Crafting When We Can Challenges 59 - Calendar/Countdown

The Challenge over at Crafting When We Can Challenges is running until 

 4th January 2014

So you have plenty of time to show us your Calendars/Countdown projects.

Our wonderful Sponsor for this Challenge is

Dilly Beans Stamps

My project is a Christmas Countdown.  I printed out my image 

#313 - Christmas Squares twice and colour with Spectrum Noir pens, used Viva pearl pen to fill in Santa's beard, hair etc. and Sparkly Gelly roll pens to add sparkle to the glove.  I can't find my clear glitter pen so the penguin is sparkly (yet).  I then cut out the image and 3d'd the image onto the cut out frame and made the 1 - 24 number grid in CraftArtist printed this out and stuck on the images.

Hop over and leave your Calendar/Countdown projects on the Challenge blog and have a look at the projects our wonderfully talented DT have made. 

Crafting When We Can Challenges 58 - Winter

The Challenge this fortnight is sponsored by 

Fitztown 

The theme is 

Winter

I don't want to be reminded it nearly Christmas so my project for Winter is a wedding theme.  I have made a bottle hanger?  I used the template from CraftArtist and a background from MSC Winter Wonderland as a base for my image Fae 20.  I printed out my image at A4 coloured it in using my Spectrum Noir pens.  I am trying to improve my colouring but am still working out blends of colours I like.  I went for blue to keep with the Winter theme.  I wrote "Happy Winter Wedding to the Wonderful Couple".  You can't see from the photo but I have used a sparkly gelly roll pen to highlight the clothes and twiddly bits on the wreath.

close up of image

This would be champagne but I make do with Schloer

Hop over to CWWCC and show us your Winter projects.  Just follow the simple rules and you will be in with a chance of winning the wonderful sponsor prize.

CHALLENGES

Challenges 4 Everybody #34 - Anything Goes

Joanna Sheen - Celebrate

Penny's Challenges 154 - Anything Goes

Delightful Skeches - Anything but a Card

Addicted to Stamps and more - Make your make 

(Spectrum Noirs to colour image before scanning)

Challenge 57 - Neopolitan - red, white, brown

First I have printer problems and now blogger seems to be playing up, but I'll try and make this a quick post.

Our theme over at Crafting When We Can Challenges  is

Neopolitan - red, white, brown

Our Sponsor is

The Stamping Chef

Tamara kindly gave us images to use and I chose Sirena.  I wanted to do this as a proper paper scrapbook but I was having problems with my printer and it took nearly 40 mins to just print out the line image so I decided to go digital.  I coloured my image with spectum noir pens, used Craft Artist II to make my page.  Digikits used - Season of Giving, Classic.  The white mats are made from coloured shapes punched out.  

Close up of coloured image

Hop over to the Challenge blog and leave your Neopolitan themed projects.

Challenges 4 Everybody - Anything Goes

Crafts 4 Everyone - Anything but a card

One Stitch at a Time - Holidays (annual holiday 2008)

Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes

Penny's Challenge - Lots of layers (digital layers at least 3 per mat)

Crafting When We Can Challenges #56 - Make your own flower/s

The challenge over at Crafting When We Can Challenges is make your own flower/flowers and our wonderful sponsor is 

Lacy Sunshine

I used card and paper from my stash with a scrabby edge made with my scissors and matted onto gold card with a Craftworks sentiment.  The image was coloured with flexmarkers and the flower mat was cut with a Spellbinder die and embossed with a Tim Holtz wood embossing folder.  The flower was also made using the same die.  I coloured the flower paper with DI to give it a bit of depth.  

My image is Mitzi Gnome digi set.  

Hop over to the Challenge blog and show us your handmade flowers.

CHALLENGES

Papertake Weekly - Sketch 59

One Stitch at a Time 188 - Use a digi

Crafty Creations 246 - Make it yourself (flower)

Challenges 4 Everyone 32 - Anything Goes

Crafting When We Can Challenges 55 - Make It Sparkle

Sorry but I'm going to be late with my DT project, but please hop over and enter your sparkly projects at Crafting When We Can Challenges.

