'Thank you, teacher 'or 'back to school'

This is for Clean and simple sketch 101 (I turned it on it's side):

The alphabet paper is DCWV (very old) and the paper with arrows is K & Co.

This is also for Copic Creations 32: 'summer reading' - I've used one of the free illustrations offered by the sponsor of this challenge, Elizabeth O Dulemba and, of course, coloured with copics.

This could be used for a 'back to school' card for a child or as a 'thank you, teacher' card.

This is also for:

Crafty Hos: 'back to school'
Cutie Sunday 103: 'school'
Frosted designs: 'need a little direction?' - use an arrow
Freshly brewed: 'thank someone' - suitable for thanking teacher
Sisterhood of crafters: 'celebrating the month of August' - using red, orange and green - a time for school holidays - thinking back or looking forward
ABC: 'A is for August' - see above
Theme Thursday: 'words'

WOYWW 61

It's that time of week yet again - time to show what's on our workspace today - if you don't know what I'm talking about (is there anyone now who doesn't know?) then hop over to Julia's blog to find out - and then take part and show us your workspace.

My space is much the same as usual - some debris left from yesterday's crafting.

You can see in my box of stamped images that I've stamped my new Stampotique birthday cake stamp and coloured it ready to take part in this week's challenge, but that's as far as I've got with it. I'm going out to lunch soon and later date must get my LO done for the new Salt challenge for tomorrow, so I'm not sure when this will get used.

I thought I'd show some of my stamp shelves - and perhaps it will prompt me into sorting them - I used to have Christmas ones separate etc but they have all got a bit out of handy lately.


Someone asked last week about the mug tree and what's on it - it has lots of double sided tape (which is a bit silly really because I hardly ever use it now because I've got the ATG yellow gun, which is brilliant, but I do sometimes use narrow DS tape. It also houses masking tape, sticky dots tape and rolls of foam tape.

Must dash - lunch is calling - and I'm meeting a friend to discuss whether I'm taking on a commission to make their firm's Christmas cards - a total of about 300!!

Bright butterfly birthday

This is for Creative Belli 96 sketch 4 and something that moves (the butterfly):

Papers areBG Indian summer and the glittered butterfly has been in my stash for a few years now (think it was originally on a hairband).

The colour combo is for Colour create 50: 'hot pink, warm orange and saffron', which also has the option to use butterflies and also for C.R.A.F.T. 61: 'hot and spicy colours'



It's also for:

Party time Tuesdays 10: 'summer birthday'
Crafty creations 78: 'summer lovin' - hot summer colours
For fun: 'summer colours - bright colours'
Ooh-la-la 59: 'birthday'
Paper romance 9: 'birthday'
Cowgirl: 'animals and bugs'
Pile it on 30: 'butterflies, bugs and bees'
Flutter by Wednesday 115: open - include a butterfly, fairy or angel'
Creative Friday 23: 'things with wings'
Crafty catz 43: 'material girl' - the butterfly is organaza
Cupcake 102: 'distressing - I've torn around perspex ovals
Paper pretties: 'glitter' - on the butterfly
Cas-tastic 14: 'bling it up'
Going grey (Scrap-creations) 21: 'anything goes'
Lollipop crafts 1: 'anything goes'

Get well soon with Scarlet's letter

This is for Eat sleep stamp sketch 94:

The colours are for Colour throwdown 103:

I used BG Scarlet's letter papers (one of the oldest range of BG, but still one of my favourites). The 'buttons' were die cut with a thin cut die. I like using these because it keeps the card flat - which is quite important if selling for charity, because people don't always want to have to pay extra for the postage to cover extra thickness.

This is also for:

Theme Thursday: 'words'
Cute card Thursday 123: 'texting crazy'
Flourish timeless 78: 'no embellishments' - the 'buttons' are die cuts and they are allowed!
Going grey (Scrap-creations) 21: 'anything goes'
Lollipop 1: 'anything goes'

BF July inchies received

Postie brought me my swaps today for the BF forum July 'America' inchies - they are fab - thanks, girls, for these.

Garden mail

This is for the sketch on Everybody art 101:
It's also for City crafter week 15: 'garden mail' - using colours from the photo inspiration and including something to do with mail - I used the stamp 'timeless memoirs, distressing the image sponging with distress inks. The smaller purple flowers were originally white, coloured with copics.

Background paper is BG wisteria.

