Autumn Leaves Challenge

Hi everyone,

 

This is my entry for the Simon Says Stamp Autumn Leaves Challenge. http://www.simonsaysstampschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/simon-saysautumn-leaves.html

For this I used:-

Kanban Autumn Silhouettes clear stamps

Cupcakecrafting backing paper from A Touch of Elegance CD Rom

Tim Holtz Tea Dye Distress Ink

StazOn Timber Brown

Gems from stash coloured with Promarkers

Dark brown ribbon from stash

Centura Pearl ivory card

 

I folded the A4 card and made an A5 card blank. I took a piece of backing paper from Cupcakecrafting 'A Touch of Elegance' CD Rom and distressed the edges of both with the Tea Dye ink pad. Using the StazOn, I stamped two flourishes from the stamp set in the top left hand corner, one vertically and one horizontally. In the other top corner, I coloured the gems from my stash with a 'Cocoa'  Promarker and fixed them to the card.

 

I stamped the tree image onto the backing paper three times and matted and layered onto the ivory centura pearl and again distressed the edges.  I stamped out three leaves and placed one on the bottom right hand corner of each tree image square after colouring them with the ink. To finish, I tied a piece of dark brown ribbon to the bottom of the card and added a knot to add dimension.

 

Thank you for calling by. Please leave a comment, I enjoy reading them.

 

Happy crafting.

 

Wendy

 

 

Happy Birthday, Crafters Companion

Hi all,

Another post today. This time my entry for the Crafters Companion Birthday Challenge over on Crafters Companion. http://ccmonthlychallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/october-challenge-birthdays.html

For this I used a cute image from the Morehead CD Rom and matted and layered it onto some silver mirri from my stash. I used an 8x8 card blank and matted and layered a coordinating backing paper from the cd rom onto silver mirri. Before attaching this to the card, I wrapped a piece of pink spider's web net from Kanban around this and then attached the image onto it. I printed out a sentiment and hot foiled this and attached it to the top right hand corner, then using a narrower piece of spider's web net, I made a bow and attached this to the opposite corner. I finished it off using some gems from my stash.

 

I hope you like the pastel colours as much as I did.

 

Thank you for taking the time to come and look.

 

Happy crafting.

 

Wendy

 





Happy Birthday Bryan

 

Morning everyone,

This is my entry for the 'Happy Birthday Bryan' Challenge over on Emma's blog - Emmas Cards Uk.com. http://www.emmascardsuk.com/p/emmas-crafty-challenge.html

To make my card I used A4 Centura Pearl cardstock to make an easel card and matted and layered using silver mirri and backing paper from Tumble Ted Pastimes Collection CD Rom 1 from Cupcakecrafting.

The card I was making was for my son's friend Nick's  birthday and my son had asked for  a card with a Manchester City footballer on. This was the nearest thing I had and I used Craft Artist to alter the colour of the mat so that it matched the background paper. (I had to go on the internet to find out what the Man City shirt was like.) As a Newcastle supporter, it pained me to make a Man City card!!
Again I used Craft Artist to make a matching sentiment. For the purpose of the challenge, I put the name 'Bryan' on the sentiment but changed this before giving it to my son to send off to Nick.

Thank you for calling by. If you have time, please leave a comment. I always like to read your comments.

Thank you

Wendy

Gardening Angel

 Hi everyone,

I've just made it. It's a five minutes to midnight so I thought I had better blog otherwise I would have missed another day.

I've been busy all day making a couple of cards and doing housework and making pizzas. My printers kept playing up, the cd roms I wanted to use wouldn't work and no - the pizza didn't turn out very well either. So had quite a bad day really. Ah well, I guess far worse things could happen.

Anyway, I got the two cards made. The first was for a male general birthday, the other was for a male 21st birthday. I will put them on my blog tomorrow.

Today I thought I would show a couple of photographs of a bag I made using the Garden Delights 2 CD Rom. I attached the angel to the bag using a piece of acetate to make it dangle and then from the angel's wing, there is another piece of acetate which attaches a bee to the angel so that they can both move about. I added a pink bow to the top and letters to form the word 'Gardening Angel'. The white bag was from a pack purchased from Cupcakecrafting.

On the back of the bag, I just used a flat image which I layered onto blue gingham backing paper from the cd.

Thank you for popping by.

Wendy

Oh Christmas Tree

Hi everyone,

 

Today's card is one made from the papers from the 'Colourblend' section of the Magical Moments Christmas Cd Rom from Cupcakecrafting. I found the idea on the Cards and a Cuppa blog - http://cardsandacuppa.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/folded-tree-tuorial.html. Full instructions are on there.

