Spring Swing

Hey there!

Now, don't tell me you have not enjoyed the sense of freedom that comes from a good old-fashioned ride on a swing! I remember how much I loved the swing when I was young and I even remember the words and tune of a song I made up when on the swing in my Nana's backyard one Christmas day! I was eight at the time. I have to say, I still enjoy a swing ride even now!

I adore the retro-type image I have used on this card which I have made for the best friend of my Little Princess who is turning four. Chosen of course, because she loves the swing!

(Right click on photo and select 'View Image' for larger image).

I stamped the image three times in VersaMark and heat embossed them in the three different colours, then cut and embossed the squares with Nestabilities. I pop-dotted them onto the lilac cardstock. I cut the fourth square with a scalloped Nestie and stamped in Versamark the happy birthday sentiment from Lawn Fawn's Sophie's Sentiments and heat embossed it also. The words of the stamp are side by side, but being a photo-polymer stamp, it bends easily and I placed the word I wanted to stamp on the edge of a small block and bent the other word up and out of the way. This way I could stamp the words individually, one below the other, without having to cut the stamp in half. :) I love photo-polymer stamps!! 

I pop-dotted the scalloped square onto green cardstock, on an angle, which I then adhered to the lilac cardstock and placed some bling around the sentiment. I stamped a background onto the right side of the pink card base and adhered a rectangle of dp onto the left. I placed the lilac square on top at an angle, my idea being that movement is the whole point of this card. The card was then decorated with the flowers to which I added some clear Kindy Glitz.

I am entering this card into these challenges:

Scrapbook Boutique - Colour Challenge using pink, lilac, white and green

Creative Card Crew - Flowers

Incy Wincy Designs - Anything Goes

Bizzy Becs - CheerFull Spring

As we head to a re-match this weekend of the AFL Grand Final I have to sign off saying GO PIES!

May your days be filled with inspiration,

It's a Boy's Birthday!

Hi There, I will try to keep my entry succinct this evening as I have some more crafting to do! LOL

This birthday card was for a friend of my twin boys whose birthday was on the weekend.

 

With three different cogs wheel stamps positioned on a clear block, I inked them up in red and stamped on the base of the white card, turning the block after each re-inking. I then went back with the bolts and screw stamps and individually stamped those in black. I then stamped Happy Birthday in Versamark and heat embossed with black embossing powder. I then ran a strip of red cardstock through my precious Cuttlebug and placed it onto a strip of black, which was then adhered to the cardfront. 

The stamp set I used is called 'robots2build' meaning you design your own from different options of body, legs arms and head. Lots of fun multi-step stamping! I had my son choose the stamps. I then coloured this guy in with copics, again utilising the limited colours at my disposal! The grey was all done with one pen, darkened in places by going over the area numerous times. I stamped the head and body a second time and cut out the inner area of the body and pop-dotted these onto the base image. I have since realised I should have probably done that to his feet also! I covered the cogs on his body, coloured red, with glossy accents and I placed clear rhinestones to the buttons on the side of his body, which I coloured yellow with a copic marker. 

I then punched holes and placed eyelets in the corners with a cropadile and placed small pieces of yellow carstock behind the holes to give a bit more impact.

Products used:

{Stamps} of Life robots2build

Memento Ink Tuxedo Black

Memento Ink Lady Bug

Copic Markers C-3, Y06, R29

Glossy Accents

Rhinestones

Cuttlebug folder Spots and Dots

Black eyelets

We R Memory Keepers Cropadile

I am placing this card into these challenges:

Truly Scrumptious - Sketch challenge

Digi Doodle Shop - Embossing

Charisma Cardz Challenges! - Anything Goes

The Sisterhood of Crafters - Birthday

Ai Factory - Anything Goes

The Creative Cottage - Birthday Boy

Thanks for peeking!

May your days be filled with inspiration,

Distress!

