Crafts Beautiful - Photo Challenge

The lovely Kate over at Crafts Beautiful challenged us to make a card using a photo. This is a photo of my mum, it's the earliest she has of her and it was very small so I thought it would be a nice surprise for her if I enlarged it, cleand it up and made a card out of it for her.I printed two photos, and used one to make another layer -decoupage style. I've also added some mini brads for buttons, a paper flower for her button hole and, of course some rosey cheeks.
Somebody said that they could see the family resemblance, what do you think?

Charmed Challenge - Bracelet

Over at Charmed Carmen set us a double challenge; to make a maze book and a bracelet, well you've seen the maze book so now here's the bracelet.I used a wooden bangle for the base and cut individual pieces of copper to fit each part. I then prepared and enamelled each part with some of my fave colours then glued them onto the bracelet and voila! There you have it.

DCM - Foil

I haven't done a DCM challenge in ages but I'm just about back on track now so here goes..... My dare this week is 'Foiled!' -I would like you to utilise some plain old aluminium (aluminum for our friends across the pond!) foil from your kitchen :). You can scrunch it, die cut it, emboss it, ink it, coil it, cover chipboard - or anything else that you choose!

Right, I splodged (don't you just love that word?) different colours of glass paint ont acetate and covered it with kitchen foil, smotting it down until the colours merged. Once the paint had dried I cut it into strips and did some weaving.
Thanks for looking xxx.

Charmed Challenge -Maze book

The lovely Carmen over at charmed challenged us to make a maze book and a bracelet. I'll show you the bracelet tomorrow but for now, here's my maze book.We had to use dry embossing, heat embossing and ribbons. Here you can see the ribbons and the dry embossing.

Each page holds a mini card so this Maze book will be given as a useful gift.

Each pocket holds one of these heat embossed gift tags.

If you want to learn how to make one of these Maze books check out the lessons over at Charmed Cards and Crafts.

Just for fun!

I've finally got around to doing something just because I wanted to! It wasn't for a challege or a design team, or a magazine! Don't get me wrong, I love doing all those things too but every now and again it's great do just do what you want and use all those things you've been waiting to play with. In this case it was my new Sizzix Lilac paper sculpting die.

I got this die recently in the massive sizzix sale, I think it costed something stupid like £2.50!

Another Crafty Template

I've just been having a look for something I haven't shown yet and came across this one that I forgot about. Now before you all call out "you've spelt it wrong!" I know Sweetie doesn't end in y but I ran out of space for an 'ie'. I'm all for using a bit of artistic license every now and again.

It looks better in real life, almost edible in fact.

Sneaky Peeks

I haven't been around much lately so here I am doing a bit of catching up, I've got a few projects on the go right now, one of which I'm not allowed to mention yet so I'll have to keep you in suspenders! lol. I'm actually making a set of cards to sell in the staffroom at work to raise money for my friend Kerry who's doing the London marathon and needs all the help she can get to raise the sponsor money required, bless. I do admire people who have the drive to do things like that.

So all I can show right now is some sneeky peeks from my latest batch of DT cards for Charmed Cards and Crafts. They all use the latest papers from Basic Grey....TWO SCOOPS.....It's totally lush! Here they are...........

Thank you all for your lovely comments on my blog, I promise I'll get around to visitng you all real soon xxx

DCM/Charmed/Di Hickman!!!

Yes you read correctly I've done a 3 in 1!

The DCM challenge was to make two cards with the same embellishments but different layout and occasion.

The Charmed and Di Hickman challenges were both sketches.

Here's what I did with the sketch from Charmed -I turned it around - of course!

Below is what I did with the Di Hickman Sketch, yes, you guessed I turned it around!

As you can see, I used the same papers and embellishments for both so that's the DCM one achieved.

All products are from the K and Company range and are available here.

