Lots of cards!

I've had a bit of a creative spell recently so thought I'd share some of my creations. As ever I'd love to hear what you think. I've had nearly 150 visitors looking at my last post with the Dutch Saturated Canary Image but only 3 people have left me comments.

My first card uses a digi from Papelitos Stamps.

 The sentiment is a freebie from Ginger's House (there are some great sentiments on there). 

I've coloured her in  pink & would like to enter her into Papelitos Stamps 'Pretty in Pink' Challenge

Digi from Birdie Brown

Sentiment is from an acrylic stamp set (designer unknown)

Digi From Birdie Brown

Sentiment is an acrylic stamp (designer unknown)

Paper from Sassy Designs

Digi from Jellypark

Sentiment from Create with TLC

These roses are a rubber stamp from Imagination Crafts called Shadow Rose. It comes in 2 sizes. I bought it after seeing a card that the lovely Brenda on Aly's Crafty Den made. Brenda is a lovely lady & sent me some Perfect Pearls to try. I've not made any cards with this stamp yet but enjoyed having a play. What do you think?

Stamped with Memento inks

Stamped with Versamark Ink then brushed over with Perfect Pearls

See the shimmer!

Versamark/ Perfect Pearls on burgundy cardstock - it makes the shimmer stand out really well.

Finally Come back Tomorrow and on Monday for exciting news & chances to win prizes x

Saturated Canary Dutch Freebie

A new blog has lunched today -  http://hetcanaryblog.blogspot.nl/  It's a Dutch blog dedicated to Saturated Canary Images. The lovely Krista has created a new digi just for the blog & it's available at the moment as a freebie (my favourite price :P)

Isn't she adorable! I decided to stick to a non complex colour range - mainly cobalt blue & china blue promarkers. The ribbon is coloured in with my powder blue promarker and the two blue mats are white card stock coloured in with the cobalt promarker.

Pop over to http://hetcanaryblog.blogspot.nl/ and grab this little cutie for yourself

The sentiment stamp (an actual stamp for once!) is from Lili Of the Valley

Here Come The Boys Challenge

Today I decided to have a go at the challenge on the Here Come the Boys Challenge blog. It's a sketch designed by Wendy Woo & it appealed for me. I'm not usually great at sketches but thought I'd give it a try.

Here's my interpretation of the sketch.

As ever the colours havn't come out as cleanly as they are in real life but it gives you the idea.

The image is a decoupage sheet from Crafts u Print with an image from Jellypark. I'm not normally a fan of decoupage so this again was an unusual thing to try. It came with a magazine I bought recently.

The papers are from the free digi scrapbook kits available from Every Day Mom Ideas. I've only just found this blog & love her designs (and they're my favourite price). I took the cloud paper & created a transparent blue overlay to change the colour for two of the free panels. I added stickles to the waves on the sea paper.

The sentiment is from Create with TLC - I love that shop and visit the blog most days to see what the freebie is.

This is the sketch the card is based on:

I'd love to hear what you think x

I'm on Two Challenge Design Teams!!

Now everything has settled I can tell you my exciting news - for the first time ever I'm on a Design Team ...... and not one but two! What a day that was! It's super exciting & I'm really looking forward to being part of the teams. They are both for challenges & trust me we have some great prizes lined up.

The first is a Facebook group - Aly's Crafty Challenges. I'm already a member of Aly's Crafty Den which is the nicest group of crafters ever. It's really like a big (slightly mad) family on there. I've met some great people & it's a lovely place to sell your excess crafty things, get advice or just have a giggle. Bring a pack of hobnobs & everyone will love you.

Aly decided to set up a separate but linked challenge group. It's on Facebook so come along and join us. It's a very open, relaxed challenge for every sort of crafting & every level of talent. We'd love to see you there. The first challenge is launched on 3rd Sept and will run for a month.

The second DT is really exciting. I've been gradually getting more and more addicted to Digi Stamps over the last year or so. I love the flexibility of them, the fact they take up no storage space, the fact that you can resize them, crop them or rotate them ....... in fact I love everything about them! 

I'm a member of the Digi Galore Facebook group which is a brilliant source of advice for digi stamps & where some amazingly talented people share their amazing colouring skills. I've been following the tutorials & gradually improving with my colouring so I was amazed to be accepted onto the DT for the newly launched Digi Galore Challenge Blog. 

Erin has been running challenges on Digi Galore and providing prizes out of her own pocket but decided to launch into blog land to open the challenges up to even more people. We've contacted several Digi design companies and have some amazing sponsors lined up. Come along and join us - there will be two DT's with challenges running on the 1st and 15th of each month

I even have my very own badge! 

I'm really looking forward to being on the DT's and seeing all the lovely entries to the challenges. I have one of my entries made up and plan to work on the other today. This morning however I got distracted and made a very last minute card to enter into the challenge at Jellypark. I love that digi company!!! The theme is bugs ...... what do you think?

The image is from Jellypark (sign up to their club for freebies & member discounts)

The sentiment is from Create with TLC

The flowers are made using a lovely free template shared by Bird's Cards

The paper is from Sassy Designs

I coloured the image with my Promarkers - sunflower, canary and lemon for the yellow stripes, 

Black for the black stripes

Skin - coral, oatmeal, blush, pastel pink cheeks

Hair - Gold, mustard, pastel yellow

Wings - Cool Aqua

Exciting News

The amazingly talented Mo Manning had a 24hr freebie in her shop of her new digi 'Laptop Baby' over 1000 people grabbed it and she's now set a challenge to come up with a good sentiment to use with it. The freebie has ended now but you can buy this lovely image at Mo's shop.

