a few challenges....

today I have decided to combine Theme Thursday's Pink and brown challenge with LIMs sketch challenge, finally going for the bottom right corner (my white space is brown).
I've also took a risk and entered this for one layer Wednesday's Fathers day challenge. Lots of people seem to think that fathers day cards have to be "masculine" but fathers of little girls get used to a lot of pink, and I think this card would be appreciated by the father of a little girl.

The stamp is a gorjuss girl that was a free subscription gift for Craft Stamper magazine and age ago. I've gone for my favourite pencil colouring on kraft card, I think the kraft helps to make it just a touch more masculine.... maybe

Theme thursday : girls

This is a variation on a card that I made a couple of weeks ago, which I thought I'd enter for Theme Thursday I made this one at the same time but it was for Jo's birthday.
This time I decided to raise up the parcel on a papermania springy thing.


The stamp is by lili of the valley, and the stencil is by crafter's workshop. The glitter border and embossing folder are papermania. The little girl is coloured with pencil and I've used a glitz spritz spray for the background.

two challenges and more new stampotique

The theme at paperplay challenges is distressing so I thought that I would enter this card I made using some more of the new stamps from Stampotique. This uses Jo's new large butterfly and flower cube as well as the french text on the wings.

This also fits the orange theme at theme thursday

Stamps are also available from Happy Daze in the UK

chocolate heart card

My book group meets on the second Monday of each month and of course that means that it falls on valentine's day this month. We considered moving it, but then decided that really we might as well be with friends than forcing our husbands to treat us to overpriced meals full of loved up youngies.
I decided though that I wanted to mark the date with a little valentine something for the members of the group. I found these little chocolate hearts, and then decided to make them into cards. I used a book page for the heart, and used this fabulous Mark Twain quote, which could have been made for book groups! both the floral heart and quote are from Scrolls Work Stamps.


These cards were so quick to make, I'm thinking they would make the coolest wedding invitations.

I decided not to put these cards in envelopes, as they are so bulky, but make little brown paper bags


After they were all finished I closed the bags with a presonalised embellishment stapled to the bag

This fits many challenges this week, including
Papertake weekly - have a heart
Crazy Amigo - valentine
Created by hand - queen of hearts (As I'm "in charge" of the reading group lol)
wednesday Stamper - expressions of love
theme thursday - words


it also fits the stampotique challenge, so don't forget to check that out, you could win $30 of stamps!! I haven't shown my piece for this yet as the stampotique team is so big at the moment, the designers' pieces are being staggered on the blog, so keep checking back for inspiration.

Theme Thursday: Spring

Oh, I'm so looking forward to spring now. Once Christmas is over there's really nothing good about winter. At least it seems to have warmed up over the last few days which is a bit of a relief. So it's lovely to see a spring theme at Theme Thursday. By the way, I have no idea what these flowers are or if they are indeed spring flowers, so please don't tell me off if I'm not quite getting the spring theme right!
This flower stamp actually naturally leans the other way, but for this card I wanted it to lean in from the left. As it has a thin stalk, it was really easy to bend it to the position I wanted on my acrylic block. Quite a neat little trick I thought.
I made this really quick card using Stamps from PaperArtsy (hot picks) onto Kraft card, and coloured with coloursoft pencils. I am so into this technique at the moment and it's just perfect for quick cards.

sorry it's a scan again! the other thing that I get fed up with about winter, the dark evenings!!

a little tag for rogue redheads

Here's just a little tag I made using stamps from the relish reading plate from Rogue Redhead Designs which is featured on the blog today.
These reading themed stamps work beautifully with old book pages.

I will also make this another entry for Theme Thursday.

another post, so soon!

Now that I've finished the last minute knitting I can get back to the quick fix that is stamping. I just had a mail order present arrive that needed wrapping and decided to have a play. it's for a guy so I wanted something quite masculine. Both of the stamps are from the same paperartsy plate. possibly my favourite christmas plate from Paperartsy (and the beautiful flourishes can be used all year round).
The funny thing about this tag is of course it's a soft present and shaking it is perfectly fine. well I find that amusing anyway!!
I'm entering this for Wednesday stamper "snowflakes" and theme thursday "tags"

inspiration from a couple of challenges

The inspiration for this card came from the Wednesday Stamper challenge (faces) and the theme thursday challenge (pink). All of the stamps are from The Paperartsy Hotpick range, and the gem is from poundland.

I have used my blender pencil again to colour the face. I'm still learning, and each time I use it I can see how to improve the technique.

It's starting to feel a lot like autumn..

..although I have no idea what happened to summer.

The theme at One layer Wednesday this week is 3 plus 1, i.e. 3 stamped images and one sentiment. I was really struggling with this one, when these leaves arrived in the post from Scrolls Work stamps today, and then I knew instantly what to do. The sentiment is also from Scrolls Work

I am also entering this for this week's theme thursday challenge "Autumn"

The leaves are stamped in the distress ink colours, Wild Honey, Rusty Hinge and Barn Door. I love this colour combo!

hedgehog party!

