Christmassy Less is More

As it was so cold and dull yesterday, it put me in the mood for making Christmas cards, so I used my new waltzingmouse tiny trees set to create a Christmas card for CAS-ual Friday and I liked it so much, I've decided to use this week's one-layer inky theme at Less is More to do another.

I used a tiny 3x3 inch card - I really love these little cards - and masked off the top and bottom to create an inky background.  I used a blue cosmic shimmer, spritzed and dried with a heat gun so I could "blow" the puddles around to create interesting shapes.  Then I stamped the green tree teardrops by mixing two inks directly on the stamp.  I then stamped the two different length trunks and allowed them to dry.  I stamped the swirly stars in white and embossed with snowflake embossing powder.  I'm not sure if this is meant to be lights or frost, but I think the white works for either.  I finally finished with a simple sentiment, from the same stamp set, in one of the shades of green I used on the trees.

I'm also entering this into Secret Saturday challenge as their theme this week is Christmas is Coming and Crafty Hazlenuts Christmas Challenge which is one layer or simple this week.

I'll try to do something more summery later I promise as there is a hint of actual blue sky outside this morning!

See you later.
Craftilicious x

Clean & Simple CAS-ual Friday

For this week's CAS-ual Friday challenge, the girls have joined forces with Clean & Simple and used one of their sketches for the basis of the challenge.

After last weeks horrendous glue dot torture, this simple sketch is a pleasant and welcome return to something a bit less taxing for the start of the weekend!

It's been more like blumming October here today than August - I even had to put my office light on at work this afternoon it was so dark and grey - so my first thought on seeing the sketch was to make a Christmas card as I was feeling a little chilly.  I used the tiny trees set from Waltzingmouse Stamps to create a simple two shaded tree, and then added "snowflake" embossing powder for the decorative lights.  The greeting is from the same set.  I added three rows of twine and a little dp border.  Very quick and simple so I may well make a set of these in different shades to add to my christmas card stock while I'm in the mood.

I wanted to get back into summer though, so decided to use the same set but without the snowy feel, so this is my second card.  I stamped a couple of trees this time side-by-side onto kraft paper and used the friends always sentiment as it seemed to me that they trees were friends.  I finished it with a strip of lime green card with some golden gems.

I think it ended up slightly autumnal so I may go and look out another set to see if I can't make an altogether more summery card to remind me that summer is still hiding behind the clouds somewhere...

Thanks for visiting - see you later.
Craftilicious x

Sentimentally Focussed....

I love sentiment stamps, and can't resist them when I see them, so I do have probably too many, and use only a limited few.  I am trying to remedy this by creating a stamp archive file so I can more easily see what I've got by theme as well as manufacturer and I'm starting with the sentiments as they are really hard to read backwards when you've only got the stamp itself for reference (I don't keep the original packaging as I file all my stamps in binders on ezmount panels, or in empty cd cases for the clear stamps).  So whenever I see a challenge that focuses on sentiments, I like to play along, and there is one such challenge this week at One Stop Craft challenge and I've made this for it:

I took my inspiration for the colours and style from the photo inspiration challenge currently on the Stamptacular Sunday Challenge  which is this stunning image (wish my fireplace looked like this lol!) so I am entering their challenge as well.

With the blacks, creams and sparkle, I knew it would be the perfect opportunity to break into one of my favourite paperpads from GCD studios "Paris Nights" which is full of velvet flocking, damasks and pearly shimmers - I do find it so hard to cut lol!  I selected a black and creamy-gold velvet damask and cut a strip for the middle of the card, matted it onto plain black and added a champagne glitter top and bottom border.  My sentiment is from the great range by Paper Makeup Stamps which are available in the UK from Quixotic Paperie and there are some for every occasion - I know cos I have a lot of them!!!  I stamped onto thick white card, cut and embossed with a nestie and then cut the next size nestie out of black for a mat.  To get the champagne glittered borders, I drew around the outside of the two nesties and cut by hand.  I finished with some seambinding ribbon, 3 champagne roses and a few gems for added sparkle.

