Friday 31 July 2009

Dare U 2 Digi Stamp - challenge 18 - distressing


Our challenge at Dare U 2 Digi Stamp this week is distressing. We'd love to see your torn edges, sanding or sponging whatever technique you'd like to try to create that distressed look on those pristine Digi Images.


I have used one of these cute Lily-Boo's Boutique images this week and coloured her with copics. I have taken the opportunity this week to use up odds and ends from my scrap box and these odd sized bit of DP were just perfect for tearing up. The flowers are by prima and the flower charm came from my friend Tracy.

I do hope you all get a chance to get distressing for this challenge. If you pop on over to the blog Here you can see all the cards from the DT this week which will hopefully give you some inspiration. We also have a couple of announcements these this week, firstly that our challenge will be moving to fortnightly so as to give people a bit longer to enter due to summer holidays, kids off school etc, and secondly to announce our first Guest DT member of the month.

I am heading off on holiday for a week tomorrow, but wll catch up with all your creations when I get back.

Have fun distressing.

Karen x

Thursday 30 July 2009

Another Sweet Daisy Card


Squiggle Stamps

Here is another card that I have made using this fabulous new collection of Daisy stamps from Squiggle Stamps. They are just a delight to colour in and look adorable either on their own or combined with other stamps.

Front of Card

On the Front of the card I have used Daisy with Balloon and the papers are by Making Memories. The little flowers came in a bunch from Hobbycraft, ribbon from my stash and sentiment was a free one with a magazine which I have stamped onto the ribbon.

Inside of Card

On the inside I have used Daisy with Bunny and combined it with Bird on Flourish which is also by Squiggle Stamps as is the little bird on the right hand page which is one of the bird from the Two Tweet stamp.

Do pop on over to the website Here to check out all the Squiggle stamps and also see some more creations with these adorable stamps on the Gallery.

Karen x

Tuesday 28 July 2009

Copics Colour Challenge #24 & Happy Birthday Sophie


For this week's challenge at Copics Colour Challenge I have taken the opportunity to make a card for our grandaughter Sophie's 8th Birthday - Happy Birthday Sophie, hope you are having a lovely day.
I have used this lovely Duda Daze stamp from Sugar Nellie and the DP is my favourite at the moment and is by Papermania and I just love these colours as they really are my favourite colours to work with. The flowers are by prima and the brads and ribbons are from my stash.

Front of card


Inside of card


This weeks sponsor is the truly wonderful Craft Barn. One lucky winner will receive a £15 voucher to spend in their online shop. The Craft Barn have such a wonderful selection of goodies, we are confident that the winner will be able to find something that they 'need'. You can find out all about this wonderful prize and see the cards from the DT this week Here

Karen x

ICS Sketch# 27

Here is Dawn's new sketch for this week at ICS and as usual it is a great one.


Onto our lovely sponsor for this week is DIGIMENTS. Michelle from Digiments is offering...
(2) $20 gift certificates to Digiments.
So that means we'll have two lovely winners to chose from. How exciting! So pop on over to the ICS blog to read all about these great prizes and also check out the beautiful cards from the rest of the DT this week.
I have used one of the Gorjuss set 2 girls for my card this week and I can't believe that this is the first time that I have used this one - how cute is she? The DP is by K&Co and the sentiment from this week's sponsor Digiments.


I hope you get a chance to join in with the challenge this week and I look forward to visitng your blogs to see what you are up to.

Karen x

A Spoon Full of Sugar Challenge 62 - Sketch by Caryn


This week at A Spoon Full of Sugar we have a fabulous sketch for you to follow which was designed by our talented DT member Cayrn - thanks Caryn it was a great one to follow.
You can check the sketch and the beautiful cards from the DT this week here and also the fabulous prize that we have this week from our own Nikki's webstore Bunny Zoes Crafts.

Tracy from Squiggle Stamps has asked me to do some design work for her new company and I have used the four new stamps from the Oscar and Daisy range which has only just been released this week and how cute are these.

Front of Card

This one on the front is Daisy with flowers, DP is by papermania and the brads by doodlebug. I have coloured Daisy in with copics and added a little stickles to the flowers.

Inside of Card

Same papers and theme in the inside and the stamps used here are Daisy sitting pretty and Daisy with Bunny.

Back of Card

I have finished off the card by using Daisy with Balloon on the back of the card.

Please pop on over to Tracy's website here to check out these fab new Daisy stamps and also to see the other stamps which Tracy has which will co-ordinate with this new range.

Have a great week

Karen x

Thursday 23 July 2009

Dare U 2 DigiStamp - Challenge 17 - Sketch by Larissa


This week at Dare U 2 DigiStamp we have a fabulous sketch for you to follow which was designed by our talented DT member Larissa. You can check out what the DT have come up with this week Here


I have used Milly with Flowers from DigiStamp Boutique on my card for this challenge. I have coloured her with copics and the little flowers are by prima with a small half pearl for the centre. The DP is a 6x6 from Making Memories and the sentiment is one that came free with a magazine.


