Offensive Material?

Why is this clean and simple lark so difficult? You'd think it would equal quick n we'd all be rejoicing! I hope the clash of patterns doesn't offend anyone too much, the fairy needed some kind of... mount n I was gettin desperate, ok?!

I'd like to enter this for:
Less Is More - Sketch
Ribbon Girl - Green & Yellow
LOTV - Punch It (the fairy was punched out with my new MS punch!)
Get Funky - Zing Into Spring (utilising the beautiful freebie paper)

For Once I'm not late!

My mom told me I was born earlier than I was due... the first & last time I'd ever be early! Punctuality ain't my strong point but thanks to the freebie from Design House Digital and Wonderland's White Rabbit I've actually managed to produce a card on time for the Daring Cardmakers challenge!

Not sure the coloured card blank exactly enhances the design but T minus 3 days til I can empty my bank account at the NEC n stock up!

Daring Cardmakers - Going Postal

Showing My Drawers!

I've been thinking about making one of these for a while but Create & Craft were showcasing a Hunky Dory Kit this morning which spurred me on to google for a tutorial and find this. I did look at others but as I'm essentially an impatient soul, the fact that the drawers in this one don't have to be glued really appealed to me!

I'm not that good at matching papers (again with the impatience?) so I reached for a freebie Kate Knight stack to satisfy the matching elements and the '6" or smaller' element of the materials needed. The magazine I got the paper from also did a chipboard kit that coordinated so I used one of those for the stopper and cut into another sheet to decoupage some of the flower heads to add a bit of interest.

Fly Me To The Moon

Gotta love a bit of Frank, huh? Paula at Pollycraft set the theme of 'Fly Me To The Moon' for the Monday Challenge and altho it sounds strange at first, she did say it could incorporate flight so when I finally used up this image thats been sitting round my desk, I thought it might just fit:

This was one of those cards that very much evolved as it went along! I had the idea of printing one of the Pink Petticoat Perfect papers over one of their Kraft designs but forgot to set the borderless printing up but then decided I quite liked the border. Like I said the Hero Arts Vintage Skyland image was in my half finished basket but I didnt like what I'd started so I cut it off n then trimmed some birds off to make it fit the dims of this card. The large bow came about by me trying to disguise my printer blobbing on the card blank - don't u just love technology?

I Won't Be Defeated!

After my complete failure in meeting the Less Is More rules, I was invited to try again and as usual I've left it til the last minute! Hopefully, this will be more successful tho...

Can u tell the card is pearlescent pastel blue?! Its from a create and craft pad I bought in the end of year sale...

WOYWW 92 - The Big Reveal!

Morning WOWWYers! Not a lot of anything interesting on my desk at the mo but I did want to share this with you:

This is the final design for those wedding invites, I was talking about what seems like an age ago. People were giving me some great suggestions for ways to decorate the giant cupcake shape we were working with but unfortunately the bride & I both lost our nerve and went for a square design with nine appertures and foiled vellum cupcakes... you can't really see on this pic but the insert is a pearlised pale blue colour which peeks thru the vellum... Hope u like it!

To find out more about WOYWW, visit the denizen of the desks Miss Julia

Show Us Your Heart!

The challenge over at Funky Hand this month, is "Show Us Your Heart". My entry uses papers and a digi stamp from the Colour Me Happy collection.
The text is cut out from Create & Craft pastel shimmer card by Robo Cop in my fave font at the moment Mr & Mrs Popsicle. Not sure if its quite clean & simple but I'll enter it for the Less Is More challenge too, if thats ok with you...

Alcohol Addiction?

On her WOYWW post yday Nicky announced that she'd succumbed to peer pressure and treated herself to some alcohol inks. I could easily empathise with her as I did the same after seeing King Tim on QVC last week and bought the set of 12 Brights, an applicator & some blending solution from Artists Trading Post - for a very reasonable price in my humble opinion and it was delivered within two days.

What followed was big brownie points for the push back/pile high crowd (an method adopted by many WOYWWers) cos I sat at my desk and thought "what can I try this out on?" I tried vellum scraps, the remains of a laminating pouch and then I found an offcut of mirri card.... WOW is all I can say

These pictures dont even do it a little bit of justice, the first one looked like a sheet of copper, its amazing! The butterfly on the green card is stamped on inked laminating pouch and I dyed the lace on the other card to match my attempts on glossy photo paper (not such a success).

Inspirational

Last week Pink Petticoat announced a new guest designer, the amazingly talented Lucy Abrams and Liz did advise you to get a cuppa n a comfy chair before you browsed her blog and she was so right! I've spent a good few hours on Lucy's blog and Flickr stream over the last few days and more than a few of her amazing designs have found their way into my inspirations folder. Her style is so bright & fresh and quite often clean and simple which is a style I wish I could adopt successfully! (She does tend to finish a lot of her cards with sewing though and I don't think my moms fragile mental state could cope with me and the sewing machine making friends!)

My best friend is about to give birth to her second child (she already knows its a boy) so in my recently inspired way, I combined the elements from two of Lucy's cards here and here to create this:

N.B. I had no idea 'Twinkle Twinkle' had so many words!

The Kraft 'card base' is printed from Pink Petticoats 'Organics' Kraft pack (I have a feeling you will be seeing a lot of this!) and I created the label shape myself in Robo Master for Robo Cop to cut out. They need a little tweaking as they are not perfectly square but as this seems to be a big shape at the mo, it seems worth the effort.

All in all, I'm mightily pleased with this!

Bowtastic!

