Sparkle!

It's Lucky Dip week at LIM and one of my favourite card designers is GDT and the challenge is inspired by her name - Made With Sparkle!  http://simplylessismoore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/week-148-lucky-dip.html

I decided to play with my cameo as I had it out making Christmas reindeer mobiles tonight and this is what I came up with.

I cut BRIGHT from a 3x4 piece of white card and stuck some red glitter paper behind the negative of it.  The Merry and & were cut from more white card but this time stuck on top of the card - the merry was coloured with a green copic and the & edged with a fineliner.

Sorry it's short and sweet but I'm currently very busy with an exciting new crafting venture that I'll bring you news of soon.

Feel the Force

One of my husband's close friends had a birthday this week so I was tasked with creating a card and there's only one place to go for a card him and that's "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away".....

It was pretty simple really - I did him a storm trooper last year, but this year we went with Luke Skywalkers light saber.  I found a decent image online and imported into the silhouette and used the trace facility to get the shape correct.  It was then a case of simply cutting the outline from white card and colouring it with copics and metallic promakers.  For the actual light part I used a strip of glitter card and added copic ink and a touch more glitter in the form of stickles.  Before sticking to the black card base I added a "glow" using green perfect pearls.   I finished with some green faux stitching using a sakura green glitter pen.

I'll link this up to this week's CASual Friday's challenge which is to use real or faux stitching
http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/cfc117.html

Twenty One

I needed a special 21st Birthday card and the inspiration photo from Pinspired this week gave me an idea for a rainbow themed sparkly celebration that would be perfect for the recipient!

I cut the words twenty one out of a piece of thick white card on my silhouette cameo and placed it on my card base.  I lightly drew around the letters using the front panel as a stencil so I could see where they would be on the base card.  I then went to town with my sequin collection!  I covered the whole area of the the words with an even layer of pinflair gel which is my preferred glue for this technique as it holds the sequins and stays wet a decent length of time for "faffing"  I covered over each letter with a different colour of the rainbow just like the eye makeup and left it to dry.

I stamped one of the fabby Uptown Girls "Opal the Optimist" from Stamping Bella onto copic card and coloured here in before fussy cutting her out.  I stamped her matching sentiment directly onto the front panel and then glued Opal into place.   I used a thick layer of pinfalir gel around the edge of the panel to adhere it to the base so there was a little dimension to give the sequins room to shimmer!


Here's the inspiration photo and link to the challenge - http://pinspiredchallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/pinspired-challenge-19.html

I'm also going to link it up to the anything goes birthday challenge - http://seizethebirthday.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/seize-birthday-with-colors-of-fall.html

Handmade Flowers

That's the theme at Less is More today and it just so happens that I had a card ready to go to meet the theme - a recent unblogged failed submission to Paper Crafts magazine so I thought I'd share it here as despite the failure I was pretty pleased with it!

The flower is cut on my cameo - the cut file gives you several layers which I just curled with my fingers and layered up.  The centre normally is a quilled piece but my centre is actually loose leaf tea!  The challenge for the submission was to use household items on your card.  I mounted the flower onto a double banner and stamped a PTI greeting on top and tucked a couple of die cut leaves (spellbinders) behind.

Right time to link it up - even with a ready made card I bet I still don't beat Lizzy ;-)

Oh, and in case you missed my news yesterday - do check out my guest blog post over at Waltzingmouse Stamps as I was honoured to be their Featured Friend this month  http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/july-friendly-featuretara-caldwell.html

Wheels

The cue word at CASology this week is WHEELS and when I looked at my stamps I actually have a lot of stamps with wheels on, but most of them are already in the gallery for this week's challenge http://casology.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/week-47-wheels.html

So I decided to take a different approach and I started to think about other types of wheels - spinning, steering, roulette, and then a colour wheel popped into my head and this is how I turned the wheel into a card in a sort of wheel of fortune styleee.

I cut a colour wheel with a spinner on my cameo and coloured the segments with copics in rainbow colours and fixed the spinner with a white brad so it can actually turn.  I decided to use a sentiment from a cake set from CC Designs and embossed it in white on the black background and then stamped the word cake into every section of the colour wheel to ensure that whoever spins it is indeed assured of sweet things on their birthday!  I used an old elzybells alphabet to stamp cake so I could get the letters to follow the curve of the wheel.