This is also for:

Basic grey 25: 'stitching'
Paper sundaes 29: 'stitching'
Scrappy frogs: 'a stitch in time'
Stamp and create 3: 'stitching'
Cupcake 102: 'distressing'
Alota 40: 'distress'
Stamping with the dragon 6: 'distressing'
Ellephantastic 5: 'distressing'
Andrea's: 'simply sponged'
Crafty pad 82: 'ribbons and flowers'
Scrappy frogs: 'a stitch in time'

Pink and black charming Christmas

For this card I've repeatedly stamped an Anna Griffin background stamp with versamark and heat embossed with detail silver for Think Ink challenge 25: 'make your own background paper' - I stamped straight on to the black stardream card, which itself has a silvery sheen to it. This is also for One stop craft 91: 'patterns' .

This week's challenge (week 35) on Sparkle creations Christmas 2010 is to use a non-traditional Christmas image - I've used a stamp that isn't actually a 'Christmas' one. It's also for Winter wonderland this week, which is a 'no designer paper' challenge.



I added the ribbon and the little tree charm held by a safety pin, which fits Our daily bread 23: 'ribbon, charm, plus one (the safety pin) and also Flourishes timeless 77: 'use pins'.

The embossed silver gives plenty of bling for Cas-tastic 14: 'bling it up' and plenty of silver (Victoria wears a lot) for Cinema Saturday 90: 'star dust - add a little sparkle or bling'

The colour scheme is for these challenges:

Paper jewels 6: 'monochromatic'
Stampavie 103: 'black, white and one more colour'
Fussy & fancy 16: 'pink and black'
Stamp insanity 20: pink and black for a cure!'
Really reasonable ribbon 5: 'black and white (hope silver is OK) - can add a splash of colour

And, as it's a Christmas card it's also for:

Sundays with Crissy 7: 'Christmas in July'
Tuesday taggers: 'Christmas in July'
Tuesday throwdown 10: 'Christmas in July'
Little red wagon: 'Christmas in July'
Tellen's place: 'Christmas in July'
Our creative corner: 'Christmas in July'
Stamp something: 'Christmas in July somethings'
Fab's big Christmas week 24: 'stitched ribbons'
Scrappy frogs: 'a stitch in time'

Let it snow

This is for Papertake sketch 45:

It's also for Going grey (Scrap-creations): 'Christmas in July' - the background paper is BG basics kraft. The snowflake cards and the oval glittered house image are Patchwork Pals. I edged the kraft paper with Prussian blue copic to pick up the blue theme.

I've used the colours for Curtain call 41:


You can see the glitter on the house a bit clearer here:

This is also for:

Sundays with Crissy 7: 'Christmas in July'
Christmas cards all year round August: 'snowflakes'
Tuesday taggers: 'Christmas in July'
Tuesday throwdown 10: 'Christmas in July'
Little red wagon: 'Christmas in July'
Tellen's place: 'Christmas in July'
Our creative corner: 'Christmas in July'
Other lovelies thoughtful Thursday 22: 'make your art related to .. the weather' - snowflakes for winter
Aud sentiments 7: choose your own Christmas sentiment'
Cas-tastic 14: 'bling it up' - the glittered house
Paper pretties: 'glitter'
Shabby tea room 21: 'house and home'
The treehouse 60: 'seeing spots & dots' - on the kraft paper

Pastel Christmas

For this card I've used Critter sketch 24:

I've used a pastel base card, some snowflakes card and image from Patchwork pals, which is OK for Cupcake 101: 'pastel Christmas'.

This is also for:

Sundays with Crissy 7: 'Christmas in July'
Christmas cards all year round August: 'snowflakes'
Tuesday taggers: 'Christmas in July'
Tuesday throwdown 10: 'Christmas in July'
Little red wagon: 'Christmas in July'
Tellen's place: 'Christmas in July'
Our creative corner: 'Christmas in July'
Cowgirl: 'animals and bugs'
Creative inspirations 71: 'animals'
Charisma cardz 30: 'something with a tail'
Other lovelies thoughtful Thursday 22: 'make your art related to .. the weather' - snowflakes for winter
Rosie-D 76: 'all creatures great and small'
Totally Gorjuss 41: 'baby, baby!' - suitable for baby's first Christmas
By the cute and girly August: 'animal antics'

Rock til you drop!

