Smash* Time!

Afternoon all,

 

So what feel's like an age ago I showed you the front page of my Smash* folio for the Baltic Highlights cruise I went on last July. Well I've been stockpiling bits and pieces to compile the rest of the folio but the biggest problem I had came to getting the photo's printed in the sizes I wanted. I really struggled to get the full range of image sizes I wanted to do the layouts and several attempts failed and various online companies also didn't do what I wanted but I have finally found a company that prints 'collage' style images so I can have a 10x8 print which is compiled of pictures in any range of sizes I want and can be slotted together in a number of format.

 

Having waited patiently for them to be delivered and having been delayed due to the snow, I have finally compiled and completed the first three pages of my Smash* folio and wanted to share them with you. I'd love your feedback and any idea's for layouts or accessories. I want to keep it fairly CAS, as that's my kind of thing but any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

So without further ado:

 

Until next time! Happy Crafting!

Crafty Catz DT Card - Cute as a Button

Good morning lovely makers and creators,

 

Friday is upon us once again and with it, a new challenge over at Crafty Catz. This week's challenge has been set by the lovely Dianne who would like to see you make something 'As cute as a button'. Nice and simple - just use a cute image and make sure you used buttons on your creation.

 

We are sponsored this week by Paper Shelter and Digital Delights.

 



 

 

For this weeks challenge I decided to use an old Mojo Monday Sketch from 2012 to create this:

I used this sweet image which is called Happy Birthday to Me and coloured him in with my beloved promarkers in the following colours; poppy, canary, saffron, gold, pear green, sky blue, lime zest, ivory, caramel, dusky rose, blush, cinnamon and cool aqua.

I decided to decoupage him slightly - only 4 layers in total and then I used up bits of paper from K&Co Citrronella Pad, My Minds Eye - Pretty Please Spring Collection and Papermania mixed sentiment stack.

The whole thing was finished off with corresponding plain papers and some buttons.

That's it for this week. Do pop over to the blog and see the fabulous creations by the rest of the team and until next time, happy crafting!

Live Life Beautifully

Morning all,

How is everyone? I hope you're all keeping warm and safe - to anyone whose been suffering from the snow, I hope you're life hasn't been too disrupted. I have to admit I love the snow and as I walk everywhere anyway it's not been too much of a pain - I just dug out the walking boots :)

Anyway, enough of this rambling. Today's card is a just because - mainly because I wanted to practice colouring hair and I find that the delicious Saturated Canary images are perfect for this.

I settled on the beautiful Rose Red (mainly because I have yet to use her in a project) and set about trying to get some depth and tone in her hair - I'm relatively pleased with how it turned out. It actually has more range and depth in reality but the light levels when I photographed it were awful!

I then decided to keep the colour palate as simple as I could and used lots of blues- which isn't my usual go to choice. I layered the image on plain blue card stock and settled on a beautiful background from Bunny Zoe and a sentiment from the same collection. Some blue ribbon a couple of silver pips and a couple of circles covered in glitter finished the layout.

I used the following Promarkers: burnt orange, terracotta, spice, apricot, ivory, blush, pastel pink, moss, duck egg, cool aqua, sky blue, pastel blue, henna, caramel, cinnamon and gold.

I would like to enter this into the following challenges:
Everybody Art - Girls
Creative Inspiration - One for the girls
Saturated Canary - Movie Inspiration (Cinderella)
Stampin for the Weekend - Something girlie
Dream Valley - Girls, Girls, Girls
Sketch Saturday- 













That's it for me today, until next time, happy crafting!

Crafty Catz DT - Anything but a Card

Good morning lovely crafters of blogland,

How is everyone today? I hope you've had a good week! Friday can only mean one thing on my little space of the web and that is a new challenge over at Crafty Catz. This weeks challenge has been set by the fabulous Sassy who wants to see you make anything but a card this week.