 

 

I used the snowflakes backin paper for the background and some other backing paper (printed on both sides) for the Christmas Tree. I cut out a scalloped circle and folded the paper to make the tree. The glitter, gem, blue card and ribbon were from my stash. The sentiment is also from the CD Rom.

 

Thank you for calling by.

 

Wendy

Twisted double easel story card

Hi everyone,

Here is today's card. This is a card I made, encouraged by my son. He had seen another story book card that I had made and suggested that I make another. This is a more simple version.

It is from the Magical Christmas Moments CD Rom from Cupcakecrafting. As can be seen, on one easel is an image from the Cd and on the other is a story about the image - made up by yours truly.

The short story is as follows.

A Donkey’s Tale

 

Donkey leaned over the rickety wooden fence and told his story to the young puppies.

“I was grazing in the field near to the house with the other donkeys, when Joseph, my master, came outside. He started to inspect each donkey in turn. He came over to me and checked my legs, my hooves and my back. He was mumbling something about the Roman Emperor wanting everyone to return to their home town to be counted, so that he could find out how many people lived in his empire.

I was chosen out of the other donkeys to travel with Joseph and his wife, Mary, who was expecting a baby.

We travelled many miles here to Bethlehem. There were many more people travelling here too. When we arrived, the inns were full. Luckily, a kind innkeeper took pity on us and let Mary and Joseph stay in the stable next to his inn.

While we were there, Mary’s special baby was born. They called him Jesus. He has had many visitors and many gifts.”

 

I hope you like it.

 

Please pop over again soon.

 

Wendy

Cupcakecrafting Challenge

Hi everyone,

Today, I thought I would share with you my entry for the Cupcakecrafting Challenge, which is a card made from the new Christmas Wonderland CD Rom.

When we were sent the designs for this CD Rom and asked to make samples, my brother in law was over for a few days and then we were going away for a long weekend, so I was unable to make as many samples as I normally would. The ones I did make, I didn't have time to take photographs of either. I intended to do it at the hotel before meeting up with Lynda and her husband to hand over the samples. Unfortunately, due to all the floods on the way up, we arrived with less than one hour to spare and I had to get ready for our night out in that time, so the photographs didn't get taken.

This was an idea that I had when I saw the designs on the CD Rom but just didn't have time to make it up.

I used one of the toppers, I think it was from the stackers and imported it into Craft Artist. I copied it three times and printed a contrasting backing paper design on the other side. I carefully cut out the windows and stuck a small piece of acetate to the three windows that I cut out, I left the remaining side intact, When cutting out the toppers, I drew on a tab to the side and bottom to each topper so that I could stick them together and make them into a box.  I stuck the four sides together and cut out a square piece of card to put in the bottom. Using another piece of card which had been printed with a complementary backing paper, I cut out a shape from the Lacy Labels cartridge using my Cricut machine. I made a box top using the same backing paper and again printed the same contrasting backing paper on the reverse so that it matched the inside of the box.

To decorate, I used a quickie glue pen and glitter to decorate the tree and also used  white flower soft from Katy Sue Designs to decorate the little girl's coat and top of the lamp post. Inside I placed a battery operated candle from Hobbycraft and 'voila' - there it is.

Hope you like it. If you too would like to enter the competition, go over to the Cupcakecrafting website and sign up for the newsletter. The closing date for this challenge is 31st October 2012.

By the way Lynda is on Create and Craft today at 11am with Nigel May and 6pm with Andy Love.

Happy crafting

Wendy

Garden Delights

Hi everyone,

Thank you to all my new followers and the lovely comments you have left. It means alot that you like my cards.

Today, I thought I would share with you some of the cards I made using the Garden Delights CD rom by Cupcakecrafting. I love the colours and the characters on this Cd and hope you do too.

This is a 'peek-a-boo' card. I used an A4 piece of white cardstock, scored it and made it into a gatefold card. I matted and layered with backing papers from the Cd and also silver mirri. The shapes were cut out using the Lacy Labels cartridge and my Cricut machine. From the second picture, the front looks a bit plain, but there were embellishments on the right hand side of the card as you look at it, they are just out of view of the camera. (I'm no David Bailey!)

 

 

The next card is a theatre card. Again, I used the Lacy Labels cartridge (I do have others, honestly!!) and my Cricut machine. For this I used Centura pearl cardstock from Crafters Companion in a mid blue colour. Again, I matted and layered using backing paper from the CD and silver mirri from my stash. I used the corner embellishments from the CD and added a ribbon.