Another Crafty Template

Here's another card made with one of the Crafty Templates from the January set. I made the glass into a shaker. I'm really pleased with this one.
I used one of my Cuttlebug embossing folders to give the milkshake a bubbly look.
Thanks for looking. xxx

A Design for Crafty Templates

I got some gorgeous templates to play with last month from Crafty Templates. This boxed card uses the 'hearts' template with BG Blush papers. I think it'll be just right for valentines day. This is just one of the templates from this month's release. I'm going to keep the rest for later. lol.

More Butterflies

I'm really loving my butterfly stamps so decided to do another in the style of the last one but in a different colour scheme. So here it is.

Short but sweet today, but I am on my lunch hour!

Details for the stamps are in the previous post.

Enjay's Challenge - Water colour

My buddie Nicola has started setting challenges on her blog and the first one was just too good to miss, the theme is 'watercolour'. I love using my watercolour paints and I've had these Wendie Rhodes stamps for ages - they were calling out for some water colour.

I'm really pleased with the results, I think the colours work really well with the butterfly because it's wings are like flames or autumn leaves.

I sprayed some sticky finkers gold ink on the background. It looks great but the only way I could get it to show was at this funny angle.

I really love this unmounted rubber stamp set, you get all sorts of butterflies and the verse too! They've only got two left so you better hurry if you want one.

Thanks for a fab challenge Nicola.

Meet Dolly.

I would like to introduce you to Dolly, the newest member of the family.......aint she sweet? I got the pattern from this month's issue of Crafts Beautiful it's als free to download from their site but you need to buy the magazine for the instructions.I found a site that sells the most fabulous fabric for making dolls, it's just the right colour, it's easy to work with and it's got a lovely soft, strokable finish the fabric is called craft velour - Dollface pink.

Hear she is sporting her new pair of kninckers/shorts, well a girl needs her dignity! There wasn't a pattern for them so I had to make them up.

I bought the wool for her hair from the range, I think it makes such a difference using the multi coloured yarn. It's Salco - Needles yarn -shade 2B.
Oh yes, and the fabric for the dress, feet and knickers.......well I have to confess.....I pinched one of my hubbie's shirts, don't tell him will you?

Scrummy Stash Cafe - Time

Well, I'm a bit late again, but anyhoo this weeks challenge at SSC is 'time'. This is what I came up with.....
It's not my usual style and I'm not sure if I like it TBH. The words on the clock hands actually say kiss me so I thought it might be a nice Valentines card.

Caardvarks - Sketch Challenge

I haven't done a Caardvarks challenge for ages so I decided it was time to have a go. This one's a sketch challenge - which, of course - I have turned over.

I 've used more of my new stash frome the Brenda Walton range.

BTW! Do you know Charmed Cards and Crafts have just launched a mega sale? If not you really need to go and check it out, you'll probably bump into me with my trolly!

DCM 4 of the Best

I'm a bit late with this one but as I always say (too often just lately) better late than never. Anyway, here's the challenge Today we have decided to revisit your most favourite dares of 2007. The four top dares, decided by the number of comments you made on them are (in no particular order): 'buttons', 'ribbons', ...'and cut' and 'frames'. We would like you to use this week as many of those dares as you like to make your card in any theme and any style.

I've gone for using hand cutting- the chicks and the card and paper edges with fancy scissors. And also ribbon, as you can see.

The Chick stamp is one of my latest toys, isn't it sweet? and it's only 75p! The papers are BG and the sentement is from Brenda Walton - Grand Adhesions
Thanks for looking.xxx

Some more enamelling

Yep there's no stopping me now. Thank you for your lovely comments about my broach, it really means a lot to me.

This next one is a hair slide, which I'm going to call my 'Monet hair slide' now, don't be impressed to quickly, it wasn't intended to look like that. It was meant to be a row of neat flowers with a green grass and blue sky background, the trouble is it all merged together but the great thing is when that happens it looks impressionistic and, unless you're too honest like me you can just about get away with it. It reminds me of Monet's Poppy field.

This next one, as yet has no purpose, it was just an experiment. It's about thr size of a 1p so I was thinking about attaching it to a brad and using it on a card. If I'd drilled a hole in it before enamelling, it could have gone on a necklace but it's too late now.

Any more ideas?