Our wonderful sponsor is

Sassy Studio Designs

Theme 

Crafting When We Can Challenge 54 - Sketch

The challenge this fortnight over at CWWCC is a sketch by me.  I have to apologies for the colours I used I was in a very clashy mood when I designed it.

Our Sponsor for this challenge is 

Dr Digi's House of Stamps

and our Theme is a Sketch by me.

I used the image Run Derek Run and I've tried to make an inspirational card for a change.  I hope I've achieved this but I'm not sure.  I used card and paper from pads I bought for £1.99 each from Lidl.  The card is 270gsm and there are 25 sheets and the paper is 135gsm and there are 50 sheets 2 of each colour.  The colours are bright and eye catching and I used the TH wall embossing folder twice and ripped a hole in the front one.  A piece of old shoelace is used for the embellishment.

hopefully the shoelace bow isn't girly

(hopefully) something inspirational inside

I'm trying to show the dimension on the card

Now it's your turn to show us your projects following the sketch.  CWWCC

CHALLENGES

Catch the Bug challenges - September photo challenge

Clear it Out Challenge - For the Boys/die cut ovals

Crafts for Eternity - Anything Goes

Crazy 4 Challenges 205 - Use a bow

Our Creative Corner - Forgotten Things 

(Wall embossing folder, found in the bottom of a bag)

Crafting When We Can Challenges #53 - Seasons (image, item, colours, sentiment)

Our wonderful sponsor for this Challenge is Krista from

Saturated Canary

We were able to choose our own images for this Challenge and I chose 

Sweet Oklahoma.  It seemed like an image I could use alot with the English weather we have.  Spring, Summer and Autumn birthdays jump into my mind. 

The Theme for Challenge 53 is

Seasons 

image, colours, item, sentiment

I used red, green and gold card stock from my stash and embossed the red and green card with a Sizzix Texturz plate, went around the edge with a Copic marker and matted it onto the gold card.  The image was coloured with Copics and Promarkers.  The raindrops were from a £shop but I can't remember which one.  They are body gems but work just as well on paper.  For my sentiments I used the dreaded peel offs, I don't know why some people turn their noses up at peel offs, I think they can serve a purpose the same as any craft item and it's where a lot of us start on our crafting adventure.

Hop over to the CWWCC blog and show us your Seasons themed creations.

CHALLENGES

Sketch N Stash 121 - Time (Autumn)

Challenges 4 Everyone #29 - Anything Goes

Cute Card Thursday 286 - Hip to be Square

My Time To Craft 234 - Autumnal Colours

One Stitch At A Time 181 - Autumn/Fall Creation

Crafting When We Can Challenges #52 - Repeat Images

It's Challenge 52 over at Crafting When We Can Challenges so why don't you hop over and join in our new challenge.

Our wonderful Sponsor is

Kenny K

I was given the image Let's Party digi stamp and I immediately thought of John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever.  You can image him at the works Christmas party strutting his stuff or is that just my experience of people who have rulers and pens in their top pockets?

The theme is Repeated Image.  

I have used the image and created a background paper.  My card was assembled on CraftArist and then split into it's separate parts and printed off.  I then cut out and layered the pieces onto the card.  As usual the colours are rubbish on screen but in real life it looks quite good.  I printed it out onto pearlised card which I find is always difficult to photograph.

Hop over to CWWCC and leave us your repeat image projects.

CHALLENGES

Sketch Saturday #274 - Sketch by Jen

OLLCB - Inspired by a song (Saturday Night Fever)

Paper Crafting Journey - Anything Goes

Catch the Bug Challenge - August Colour Challenge

Shopping our Stash #116 - For the Boys

Beccy's Place August Challenge - Scrapbook page

Just a quick post so I can enter Beccy's Place August Challenge.  I used Beccy's image Petit Paris for my background image and use CraftArtist to create the road and the digi kits Beach for the sky and Vintage Vehicle for the car and vans.  If you look closely I have put tiny pictures of my OH and kids as the drivers.  The sentiment is an anonymous quote on the Just a car guys blog.  (Hope it's OK to use this apologies if it isn't please let me know and I will remove the reference).  I totally agree with this sentiment there's too many nuts behind  the steering wheel of too many cars these days.  A little patience goes a long way and makes everyone feel better.  (Little rant over).