I'm really pleased with the rich results, so I may have to give it to my DH as I don't think I can bear to give it away ;-)

Craftilicious x

Music lover

Sorry but this is a scanned image so the colours are a bit flat, I forgot to photograph it before I took it to work for the birthday club to sign so I had to make do with a scan.  This is for one of our colleagues whose birthday is today and he's quite a muso so I thought this was the perfect image.

It's a simple collage image stamped and coloured with copics with a tiny touch of glitter and shimmer on the cd.  I created the musical score background by stamping the background stamp at different angles and masking each off before stamping again.

I can't find a "music" challenge, so am entering it into a couple of anything goes:

http://craftuscrazy.blogspot.com/2011/08/challenge-14-anything-goes-in-august.html
http://sirstampalotchallenge.blogspot.com/2011/08/mr-linky-problems-august-challenge.html

Thanks for stopping by,  Craftilicious x

Wedding Cake

I made this cake for friends who now live in Norway but got married in Ireland a couple of weeks ago - they should have received it by now so I think its safe to blog.  Unfortunately we couldn't get to the wedding but I hope they had a fabulous day.

It was really hard to get a good photograph of this card, but if you pop it out large, I think the detail just shows.  I used a new damask cake stamp from papermania and stamped in a pale blue with an overcoat of embossing ink onto a grey pearl card and embossed with clear glossy embossing powder.  The cake stand was embossed in ultrafine silver.  I cut it with a nestie and cut a matching silver mat, and pierced holes to poke the roses through.  I overstamped the sentiment, from the new fabby Waltzingmouse set, with black stazon so it could stick to the embossing.  I added a blue vellum base and stamped the co-ordinating swirl from the set in the corners, and finished with a little blue seam binding ribbon.

Night all, Craftilicious x

CAS-ual glitter glue

Well, this week's CAS-ual Friday challenge, which is to use glitter on glue dots, almost had me beat!  The problem is, that we don't get that brand of glue dot in the UK (well I've never seen them).  The brand we have here isn't such a pretty shaped dot - the ones I have are not at all round, and have odd pointy bits, so when you apply glitter they REALLY don't look so good!!!!

I refused to be beaten and miss a week however, so I used two strips of double-sided tape and glittered those once applied to a kraft base card and stamped a doily border.  I then added a sentiment and "made" my own glue dots by using my crop-a-dile on the centre of my messy glue dots to get a properly round dot.  It turned out to be VERY tricky and made a real mess of my crop-a-dile so I don't recommend it - and the swirl I intended to make became a shorter line of just 3 dots - but I'm hoping for brownie points for determination and ingenuity ;-)

Can we have an easier challenge back next week please????

Thanks for stopping by.
Craftilicious x

Punk Princess

Good afternoon LIMettes.  I'm a bit later than normal with my challenge entry this week as we spent the whole day at Magna yesterday with our friends and their 3 children.  As we don't have kids and only see them occassionally as they live in Herefordshire, I forget each time they visit just how tiring it is.  If you're looking for a good day out with kids under 12, then I can't recommend Magna enough - we all had a great time.

This week's LIM challenge is an interesting one - use the colours of your flag, which for me in the UK meant either red and white or red, white and blue depending on whether I use the English or Union flags.  I opted for the latter and decided to colour one of the fabby images I chose from my Tiddly Inks win - this little lady is called Pinky Punker and you can expect to see a pink version very soon as she is brilliant to colour with the massive beehive of hair, but I thought she'd fit right in on Carnaby Street in red and blue.

I coloured her with copics, added a little glitter for extra punk, and created a sentiment in WordArt in Old English font.  A red and blue mat onto a white base and she's ready to rock!

Hope you like her ;-)

Craftilicious x

Surf's Up!

 I said I'd be back, and this evening it's with another card for the current challenge we have this month at St Luke's Charity Cards Challenge which is "beside the seaside" so can be anything holiday related.  For my second card for the challenge I've gone for the cute little surfer dude from The Greeting Farm, teamed with a Stampedous sentiment and some snippets of blue card cut with  various width scalloped edge scissors. 