Hello There! Where does a week go? Mine has been exceptionally busy; I've had a few to cards to make and hope to share over the next few days. I just wish I could work faster. I look at the blogs of some amazing talents who are just able to turn their masterpieces out at the rate of knots - I take 2 hours just to decide how I want to create something and chop and change as I go  along - and then when I'm finished I'm still not sure - something is missing, doesn't look quite right... Am I the only one who has these doubts or insecurities?! I keep hoping with experience my confidence will grow and my design abilities will improve. I know I need to grow my stash of embellies too; I think that might be part of my problem. At the end of the day, I find it difficult to be objective about my work. Ahh, if only these things came easily to me!!

So having said that, any constructive criticism is welcome.

This card was made at the request of a friend for her daughter's 12th birthday. Green is her favourite colour and she loves nature:

The bird stamp is from the same set as my last card, this time clear embossed onto white cardstock and then coloured over with distress inks. I distressed the edges  of the white cardstock and layered it onto brown, which I also distressed. I made a box flower as shown in this tutorial, but only used scalloped circles:

Products used:

Inkadinkadoo clear stamps Gem Stone Birds
Stampin' Up! Sincere Salutations
Versamark
Clear embossing powder
Tim Holtz Paper Distresser
Distress Ink Crushed Olive
Distress Ink Frayed Burlap
American Crafts Glitter Cardstock
Colorbox chalk ink Orchid Pastel
Kaisercraft bling
Wool, feather, butterfly, dp paper from stash


I am entering this card into the following challenges:

Scrappy Frogs Challenge Blog is after Handmade Flowers

Crafty Catz  are looking for Chocolate and Green

Cute Card Thursday's theme is Tweet and a Flutter

Daring Cardmakers wants to see All Up in the Air



I have been fortunate this week. I received my wonderful prize from Merry at Merrymade Cards and Crafts


Letraset Aqua Markers, paper flowers and Merry handmade crotched flowers



Sticker sheets from The Sticker Store



She also surprised me with a lovely card and some Cuttlebugged pages. I love that most of the pages she sent me were embossed from folders I don't yet have! Thankyou Merry!

Today I received some gorgeous ribbons from Marcia from The Stamp Spot as a prize from her 1st birthday celebrations last week.





Thankyou for the lovely card and congratulations Marcia! May there be many successful years ahead of you!! :)

I was also lucky enough to win a $25 voucher from Scrapbook Boutique last week for their Magnolia challenge! Thankyou so much Evelyn!! The challenges are fun and the new challenge is a colour inspiration challenge using the colours pink, lilac, white & green. Open to Australian residents. 

On the weekend I won a Facebook challenge put to followers by the talented Zoe of Make It Crafty. She asked for a 135 character ad to entice new followers to join in. It was then put to a vote requiring followers to choose their fave and I was lucky enough to receive a $35 voucher to the Make It Crafty online store. Find her Facebook page here. As a follower you will be entitled to inside information, challenges, prizes and an occasional discount. Lots of fun to be had! There is a free digi stamp in the offing at the moment from the store for a limited time. If you have an interest in copic colouring, be sure to take a look! Zoe is very helpful and has a lot of energy and ideas. Thanks again Zoe!

Phew! That's it for now. Back soon!! :)

May your days be filled with inspiration,

Get Well Soon

Hi There! Well, it seems my daughter is slowly getting better, thank goodness! At least for most of the day for the past two she has been more like herself. I guess I'll be chasing her in circles once again instead of being paged from the kitchen to the lounge room couch/beanbag with a heat pack on a regular basis!

This card is for a friend who has had a few difficulties health-wise this year and last week had a life threatening reaction to who knows what. Hopefully the medicos work out what caused it so it doesn't happen again.

I am placing this card into the following challenges:

Raise the Bar is looking for orange, brown and green

Stampin' Sisters in Christ are after real or faux stitching somewhere on your card/project

Pollycraft is requesting autumn colours

and

Paperplay Challenges is also asking for work featuring autumnal colour schemes.