Only a few days left but there's still time to join in.  

Crafting When We Can Challenges #51- 007 (Spy)

Our wonderful sponsor for challenge 51 is

Miss Muffet Stamps

This one was a tricky one but with this great image I only had one choice, my card had to have a James Bond theme.  I went for a "Skyfall" theme.  Unfortunately I didn't realise that "Skyfall" should have all been in quotes, but never mind the thought was there.  My fab image is Agent Eclair Dropping.  I printed out a picture of a camera aperture (like to background to Daniel Craig on the DVD cover of Skyfall).  Added the sentiment in CraftArtist then cut the centre of the aperture out and put some gold card behind it (I may change this for some silver glitter paper not happy with the gold now) and coloured my image using Copics and Promarkers and fussy cut around her and used Pinflair glue gel to stick her on the aperture layer.  If you look carefully you can see the shadow but the dimension is lost in the photo.  To finish of the harness I put a couple of gems.

Hop over to the Crafting When We Can Challenges and leave us your interpretation of the 007 theme.

CHALLENGES

My Time To Craft #231 - Use an aperture
Challenges 4 ~Everbody - Anything Goes
Creatalicious Challenge #54 - For the Boys
Our Creative Corner - Words, Words, Words
Through the Craftroom Door - Anything Goes

Crafting When We Can Challenges #50 - Colour Combo - Lemon and Lime + DT call

I can't believe how quickly time is flying.  We've been in our temporary offices at work for 2 weeks while our office is having a complete refit.  It should be a lot more comfortable to work in when it's finished.  Hopefully we'll have air conditioning and a radiator or 2 instead of a window that only opens 6" and a coat and gloves.  Then we just have to merge 2 departments into 1 as well as learning a new system.  The following few months should be fun!!  

To add to this my printer still isn't completely well and my laptop keys seem to be sticking (this could be all the crumbs in the keyboard, OH is going to have a look at this for me in the next few days).  These problems are making doing any digital crafting quite difficult so as soon as I managed to get a print of my image I used some of the numerous pages of card I have in my stash.

We are having a DT call over at the CWWCC blog so hop over and leave a comment with a link to one of your projects so we can hop over and have a look.

Our wonderfully, talented Sponsor for 

Challenge 50 is

Dilly Beans Stamps

The image I was generously given to use is #555 - Paige.  I used some card I bought from Lidl.  There are 25 different colours at 270gsm and they cost about £1.99 so I bought 5 pads. It's really nice card and makes great card bases and punches like a dream with the punches I have.  My card is larger than I normally make it, it's 8" x 8".  I had to make it this size as I wanted to use my new punches that cut a 6" x 6" mat.  It is a Lucky 8 punches by We Are Memory Keepers.  The small pearls are from Home Bargains and the image was coloured with Copic Markers.  The little tag is from HOTP and says when life give you lemons make (don't know why they didn't finish the phrase but I assume they knew you would finish it in your head).  The colours are a lot more vibrant in real life than they are on this photo.  

Hop over to the Challenge blog and join in our wonderful Challenge or if you want to be considered for the DT leave us a comment so we can visit and see your work.

CHALLENGES
Papertake Weekly # 81 - Sketch #61
Cute Card Thursday 280 - Anything Goes
Crafty Calendar - Anything Goes
Paper Crafting Journey - Punches and/or Die Cuts
Ruby's Rainbow - Layer It Up

Crafting When We Can Challenges 49 - Floral

AARRGGG my printer is driving me crazy.  I eventually managed to get a workable print but it still has some inky speckles on it.  Anyhoo, over at Crafting When We Can Challenges the theme for this fortnight is

FLORAL

and our wonderful Sponsor is

Sassy Studio Designs

I used a yellow base card a scrap of scrapbook paper from my stash.  The image Snow White Pinup was coloured with spectrum noir and flexmarkers.  The flower were from my stash I've had them for years and can't remember the make.  The butterflies were punched from white card and coloured to match the image.  The round sentiment is from Craft Works cards.

