Some more Samples for Be Creative

Here are some cards made with the Be Creative paper pads for Gordon and Justin's appearances on Hochanda a little while ago. For the first I used a Digi from Hero Arts (I also have this as a clear stamp and a red rubber wood mounted stamp, but the possibility of resizing the digi made it a must have as well!)  I coloured it with Be Creative alcohol markers, shaped it with spray 'm' boss, and mounted on a Nellie Snellen die cut. The border is a spellbinders die and the gems are also from Be Creative, coloured with an alcohol marker. I added some Be Creative glitter glue to the butterfly too.

For my second card I used a stamp from Inkylicious over some card washed with Distress inks and water. I added a skeleton leaf and popped them on the front of a card covered in paper from the Be Creative Nature's portrait pad.

My final card was made with the time flies pad and a Digi from Digistamp boutique, again coloured with alcohol markers. The sentiment was stamped then placed into the flattened bottle cap before mounting with 3d glue gel.All Be Creative products are available from Once Upon a Stamp. You can find their website here.
Sorry I haven't been in blog land much recently. There has been lots happening at work and Steve's Dad has been in hospital all week after a fall caused by very low blood pressure. He had a nasty knock to the head, but no broken bones, and after transferring him to another hospital he had a pacemaker fitted on Friday...not bad going for a 95 year old, and to be honest he seems more lively now than he has in months! He should be home by the middle of next week, but is still a bit wobbly walking.
I will leave you with a photo or two of our wildflower meadow in the allotment at work. So pleased it came into flower just as we were judged for the Nottingham in Bloom competition!

Thanks for looking! 

Rudolf day for May and In the Pink

 It is time for another Rudolf Day over at Scrappy Mo's, and for this month I have gone with two digis. The first is a freebie I found online by Inger Harding. You can find it here. The papers are from my stash and the base card was stamped with a holly border stamp from Inkylicious in old paper distress ink.

 My second card is another digi, this time from Digistamp Boutique. The embossing folder is by Sheena Douglas and I used another snippet to make the bow and fake ribbon. Do pop over to Scrappy Mo's and take a look at the inspiration and lovely prize. As I have used snippets on both of these I'm taking them to Miss Di's Snippet playground, where there is more lovely inspiration for using up those snippets

When I saw the Challenge at Allsorts this week was 'in the pink' I had the perfect card for it. I am god mother to a lovely young lady who has pink hair from time to time! It is her birthday this week, and when I saw the digi from Lavinia it reminded me of her so much! Take a look and see for yourself!
All of the digis in my post are coloured with Be Creative Markers and a range of glitter glue and liquid pearls. The papers on the pink card are from PDA, and the bright pink ribbon was a gift from a friend.
I hope the bank holiday weekend brings you good weather and the opportunity to do what you love. Hoping to do some serious gardening myself.
Thanks for looking!

March Challenge at Stamping Sensations

Good Morning! It is the first Sunday of the month, so time for our March challenge at Stamping Sensations, where this month we have a great theme of........

********Flower Power********

Perfect for Mother's day, and spring! For my first card I used a stamp by Honey Doo Crafts, coloured with Be Creative markers and decoupaged  over an ink dusted oval. I used the same pens to make a coordinating layer before mounting on a base card covered in paper from the pastel inspirations pad. I added a stamped sentiment framed using a Be Creative  bottle cap. 

 For my second card I used a digi (girl) from Digistamp boutique and a flower woodware singles stamp. All images were coloured with Be Creative alcohol markers. The paper on this card is from the Vintage Collage pad, and I also used be creative glitter glue.
The Usual rules apply, you can enter up to three times, combine with other challenges, use any make of stamp......but can I please remind you we are a stamping challenge and stamping must be the focal/predominant element of your work. Conventional rubber/acrylic stamps and digital images are acceptable, but pre-coloured digital images and toppers are not. It so upsets us to see names come out in the draw who are not eligible for the prize because they have not read the rules. 
Now onto the sponsor and prize this month 
We are being sponsored by Be Creative who have put together a great prize! Feast your eyes on these goodies!  