Products used:

DCWV dp from the Whimsy stack
Inkadinkadoo clear stamps Gem Stone Birds
Stampin' up sentiment from Sincere Salutations
Versamark
Colorbox Chalk ink Lime Pastel
White embossing powder
Chocolate embossing powder
Uniball Signo Broad white gel pen
Spellbinders Nestabilities petite ovals
Ribbon from my stash
Rhinestones in clear and green

Today I was lucky enough to receive a surprise in the mail as the result of  entering a Facebook mini challenge set by Kelly Marie of Lawn Fawn. All of the entrants received this surprise and I want to shout out a big Thankyou for my oh-soooo-cute Heebie Jeebies! There is a new release week with sneak peeks going on over there on the Lawn Fawn blog with lots of chances to win a giveaway. Run, don't walk!

One more thing - when you visit, take a minute to check out my sidebar - you will find candy that you might like to add to your own blog! My newest addition is Ying's Birthday Blog Candy Giveaway. Yum!!

May your days be filled with inspiration,

More Colours Needed! (or, My First Magnolia)

Okay - I know it - I need a class in copic colouring. Thank goodness I am taking a class next month (I can only hope that it helps). In the meantime, thank goodness for You Tube! I  appreciate those who are kind enough to spend time sharing their knowledge and skills for the benefit of others. One person whose tutorials I have been watching lately is Suzanne Dean. She helped me colour Tilda! I currently have only the Set A of 36 Ciao markers, so really not many colours that will blend together well. I do have Set B winging its way to me  and I found that there is no E000 in the Ciao range, so I ordered a sketch marker too. No sooner had I paid for it, I received an email to say it was posted - can't ask for better service than that!! Anyway, I did the best I could with what I have and it only took me all day to make this card! LOL. Granted I had numerous interruptions as my daughter is still unwell and we spent the day in the ED of the local hospital on Friday. I have had too much of hospitals this year and really, 2010 can't finish soon enough for me. 

My first real attempt at using copics: Tilda with Peony is for a friend who celebrated her birthday this week:

I am entering this into the following challenges:

Scrapbook Boutique is looking for a project using a Magnolia Tilda stamp

Craft Your Days Away is asking for Girly and Glitter

and

Southern Girls Challenge first ever challenge theme is Anything Goes

A quick run down of products used:

Magnolia stamp Tilda with Peony
Darkroom Door background stamp French Script
Lawn Fawn stamps Bannerific and Sophie's Sentiments
Copic Markers
Memento Ink Tuxedo Black
Distress Ink Milled Lavender
Colorbox Chalk Orchid Pastel
Sakura Gelly Roll pen Clear Star (used on handmade flower and Tilda's peony)
Uniball Signo white gel pen
Spellbinder Nestabilities Label 8
We Are Memory Keepers Corner Chomper
Lace from stash, one piece coloured with copic marker
Butterfly and pearls from my stash

Before I sign off, I would like to thank Merry of  MerryMade Cards and Crafts as I was the second prize winner of her generous blog candy giveaway. Do yourself a favour and visit her blog, she rocks! :)

Thanks for looking!

May your days be filled with inspiration,

Happy Birthday Mate

Hi There! Wow, the last few days have been a bit rough with my Little Princess having been quite unwell and leaving Wonderful Man and me with little sleep through the night. She has been to the GP three days in a row and is hopefully on the mend, but she has been in a lot of pain. She is a trooper though and thankfully she has some brighter moments. I just hope her pain stops soon. It is awful to watch her go through this and not be able to do much to help other than comfort her.

My Dad actually 'commissioned' me to make this card for his mate! He told me what he was after and I searched ebay for a stamp that fit what he had in mind. I was really trying to find an image of a man with a walking stick, but I am pretty happy with this one nonetheless. I am sure there is something out there and I hope to come across it sometime. You can probably gather by the card that my Dad's mate has a good sense of humour and the two of them are often heard giving each other a ribbing! I am happy too that I managed to find a way of getting flowers and a bit of glitz onto a card without it appearing feminine!