I did make another wheel card - for a cycling mad friend - but it's not really CAS so not an entry in the challenge but I'll share it here anyhow.  I used one stamp from a Hero Arts bicycle set and repeat stamped in grey for a background before embossing the same again in black on a strip of DP.

Have a "wheely" great weekend everyone ;-)

Words, Numbers and Paperpiecing

I have a couple of cards this morning for three different challenges.

The first is my last minute attempt at this week's CASology cue word which trickily was just "word" this week!  I've really been struggling to come up with an interesting idea until I saw the new Keep It Simple challenge which is numbers and finally an idea for a word came to mind....

I love scrabble - so the idea of using letter tiles for my "word" was obvious once it finally came to me!  The choice of word was obvious too - I wanted it to be really simple - nothing but the word on the card and as the song goes "all you need is LOVE"   I used the print and cut function on my cameo to create the scrabble tiles on cream card, stacking each tile 4 thick to create dimension.  I covered the top of each with glossy accents and rounded the corners of the base card to match the tiles.

http://casology.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/week-40-word.html

http://kis-challenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/kis-12-3-2-1.html

I also wanted to play with some new stamps I got this week - I saw them on a blog and had to hunt them down as their humour really appealed to me!  I inked up one and used it as another opportunity to play with one of my favourite techniques - paper-piecing which is the challenge at The Pink Elephant this week.

The background "flash" was cut on my cameo and I used lots of scraps from my snippets box to do the paperpiecing of the lovely ladies so I'll enter this to Di's weekly snippets challenge too http://pixiescraftyworkshop.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/pixies-crafty-snippets-playground-week_15.html
I used copics to colour the skin and hair and then simply fussy cut leaving a little border before mounting on the flash background and stamping one of the sentiments from the set using versafine.

http://thepinkelephantchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-pink-elephant-challenge-tpe195.html

CASual Birthday

One of my best friends turns 40 tomorrow and as such this suitably sparkling number is currently winging its way down south courtesy of the Royal Mail....

I followed a similar theme to my 18th card but went for a more "Dioresque" quilted background rather than stamped facebook sentiments ;-)  Simple tools - just the cameo, tweezers and pinflair glue for all those lovely shimmering sequins.   Teal and gold - very classy - here's hoping that she gets a classy day out to go with it (her husband is taking her on a magical mystery tour and won't tell us where!)  

I'm entereing this into this week's CASual Friday challenge which is a birthday project http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/cfc99.html

Marvellous Magnolias

This week's Tuesday Trigger over in the Moxie Fab World really caught my attention so I thought I'd play along and I've just about managed to get my entry in before the deadline http://www.moxiefabworld.com/2013/04/tuesday-trigger-magical-magnolias.html

Now you might well be looking at my card and wondering what the hell it has to do with Magnolias!  Well we've been watching a TV show recently with Keifer Sutherland called "Touch" and in it his son has the ability to see the mathematical in the world around us and I'm learning, even though though I'm a math-o-phobe, just how much maths there is in the natural world.   So I saw the pattern in the branches and interpreted that into the fretwork white frame which I cut on my cameo, and I took the colours in the flowers and pieced the pattern back into the frame (I cut it 3 times from different card stocks).  To add the hint of orange in the petals, I turned to my go to embellishment of the moment - are you fed up of sequins yet?  I hope not as I have LOTS of them to get through!!!

So that's how I saw the trigger image - hope you see I'm not so crazy now.......

Doilies

It's Blog Party day over at Waltzingmouse again - sometimes the 17th creeps up on me and I have rush to make a project last minute, but not this month, oh no sirree not me!  I have not one, but two doily creations all ready to share with you.  I had a couple of birthdays this week just gone that I thought a doily card would be suitable for so I made them in advance and saved the blogging of them ready for today :-)

This is the "academic year" that my school friends and I reach one of those milestone birthdays we'd rather all forget!  Mine was last year, but I have a number of friends who ares till to take their turn and this one was for Vikki.  I die cut the doily using a cut file from the silhouette store from DP and using the offset function created a matching mat to layer it on.  The centre was again cut on my silhouette cameo and I distressed the edges of it.  I stamped the greeting using two sentiments from Compact Sentiments and added a subtle 40 in the corner using Woodenheart Alphabet both in crumbcake ink from SU.  I carefully (very carefully with my sharpest pointiest scissors!) cropped the word "sweet" from the beginning of the Birthday wishes stamp (sorry Claire!) - it still goes back together perfectly for when I want to use it but it gives me a little more diversity from the stamp set when I don't ;-)  I finished the card with some washi tape stripes and a little pool party inking around the panel onto which I mounted my doily - deliberately hanging it over the edge and trimming it off flush.