Hurrah! I tied my first *successful* bow! I followed this tutorial but I think the green bow is neater than the pink so I might have to watch it a few more times before I declare myself cured, lol

As a fellow sufferer of an uncommon name, I figured my cousins daughter Niamh wouldn't own many things with her name on (or in my case name spelt correctly!) when mom suggested making the gorjuss tag part of this design into a removable bookmark, I thought adding her name would be a useful touch.

I followed a tutorial from Jacqui on the Lili Of The Valley Ideas To Inspire blog to make the base card, the paper is from a magazine freebie Kate Knight stack, the ribbon is American Crafts and the lettering & border were cut out by good ol' Robo Cop.

I'd like to enter this for the Pollycraft Monday Challenge - Special Birthday

Love Machine

A regular WOYWWer, the incredibly talented Mary Anne posted a tutorial for a pop-up slider card and I just had to give it a go... I did away with the top flap (altho in hindsight not sure it was the best idea) and drew it up in Robo Master. Then I was at a loss for how to decorate it until I managed to bully the rep at work into letting me make him a Valentine card for his wife. The Pollycraft digi stamp is called Tin Rose and I printed him on to a sheet from Funky Hand's Sticky Lemons collection and coloured the rose with a Promarker.

I'd like to enter this for:
C.R.A.F.T. Challenge - Valentines
By The Cute & Girly - Red Is All Around

Young Love

I love easel cards. They are so simple to create and yet look like so much more work has gone in to them than a bog standard card, three cheers for the person who invented them!

Ok so technically this is a calendar not a card, but still... The calendar is downloaded from http://creativemamma.com/ as a printable freebie AND I actually cut it out with a ruler n scalpel! Proud of me?! Its sitting in some cut up packaging that I glossy accented to the card to make a see-thru pocket. The check paper is from Funky Hand Dreams Come True CD and I created the border 'punch' in Robo Cop's software by welding some flowery shapes together.

I'd like to enter this for:

Get Funky - Going Round In Circles

Simply Create - Colour Challenge

C.R.A.F.T. Challenge - In The Roll Of A Die



In The Round

You may have noticed I'm a bit of a sucker for shaped cards and as I can't cut an actual circle to save my life, this design was a lil ambitious but I still love how it turned out! I saw this wonderful example (see right) after a convoluted blog hop that I think started out on somebodys WOYWW post and decided I wanted to make one!

 
 
 
 
With The Ribbon Girl challenge of pink & green in mind, I set out to emulate the brilliant clouds (did I read somewhere that this is a die?) with dry embossed vellum behind the apertures and a rub-on sentiment & image morphed it into a card for a colleague at work who's leaving.. providing the 'guys' at work don't think its too girly!

Zero Calorie Recipe

Daring Cardmakers have every girls dream this week! A recipe with zero calories... unless u eat the card afterwards, I spose there must be some calories in paper?

Recipe:
1 image - T-Rex by Zenware Designs from mygrafico

2 kinds of ribbon - from the Fantastic Ribbons/Papercraft Inspirations offer

3 different papers - from Deena Rutter's Maybe Collection on Design House Digital

Winged Things

Lili of The Valley have such cute images don't they? I think I would be a constant lil melted puddle of "Ahhh" if I worked there!

The challenge for this week is 'Things With Wings", which of course they have a lot of in their repertoire. The flying theme gave me the inclination to make my fairy at least float, if not fly although looking at the pic I think I need to use a more subtle mechanism... like something that isn't bright green! Doh!

The papers are from Celeste Knight's Sunshine collection which was on special offer at Design House Digital during their first birthday celebrations. Oh and the rose is a cutting file I found for Robo Cop by downloading the latest version of the software which includes a magic doorway to the Silhouette shop!

Moving On

The CRAFT challenge is for moving components so this seemed to fit the bill. I was aiming for a "looking out a spaceship window" kind of theme.

The robot is suspended from invisible thread so he swings when the card is stood up.

Something New

My new stamp really reminds me of a stained glass window, a theme I intend to play on at some point but for this attempt I stuck to Keryn's favourite colour combination of red, white & black. I'm entering this for the Pollycraft challenge which has the theme of 'New Things' - the stamp, the ink & the ribbon are all new and the flock paper is absolutely ancient!

WOYWW 84 - A plea for help!

Morning peeps! Welcome to WOYWW 84! Head over to Queen Julia's place to find out more...

Bit of a dump this week, as I've not really been in here much lately. I've had yet another move around and four days later I still like it so thats gotta be a record. On my desk is a new stamp and two fluid chalks I got out of the bargain bin at Crafty Bunch in Ketley on Saturday and a sheet of playing with a V&A quilt stamp I also bought (cos it was reduced n ive had my eye on it for a while). Other than that is the remains of an attempt to get me a commission (altho I doubt I'll charge her cos I'm too nice!) for some wedding invites. I made some examples of  favour boxes along the theme of a cupcake and while I was trying to give my sales pitch she decided she liked the idea to use the one design as the invite, if I could make it thinner so after a couple of botched attempts, I managed to produce this:

But here is where the plea comes in... I'm really at a loss for how to decorate it! The original image looks like this which I think looks more like a kiddies party than a wedding invite n its kind of coloured my way of looking at it so all the things I picture in my head seem a bit lame! Any ideas?

Sunday Best

In the latest edition of Papercraft Inspirations, Angela Poole shares a design for an origami dress. I can't really resist a bit of origami.... I even translated the design into a RoboCop file, altho in the end it worked out better if I drew the nine sections out on the back first instead of folding/scoring them.