I am also going to enter this into a variety of other challenges as there are lots around like ours at present:

Firstly - cards for men, want clean and simple cards this week - http://cardsformen.blogspot.com/2011/08/challenge-16-clean-simple.html

Cooking it up with Katie would like something old - which is surfer stamp, something new which is the stampendous stamp, and your favourite thing/technique which for me has to be colouring with copics.  http://cookingitupwithkatie.blogspot.com/2011/08/cooking-it-up-69-show-me-your-new.html

Over at Critter Challenge - the challenge is summer fun - http://critterchallengeblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/challenge-76summer-fun.html  and the same challenge at Stamp Challenges http://stampchallenges.blogspot.com/2011/07/summer-fun-something-challenge.html  and at Die Cut Dreams it's holiday fun - http://diecutdreams.blogspot.com/2011/08/die-cut-dreams-95-holiday-fun.html

At TSG Clear Stamps the challenge is to celebrate summer http://tsgclearstamps.blogspot.com/2011/08/tsg118-celebrate-summer.html and Creative Inspirations is Summertime - http://creativeinspirationschallenge.blogspot.com/2011/07/challenge-65and-winnersof-challenge64.html 

At Try it on Tuesday's the challenge is from the beach - http://tuesdaytaggers.blogspot.com/2011/08/card-week-from-beach.html   and Craft Room Challenge is Summer Holidays - http://craft-roomchallenge.blogspot.com/2011/07/summer-holidays.html 

Finally this weeks challenge at Cute Card Thursdays is to create a card without any designer papers - http://cutecardthursday.blogspot.com/2011/08/challenge-176-no-designer-paper.html 


That's all for this evening.
Take care
Craftilicious x

Double Winner!

Just a really quick post while I eat my lunch at work but I wanted to share my very good mood as I've won two challenges in less than 24 hours and boy am I a happy bunny today because of it :-D

Firstly - I was runner up in the Tiddly Inks/Make it Crafty Steampunk MixnMatch Release "I Spy" challenge which means I get $10 worth of Christy's FABULOUS images to play with.  Check out the blog post  here to find out more about it and it see some the fab new images from Christy.

Then today, the winners of Jeanie Winter's  "That's Krafty Thursday" challenge were announced over on her blog The Spotted Chick and I was TOTALLY thrilled to be named one of the four krafty chicks with my housewarming card.  If you like using kraft cardstock on your cards, then this is the challenge for you - using kraft is the only requirement - otherwise anything goes - so do join Jeanie on the next challenge and you too could be the proud owner of  your own Clara badge ;-)

I have another card to share this evening so will see you all then.

Craftilicious x

Beach Bum

Well, it's the first of the month again, so time to launch a new challenge over on St Luke's Charity Cards Challenge and this month our challenge is "I do like to be beside the seaside".  There's a gift voucher for Quixotic Paperie as a prize this month so do pop over to the site and play along.

I created a beach scene as a collage of torn papers and printed my beach bum sentiment and stamped  the clouds over and cut them out.  I added one of the 3 beach huts from the Molly Blooms beach hut stamp which I coloured with pencils in ice-cream colours.  The "bum" image is a free digi from Leighs Paper Creation and I just love the humour in it!  I matted onto a black mat, and stuck the images on so they deliberately overhung the mat but stayed within the card edge.

Have a sunny day :-)

Craftilicious x

Hang on in there

It's been a busy day in the craft room today as I'm frantically finishing off my final projects for the DT call with Crissy Armstrong.

This image was one of the first of hers that I bought, from Kraftin Kimmie in rubber.  I love this little guy as he's very versatile and I've used him a lot.  I've never cut him out before but I thought he'd look great hanging from his vine, so I've made a tent fold card and suspended him behind the aperture.  He's coloured with copics and then I've added texture with pencils.  I've added leaves around the aperture to create a jungle feel.

I'll be back after lunch with another entry - maybe even two as I have all day to play today :-)

Cheers

Craftilicious x

LIM 6 monthiversary!

It's LIM day again, and today it's 6 months since the first challenge - so happy 6 monthiversary Chrissie and Mandi!