This is for the sketch on Sketch & Stash 40:


using the colours for SPCC 58:

I've used a Charmed download, '60s George' from the Rock til you drop set - I used the coloured one and then filtered to give an antique look - sorry, but the colour on the scan doesn't look quite right. So this is also for today's challenge on Dottie's world: 'manly with a twist' - the twist is to use ribbon - I've used three different sticky ribbons across the middle of the card. Papers are K & Co and unknown - been in my scraps box for a long while, so definitely qualifies for neglected stash for the Sketch & Stash challenge.


It's also for:

Cards for men 15: 'recipe - one image, two papers and three embellishments (the ribbons - hope it's OK that I've sneaked a button in as well)
Craft your passion 16: 'recipe - three different ribbons'
Stamp with fun 69: 'card for boy/man'
Donna's den of crafts 4: 'we want to see your 'green' cards'
Friends having fun 4: 'pop culture'
Simon says: 'we are all going dotty'
The treehouse 60: 'seeing spots & dots'

Owl always love you

This is a quick card, using some wallpaper for the background - I acquired this years ago and a piece has been in my scrap box for ages. It is a lot more silvery irl - a bit like dufex and changes according to the light shining on it.

The image is 'snowy owl' from Art freebies.


This is for:

Sunday postcard art: 'owls'
Some odd girl style challenge 5: 'so punny' - punny sentiments
ABC: 'Y is for you and me' (sorry this is late)
Cinema Saturday 90: 'star dust' - with a little sparkle - the dufex type background paper - and general silver worn a lot by Victoria
Etsy inspired 99: 'Becky Kazana' - I chose this item for inspiration:

Fleur Anya

This morning I was privelged to receive two Greeting farm stamps in the post from Nutcrafters - I had received a £10 gift voucher to spend with them for winning Nutty Nutshells challenge 18 - you can read about it here. The stamps I chose were Dahlia and Fleur Anya - so I couldn't wait to use one of them.

And mentioning prizes, I was fortunate enough to also win a digi image for Freshly brewed challenge 11 - you can read about it here.

And, as you can see from my side bar, I've been priveleged to be chosen for some top places recently.

By the way, we had a lovely time at the wedding this afternoon - the bride looked beautiful and the groom and best man were very handsome in their outfits. The whole occasion was so lovely and we met a few people who we haven't seen for a long time and one or two unexpected people who we didnt realise had any connection with the bride and groom - it's a small world.

Anyway back to the purpose of this blog post - this is a card for Anyone for Anya sketch time and here is Dawn's lovely sketch:

Papers are BG euphoria and the image, of course, is Fleur Anya, coloured with copics.

This is also for:

Corrosive 74: 'pink and blue'
Ooh-la-la 59: 'birthday'
Totally stampalicious: 'birthday'
Party time Tuesdays 9: 'anything goes birthday'
Paper romance 9: 'birthday/celebration card'
Stampin' B 69: 'make a birthday card'
Stampin' royalty 30: 'keep it simple, sweetie'
Stamp, scrap & doodle: 'CAS'

On your special day

I'm in a wedding mood today - we're going to our friends' wedding at 2:30 (so I mustn't linger on here).

So I've made another quick wedding card. I've recycled something twice for this - I originally used the bride and groom favour boxes from Poundland to create these, using a cuttlebug folder to emboss the bride's dress - and now I've cut them down to flat and put them on a purple Majestic card that I cut the corners with Fiskars nostalgia edging scissors. Just the addition of the sentiment and the card's done. I was tempted to put some flowers on it, but decided to leave it as it is.

This is for the following challenges:

Just scraps 15: 'love is in the air' - wedding card
Sunday stamper 113: 'love of my life' (sorry, no stamping involved, yet again!)
Pollycraft 54: 'love and marriage'
Creative craft: 'here comes the bride'
Paper romance 9: 'celebration card'
Cas-tastic 14: 'bling it up'
Crafty angels 42: 'something old, something new'
Creative cottage 19: 'touchy feely' - plenty of texture created by the embossing, ribbon and gems
Challenge up your life 26: 'celebrations'
Allsorts 63: 'dressing up'
Just us girls 44: 'wild wedding'
Cutie Sunday 102: 'swirls'
Stampavie 103: 'black, white and one more colour'
Stamp, scrap & doodle: CAS - clean and simple

Autumn 3D

Having spent a lot of time recently making Christmas cards, it makes a change to come across a challenge, Hand full of stamps 38, which asks us to create something inspired by September and October. So I've done a simple invertage to give a 3D effect, which is for challenge 30 on Prairie fairy designs.