The second card was for my second Valentine's Day birthday - two of my friends were born that day - and I found another cute cut file in the silhouette store to make this adorable doily banner.  I swapped out the line and bows from the cut file for some twine to give it a more real feel.  I used DP from Craftwork Cards and embossed it with a spellbinders double folder.  I added a doily-style border (spellbinders die) across the bottom and fussy cut the Eiffel Tower from another sheet of DP (which bearly shows in the photo but does IRL).  The sentiment uses my trimmed Compact Sentiment again but this time I shadow stamped it using pool party and cocoa brilliance inks onto a die cut kraft label.  I used pool party ink to stamp one of the labels from Very Vintage labels No 10 onto the edge and finished with a couple of soft pool pearls.  In hindsight, I should have used a little distress ink on the edges of the DP for more definition and a more vintage feel.

Can't wait to waltz around and see what doily creations everyone else has come up with - I'm off to get a cuppa and a slice of cake - on a plate with a doily naturally :-)

Baby Bumps

It's all been about babies this week - one of my mates from work is due in a couple of weeks and today was her last day in the office so I've been busy making cards and gifts from us all for her.

To begin with I made a card on my cameo silhouette for her, in the shape of a onesie, and I used another cute cute file to make the giraffe to decorate it and the word baby - suitable coloured in neutral yellow as she doesn't yet know if she's having girl or a boy.

The silhouette came into play again to make this super cute favor box which I used to hold the money we collected for her - we were going for a gift card, but given the number of stores going into liquidation we thought that the folding gift vouchers exchangeable at any store were a much safer option ;-)   She didn't know what she wanted to get so at least now she can choose stuff she really needs.   I stamped some decorative panels on 3 sides and on the onesie on top, stamped a sentiment on the front (Waltzingmouse Compact Sentiments) and then wrapped all around it with some dotted washi tape.

Finally, with some of the collection, I made her something fun and just a little bit larger than a tiny box to make her gift presentation a little more impressive!   I'd seen these nappy cakes online and thought they looked like lots of fun and not that difficult to make - here's the finished article - both in its wrapped and unwrapped form.

It was quite easy to make - although rolling 130+ nappies into tight rolls took a little longer than anticipated and I had to run out for extra packs when I ran out half way through the 2nd tier! 

The "cake" is filled with lots of useful baby products - talc, wipes, shampoo and a few little mummy toiletries too.  You simply tape your tallest items into the middle and then you need a lot of elastic bands and it's then just a case of adding lots of your rolled up nappies until you get nice round tiers of "cake"   Here's an in progress shot of the bottom two tiers.  I wrapped some bibs around the the baby cream to make the centre of the top 2 tiers nice and round.

The "roses" which decorate the cake are actually just individual baby socks, rolled up and wrapped with a green pipe cleaner with a die cut felt leaf.  The pink and green "baby" words are actually white chocolate lollies I made just by melting some white chocolate and adding food colouring into shop bought molds.

And here is a shot of the happy Mum-to-Be being surprised in our reception with her cake - she loved it although was a little disappointed when she realised it wasn't entirely edible ;-)

Camera Window

I'm back to cross off another card off the list of the challenge I've set myself to complete all 75 challenges in this Paper Crafts special issue.   This one however is also one of the challenges picked out by Cath as a Moxie Fab challenge so I am naturally going to enter it to the challenge there too  http://www.moxiefabworld.com/2013/01/75-creative-card-challenges-week_8.html

This particular challenge is No 60 on the list (you can see all the ones I've completed here) and is simply to use a window on your card.   I made this card for my husband, who loves photography so I decided to make my "window" the lens of a camera.  The camera which was a design I cut  using my silhouette and pieced together the layers after colouring with copics.  I added some vellum to the flash area and covered in it stickles and added a red gem for the light.  I used a gate fold kraft base card and added a sentiment from PTI's movers and shakers on the outside with it's partner sentiment on the inside.  It was a little plain so I added some dotted lines for interest around the edges and took care the line the camera up so the lens was in the middle of the card which is important when you see the inside.....

