see what exciting things the other members of the design team have in store for us.

Cupcakes and chocolates...

Such an easy card to make using card and paper from my Kanban trip. I just love this printed card and the matching toppers. They were just so easy to put together.


Both prints seemed ideal to use in combination with this week's sketch at the Cupcake Challenge.


The brown card and candy pink paper used in the matting and layering are also from Kanban. The only addition I've made is the gold sentiment peel off and using my square nestabilities to create the focal point.

Hearts and flowers...

This is my new stamp from Pollycraft - isn't she gorgeous? Well I think she is - but both my daughters think she has an evil look! I prefer the term impish!!

My card is for quite a few challenges, which is perhaps as well seeing as not being very well this week really curtailed my crafting. The challenges are:

Love at http://pollycraftchallengeblog.blogspot.com/
Hearts and Flowers at http://papertakeweekly.blogspot.com/
Hearts at http://joannasheenscraftforum2966.yuku.com/
Crazy for Hearts at http://ourcreativecorner6.blogspot.com/
Hearts Galore at http://craftycreationschallenges.blogspot.com/

Hmmm something tells me lurve is in the air in the crafting world!

Materials used:

• Pollycraft Sherbert clear stamp
• Sakura Stardust pens and Lyra Aqua Colours
• Pink card and Dovecraft floral paper
• Cuttlebug Heart die used on shrink plastic
• gems and organza ribbon from stash

Another version (and maybe one showing the not so innocent side of this stamp) will be on my blog on Monday - I will also be telling you about something really BIG and PINK then too so do come back to see what's going on.

Spooky doodling...

I really thought I wasn't going to have time to craft today. It was my mum's birthday so we were pretty busy cake making and partying for her. She's was 85 today.

Anyway this evening I did intend to wind down but then got tempted to do something for Halloween and ended up making this Halloween card for Shelley. The middle is cut out using circle nestabilities and the witch image is stamped on the white inner card along with a Halloween sentiment and some extra bats. I also used clear alphabet stamps to stamp Shelley's name.

I hope I am not too late to enter this in the challenge at http://thisthursday.wordpress.com/ as I have been wanting to get round to this spooky challenge all week.

I also think that my cobweb doodles fit the criteria at http://www.mytimetocraftchallenge.blogspot.com/ where they want to see crafters doodling and drawing on their cards. Luckily the drawings can be really simple ones which is just as well for me!!

Materials used:

• circle scalloped nestability dies
• black card
• orange card
• white inner card
• witch stamp by Tanda
• bats and Halloween sentiment unknown company (but not a good one as they have fallen off the wood)
• clear alphabet stamps by Stamps Away
• Sakura pens used as paint for moon and cauldron on image

No card but interesting research...

I have had my Wizard die cutting machine for a long time. I bought it when they were first sold in England - infact when there was only one retailer in the whole country who stocked them. At the same time I spent a fortune on the geometric dies which I have used a lot and love cause they have been so useful.

However, the nestabilities hold so many more possibilities and naturally I would love to own those too. I was told that the old style geometric dies and the new nestabilities don't work together - hmmmmmmm well this morning I have been doing some investigating and have found that...

My old oval and rectangle dies are not suitable for combining with nestabilities but...

The large old geometric square and the large nestability square are almost identical - too late to save me money as I have already bought, but maybe if you already have the old die you might want to think twice about buying the new square. Photos below show the difference. The old dies are slightly bigger and therefore leave less of the scallop showing.

I haven't got the basic large nestability circle die set yet so can't show you the two together. The following photo shows the old circle die with the new large nestability circle. As you can see the dies don't work perfectly in the smaller shapes but do combine to a certain extent. The size 4 circle fits in the smaller nestability.

I hope this has proved useful to someone as I know I would have welcomed it when I was trying to decide which nestabilities to invest in.