Hop over to the Challenge blog and leave us your wonderful Floral Creations.

CHALLENGES

Anything Goes #97 - Anything Goes

Crafting For All Seasons - Bingo (lemon, digi image, blue)

Love to Create - Fairytale or Fantasy (Snow White)

Sketch Saturday #268 - Sketch (on it's side)

Pin and Tack (SYCN) #11 - Anything Goes

Crafting When We Can Challenges 48 - Christmas in July

For the Challenge over at Crafting When We Can Challenges we have gone all Christmassy for the Christmas in July theme.

Our Sponsor is 

Dr Digi's House of Stamps

The image I have used is We Three Kings.  I pulled the image into CraftArtist and printed it out on at A6 size.  I then coloured it using Copic Markers and Promarkers.   Then I scanned the coloured image on to the computer.  I used the Winter Wonderland digi kit to form my background, inside and back of the card and layered the coloured image onto the scene and sized it how I wanted.  I then printed out both sides of the card and folded in half.   For the verse inside I've used the colloquial version of We Three Kings, this involves a taxi, car and scooter bipping its hooter

Unfortunately I managed to put the paper in wonky and had to trim the card square so it turned out a little smaller than the 6" square card I was hoping for.    I photographed the card but as usual the photo was rubbish so I will show you the exported jpegs from CraftArtist.

Front

Inner

Back

Get a head start on your Christmas cards and join in our Challenge.  Leave your project with the blue linky and we will be over to leave you some love.

Saturday Sewing...

at Craft Den.  My daughter and I have attended a couple of sewing classes at Lynne's Craft Den Studio.  I made a big square tote and I will post the pictures of this at a later date but I wanted to show you what my 14 year old daughter made this weekend.  She made a quilted messenger bag.  (The photos are rubbish I took them about 1 o'clock last night under an energy saving bulb).

Front of bag with flap up

Back of bag

Front of bag with flap down

The front flap, gusset and strap are made from a red/cream flower and the green material for the main bag and inside strap handle has flowers on it too.  All fabric and batting from Craft Den (the web site is down at the moment but you can contact Lynne from her blog)  

I think she's done a marvellous job and she can't wait to use it when she goes to Belgium with school later this week.  

Crafting When We Can Challenges 47 - Keep It Simple

I'm really getting fed up with the grey skies and disappearing weeks.  Another grey weekend but at least the company was good and where are the weeks going, we've just passed the longest day and we haven't had a really good run of sunny weather yet.  Any hoo enough of my moaning onto Challenge 47 over at Crafting When We Can Challenges.

Our Sponsor for this Challenge is the talented Heather at

Lacy Sunshine

Theme

Keep It Simple

I've made a digital scrapbook page for this challenge.  I used CraftArtist 2 and imported my coloured image,  Jack and Lily Rose Gnomes Digi Set.

The image was coloured in with Copics and then cut out and scanned so I could use it on my layout.  

This photo was took near Fox House, Derbyshire.  We were out for a walk when my son said "look there's an elephant".  I couldn't miss this photo opportunity could I.  I have used a border from Banners and Dividers and the alphabet is from Classic.

Hop over and leave your Keep It Simple projects on Challenge 47.

Crafting When We Can Challenges 46 - Mad About Markers

For the next 2 Challenges we are being sponsored by the talented Heather over at Lacy Sunshine

We were generously given an image to use for these challenges and for the

MAD ABOUT MARKERS

use Promarker, Copics, Spectrum Noir on your main feature.

The image I used is called Mitzi

I have used a blank white card base with green, pink, yellow and gold card out of my stash.  The gold card was embossed with my new Tim Holtz wood embossing folder.  My image was coloured using Promarkers and Copics.  I used my new spellbinder flourish with a little flower punch and pearls to add interest.  Behind my image is a beautiful piece of ribbon which you can't see very well on the rubbish photo.  The sentiment if cut from a HOTP senitment sheet.  I added some tiny butterflies at the last minute punched from the parchment paper I used to help release the card from the die.