I'm also linking this for:

Creatalicious 12: '3D'
Simple doodles 23: 'get out of the box' - orange is a colour I rarely use, so this is 'out of the box' for me
Ooh-la-la 59: 'birthday'
Totally stampalicious: 'birthday'
Party time Tuesdays 9: 'anything goes birthday'
Paper romance 9: 'birthday/celebration card'
Stampin' B 69: 'make a birthday card'
Stampin royalty 30: 'KISS keep it simple, sweetie'
Stamp, scrap & doodle: CAS - clean and simple
Alphabet: 'N for nature'

More blue and silver Christmas

This is for Challenge up your life 25 sketch, which also calls for sewing:

The background card is stardream, another piece of the stitched paper across the middle and the silver strips and stars cut from pattered embossed foil card - much more silver than it looks here.

This is also for:

2 sisters 2: 'Christmas in July'
Sundays with Crissy 7: 'Christmas in July'
Christmas cards all year round July: 'anything goes'
Drunken stampers 26: 'Christmas in July'
Stamptacular 69: 'Christmas in July'
Tuesday taggers: 'Christmas in July'
Tuesday throwdown 10: 'Christmas in July'
Little red wagon: 'Christmas in July'
Tellen's place: 'Christmas in July'
Pixie dust studio 33: 'walking in a winter wonderland colour challenge - navy, grey/silver, white/ivory'
Cutie Sunday: 'swirls'
Digi doodle 18: 'punch or cut me' - the punched stars
Anything goes (Craft Den) 9: 'punches'
Polka doodles week 30: 'generic male & female'
Cas-tastic 14: 'bling it up'
Other lovelies thoughtful Thursday 22: 'make your art be related to ... the weather' - winter
Always playing with paper 8: 'inspiration':

Etsy inspired 98: 'EmenGeeDesigns' - I chose this Marie Antoinette mini plus clasp purse in blue for the stitched swirls:

A special day tomorrow

It's a special day tomorrow for two friends at church - it's their wedding day.

I decided to wrap their present in a piece of Creative Imaginations Sonnets paper 'love' and found a piece of textured, sparkly ribbon that went with it. Having done this I discovered I had another piece of the paper, so I made a matching card. The inside message says 'Congratulations on your wedding day'.

I think I'm safe to show this on here today because I doubt that the bride-to-be will be looking at my blog tonight!

I'm linking for these challenges:

Totally Gorjuss 40: 'congratulations'
Just scraps 15: 'love is in the air' - wedding card
Sunday stamper 113: 'love of my life' (sorry, no stamping involved)
Pollycraft 54: 'love and marriage'
Creative craft: 'here comes the bride'
Paper romance 9: 'celebration card'
Cute card Thursday 123: 'texting crazy'
Theme Thursday: 'words'
Cas-tastic 14: 'bling it up'
Crafty angels 42: 'something old, something new'
Creative cottage 19: 'touchy feely' - the ribbon is very textured
Charisma cardz 30: 'something with a tail'
Creative inspirations 71: 'animals'
Rosie-D 76: 'all creatures great and small'
Dutch dare 83: 'anything goes'
PaperPlay 30: 'anything goes'

Fun with shapes for Christmas

This is for Fun with shapes and more 62 sketch:

I've used some more of the stitched paper that I've shown recently on other cards - it has the texture of handmade paper. The image is 'white lady' from Art Freebies.

The piece of stardream blue card was embossed with divine swirls cuttlebug folder. The stars were punched from some of the embossed silver mirror card that backs the image and runs across the card (much more silvery and shiny irl).

This is also for:

2 sisters 2: 'Christmas in July'
Sundays with Crissy 7: 'Christmas in July'
Christmas cards all year round July: 'anything goes'
Polka doodles week 29: 'Christmas in July'
Drunken stampers 26: 'Christmas in July'
Stamptacular 69: 'Christmas in July'
Tuesday taggers: 'Christmas in July'
Tuesday throwdown 10: 'Christmas in July'
Little red wagon: 'Christmas in July'
Tellen's place: 'Christmas in July'
Pixie dust studio 33: 'walking in a winter wonderland colour challenge - navy, grey/silver, white/ivory'
Cutie Sunday: 'swirls'
Annabelle: 'say it with ... embossing'
Digi doodle 18: 'punch or cut me' - the punched stars
Anything goes (Craft Den) 9: 'punches'
Dare U 2 digi 42: 'stitching'
Stamp, scrap & doodle: 'digis'
Other lovelies thoughtful Thursday 22: 'make your art be related to ... the weather' - winter
Always playing with paper 8: 'inspiration':

Etsy inspired 98: 'EmenGeeDesigns' - I chose this Marie Antoinette mini plus clasp purse in blue for the stitched swirls:

Clean and simple Christmas

This is for sketch 100 on Clean & simple:

The background paper is English paper company.