 Paper pads, pearls and gems galore! You can see loads of ideas of how to use Be Creative products on the design team blog. Do pop over and become a follower!
Also don't forget to pop over to the challenge blog and take a look at all the fabulous inspiration from my multi-talented teamies too! 
It will be a very strange Mother's day for me as Meg is not able to come home this weekend and I'm the only Mum left in the immediate family. We are postponing Mother's day here until 20th March, when Meg will be home for her Easter holidays.
Thanks for looking, and if you are celebrating Mother's day today, I hope you have a great day!

Rudolf day for January

Hi There! It is the 25th of the month and time for the first Rudolf day of 2016. I have made two very different cards for this month. For my first I used a be creative wonder sheet, a frantic stamper die, indigo blu mega flake and some of the narrowest wonder tape on a linen finish card.

My second card is a cute one. For this one I used a digi from Digistamp Boutique, coloured it with Be creative alcohol markers and added Inkylicious fluffy puffy stuff for the fur trim. The base card was embossed with a Sheena embossing folder.

 You can see the dimension of the Fluffy puffy stuff and a bit of the twinkle from the ultra fine glitter that I added below.

Do pop over to Scrappy Mo's and take a look at her inspiration and the prize this month - a rather gorgeous Die from Memory box!
Before I go I thought you might like a piece of my Whiskey Mac Ginger cake that I baked for our Burn's Night celebrations.

It was quite boozy with some single malt drizzled over it! If you fancy trying it for yourself you can find the recipe here.
Thanks for looking!

Rudolf Day for March

Here are my cards for Sarn's Rudolf Day this month. For the first I used Inkylicious Black Forest stamp, stormy sky distress ink and my ink dusters. I added some glitter and squeezed in a sentiment (Woodware) which looks a little straighter in real life! You know when you wish you hadn't put it there, lol! The papers are snippets from my snippet drawer and have been there forever!!!

My second card features a cute Digi mouse from Digistamp Boutique, coloured in with promarkers and backed on some snippets of digi papers printed out a very long time ago! The papers were from Funky Fairies, and I am sorry to say  are no longer available. The circular sentiment is from Little Claire.
As they both use snippets I am also taking them over to Di's snippet playground.
It is Saturday, so I should have been able to photograph them in daylight, but we spent this morning planning a school trip at Rufford Park, then carried on to see my dad this afternoon. It was such a beautiful day, and we really enjoyed the fresh air!

 It was sunny and warm, and there were so many birds in the trees. Unfortunately I wasn't quick or talented enough to capture them on my camera!

 

I think we will have to go again when the bluebells are out, judging by how many are here! We saw 4 or 5 great spotted woodpeckers chasing each other amongst the tree tops and heard the cries of a buzzard overhead too.

 I really hope it is as good weather when we take 60 children on Thursday! Thanks for looking and I hope you have a wonderful Mother's day - what a shame we have to lose an hour on the day most of us would like an extra hour in bed!

Some Girly Cards

I was asked to make an 8x8 card for a friend's daughter who is 18 today. The young lady in question is very fashion concious and loves her shoes, so I used a mixture of Pink Petticoat papers, Digistamp boutique digis and a digi of my own (the shoe, drawn by me, with some help from Meg to turn it into a digi). I then did some paper piecing and embellished with 3d paint and mini punches.

The sentiments were done on the computer too. As I'd got the papers and the digis to play with I did a couple more.

Not my usual thing, but very popular, and snapped up immediately from my sales box. All of these I made a little while ago. At present it is report writing time, so I may not be here as frequently as I would like. Thanks for your comments and I will try my best to visit you soon, when I have finished writing them all!
Thanks for looking!

Back to the Snippet Playground

 Well, I've made it back to the snippet playground again. I've suddenly realised that I have only this week left of my holidays and then I will be struggling to find the time to craft again, so I have made quite a few this weekend. Here are a couple of snippet makes.

Yes, the green snippets have been out! The top one is a digi from Digistamp Boutique, coloured in with promarkers. The second is a Little Clare stamp coloured in with Coloursoft crayons.
Finally I am sharing a card I made a few weeks ago...
'Can you make a card for Ray?' they said. 'What is he into?' I asked. 'Beer' they said. 'What else?' I asked. 'Just Beer' they replied. This was what I came up with.