I also included the shutter on the inside of the card, and when they open, they reveal a hidden image - cute n'est pas?  I learnt how to make the shutter part of the card using the magic marquee technique from a class I took last year taught by the marvelous Julie Ebersole - don't you just love her laugh?   I could listen to her videos all day long she just brightens my day!   This was why my lens had to be centralised, or the mechanism wouldn't have opened fully.

I stamped the cameras from the "Oh Snap" set from There She Goes - one of my all time favourite stamp sets to add interest to the inside and popped the sentiment on a red banner to make it pop - its quite small on the photo but it reads "a birthday as special as you are".

Finally, inside my second window I hid my other favourite There She Goes set - one of the little solid "Lovebot" images which is only revealed when you fully open the "shutter".

It was quite a fiddly card to make, but I had fun doing it and gave a little whoop of satisfaction when I finally got the shutter mechanism working smoothly (tip - a nice shiny coated card stock really helps here)

The long and short of it

This week's challenge which is about to expire at CASual Friday's was to use a long/tall card and I wasn't really inspired to begin with - hence being late to join in.  http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/cfc86.html  But suddenly I had an idea based around making word 'long' the focus of the long card....

The long is my first attempt at creating my own handwriting file on my Silhouette Cameo using my Wacom tablet - it's a little wonky but not bad for a first attempt, simply cut from white card, coloured with copics and stuck on my long card base..  The pen and tablet are going to take a little practice!  I then added the rest of the phrase with a stamp from Crafts Meow Vintage Clocks and stamped a pair of glasses from Woodware going off the edge of the card.  A little corner rounding to finish and we have a very CAS monochrome card with a hint of humour - just my style.

Feeling the CASual Force

The challenge this week at CASual Fridays is to create a CAS card for a guy  http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/cfc77.html

 I've gone quite topical this week, what with George Lucas and his deal with Disney and made this card for my husband's friend who is a Star Wars nut and is very excited about the new film already even though it's not out til 2015!

I found the image of a storm trouper online and using silhouette studio I converted the gif into an SVG cut file which was then simply cut from white card and mounted onto a black card base.  The sentiment was white embossed directly to the card base also.

Can you feel the force with this one young Skywaker?  (Sorry, you live with a sci-fi geek for 18 years and it starts to rub off......)

I'm also going to enter this into the following challenges:

http://allsortschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/week-179-for-men-only.html

CASual Hearts

This week's CASual Friday challenge (well almost last weeks now as it closes in a few hours) is to feature hearts in your project.  http://cas-ualfridays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/cfc74.html   I'd had an idea earlier in the week but last night was the first chance I had to get my cameo out to do it.

I simply designed a heart with a central jigsaw piece on the cameo and cut it from red card.  I coloured the jigsaw piece with a copic marker to get a darker shade and covered it in glossy accents.  The background is a spellbinders embossabilities double folder.  The wonderful sentiment is by Elzybells who is sadly no longer trading, but happily is now designing for Penny Black :-)   A couple of her sets have already been re-released in their T for Transparent range so this one may appear in the future too.  Check out their site for examples - look for cute, bears, flowers and great sentiments in her classic font - this is one of hers from their newest release http://pennyblackinc.com/display_item.php?PID=7164&CAT=RStransparentsets as is this one of the sentiment sets which is one of my faves as its really useful http://pennyblackinc.com/display_item.php?PID=7097&CAT=RStransparentsets

See you all tomorrow for the new CASual challenge - and the reveal of the big surprise little sister!

Simple Christmas for St Luke's

It's the first of the month again (already - just what happened to September????) which means a new challenge over at St Luke's Charity Cards Challenge and this month we are looking for CAS Christmas cards - well it is time to get cracking on those soon to be needed cards and simple is defo the way to go (for me anyhow) for Christmas cards so I can whack out a few in each design.

This is my case in point - it's been a hectic weekend so my card HAD to be CAS and very quick.  The bauble, complete with the word joy, was a design I found in the silhoutte online store and I simply cut it from white card stock and then coloured with a copic marker.  I added a simple circle of white glitter card behind the outline to give the bauble some weight and then added stickles to the word joy.  I cut a nestie shape to mount it on and drew around the outline of the die to cut a thin red border (the next size up die would have been too large for my 4 inch card base).  I finished by handing the bauble on some red and white twine with a matching bow.  I can definately knock out a few more of this design in different colours to make up a stack of cards ready for Christmas.......