I have a completely free weekend coming up and am so looking forward to some quality craft-time and hopefully a bit of relaxation before I head off on holiday next Saturday - can't wait!!

Have a great weekend and I look forward to seeing how you use Larissa's sketch.

Karen x

Wednesday 22 July 2009

Copics Colour Challenge #23 using Stamp Something Sketch


This week at Copics Colour Challenge we have another great sponsor for you - Toodles and Binks. Toodles and Binks are offering a rather lovely £15 voucher to spend on their stamps, and as they are already so competitively priced, the winner of challenge 23 will get a lot of goodies for their winnings! For those of you who haven't seen their amazing stamps before, where have you been?! Make sure you check them out as their designs are simply gorgeous.


To be in with a chance of winning this great prize, you just need to create 'something' with your Copics using the above colour combo YG63, YR04 and R35. You can make anything you like to enter, however, you must use your Copics. If you haven't got the right shades, just pick one that is 'near enough'!


I have used a couple of the new Manga Stamps from Sugar Nellie and aren't these just too cute. The DP is Making Memories Cheeky Abbie , buttons Stampin Up and ribbon from my stash. The sentiments are from a CC Designs sentiments set. The sketch that I have followed is the one at Sketch Something this week which I think is a great one with this image.


I have carried the same colours through to the inside of the card and this time have cut out the image.

I do hope that you get a chance to join in with us this week with these great colours.

Karen x

Tuesday 21 July 2009

ICS Sketch #26 & Cute Card Thursday Xmas in July


Tuesday again already and time for another sketch from Dawn at Inspirational Card Sketches and another fab one to follow.
This week our sponsor Bunny Zoe's Crafts owner Nikki is giving away a fabulous prize to one lucky winner using ICSketches #26, a set of 7 Christmas Charms and Ollyfant Winter Skates Clear Stamp Set. What a nice prize to receive and you only have to create some kind of project using the sketch below. So lets see what you can do with it.


The challenge at Cute Card Thursday this week is Xmas in July so I have taken this opportunity to get another of my Christmas cards done and for this one I have used Snow Anya from the 2nd set from the Greeting Farm, the papers are by Craft House, glitter card by Doodlebug and the brad and ribbon from my stash.


Have a great crafting week and I look forward to seeing your creations with this great sketch.

Karen x

A Spoon Full of Sugar - Challenge 61 - Swirls


We have a nice easy challenge for you this week over at A Spoon Full of Sugar which is to use swirls on your cards. These swirls could be swirly papers, swirl embossed paterns, swirl stamps of chipboard swirls.


I just adore this little mermaid from CC Designs. The papers are by doodlebug and the swirls were cut using a Quickutz die. I have embossed the paper just behind the mermaid with a cuttlebug swirls folder, but I do not think that the embossing is showing up very well in the photo. The little charm came from my friend Tracy - thanks Tracy.


I have used the same papers on the inside of the card and used another one of these cute mermaids.

Our sponsor this week is Tracy from Squiggle Stamps. Squiggle Stamps are a new stamp company - launched June 2009. Their premiere collection of general occasion images are available now with the arrival of the very cute Oscar & Daisy due very soon!
As well as the two cute Daisy stamps Tracy is very generously giving the lucky winner a selection of 6x6 MM Abby papers, pebble stickers, assorted ribbon, trimming, flowers & gems. Thank you Tracy for this awesome prize! - worth checking out here

Have a great week.
Karen x

Friday 17 July 2009

Dare U 2 Digi Stamp - Challenge 16 - anything but a card


This week our Dare is: Anything but a card.
It can be anything you like such as a gift bag, gift box, ATC, or a bookmark. We're sure you'll come up with many more gorgeous creations which of course must include a digi image. We hope you can join us.

We are offering a prize this week of two single digi images from Sketching Stamper and two single digi images from Sandra Dry Designs, you can get more information and check out the fabulous creations from the rest of the DT here

For my project this week I have covered a little notebook. This cute little image is a new one from Sally-Ann at Digi Stamp Boutique, her name is Sophie and she is a real cutie.
We have out grandaughter, also named Sophie coming to stay at the weekend and this will be a nice little gift for her. The papers are by Making Memories and the flowers by prima. I have used a quickutz alphabet to cut out the Sophie letters and given them a bit of bling with stickles. The image has been coloured with copics and I have paper pieced the dress with some of the Making Memories paper.



On the back of the book I have used another of Sally-Ann's stamps and this one is called Sidney.