I was really upset when I saw it was the 6 month anniversary when I saw the theme of fruit as I thought I would have to miss the challenge as I don't have anything fruity in my stash :-(  However on my trip to the supermarket this morning I found August's Cardmaking and Papercraft magazine which had chipboard on the front and free digipaper downloads inside both of which feature fruit - so hurrah - I can play today afterall and keep my weekly entry tally going :-)

Very simple card, cream base to match the chipboard then I just used a strip of the digipaper, the cherry chipboard, a couple of nestie circles and I wrote the sentiment with my copic fineliner.

Happy Less is More day - hope the sun is shinning.

Craftilicious x

Featuring Buttons.....

The Daring Cardmakers this week want us to make cards with buttons - but rather than just bunging one in a corner, we have to make them part of the feature image.  The DT have some great samples with really quirky ideas for incorporating buttons, and as I've just got a new stamp set full of button images, I wanted to play along.

I was inspired by the phrase - "one in a million",  and created a sentiment I could apply to my DH who does put up with a lot from me and this crafting lark!  I created the sentiments in word art using cena font, applying a wave and a shadow to mimic the shape of my stamped buttons.  Now I know there aren't actually a million buttons on my card, but I hope my idea gets the message across by featuring just one real button on my card.  As it's a DL card, then I am also entering it into this week's CAS-ual Friday's  'the long and short of it' challenge which is to create a DL sized card but maintaining a lot of white space.

Back tomorrow for LIM and some more entries for the Crissy Armstrong DT call which closes this weekend.

Craftilicious x

Another birthday and another DT entry

Here is the last birthday card of the ones I needed for this month - this is for my friend whose birthday is today so I can finally share it.

I bought this stamp a couple of months, ago with my friend in mind - if anyone LOVES cake then she does - she can always manage dessert even when we're full - she says she has a second stomach just for cake!  As this is another Crissy Armstrong image, in rubber from the Whimsey this time which are available in the UK from Quixotic Paperie, I am also making it my 6th entry in her DT call for this month.  Only a couple of days left now so I'd better get my finger out with the other 3 projects I'm planning for it.

I stamped onto blending card and coloured with copics - she's such a joy to colour - an easy image if you're new to copics as there aren't too many large empty spaces which often scare me.  I just love how she's making herself comfy on the cake.  It does come with a sentiment which says 'there's nothing like comfort food' but I decided to use another from a set all about cake from CC Designs, also from Quixotic Paperie which I thought was more appropriate for my friend.  I used a co-ordinating verse from the same set "inside".  This is is a new shape of card for me and it is deceptively easy to make - 2 cuts and 5 scored lines and it just sort of folds itself but I think it makes an effective base for this image.  I got the giraffe background paper in a kids set which I've had ages - finally found a use for it!

 

See you tomorrow.

Craftilicious x

New home card

Just a really quick post today whilst at lunch as its book group tonight so no time to be online.

This is a card I've made for friends who have just moved into a new house.

The stamp I've used is actually a molly bloom "beach hut" stamp but I've used just half of it, going off the edge with half a hut, and missing the third off completely.  I think this makes a great housewarming stamp if you use it without the beach context.  The sentiments are from a couple of different sets and I've only used part of the Memories stamp, there are more words to it but I just carefully inked up the parts I wanted with the pointed bit of a dew drop ink pad.  The card base I got on Sunday and the texture of them is great to colour on with pencils - makes the houses look really wooden :-)

Edit - as this is also on kraft card stock, I am going to enter it into the Spotted Chick's That's Krafty Thursday challenge, which I keep forgetting to enter, but was reminded after her mid week reminder post today.  If you like working with kraft, she runs this challenge every 2 weeks so do check it out.

That's all for today - catch you later.

Craftilicious x

Birthday cards

July is a birthday heavy month in our household, so I've been busy making birthday cards but couldn't blog them until after the birthdays are over.  There are still a couple more later this week so I can't share those yet, but I can now share my husbands and one I made for our friends little boy who turned 6 last Friday.  All 3 cards feature snippets so I'm entering them into Jule's snippet challenge for this week.  I'm sharing some of my snippet storage below too so if you fancy a nose around my very messy craftroom, keep reading....

This was for the 6 year old - using a PTI set on black.  The red rocket is a snippet taken from the divider from a DCWV card set - I really can't throw anything away!!!  I'm also going to enter this into the get funky and craft challenge which is "boys, boys boys" - so highly appropriate for this little card!