 

 

For this card, I used an 8x8 card, matted and layered using backing papers from the Cd and silver mirri (I like silver mirri, in case you hadn't guessed!). I added one of the sentiments and a flower from the Cd and a ladybird from my stash. I think I bought the ladybirds from 'Boyes' which is known as 'Harrods of the North' round here apparently! I made a bow from ribbon and twirled the long lengths and embellished it with a gem. (The flowers were to cover a happy accident and the ladybird to balance it out, I hope it works.)

 

Thank you for calling by. See you again soon, I hope.

 

Happy crafting

 

Wendy

 

 

Jo Austin

Hi everyone,

Thank you to the lovely Jo Austin, designer for Docrafts, who has helped me add a name to my photographs.

I asked her the other day how she did it. After two and a half days, I have managed to fathom it out, granted not using Photoshop as Jo does or Gimp as used by her daughter but by using Paint and Publisher.

I didn't have Photoshop and was a bit wary about downloading a freebie from the internet as we have enough trouble with our computer without adding problems. The software that came with the camera was Fine Pix so I tried using that, it would let me do it but encountered a problem, couldn't find a solution and closed down before I could save it- every time!!!

I then found a programme on our cd shelf from Serif - Photoplus, so installed that. The same thing happened again. We didn't know why this kept happening, but my husband thought it might be because it hadn't installed properly. So I decided to uninstall it. Then tried to reinstall it, but it wouldn't and kept coming up with another error message - something to do with basic filters. So I decided to ditch that.

I went on Serif website to see if they had any free downloads for Photoplus and found one. Tried to download but ended up with different search engines and toolbars and a slow computer - maybe coincidence re slow computer but it happened. Still no luck. By the time my husband came home from work and asked how my day had been, I burst into tears. Not only because of this - one of my neighbours had passed away and I was upset.

He sorted the search engine and toolbars out and I managed to download the programme. By this time I had had enough and went to bed.

This morning, I tried to add my text to the photo, I eventually managed it but it saved it as a spp file???and wouldn't upload to my blog. By this time, Jo had suggested Gimp as used by her daughter but when I tried to download it, it was going to take a hour. I therefore tried to do it using Word and Paint - no luck. Then I had a brainwave and tried Publisher and Paint to save it as a jpeg file. Eureka, I did it!!

Here's the proof.

Thanks Jo, I owe you.
Jo's blog is craftychitchat.blogspot.com if you'd like to take a look at her cards.

Happy crafting everyone,

Wendy

Kanban Christmas Cards

Hi everyone,

Today, I thought I would share with you some Christmas cards that I made from the Kanban papercrafting kit that I had left over from last year.

 

I used the inspiration sheet for these as I wanted them to be quick and easy, ready for a Craft Fair that I was attending.

 

I used the cards provided in the pack and when I had run out of these, I made my own using a template from the internet which was a similar style to the ones in the pack. I think they look very clean and crisp looking. I love the colourways. I like Kanban products.

I added embellishments such as ribbons, gems or peel offs to finish the cards off and on a couple of them, I punched snowflakes, using a snowflake punch, out of the waste part of the card so that it would match the main part of the card.

I had some positive feedback from the craft fair, too. Hope you like them.

Wendy

Another 21st

Hi everyone,

Yet another request for a male 21st card. This time I chose a cricketer image from the 'Me to You' CD Rom. Dan is a cricketer and a footballer but since he saw Wilson's 21st card for a footballer the day before yesterday, I thought I would make the Tatty Ted one of a cricketer.

I used an 8x8 card and matted and layered on to silver mirri. I made my own decoupage from the image on the Cd and I used some star embellishments from the Cd also. I typed out a sentiment as I felt '21 not out' was more appropriate and matted and layered this onto silver mirri to match the main image and backing paper.

Hope you like it Dan. Happy 21st birthday and hope you have a great day.

Thank you for stopping by.

Wendy

21st Birthday

Hello everyone,

This is a card I made yesterday for my son's pal's 21st birthday. I couldn't show it yesterday as the pal was having a surprise birthday party and I didn't want to spoil it for him (not that he would look at my blog!!)

I always find it difficult to make cards for males especially for younger ones i.e. around this age, especially when it is from one male to another. Apparently, there are a few of his friends who have a forthcoming 21st birthday, alot of them male, so I suppose I best get practising and finding new images. Any help would be appreciated.

Wilson, as he is known, plays football and I tried to copy the football shirt from memory, not sure I did a good job though.