I do hope you'll join in our challenge this month and get making your Christmas cards too - and if you're short on Christmas supplies you can even with a fabulous set of Waltzingmouse stamps as a prize if you're our winner so check out the challenge blog  http://stlukescharitycardschallenge.blogspot.com/

Decapitated Elf....

Well I know Halloween is around the corner so I thought a gruesome title might grab your attention, but it's not quite as awful as it sounds!  It's my card for this week's CASology cue card inspired by the word "shoe".  I went for this cute pair of elf's legs complete with shoes but minus a body!  It's from the silhouette online store and cut simply from red and green card.

I turned the legs into a card with a punny sentiment printed on the computer in green, mounted with a slight overhang and finished with some red faux stitching.

http://casology.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/week-12-shoe.html

Wedding Wishes

If you are a regular visitor, then you will know that last month I made a tiara for my friend who got married in the Caribbean - well Saturday was their "UK Reception/Celebration" and they both got kitted out in their wedding gear again so I now have a "in use" shot to share. 

I made them a second card, from all the girls in our book group, to go with the gift we bought between us.

I cut the flourish frame on my cameo and created a background (slightly too wide really but I discovered that too late to change it!) using the offset function.  I stamped and embossed the cake from the stampin up love and laughter set onto vellum with white ep with an amber rose heart on top.  I punched some flowers (MS hydrangea) and embossed those too, shaped and added a gem centre.  I used the same amber rose powder with a glue pen in the detail on the flourish and added some more gems around to bring out the details.  I stamped and embossed the sentiment underneath the cake and used a sakura pen to add colour to the holes around the frame.  I mounted onto some maroon ribbed cardstock to make a base and finished with some hand drawn stitches with a white gel pen.

I'm going to squeeze this in just before the deadline on the challenge which is all about weddings or anniversarys over at http://mymumscraftshopchallenges.blogspot.co.uk/

Blue and Green Butterflies

We've had a bit of a rubbish end to this week as my father-in-law has taken a turn for the worst and we spent most of yesterday following him around local hospitals in search of a surgeon who wasn't on holiday!  Thankfully things seem to be looking up a little today so my hubby has gone back to work, I've got the chores done and can now squeeze in an hour of stress relieving crafting before visiting.

I decided to combine my two favourite weekly challenges - the sketch at this weeks Less is More Challenge with the colour challenge at CASual Friday's which was navy, lime and aqua.

I stamped a 6cm strip of white card with various butterflies from my new craftwork cards butterflies and blooms stamp set using 6 shades of momento ink.  I matted it onto some pearl aqua card and punched my favourite border (EK Sucess Agapanthas).  The large butterfly was cut from the same pearl card using my silhouette - I curled the wings using my fingers and popped it up with pinflair glue adding some green gems to the body.  Finished with a lovely Waltzingmouse sentiment in pear tart ink with 3 tiny gems to highlight it.

Catch you later - thanks for visiting.

Wordy Anniversary

It was my friends Anniversary this week and I wanted to make a card in a very clean and simple style as that is her taste so I decided to use my silhouette to simply make "Happy Anniversary" the focus of my design.

I started by drawing an oblong in silhouette studio just smaller than my base card and typing ANNIVERSARY into it so it filled the width as I intended to use the negative of the die cut letters.  The "Happy" was an existing download (part of a Happy Birthday sentiment) so I edited it to be just one word - adjusted it to be the size I wanted and then moved it out of the oblong so it would allow me to stick it on top.  I then selected another download - a pair of linked hearts, again sized them, then moved them to the side too to cut.

Once cut, I carefully removed the die cut oblong leaving the letters on the cutting mat.  I stuck some decorative paper behind the word Anniversary and carefully glued the "inner bits" of the letters into place.  I saved the die cut letters for another time.  I coloured the Happy with a copic marker (Peony) and inked the edge of the die cut oblong with the same marker.  I decided to use the negative of the linked hearts rather than the thin shape itself as I felt the design needed a little more weight - I coloured those with the same marker and added one tiny red gem to the right hand one.  I stuck the oblong to the base card, glued the "Happy" on top just overhanging some of the cut out letters and glued the hearts in the bottom corner.

I am going to enter this into this weeks Paper Players challenge which is to create a card with a sentiment as the main element of your design.  http://thepaperplayers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/leannes-clean-simple-challenge-104.html