Everything on it was from my pile of snippets. The only thing I did especially was to stamp the name and cut it out. The digi stamp was a freebie from Digistamp Boutique, many moons ago, and it was coloured in about 2 years ago.
So I'm entering these into Pixies Crafty Snippet Challenge, although the beer had better go into the safe hands of Miss Di, I think!
Thanks for looking!

It's the holidays!!!

Finally we have finished the term, so, as promised here are a few more of my Christmas cards made at the weekend. There seems to be a bit of a colour theme going on!

 This first one features some funky fairies papers, a Marianne poinsettia die and a Martha Stewart punch. What, no stamps?! Well, I'm trying to keep them simple!

 The next two are more using the tipsy trees (woodware) and papers from my Funky hand Dreams Come True cd.

Finally this one uses a Digi image from Digistamp boutique, coloured with promarkers. The paper was a funky fairy one and the paper used for the border is a rich burgundy colour - not dark brown as it looks on the photo!
I'm off to have a nice cuppa and try to tidy my craft table a bit. Thanks for looking!

Christmas at Tuesday Taggers!?!

Don't worry it is still July, but over at Tuesday Taggers our lovely teamie Emma has chosen the theme Christmas. Now I know I don't really do anything Christmassy until at least September, so I kept it simple.

An oval cuttlebugged with the snowflakes embossing folder, a digistamp from Digistamp Boutique coloured in with promarkers and lots of stickles!  Please do pop over to Tuesday Taggers and take a look at my teamies fabulous work. Hope you can join us!

A couple of Cards

My friend asked me to make a couple of cards for her dad's birthday. Apparently 75th cards are very few and far between in the shops. This lovely chap likes his gardening and golf. The first card uses a set of AI watercolour stamps (Sir Stampalot) coloured in with my coloursoft pencils and blending solution. If you look very closely you will see my favourite stamp again! I stamped the letters (Inkadinkado I think) in versafine olympia green and just traced around the letter with a gold stardust pen.

My second card was inspired by one that my friend Jules made a little while ago. When I saw hers I thought of my friends dad, who is a very keen golfer. The image is from Digistamp Boutique coloured with promarkers.

Don't forget you have two weeks left to get your entry in for this months Sir Stampalot challenge. The prize is a Cricut machine - how cool is that? Go check it out now, and thanks for looking!

Allsorts Challenge week 34 - a sketch

Here is my entry for this weeks Allsorts challenge. Emma has created a lovely sketch and the theme is entirely up to us. To celebrate Digistamp Boutique becoming a regular sponsor you get two chances if you use one of their fabulous digistamps, so I have. This is Bernard. I coloured him with promarkers and I think he goes very well with these MME papers. The flower stamp is also MME, joining the punched leaves. I used some tulip paint and some flat back pearls in the centres. Thanks for looking!

Dare U 2 Digistamp? - last minute Christmas cards

It has been a while since I've managed to enter DU2DS challenge. It isn't that I haven't had a go. I know for a fact there are two half finished cards on my craft table! Anyway, I couldn't let last minute christmas cards go by without making an effort to post some!
The two mice are from Digistamp Boutique and coloured with promarkers. the patterned paper is from Funky fairies. These two doubled as money wallets with a flap on the inside with notes tucked in! The first snowman was a freebie from Dustin Pike some months ago. Again I coloured with promarkers. The Paper was some from my stash (Dovecraft I believe) and the sentiment was from Craftwork cards.
The second snowman was another freebie, this time from Cuddly Buddly Crafts. The backing paper is more old stash from Dovecraft and I used my nestie snowflakes and another Martha Stewart punch. I'm on a roll now... about 7 more to go I think! Thanks for looking!

More cute ones!