Today on the Frantic Stamper Blog I have this card featured. it's a really simple card, using a fistars texture plate, basic grey paper and penny black stamps. There are full instructions on the frantic stamper blog, along with step by step pictures. (why not pop over and say hi over there?)

I am entering this for theme thursday where the theme is animals

triangle gift box

Today on the Frantic Stamper blog . I have a quick tutorial for making this easy gift box.
and yes, there's flower soft!
all stamp credits and instructions are on the frantic stamper blog and materials are available from the frantic stamper shop

As I have a strip of torn paper across the bottom of the box, I am entering this for Theme Thursday's torn paper theme.

The frantic stamper is offering a prize to one of it's readers. Here's what you need to know

The Frantic Stamper Happenings Blog has something new for you!

Our design team works really hard to bring you all these wonderful projects, so lets show them some appreciation. Leave a message on the blog for the June project you liked best and you might be selected to win a prize from the FranticStamper store.

Fran will be making the selection of the lucky winner from those who leave messages for the designers. She will be making her random pick in about a week, so get those comments in!

In the meantime, we hope you will continue to enjoy the projects for July, and will let the designers know how much you like those, too!

Collage, my way!

The theme at Theme Thursday is collage. If you have visited my blog before you may have noticed that I have a bit of a thing for white space. So when I collage, I don't feel the need to cover every space of my card.
The quote stamp is from Scrolls Work Stamps and the collage image is one of Inka's old collage images. Inka is now selling some of her images to download at her etsy shop.
This style of small collage allows you to use up some of those smaller images that just wouldn't work on a larger collage

Out of this world!!!

Today I have this card featured on the frantic stamper blog. Please visit there for the details and stamp credits. There's lots more to see on the blog which is constantly being updated with new tutorials for a wide range of stamping projects, using stamps from loads of different manufacturers. It really is worth a visit

As I have used bright colours I am entering this for Theme Thursday

jasmine

Isn't she beautiful? Here's another card with some of Jo's new stamps.
The background paper is from prima and I picked it up at a bargain price of 20p from a fab shop in Harrogate yesterday.
I have used Jo's flower stamp and if you look closely I also used the long splatter with clear sparkle embossing powder down the side. Then finished the whole thing of with flower soft!
Jo's stamps are available from Stampotique, and you can get them from Happy Daze in the UK.

as she is so beautiful I have decided to enter her for Theme Thursday's Beauty theme

looks like I'm on a roll again, this is my second post today and I have made something else. I think I'll schedule that for tomorrow though.

Happy Birthday Craft Stamper

Craft Stamper Magazine is 10 years old, and they are celebrating with a bumper issue of the magazine, released on the 7th may. I got my subscription copy today and it really is a great issue, lots of inspiration. Definitely an issue I will keep going back too. High points include a fantastic colouring technique by kim costello and and some beautiful inspiration from Jo Capper-Sandon. While on the subject of Jo, have you seen her new range of stamps produced by Stampotique? wow! they are gorgeous
It's an extra celebration as I have officially become a contributor to the mag, as I have a couple of articles coming up. (look I'm in the list of contributors on the blog)
The Craft stamper website has also had a facelift.

I made this tag with this month's free stamps, although the flourish is from the new PaperArtsy hotpicks plates. The texture on the cat is black ultrafine flower soft.

I am entering this tag for Theme thursday's black and white challenge.

theme thursday: hats or crowns

the theme at theme thursday is hats or crowns, I just received this newspaper hat stamp from scrolls work stamps, so of course I had to try it on Erica!!
The layout of this card started out much bigger, but I couldn't make it work so I went back to what I know: cramming it all into a 2 inch square!!
The bunting is the same stamp as the background, with freehand triangles. I have done the background with one of the new distress inks: victorian velvet.
All stamps are available from scrolls work

All mine!!

I thought this week's stampotique challenge was indeed challenging, the theme is easter and it's stampotique stamps only. I have 4 stampotique stamps and none of them seemed particularly eastery, but I am not beaten easily.
When I saw the theme thursday theme of 2"x4" I was further intrigued....
could I combine these two challenges?

I love this little guy's smiel and thought that it would be the kind of smile you would have if you were surrounded by easter eggs.

The papers are all basic grey, the eggs are punched, the sentiment is done on the computer and the little guys background is done using two of the new distress inks, spun sugar and bundled sage.

Theme Thursday: Girls

This week at theme thursday the theme is girls, and some of my favourite girls come from Inka. So I decided to make this tag in a card using stamps from Inka, which are now available from scrolls work stamps.

theme thursday: hearts

The theme at theme thursday is hearts, so I decided to use stamps from The Artistic Stamper to create a heart background and heart hanging feature on this card using mabel lucie atwell stamps.

This second card is also made using stamps from The Artistic Stamper. This one was for Carol's birthday.

angel

Made with stamps by Paperarsty
wings from winter wonderland plate 1
girl and background from xmas plate 1
halo, part of ink and the dog mini 56
and letters from words plate 2
I am entering this for theme thursday's writing theme for the background writing.

I have also used some of the paperartsy stamps with this I brake for stamps skateboarder. I used crackle accents over the name, I hope you can see the effect