This is also for:

2 sisters 2: 'Christmas in July'
Sundays with Crissy 7: 'Christmas in July'
Christmas cards all year round July: 'anything goes'
Polka doodles week 29: 'Christmas in July'
Drunken stampers 26: 'Christmas in July'
Stamptacular 69: 'Christmas in July'
Tuesday taggers: 'Christmas in July'
Tuesday throwdown 10: 'Christmas in July'
Little red wagon: 'Christmas in July'
Tellen's place: 'Christmas in July'
Christmas stampin all year long 58: 'buttons and bows'
Pixie dust studio 33: 'walking in a winter wonderland colour challenge - navy, grey/silver, white/ivory'
Cutie Sunday: 'swirls'
Cooking it up with Katie 22: 'button me a blue bow'
Fab n funky 33: 'buttons & bows'
Penny's 34: 'recipe - 1 ribbon, 2 design papers & 3 embellishments (the buttons)
Always playing with paper 8: 'inspiration':

Layer it up

This card is for Crafts4eternity recipe 43 and for Daring cardmakers 'layer it up'. This week we are being sponsored by the lovely Teri of Teri's Delicious Doodles.

This is the sketch that accompanied the recipe for C4E 43:

On DCM, Lynda said: 'I want to see at least one extra layer to your stamped, digi or pre-printed images used on your cards this week. I won't accept just layers to card stock or papers - it has to be on the main image of your card.'

I used some pyramage that was free with Papercraft Inspiraions magazine - it had alternate squares and diamonds to build up the pyramage.

Apart from the sketch, the other part of the recipe for C4E 43 was to use marbled paper and make your own embellishments. So I used the shaving foam marbling technique - very messy and great fun, haven't done this for a while. I used distress ink refills broken china and shabby shutters. Here are the three A4 pieces of card I created:



- and used pieces from these for the three layers behind the pyramage one. I then added some die cut fish (one of the original Sissix green dies) using holographic blue and silver paper - these were my 'own embellishments' for the recipe.

If anyone visited earlier, I've now replaced the poor flash photo with this one.

Chocolat, lovely chocolat!

One of my favourite films is 'Chocolat' - if you haven't seen it, I'd thoroughly recommend it - or, of course, you can read the book (by Joanne Harris - no relation , which is such a good read.

This week's challenge on Dottie's world is 'let's go to the movies', so I've used one of the Charmed downloads from the Dottie at home collection - Naughty Dottie - I chose the coloured version to save time. Naught Dottie has been at the chocolate - so reminds me of a part of the Chocolat film. The theme for this week's Crazy amigo challenge is 'film/movie and Hanna and friends 55 is 'favourite movie', so I'm linking for those too.

I've used the sketch for Eat sleep stamp 93:

and I've used the photo inspiration on Off the wall 17 for the colour combo, using raspberry fizz, Hawaiian shores and purple - can also use black, white or cream':

The background paper is Chloe's closet Wonderland, the striped one is a scrap of DCWV lurking in my scraps box - the scalloped circle cut with nestie is DCWV from the garden party stack.

This is also for:

Digital Tuesday 69: 'dazzle me' - the colours are lovely and bright and dazzling and there's turquoise sparkle surrounding the sentiment.
Digi doodle 18: 'punch or cut me' - the scalloped circles were cut using nesties in my cuttlebug
Mami doodles 7: 'anything goes'
Stamp, scrap & doodle: 'digis'
Crazy challenge: 'all about birthdays'
Ooh-la-la 59: 'birthday'
Totally stampalicious: 'birthday'
Party time Tuesdays 9: 'anything goes birthday'
Paper romance 9: 'birthday/celebration card'
Stampin' B 69: 'make a birthday card'
Stampin' royalty 30: 'keep it simple, sweetie'
C.R.A.F.T. 61: 'hot and spicy colours'
Whoopsi Daisy July: 'hot - vibrant colours'
For fun: 'bright colours'
Scrappy frogs: 'are you a girlie girl?'
Paper Play 30: 'anything goes'
Dutch dare 83: 'anything goes'
Creative inspirations 39: 'anything goes'
Sisterhood of crafters: 'funnies'
Paper pretties: 'glitter' (around the sentiment)