Sleepytime Fairy Step Card

This week the theme for challenge #36 at Michelle Perkett Studio is to make a stair step card.  My DT card for this challenge is another baby card...nearly there lol!! Only one more to go at this stage and I'm done with baby cards for a while...I hope :)

I chose the very cute Sleepytime Fairy from Michelle's Etsy Shop for my card, printed her onto Xpress Graphx blending card and coloured with Copics. She was then highlighted with glitter pens. The image background is sponged with SU Bashful Blue. CS is SU Pale Plum & Perfect Plum...2 of my favourite SU colours and they've deleted one of them from the range...not fair!! I bought a pkt of each, which should last me for a while :) DP is from Kaiser Lilac Ave collection. SU punches were used for the lace borders, oval and scallop oval mounts. All wording is computer generated.

The tutorial for this card is HERE on Dawn Griffith's site. I like this variation on the stair card and it has a good size panel for the image.

Close up of the cute fairy:

I hope you'll come and play along with us this week and show us what amazing stair cards you create :)

60th Card

I am entering this card in the Michelle Perkett Studio challenge this week...the theme is Cutting, Cutting, Cutting. I love fussy cutting so thought I should try to get something done for this one. I had to make a 60th birthday card for one of our male friends (going to dinner with them tonight) and wanted to use that for the challenge card. Not good at male cards...much prefer girly cards!!!

I used Michelle Perkett's new Abby & Walter digi stamp and just printed out Walter for this card...didn't think Greg would think much of a curly haired cute girl on his card lol! Abby & Walter are so cute. I'm looking forward to printing the whole image out to use soon :)

Walter is printed onto Xpress Graphx blending card and coloured with Copics, to try and look like our beagle boy, Barney. The card is CM CS and DP is Kaiser from a 6" paper pad. The DP mat has been cut with my KNK Maxx (which I LOVE) and adhered to the base card. The 60 is also cut with Maxx from CS and JAC paper. The JAC paper is then adhered to the CS mat and glittered with AED Golden Sunset fine glitter. It was then popped up on foam dots.  The balloons are hand cut from coloured CS, coloured with Copics to give depth and then embossed for shine. They've been tied to "Barney's" tail with string. Barney and the blue ballooon have also been popped up on foam dots.

A close up of "Barney" aka Walter and his balloons :)

Mrs Owl

This is a little 4 x 4 thank you card I sent to my lovely friend Helen this week...she does such lovely things for me...I had a nice surprise parcel turn up in my mail box recently :)  Thank you Helen...*waving*

I've had sooo little crafting time lately...very depressing!  Work has been crazy busy and I'm just about over it!!!  I want to run away to a far-away place where no-one can find me...with my crafting supplies of course :)...and spend a month just chillin' out...I WISH!!!

Anyhow...the base card is CM CS from my stash, DP is Kaiser from the What a Hoot collection. Mrs Owl is from Pink Cat Studio, Q.T. Owl stamp set. This was my very first try with coloured pencils...it's been in the drawer for some time! She has been highlighted with a little glitter pen on her glasses and flower.

Hopefully the work stuff will settle down soon and I can get back to crafting and blogging regularly!

'Adorable' Easel Card

I actually had a little play time this weekend...YAY!! Work has been all-consuming lately...and I'm a bit over it! I've been wanting to have a play with pencils and blending medium for quite some time. I LOVE my Copics but also really like the effect achieved with pencils.  My lovely online friend, Ileana, inspired me to have a go with the pencils, with her beautiful work...which you can check out HERE...well worth going for a look-see as there's lots of beautiful eye candy to drool over :) I never tire of visiting her blog to look at her creations...thanks for all your wonderful inspiration Ileana :)

I've been wanting to colour up some of my gorgeous CC Designs since I bought them so decided I'd choose one of them to experiment on.  They are so CUTE :) The image is printed onto cartridge paper from a Quill sketch pad, coloured with Prismacolor pencils and blended with Odourless Solvent. I tried Gamsol as a blending agent also and like the solvent better, which is excellent as it's much cheaper than Gamsol! The background of the stump image has been sponged with SU Bashful Blue.

I circle cut the stump and matted it with SU Real Red CS, then cut out the cute girl and popped her up on dots. The spots on the toadstools are dots of Liquid Pearls, the cherries on her top have been highlighted with a glaze pen and her frills are highlighted with a little Frosted Lace Stickles.

The DP is digi paper from Scrapbookingmad...I found it today while looking for something with cherries to make this card. Am loving digi paper as I can get nearly anything I need at any time of the day :) The base card is SU So Saffron and the mats are SU Brocade Blue & Real Red.  "Adorable" is an SU stamp from the Warm Words set.

I am entering this card in the Digital Tuesday Challenge...make an easel card :)

A close up of the cute girl:

I LOVE using the pencils!!! Now it will be a major decision between Copics and Prismacolour pencils each time I colour lol!

A Stitch in Time

Here is my DT project for this week's challenge #32 at Michelle Perkett Studio. Our theme this week is A Stitch in Time, so we'd like to see some stitching (real or faux) on your creation :)

Most of my life my main creative outlet has been sewing, in one form or another, so for quite a while I've been thinking that Michelle's beautiful images would look great turned into stitcheries, which are all the craze in the sewing world at present.  When I saw the theme for this challenge, I decided to give it a go and chose Michelle's new Bloom, Grow, Live design to try out my idea.