Here's my entry. Many of my friends seem to be having babies at the moment but they all live a long way away so I don't get to see them very often - so I thought of this sentiment.

The Image is Laptop Baby from Mo Manning

The Sentiment is my Own

The Paper is from Sassy Designs

I coloured the image using my trusty Promarkers

Skin: Oatmeal, Blush, Pastel Pink cheeks

Hair: Primrose, Buttercup, Pastel Yellow, Mustard

Clothes: Baby pink, Antique Pink

Edges of Picot Circle die cut & mat for sentiment are coloured with Antique Pink

I also made a good discovery today. I have a great big pack of slightly pearlescent card banks which are great but sometimes look odd when made into cards as they're a different tone - not quite white. I experimented with the top half of this card and found that colouring with my baby pink promarker gave a lovely coverage & the pearlecense  shows through :D Yet another great discovery with my Promarkers!

I also made another card using the 'Hug Monster' sentiment from Create with TLC using a different digi than last time. This set of monsters comes from Birdie Brown. I think I like it better than my last attempt - possibly because I didn't try to do fur/ hair this time.

Image from Birdie Brown

Sentiment from Create with TLC

Paper from Sassy Designs

I can't remember which Promakers I used for the orange monster - it was a bit of a voyage of discovery. The Middle monster is Turquoise & True Blue & the other monster is Prussian.

I have other exciting news to share today - I've become a member of 2 Design Teams ...... yes TWO!!! Having never been on one before it feels great :D I'll let you know more details once things are settled.

Hope you're all having a wonderful day. Please leave me a comment - I'd love to know what you think x

Saturated Canary Up Up and Away

I'm having a bit of a spaced day today after watching the Olympic Closing Ceremony last night. I know there are all sorts of feelings about the Olympics & the money that's been spent on it but I must say I've Adored it! I've watched loads and loads of coverage & watched the Opening & Closing Ceremonies. I enjoyed them both but think the comedy moments - Mr Bean in the Opening Ceremony and Eric Idle in the Closing Ceremony were absolutely priceless. The most emotional moment had to go to seeing Gary Barlow performing so soon after his personal tragedy. How on earth he had the strength to sing that beautifully emotional song I have no idea - he's an incredible man. 

I'm really looking forward to seeing the Paralympics  - that's always so inspirational.

So the only thing I've managed today is to make a couple of cards & clear up all the crafting stuff I had over the lounge floor. I had loads out to photograph it so I can list to sell on Facebook as I've got far too much!

I normally struggle to use the really long thin cards thought I'd give it a go today. I've seen quite a few lovely cards made with the Teddy Bo tag designs & thought I'd try something similar with a Saturated Canary image I got with the 30% coupon that the lovely Krista had available this weekend. I expanded the image until it filled almost the whole card then cropped and added a border.

It's a bit of a shame that as normal the colours loose something in the photos. There's actually a reasonable amount of shading on the face but it just doesn't show up for some reason.

I love the way that two different colour conversations can make the same image look totally different.

The image is Up Up and Away from Saturated Canary

The sentiments are both from Create with TLC - my favourite source of sentiments. Paulette is an amazing lady who shares a free sentiment every day. Make sure to stop by & see what she has and leave a comment thanking her as that's always nice.

Coloured as ever with my trusty promarkers. I made the clouds using Hazel's tutorial that I posted about a few weeks ago. I made a very good discovery today - the barrel comes out of my old 'Spritzer' so it will take a Promaker :D :D :D Needless to say I'm a very happy bunny! I've also been asked to be on the Admin team of the lovely Aly's Crafty Den on Facebook so am really touched by that. So apart from not achieving much today it's a nice day.

I'd love to hear any comments you have on my cards xxx

Three Cards this afternoon

A day off work today so I made a few cards. The first is one for a male friend who has rather a soft spot for Betty Boop! I was going to make him a tractor card but then decided this might be more fun. The image was a colouring page I found online & coloured myself. It's my first attempt at an easel card and I'm pleased with how it looks, but do wonder if the recipients of these know how to make them stand up or just think we've sent a very odd card x

The image was from an online colouring page

The sentiment is from Create with TLC

I then made a quick silly card for a lady on the Crafting Facebook group I'm on who's having a rough time of it at the moment. I had this lovely sentiment from Create with TLC so went on a search for a Hug Monster to go with it. I found this freebie who did the job, but my hair creation didn't go very well. It gives the general idea though. Yet again I created the matting layers by colouring white card with my Promarkers.

Image is a freebie from Away with the Pixels

Sentiment is from Create with TLC

Coloured with Prussian, True Blue & Turquoise Promarkers

My final card was made using an image from a new company I've found - Jellypark. They have some lovely images. I have this one twice as I bought it, then also got it on the free DVD that comes with this months edition of Complete Cardmaking. I've generally stopped buying magazines but did give into this one as the DVD of digis & papers that came with it is brilliant. I really love the Jellypark images & have signed up to their free club & newsletter.

I resized one of my papers from Sassy Designs & printed a second copy of the stamp off so the dress printed on top of the paper. I then cut it out & glued it on the main digi stamp. I coloured it with my Promarkers (as ever) and even added some bling to the jewellery with my metallic gold & a tiny bit of stickles on the earings & necklace.

The backing paper is the same paper from Sassy Designs printed at a bigger size. The Sentiment is from Create with TLC.

That's all for today - I think I might follow this lady's idea & have a nice glass of wine. Then again maybe not x