Supplies
Hero Arts Background stamp Clouds
Hero Arts stamp Slanted Tree
Art Impressions stamp Norm
Versamark
Gold embossing powder
Gelly Roll Stardust Clear Journal Glitter Pen
Eyelets
Copic Markers
Colorbox Cats Eye Inks
Stickers from my stash
We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper
We R Memory Keepers Cropadile             

I am entering this card into a few challenges:

Merry from MerryMade Cards and Crafts would like to see a coloured image and some form of sticker

Crafty CardMakers have a Spotlight Challenge on glimmer and sparkle

and

Cards for Men's theme is long summer days.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention! I won two great stamp sets as a newbie on the Inkurable Stampers blog. Thankyou Sarah! This month's theme is Shoes!! :) Sarah also has Gothic Arch challenges. Take a peek at her blog and join in!

May your days be filled with inspiration,

Happy Father's Day!

Hi all! I hope you had a relaxing/creative/fun-filled weekend! Happy Father's Day to all the great Dads out there!! I thought I would share the cards I made for my fantastic Dad and for my super Father-in-Law. Again these are fun cards and perhaps a little cheeky - both these characters have great personality!

The feline stamps I used are from the Circus set from Sparkle n Sprinkle. The quality of these stamps is just superb and they are very well priced; the postage costs for me in Australia were minimal. The images are coloured with water-based markers. I used DCWV dp on both cards. The squares of paper on the tiger card were originally black and off-white, but I used a water-based yellow marker to colour it up. I have used Lawn Fawn's Bannerific once again, this time along with Harold's ABCs which are The Best font stamps - they line up perfectly side by side and close together - no silly looking spaces between letters. I actually thought I would struggle to fit the sentiment onto either of the banners, but as you can see, they fit perfectly! The sentiment and banner on the tiger card are embossed in silver and the faux stitching was done with a silver Uni-ball Signo Broad gel pen. Distress inks coloured the background on both cards, but I am currently lacking green, so the grass was done with chalk ink! I must add greens to my stash, pronto! (Especially as it's my favourite colour...!)

I have entered these into 2 challenges - 

Paper Romance Challenges is asking for Furry Friends

 and
The Corrosive Challenge blog is seeking For the Guys

I feel a little guilty  for not having made a card for the Wonderful Man in my life - he did make me a Mother's Day card earlier this year. <3 I sadly ran out of time. However, the Teen of the House cooked pancakes for breakfast, the Pre-Teens were up at the crack of dawn making cards and the Little Princess had make n takes (lol) from a couple of places. All in all, I think he's forgiven me! Happy Father's Day Handsome!!

Feel free to leave a comment, it would be great to hear your thoughts.  :)

May your days be filled with inspiration,

Be Seein' You!

Hi There! This card was a lot of fun to make and it is bright and cheery, like the person for whom it was made :)

The dance teacher of my children is a uni student and she is leaving this weekend to venture interstate and complete her degree. It is a great opportunity for her; we'll miss her dearly, though we know we'll see her on her visits home. She's a gem to be sure - one of those generous people who give and give and expect nothing in return. She is also highly motivated and I know she'll go a long way in life and we wish her every success.

I am entering this card into two challenges: Lawn Fawn's Facebook Mini Challenge - Quote: 'Use any type of letter stickers (for example, Thickers) and Bannerific together in a crafty project by Thursday night (September 2nd) to be entered to win a prize' and Card Positioning System  blog's CPS Sketch 182.

The card:

I used the Tiny Bubbles Cuttlebug embossing folder on white cardstock, rounded the corners and placed it onto the card front. I then stamped in Stazon each of the gorgeous Lawn Fawn creatures from the set Critters In The Sea onto various colourful card stocks and cut them out. I pop dotted the whale as he is the star of this card!  I stamped the whale's spout and 'have a whale of a time' from the same set, curving the sentiment to fit between the whale and dolphin - gotta love that you can do that with clear stamps! Lawn Fawn's Bannerific stamp was then adorned with American Crafts foam Thickers Rockabye - not a goodbye, but a 'Be Seein' You' or 'Be Sea-in' You'!?!  LOL. I added pearls to finish it off and pop dotted it onto the card front and placed Cotton Candy Stickles on the hermit crab's shell.

Have a great night!

May your days be filled with inspiration,