Hop over to the CWWCC and join in Challenge 46.  We would love to see your awesome projects.

CHALLENGES

The Paper Shelter #115 - Flower Power
My Time To Craft #225 - Fairytale ~ Thumberlina
A Gem of a Challenge 83 - Emboss it ~ tree trunk
Allsorts Challenge 210 - In the Garden
Shopping Our Stash 104 - No Patterned Paper ~ used 3 different plain card colours, piece of ribbon, embossing folder, die and punches.

Crafting When We Can Challenges 45 - Die cuts and /or punches

Time again for another challenge over at CWWCC the theme for Challenge 45 is

Die Cuts and/or Punches

Our Sponsor is

Kenny K Downloads

My image is Happy Hour and I've used Promarkers and Copics to colour the image and DIs to colour the background.  The pearls are from Home Bargains and the sentiment stamp is from the Dovecraft cupcake boutique sets. I always seem to have difficulty in getting the ink not to pool on the clear stamp so I decided to use a diamond nail file on the surface and it worked great the ink stuck and gave a decent image for once.  I have used a Spellbinder labels 4 and a large corner rounder on the page and sentiment banner.  The dots were made with finger dobbers.

Hop over to the challenge and leave us your creations. We would love to see them.

I will post some of my sewing items over the next couple of weeks and you can let me know what you think.

Have a great weekend and happy bank holiday if you live in the UK.  :-) xx

CHALLENGES

Anything Goes Challenge - handmade background
Eureka Stamps - all white or NO designer paper
My Heart Pieces - Be sentimental (use a sentiment)
Shopping Our Stash - what's in your took shed.  (finger dobbers, corner rounder)
Joanna Sheen Challenge - Girls, Girls, Girls

Crafting When We Can Challenges #44 - Colour Combo - Lime Green and Pink

I can't believe it's been 14 days since I last made a post, doesn't time fly.  I've been crocheting a little jacket for myself and sewing some mannequin pin cushions to sell at a local craft fair Lynne at Craft Den is organising for September.  I'm also trying to think up some other things to make and sell. 

Our Sponsor for Challenge 44 is the talented Megan at 

Dilly Beans Stamps

My image is Skellie with balloon.  I have used pearlised card so the photo is a bit reflective (my excuse for rubbish photography skills). I coloured it using flexmarkers and the papers are from my stash and I've had them years.  The little pearls are from Home Bargains.

Hop over to the Challenge Blog and leave your Lime Green and Pink creations and you could be in with a chance of winning our great prize.

CHALLENGES

Delightful Challenges - Stash It (all card used over 2 years old)

Crafty Creations Challenge 221 - Something old/something new (old card, new image)

Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes

Our Creative Corner - Anything Goes

Pin and Tack (Spark your creativity now) - Anything Goes, May

Beccy's Challenge May 2013 - Anything Goes

Here is my entry for Beccy's Place May challenge.  I originally made this for the April challenge but forgot to post and enter it  so as May's challenge is anything goes this will work too.  The image is called Full Bloom and is perfect for layering up, as you can see on the 2nd picture.  The decoupage is about 2cm high. The image was coloured with copics and promarkers and then scanned and printed so I could layer them up.  The base card was embossed and coloured with DI and the mat was cut with a Nelly C die.

CHALLENGES

Beccy's Place  - Anything Goes

Crafting When We Can Challenges 43 - Personalise It

A very quick post today.  MY OH has decide to update my laptop and now I can't find anything.

Sassy Studio Designs are sponsoring us again for this Challenge and I chose Little Honeys - Cinderella Honey

I made a scrapbook page on CraftArtist (half my digikits are still missing) but I printed out and coloured the image with Copics and Promarkers then scanned it back into CA and added it to my page.

Hop over to Crafting When We Can Challenges and let's see your personalised projects.

Crafting When We Can Challenges #42 - At the Movies.