I'm still making Christmas cards, although I haven't got the brain power or inspiration to do anything other than cute, I'm afraid. Panto is over and I have had what was probably the most important meeting of my career. The Head has been off sick for two and a half weeks so I've been really acting up ;o) !!! I thought I would be able to relax a bit after Tuesday's meeting and Wednesday's Nativity and Carols, but no. I won't say any more other than I will really enjoy Karate on Friday night!
Anyway, onto my cards. The reindeer is a Pink Gem stamp and the mouse is from Digistamp boutique. They are both coloured with promarkers. The blue paper is from Dovecraft and the tartan paper is from Funky Fairies. The mouse one brought back memories of a dress I had when I was a little girl. It was red tartan, with bodice that had two lines of lace down it, and a sash that tied at the back. Crickey, I'm really rambling now! Maybe I'm cracking up... or hallucinating on promarker fumes!!!

Two challenges

Here is my entry for this weeks Tuesday taggers, where the theme is red green and gold, and Dare you to Digistamp, which is glitter. I used Sophie from Digistamp Boutique and coloured her with promarkers. I used gold glitter on the punched snowflakes and holographic glitter on the image. the paper is from my stash and I have had it for a very long time. Finally I managed a photo without using the flash!
Let's hope the weather improves for everyone, particularly in Cumbria.

Thanks for looking!

Passion for promarkers - Burnt Umber and Marsh Green

Here is my entry for this weeks Passion for promarkers. Besides the challenge colours of Burnt Umber and Marsh Green I used Pastel Blue, Ivory, Blush, Dusky pink, Terracotta and Pumpkin. The image is from Digistamp Boutique, and the papers from MME and Funky Fairies. I foolishly waited until Saturday to try and get a decent photo in daylight, so I'm probably to blame for the awful weather!
Thanks for looking !

Where did this week go?!

Here is my card for this week's Tuesday Taggers (no patterned paper) and it follows the sketch for this weeks Passion for Promarkers. I used marsh green and burgundy(again) with cool grey 1, 2 and 3, blossom, ruby, cinnamon and pastel blue. The digistamp is from Digistamp Boutique and there was much use of my nesties and cuttlebug. Not my best colouring, and I think it is something to do with the card I printed on. I can't seem to get the 'In 2 crafts' stuff any more. Wilkinson's have stopped selling it and are now doing the stuff from create and craft which is thicker and allows more 'bleeding'.
This week has been completely mad. There has been lots of staff absence at work, with those of us that were there  having to cover. There were three trips besides the usual swimming. We are rehearsing for the school panto and I've had two new children start in my class. I haven't seen the house in daylight all week and my craft table looks like a bomb has hit it. I've made three cards this week and none are up to my usual standard. I would love a three day weekend so I could just catch up a bit! Off to do some tidying... I might make a better job of that!
Thanks for looking!

Passion for promarkers week 21

Here is my entry for this weeks passion for promarkers challenge. It was to use any colours and a sketch this week. I used Cool Grey 1, 2 and 3, Pastel Blue, Ruby, Moss, Marsh Green, Cocoa, blossom, sandstone and ivory. The digistamp is from Digistamp Boutique and the papers are from Funky Fairies 'lets get traditional' kit. Finally a Christmas card is finished! Thanks for looking.

A bit like buses...

No posts for days and then three come along at once! Well, this is only the second, but there might be another between now and Sunday night. My first card is a digistamp image by Mo Manning, coloured with promarkers including my brand new Burgundy one. The papers are from Summer Driggs. The quote and sentiment are both computer generated. Steve's Dad adores his trains and given half the chance this would definitely be him!
The second card is my entry for this week's DU2DS challenge which is Punched shapes or die cuts. The images are the Jim Series from Digistamp Boutique. I coloured them with promarkers and put them onto an 8x8 card generously given to me by my good friend Lynne (They are huge and a bit daunting!) The papers are from Summer Driggs again. Thanks for looking!

Passion for Promarkers - Girly and Glittery

Here is my entry for Passion for Promarkers this week. The digistamp girl is Sophie from Digistamp boutique and the flowers are from the Elusive Images big flower plate (Graphicus). I used mainly cool aqua and lilac, with ivory, blush and dusky pink for skin tones. The blonde hair was done with ivory, pastel yellow and sandstone. The flower centres were canary and gold. I used diamond stickles for the glittler. The papers are from the artylicious floral fantasies cd and the sentiment is a rub-on freebie from a magazine.
I coloured it whilst I was on holiday, so it was just a case of putting it together this evening and adding the glitter. I am pleased that I manged girly without any pink!