 

I used the Cupcakecrafting Tumble Ted CD Rom and an 8x8 card from my stash. As there weren't any numbers just alphabets on the CD, I used Craft Artist to make some tiles with both letters and numbers. I used paper piecing to make the shirt which is blue and yellow - can't quite see that from the photo. I used my promarkers to colour in one of the shirts (as one is left blank on the CD). The pen used was Buttercup although it looks a little dark on the photo.

Hope you like it Wilson. Have a great night and Happy 21st Birthday.

Keep crafting!!

Wendy

A new arrival.

Hello everyone,

Today, I thought I would share with you a cherub cot that I made for my husband's PA's daughter's baby. Blimey, that was a mouthful!!

Jenny, the daughter and her partner knew that they were going to have a baby daughter, so I had a little longer time to make this, longer than I normally have! The baby is called Lily and is beautiful, so congratulations Jenny and Lee to your new addition.

The template is by Arty Farty. I used the double sided A3 card that I bought from Carol at Arty Farty. The cots are a bit faffy but worth it when they are done. Although I have a Craft Robo and a Cricut machine which I am sure there will be cutting template files out there somewhere, I haven't really got to grips with the machines and at the moment prefer to use the Arty Farty templates. People keep saying that the Silhouette is an easier machine to use, but I'm not sure Mr H would be too impressed if I bought yet another machine. There's hardly any room left in my Craft Room already. In fact, crafters, as you probably know from your own experience, there is NO room in there!!

I also used some largish daisy braid, again from Arty Farty to decorate the box and cot. I made the mobile using the card and also cut up some teddy ribbon that I had bought from Carol previously. Instead of using paper to make the quilt, I use fabric from my stash and fill it with wadding and then put lace around the edges. I just think it adds to the 'wow' factor. I recently made some without the mobile and I don't think they looked as good.

Hope you like it as much as I did.

Hope to see you soon.

Wendy

More from the Magical Christmas Moments CD Rom

Hi everyone,

Here is another of the samples I made for Lynda to show on Create and Craft and fortunately it got shown. I'm not sure whether it was shown on the first programme, but it was definitely shown on the one on 8th October.

I like the colours on this one - a pale aqua and pink. I decoupaged the bauble and then cut a circle in acetate with my Cricut machine and stuck it on top to make it look like a glass bauble. I then added the gold mirri at the top (for the holder) and the ribbon at the bottom to cover the glue dots which were holding the acetate on.

I liked this image from the Magical Christmas Moments CD Rom although I'm not really a lover of cats. I'm more of a doggy person.

It's the first time I had printed out a black and white image and tried to foil it. I was pleased with the results.

This time, I used a 7x10 card and matted and layered onto silver mirri card and black card to match the siver foiling. I finished it off with black ribbon to two sides and three black gems in the opposite corner.

Thank you for taking the time to stop by.

Happy crafting!
Wendy

Samples from the Cupcakecrafting Magical Christmas Moments CdRom

Hi there,

Today, I thought I would share with you some of the samples I made for Lynda Chapman to promote the Magical Christmas Moments CDRom, along with the other Cupcakecrafting Girls.

I like this image, it lent itself to being stacked as can be seen from the second photograph, it is flat in the middle and then each layer builds up to the edge, if you see what I mean. Again I used an 8x8 card but with black card to mat and layer and some gems to decorate. The ribbon at the bottom was from the colourblend section. It took three attempts to get it just right. Someone said on Create and Craft, I think, recently, that there are no mistakes in crafting. There certainly were in this case and the more I tried to cover them up, the worse the card looked, so I had to go back to the drawing board 3 times!!

 

Thank you for stopping by.

 

See you soon.

 

Wendy

The First Post

Hi everyone,

Here is my first ever blog. It seems that to be on some design teams or to enter challenges you have to have your own blog.  I must say, I am a better card maker (even though I say it myself) than a blog maker, so here goes.

 

My first card that I post has to be the one that I made for my son for his 20th birthday. I used the Seraphina and Friends CD Rom by Doolicraft. I've had the CD for a while but haven't used it although I had looked at the images. If I remember correctly, Hayley West demonstrated it on Create and Craft a couple of years ago.

 

Thomas likes to go fishing and used to go with my Dad until he passed away in April 2010. After a while of not going, he now occasionally goes with his Uncle Brian, who unfortunately doesn't live near enough for them to go more regularly.

 

To make the card, I also used an 8x8 white card blank, some mirri card and used my hot foil machine to do the sentiment. I was pretty pleased with the result and Thomas liked it too, so that was the main thing.

 

Thank you for dropping by.

 

Happy crafting!