The Challenge over at CWWCC is At the Movies.  Sara from Sassy Studio Designs let us choose our own image for this challenge. I chose Mistress of the Night. I love the Elvira movie Mistress of the Dark, I think it's really funny.

The backing papers are from Creative Cottage and the shape is from CraftArtist.  The spider is from a digikit Halloween 2011 (a free kit I do believe).  The sentiment was cut out with a spellbinder die.  The image was coloured using copic markers, the bling was from Poundland.  Card from stash.

CHALLENGE

Moving Along With The Times - Inspired by a Song or Film

Bearly Mine #81 - Anything Goes

Gingerloft - For the Guys

Delicious Doodles #31 - Anything Gothic

Pin and Tack #8 - Spark you Creativity Now -  Anything Goes

CraftnDen ATC swap March - bit late...

Because of life I'm a little late with my March ATC swap for Craft Den but I will be taking them down to Lynne on Tuesday.  If you want to join in hop over and see what the theme will be for April or even better become a follower of Lynne's blog and you'll never miss them or any of the wonderful classes she runs.

The theme for March was Birds of a feather. I was going to go with flying birds but I decided to go with the colloquial ones instead and add feathers.  All 5 are the same.  I've used an image from Dezinaworld and feathers from an old boa.  The stamp is from a set that came with a magazine, inked with DI.  The little pearl is from Home Bargains.

Hope you're having a great weekend.  Weather not too bad in Sheffield today.  Half past 7   in the evening and I'm sat looking a blue sky with scattered clouds.  Spring may just be arriving and about time too.

Shouldn't eat, won't eat...

I'm on holiday this week and so thought it would be a great time to get back to my healthier eating plan.  Before Christmas I lost 7lbs in weight but managed to do so much more with controlling my type 2 diabetes and blood pressure.   I managed to have 1 of my tablets taken away and my blood pressure was the lowest it had been for nearly 10 years.  Over Christmas I indulged myself but didn't go overboard but then I had some stress at work and the eating started again.  I am overdue to go back to see my nurse and I can tell that my blood sugars etc are not going to be very good.  So I have decided that this holiday would be a great time to start again and hopefully I will get back to where I was or better.  

Anyhoo the reason I am posting today is to show a digital scrapbook page I made using Vintaj Victorian Garden in CraftArtist instead of raiding the fridge/crisp bag.  I really everything about this page. I even worked out a way to put a shadow in the aperture that didn't hang over the border at the side. Woo Hoo love CraftArtist 2.

CHALLENGES

Challenges 4 Everybody #17 - Anything Goes

Allsorts Challenge 200 - Vintage

Crafting When We Can Challenges 41 - Name That Tune

The Challenge for this fortnight was a fun one to do.  As soon as I saw this image in the sponsors shop I knew what song I wanted to do.  We have a new sponsor for this challenge

Dr Digi's House of Stamps

Theme

Name That Tune

Image:  Run Derek Run

For my card this week I used one of my shaped cards (I never use these but this is how much I looked forward to this challenge).  I made my own backing paper using a background from CraftArtist (Butterfly Elegance ) and an image from My Craft Sudio.  The backing paper was a bit of a pain to cut out which is why it just does fit quite right around the edge but as this card will eventually be received by my from my OH it doesn't really matter (yes I have to sort out my own cards and presents or I don't get them, usually sometime he really surprises me).  Nest time I will draw around the card and cut the paper on my Craftrobo, so it will hopefully fit better.  I coloured my image using Promarkers and Copics, matted it and my message onto blue card, popped up on 3d foam.  I added 3 buttons, trying to keep with the colours green, orange and yellow, used blue and white twine in the middle of each.  All the edges were coloured with Ocean Spray DI.

Hop over to Crafting When We Can Challenges and leave us your song inspired projects.

CHALLENGES

Stampotique Designers Challenge SDC90 - Song Inspiration

Simon Says Stamp - Anything Goes

Lacy Sunshine - Anything Goes

Eureka Stamps #32 - It's in the Words

Penny's Paper-Crafty 120 - Anything but a Square