Our sponsors are the fabulous Crimson Cloud who are once more offering our lucky winner 3 packs of die cuts:

 

This weeks challenge allowed me the perfect opportunity to do a project that I've had on my pinterest board for a while:

Isn't this just the cutest little gift box? I found this adorable owl, who is called Sophie by the way, on this fabulous website. It is a completely free template to download for personal use.

I tweaked the template slightly as I don't have a scalloped circle punch or die and I didn't have any buttons suitable for the eyes, but pretty much it's a straight copy from the template.

I used up scraps of card and papers for this project. It uses almost a full A4 sheet of cardstock but the rest of it is perfect for all those odd bits of paper we crafters refuse to throw away. The only addition to the project I made was a little heart button on top of a flower which matched the colour theme perfectly and I felt just finished the design.

I would also like to enter this into Cupcake Challenges this week, who also have the theme of anything but a card.

So that's it for this week. Thanks for stopping by and until next time - happy crafting!

Monster Birthday

Morning everyone!

 

How is everyone? I hope you're all staying safe in this current snow/frost. My advice, for what it's worth, is stay home - do food shopping online for home delivery and spend as much time with your craft supplies as possible :)

 

Anyway, those little pearls of wisdom aside I have a card to share with you today. This is for my Dad's birthday at the end of the month, but he's following me in trend and will be on board a cruise ship for his birthday and so I had to get his card made so I could send it out with him. As usual, I struggled to come up with a card for him, I really have issues with male cards, but eventually I settled on this image from Tiddly Inks. I thought it was somewhat appropriate given that there are 3 of us (me and two brothers) and he always calls us his monsters..... 

I paper pieced all the monsters - no I won't be repeating this practice any time soon! It's worked out really well but I need some better scissors before I try it again. All the papers are oddments from various paper pads. It was a great way to use up scraps.

I finished the card with some ribbon and a little button. The sentiment inside simply says, wishing you a monster birthday! So that's it for this one. I would like to enter this into Dream Valley Challenges - Anything Goes

Until next time, happy crafting!

Challenging Organisation

Good Afternoon all,

Just a quick project I wanted to share with you all - I've been meaning to get it photographed and up on the blog for a week or so but things kept getting in the way.

One project I promised myself I would do to ease my time management in the year ahead was to make a DT challenge organiser. Now, I know many of you design for numerous teams and how you keep it all together is beyond me. So I designed myself a little project folder in which I can keep all the information, my notes and sketches together so that when I come to write up my posts I'm not trying to hunt down scraps of paper with random jottings on them.

I thought A5 was a practical size and so this is what I came up with:

Each page has a section for when the challenge goes live, whose challenge theme it is, what the theme is and any notes relevant i.e. sponsors image etc. A section for that weeks sponsor and what the prize will be, a box for my design notes and sketches and a section to keep track of the materials used and the promarker colours etc.

 

I printed everything out onto pre-punched paper from Paperchase and its all stored in a recycled folder, which I may get round to decorating at some point.

 

Just a quick project which I hope you all like.

 

Until next time. Happy Crafting

Crafty Catz DT - Buttons and Bows

It's Friday! the end of the week is here at that can only mean one thing - it's time for a new challenge over at Crafty Catz. This weeks theme has been set by Kim, who would like to see Buttons and Bows on your project. Nice and simple.

Our sponsor's this week are Mulberry Crafts, who are giving the lucky winner this fabulous goodie bag:

I'm very jealous! just look at all those fabulous flowers.

Anyway, onwards with this weeks card, I decided it was about time I did another circle card and this is what I came up with:

For my card I used this adorable image which was a freebie over on the Tiddly Ink's blog last year, called You're a Doll, and I'd been dying to find an excuse to use it. I covered the base card in a lightweight mauve card and then mounted on a Dovercraft Teatime Doily. In the centre is a small circle cut from design paper which has a purple flower pattern - I can't remember what it's called as it's so old, sorry!

The image was coloured with my beloved Promarker's in the following colours: Blush, Dusky Rose, Lilac, Mustard and Gold.

