Olympics & Challenges

Am I the only one loving the Olympics?! I watched the opening ceremony on Friday & loved it. What a spectacle - especially the cauldron at the end. I'd have loved to be there but must admit watching snuggled on the sofa at that time of night was the best option for me.

Today Deborah Gill set a 60 min challenge on Aly's Den - the crafty group on Facebook. She posted the theme 'Proud to be British' at 3pm and we had until 4pm to make a card & post the picture! It was quite a challenge - it makes you realised how long you normally spend making a card! I had also seen the current challenge on I Love Promarkers which is Gold, Silver or Bronze so I thought I'd combine the two. This is the result:

The Image is A Big Whoop from the wonderful Mo Manning of Digital Pencil Two. The circle is the largest Picot Circles Nestabilities which I really love, the outside is coloured with my metallic gold Promarker.

Promarker colours:

Skin - Oatmeal, Blush, Pastel Pink

Hair - Walnut, Cocoa, Cinnamon

Dress - Cardinal Red, Poppy, Red

Top - Royal Blue

Background - Powder Blue

The matting layers are plain white card coloured with my Poppy & Royal Blue Promarkers to ensure they matched.

It's not my best colouring but it was in a limited time frame.

The Sentiment is from Create by TLC - I added the 'is for British' myself as I thought it worked well both for the British Pride theme and the Gold, Silver & Bronze. I printed it on my lazer printer then foiled it with my Black Cat Foil Master from Thyme Graphics. I bought it second hand a month or so ago & havn't had a chance to play with everything that's gone on this month. It was really nice to put it to use. 

Here's a better photo showing the effect of the gold foiling.

As I had it up and running I had a play and foiled some words for an invitation & also some of the beautiful free vector ornaments available here. I love the effect the Foil Master gives! I need to work a bit on getting the temperature settings exactly right for the different cardstock & I need to play more with coloured card but I'm so impressed with the results.

I must play with this more - it's soooooo pretty!

I Love Promarkers Circle Challenge

Here's a quick one from me today - I saw the Circle challenge on I Love Promarkers & decided to give it a go.

I think I included enough circles! The Rocker card base starts as a circle & is shown here. I cut it on my cougar & scored it on my Hougie board.  I've used the lovely Picot Circles die from nestibilities which is now sooooo much easier to use after I put release foam in it (before I was making very loud noises every time I tired to use it - trust me SUCH a difference!

The Image & Sentiment is from Bugaboo

I coloured her with my trusty Promarkers & even coloured the decorative edging on the circle and a silver edging around the paper with my metallic Promarker to highlight it.

The Paper is from Sassy Studios (circles on that too) and I finished it with a triple row of circle peel offs. Sassy Studios currently have a 25c sale on so a great time to stock up - you can get lovely digi paper packs for 25c!!!! Brilliant to have on the computer to print out as you need them.

I'd love to hear what you think x

Clouds!

The lovely Hazel did a brilliant tutorial on how to make clouds on cards & set us a challenge of trying the technique. I've been wanting to for a few day but was struggling to work out how to do it as I don't own a single blue ink pad or pot of blue paint so I was struggling to work out how to do it.

Luckily inspiration struck last night when I remembered the 'Blitzer' I had when I was a kid. 

It's basically a hand powered air gun - you put a felt tip pen in the holder so the tip of the nib sits just over the hole at the end of the Blitzer. Then you squeeze the bulb & blow a fine spray of ink over the paper. Not quite what Hazel suggested for the technique but with a bit of sideways thinking it did the job.

Update! I've just discovered that the inner barrel can be removed which means the main barrel is big enough to hold a Promarker!!!!!! What a brilliant discovery - I can see me using this lots!

I cut Hazel's cloud template out of doeflex template plastic on my Cougar (it's incredible to have a machine that can cut material that thick!). This means I have the templates there to use whenever I want them in the future & they also wipe clean which is great.

Following her tutorial I came up with these:

The image is one of the Superkids by Mo Manning

The sentiment is from Create with TLC

I then made one that's more appropriate for the lovely weather we've been having this summer:

I made it as a top folding card & added a layer of plastic over the top. I couldn't find my acetate so used a plastic document pocket instead. On the front of this I used glossy accents to create raindrops & a puddle for her to splash in.

The image is Waiting for Rain by Mo Manning

The sentiment is one I created myself.

Here's a close up of the raindrops - they cover the whole of the card but don't show up particularly well in the photo.

I'd love to hear what you think x

Promarker Storage

Look what my clever hubby helped me make :D

I saw this brilliant idea for storage of copic pens while looking round the internet & decided I wanted to adapt the idea for my Promarkers as I've now got a few too many to fit in my drawers from Poundland. After a bit of trawling on the internet I bought some grid from a lovely lady on Aly's Crafty Den on Facebook. It turned out to be on the diagonal rather than square but it still worked well. Andy set to work with some cutters & his stanley knife & this was the end result - what do you think?

The boxes are the 9l Really Useful Box. I'm going to invest in a XL lid as this means I can fit the lid on top so can transport my lovely pens without having to decant them :D

Empty & raring to go.........

All full up with my lovely pens ......

There are lots of gaps for new ones but it generally follows the Promarker colour chart so is easy to find coordinating pens.

Sideways View

and another side ways view. 

It stands up quite securely on it's own as it's well balanced.

Sooooooo pretty and soooooooo practical! I love it to bits!!!!! Thanks for all the cutting skills Andy x

Goodbye Diva

RIP our beautiful dog Diva. 

21 months was far too short a life for you and 16 months was far too short a time for us to know you but you bought us so much joy & happiness. 

Diva passed away on Thursday after developing epilepsy on top of pancreatitis x