I am soooo rusty on the hand sewing...haven't done any in soooo long...it felt quite weird! Once I got going though I really enjoyed it :) I'd forgotten how relaxing it is to sit and hand sew!  I've made my embroidered panel into a journal cover that slips on and off so that it can be used over and over again...it fits a standard A4 journal. The downside is that it took waaaay longer to do than colouring :(  Now I know why I've been papercrafting instead of sewing for the last 7 months lol!!

I transferred the design via a light table (a lamp underneath a piece of glass) onto a tone-on-tone patchwork fabric using a fine, permanent, sepia-coloured, felt tip pen. The design was then stitched in backstitch with 2 strands of DMC embroidery floss. The flowers were made using a lazy daisy type stitch and the water has been stitched using Kreinik blending filament. The words were stitched with one strand of embroidery floss for a lighter effect.

Close up and inside:

I hope you'll come and play with us this week and show us your creative 'sewing' ideas :) The other DT creations are amazing, so go and have a look HERE for some great inspiration..........

Holly's Card

I'm still on the baby cards lol! Two more to go and I think I've caught up for now :) This is a very different baby card for me...I'm a bit old fashioned when it comes to baby things...I like them all soft and pastel...I think they get trendy all too fast these days, without them doing so from birth!! I like to enjoy them as babies for as long as possible :) So....I surprised myself when I chose these papers to make up this card.

The gorgeous image is a freebie from Phindy's Place, if you play in the challenge this week...and how could anyone resist a Girlie challenge, let alone a lovely freebie to use for it :) I printed the image onto Xpress Graphx blending card and coloured with Copics, chalks and pencils. The image was highlighted with glaze pen and glitter pen.

The DP is from the new Kaiser 6" paper pad called Hey Birdie. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this paper!!! It's absolutely gorgeous. What I love about the Kaiser pads is that they include a few specialty papers and also have a couple of pages of die cut borders and tags. They are fantastic value! I think this one will become one of my very favourite Kaiser ranges. [I also bought some of the 12 x 12 papers to add to my stash...I keep telling myself I'm not going to buy anymore things to add to my "stash"...oh well, I guess I could have much worse addictions than paper!! :)]  The CS is SU Perfect Plum and Ivory Naturals. Both the image and its mount have been popped up on foam dots. "Welcome Holly" is computer generated and mounted on Perfect Plum. Three pink Sprinkles finish the card.

A close up of the cute bear:

Babies Galore!!

The other week we had a Flowers Galore challenge...this week I feel like there's a babies galore challenge happening in my house lol!!  There have been so many babies arriving around me lately, I can hardly keep up :)

A lovely work friend gave birth to beautiful twin boys last week so I wanted to make them a card each to go with their presents. I like to give a card for each baby so that they can keep them when they get older...bit hard to share a twin card, short of ripping it in half :) And I like to make them a little different to each other but still sort of the same!

I've been wanting to join in with one of Makeesha's Inkspirations challenges for ages but haven't managed, so when I saw sketch #25 for the challenge  this week I decided to use it for the baby cards. Unfortunately the challenge closed at midnight LAST night...I thought it was Friday night it closed...so I'm too late :(  Oh well...maybe next time I'll manage to get the timing right!

The image I used for the cards is Moon Baby from *Wink *Wink Ink. They were printed onto Xpress Graphx blending card and coloured with Copics. The ribbon and star have been highlighted with clear glitter pen. The background DPs and stripe strips were printed from digi paper kits. The welcome panels are computer generated. The 5 1/2" card bases are made from Grant Archival textured CS. All other CS is SU & CM. Sponging around the image is done with SU Baby Blue ink.

One of the "babies" :)

Now I need to get on and make 2 baby girl cards and I'm done for a few weeks until the next one arrives :)

Beach Babe...

WOW...we are up to challenge #32 already at Michelle Perkett Studio...my how time flies when you're having fun lol!! The theme for this week's challenge is Summer...here is my DT project:

I chose to make a photo frame and use Michelle's new, very cute, Penny...available at her Etsy shop HERE.  Thanks Michelle...gorgeous Penny arrived with perfect timing for this challenge :)

The 10" square wooden frame is from Kaiser and has been painted with navy blue craft paint. Penny was printed onto Xpress Graphx blending card and coloured with Copics. Her bathers have been highlighted with dimensional glaze (have to have shiny lycra bathers!!) and her floatie ring has been highlighted with a glaze pen.  Penny has been cut out and popped up on foam dots.

The DP is Kinder Cosmic from Francheville.  I made the water and sand by printing out a photo of the ocean and a rock wall, taken on our trip to the beach at Christmas. Then I cut them to size...and I even TORE and inked the 'sand' paper!!!! Our distressing challenge has inspired me to loosen up a bit lol!

The beach bag, shell and starfish are 3D stickers from K & Co. I cut the caption with my KNK Maxx from a sheet of 6" Basic Grey DP and inked the edges with a Copic marker.

A close up of cute little Penny:

Our weather is getting colder by the day here, as we head into winter. I'm one of those odd people who love winter. I was sooo over our hot summer this year...I don't like the heat.....so the cooler weather is very welcome! This little frame is the only sort of sun & sand I'm interested in for a few months :)