Have a great weekend and I look forward to seeing what ideas you come up with for the challenge this week.
Karen x

Wednesday 15 July 2009

More Gingerbread


Here is the card that I was making as my DT card for Copics Colour Challenge this week. It was only after I had finished the front and I was feeling really smug that I had got it done in plenty of time for the challege that I discovered that I had used the wrong sketch. I had printed off the one for Sketch Saturday as well as the Copics one and had by mistake used the wrong one. I then left this card and made the correct one before coming back to finish off this one.


I so love these gingerbread people and these Heidi Grace papers are just pefect with these images. As I already said, the sketch is this week's one at Sketch Saturday and what a great sketch it is. The big brads are by Imaginsce and ribbons from my stash.


I have carried the same papers through to the inside and the little recipie was printed straight onto the DP on the computer.


This picture shows the normal sized card that I had made along with the mini one that I had posted earlier for Copics Colour Challenge.
I hope you like them both as much as I do.
Karen x

Copics Colour Challenge # 22


Over at Copics Colour Challenge this week is a little different. We decided that we would have a week off the colour challenges and so Maddy kindly produced one of her marvelous sketches for us. I'm sure you will agree, it is a stunner!


This week, we have yet another wonderful sponsor for you..... Peachy Keen stamps. For those of you who have not yet visited Peachy Keen, you are in for a treat. Super cute! The DT had real problems in choosing images for their cards as they wanted them all! However, the lucky winner of this weeks challenge could seriously add to their rubbah stash with the $40 voucher that Peachy Keen are offering as a prize!

I just love these little gingerbread people. I have made a really tiny card for the challenge this week - long story, but to cut it short I used the wrong sketch and then ran the risk of running out of these fab papers, so decided to use a Stampin Up 7.5cm square card as my base. I had orignally intended making a gift tag, but decided that it looked really cute as a mini-card. I will post the original one with the wrong sketch later and take a photo of the two of them together to show the difference in size.
Papers are all by Heidi Grace and brads are by imaginsce.


I have used the same papers on the inside and the little gingerbread house is cut from one of the papers.


Same theme continued to the back.


I just love this mini-card and think there may be a few more of these in the pipeline. I have even thought that they could be used as small photo frame cards as you could substitute the gingerbread man in the frame inside of the card with a photo - baby, wedding etc. - now that has got me thinking....
Have a great week and sorry for the length of this post.
Karen x

Tuesday 14 July 2009

ICS #25


Here is Dawn's fab sketch at ICS this week.
This week Squigglefly is sponsoring the challenge and they have a prize of 3 images of the winners choice to offer one lucky person. Please do take a look at what my fellow DT's have made here and I hope you can join us this week.


I have used another of the fabulous Nutshells stamps from Nutcrafters and this one is called Summer Mac. I could so do with that cocktail at the moment!
The DP is by daisy bucket and the swirl is from quickutz. Sorry no inside to this card yet - another one to add to the pile to be finished off!!



Well the sun has come out here again and it is another lovely day - hope the sun is shining wherever you are.

Have a great week

Karen x

A Spoon Full of Sugar - Challenge 60 -Sketch by Debbie


This week at A Spoon Full of Sugar we have a fun sketch designed by our own Debbie for you to follow.


We have a cute Space Ian stamp which has been kindly donated by Bryony from Silly Monkey Crafts as a prize this week. Thank you Bryony!
This sketch was a delight to work with and was just perfect for this cute little Pixie from CC Designs. You will notice that I have rotated the sketch. The DP are a mixture of Craft House and Doodlebug and I have framed the image with some gorgeous Doodlebug glitter card which I had been saving as it was too yummy to cut up. Flowers are by prima and the sentiment from Stampin Up.


I have used another couple of these cute pixies in the inside and carried through the same colours from the front.


I hope you get a chance to join in with the challenge this week and I am sure that you will enjoy working with this sketch.
Karen x

Saturday 11 July 2009

How exciting is this - I have been published!!!


Some weeks ago Karen at Sugar Nellie asked me if I would make a card for her with the Daisy stamp. This is one of my favourite stamps so certainly was not a problem at all for me. The only instructions were that it needed to be a summer themes card and it was for submission to a magazine.

I had completely forgotten about it until Friday when I was in WH Smith and went to look at the craft magazines. I could hardly believe my eyes, not only was there a whole page for my card, but it also was on the front cover of the Stamping Essentials magazine which comes free with Papercraft Essentials this month and my card also appears on the back page of the give away papers booklet.

I have only jsut noticed that on the Sugar Nellie advert at the bottom of the page there is another of my cards - the one with Hamish the Rugby Player.

I have checked my camera and have found some pictures that I had taken of the card before handing it over.
Front

Inside

Back

Well I suppose I had better try and come back down to earth now and get some tidying up done in my craft room as my daughter is coming to stay tonight and I need to hide away the bits and pieces that I don't want her to be tempted to help herself to!!!
Have a great weekend.
Karen x