The whole thing was finished with a lilac bow, three buttons from stash and a small thread bobbin, which is a stamp which came with my last copy of Cardmaking and Papercraft that I wrapped some embroidery thread around.

I would like to also enter this card into the following challenges:
Everybody Art - Pastel Colours
Tiddly Inks - Anything Goes

So that's it for this week. Thanks for dropping by and until next time, happy crafting!

Birthday Roses

Good afternoon,

How's everyone feeling today? blog land still seems very quiet after the Christmas period, is work draining everyone's Mojo? I do hope it's that and not that you're all down with the horrid flu bug that's doing the rounds.

Anyway, enough rambling, todays card is a for a friend's birthday. Thankfully, I'll be seeing her at the weekend which meant that I could make the card more dimensional than I would if it was going in the post, which is perfect as I really wanted to use this beautiful digi image by Floppy Latte.

I printed the image three times and coloured the whole base layer, then all the roses and the three main leaves for the second layer and the centre of all the roses for the third layer. I then carefully cut all the pieces out and in between all the leaves and stems on the base layer and carefully curved the top two layers using my nail and finger, much as you would if you were curling florist ribbon. I then used a few foam pads underneath to mount them.

 

The sentiment was added on the computer prior to printing and the image was coloured with promarker's in the following colours: Duck Egg, Pear Green, Moss, Blush, Dusky Pink, Pastel Pink and Dusty Rose.

 

To finish I edged the base card with a white boarder using my Opaque white gel pen.

 

I hope you like it, I really enjoyed making this one.

 

I would like to enter it into the following challenges:

Ooh-la-la - Happy Birthday

The Pink Elephant- Celebrate

 

Until next time, happy crafting

 

Errr, is it easter already Mr Chick-Chick?

Afternoon Everyone,

 

Well the Christmas decorations are coming down and Easter is well and truly in full swing in our house as the annual knitting fest of crème egg covers starts. Now I can't knit to save my life so this is one church fundraiser I get out of!  For the last few years Mum and the 'Knit and Natter' ladies have made bunny covers for the eggs and one year we did chicks, but that design wasn't popular and it didn't sit over the egg very well. Anyway, for those of you that haven't seen them in the past they look like this:

Cute, right?!

 

Anyway, the bunnies have been knitted to death and we needed to come up with another design and so, from the quirky brain that is my mother, came this little fellow:

So what do you all think? Any and all feedback is most welcome before we start on mass production. Well, I say we, but all I do is put the eggs in at the end....very much a one for them, one for me kind of practice I assure you lol!

 

Until next time, happy crafting! x

Crafty Catz DT: Anything Goes - Birthday Birdies

Hello Everyone,

Well welcome back to Crafty Catz Challenges. We're starting off easy for 2013, to ease you all back in after the festivities. This weeks challenge has been set by Carol who says, anything goes! so people, create what you will and add it on to Mr Linky in our little space of the web.

We have two sponsors this week, our very own Carol who is celebrating taking over the running of Crafty Catz and is offering

and J&C Creations who are giving the lucky winner a £10 gift voucher.

For this weeks challenge I had the added bonus of being required to make two male birthday cards for the first week of January, oh I do hate making men's cards! I gave them both the same design and used this fabulous digi over at Tiddly Inks. I love these quirky little birds!

So it was a nice and simple layout. I simply printed the birds onto white card, along with where I wanted the miniature subway art and a second copy of the banner to foam mount over the top. I took my colour inspiration from the banner and coloured the birds in the following colours: Ruby, Poppy, Canary, Mustard, Cornflower and China Blue. I used Cinnamon, Caramel and Pear Green for the branch and leaf.

All I had to do to finish was put a bit of ribbon through and mount the 'sign' on the branch and double mount the whole thing on blue paper to finish.

So that's it. Thanks for stopping by and for more inspiration do pop over to the blog to see what the other girls have rustled up.

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:
Creative Inspiration - Celebration

Until next time, happy crafting x