I printed the sentiment inside on white paper (using starshine font) and cut with a nestie.

My husband loves photography so when I saw this teddybo digi my problems of what card to make him were solved!  I coloured him with pencils and copics and added some glitter for the flash and glaze for the lense.  The black strip and happy birthday border are from more snippets.

I am a bit of a paper addict, and do have ALOT of it - and I have a lot of poorly co-ordinated storage solutions for it at the moment as I am trying to get it all organised.  The two 3 drawers on the left have 6x6 pads - the bottom 3 drawers in the silver drawers have 12x12 pads.

 
The blue drawers in this photo have all my A4 card, papers and decoupage sheets.  (I have another 3 sets of these drawers at the other side of the room, not photographed) which have all my glitter and metalic card stock, thin strips for borders and vellums.  The pink drawers have my small cards and envelopes and a few ribbons.

However, I have a BIG problem - I find it VERY hard to actually use any of my papers in case I use them up and can't buy them again......  So unlike lots of you who play along with Jule's challenge each week, I find I use my "snippets" on most of my cards as I keep my snippet stash right at the side of my desk and I use anything I find in there BEFORE I look at cutting a precious full sheet of paper.  I do have a couple of files on my desk with 6x6 co-ordination sheets in and I do use those alot, but other papers generally sit in a drawer, untouched, but certainly not unloved!!!  So these are my snippet drawers - I don't have space to store them by colour, so I store my by size - the bottom drawer has the biggest sheets, the top the medium and the middle is FULL of tiny bits I just have to hold onto, just in case!

I'll show you the full on afters when its finished but there may be a view "durings" the organiation process too.

Right time to stop waffling, and go and make tea!

Craftilicious x

Play Date Cafe Splash Challenge

The playdate cafe colours this week are black and white with a splash of colour which is the same as our monthly challenge over at St Luke's Charity Cards Challenge so if you're playing along with PDCC91 then do check out our challenge too as you could win a stampin up! stamp set.....

Here's my entry for PDCC91 - I've used purple as my "splash"

I've used another couple of rub-ons from my QVC set so I'm making this a second entry for this week's CAS-ual Friday's challenge too.  I applied the ribbon rub-on on to some thin white card and cut around the scalloped edge, mounted onto a snippet of purple dotted paper so I'm entering Jule's snippet challenge too, and mounted that onto black card.  The sentiment is from waltzingmouse stamped in eggplant versamagic, and then I added the rub-on butterfly as if it was landing on the sentiment.

Simple card, lots of challenges....

Off for birthday dinner with my DH now :-D

Craftilicious xx

LIM Ribbons

I must have been having a psychic moment again last night when I did my CASual Friday card which was to create a card using rub-ons, but I decided to go for ribbon as part of my design which is one of the options for today's LIM challenge.  As I hadn't put last night's supplies away, there is a colour similarity to today's card!

I still need to make some samples for wedding invitation for our friends who are getting married next year so took the opportunity to make one design idea for them.  They're not sure of their colour scheme as yet so I'm just making samples in a variety of colours so they can just pick a design and we can apply the colour scheme once chosen.

This is a very simply design, two shades of pink matting and layering, and the focus is some more of the antique seam binding ribbon with a diamante heart ribbon slider.  The GORGEOUS sentiment is from the new collection from waltzingmouse stamps which is stamped and embossed with pink petunia versamagic ink - as this is chalky it doesn't emboss well on its own, but if you put an embossing ink on the stamp before the colour, then it holds the glossy embossing powder perfectly.

See you later

Craftilicious x

CASual Rub-ons

This weeks challenge at CAS-ual Fridays is to use rub-ons or stickers - a nice easy challenge for the end of the week.

I've gone for a really simple card, just a couple of layers of card in two shades of pink, a black floral rub-on from QVC, a sentiment from there she goes, and some vintage seam binding ribbon.

Quick card, quick post, as I need to get things organised for my DH's birthday on Sunday and we want to try and see some stuff going on at Tramlines - the free music festival going on in Sheffield this weekend which is where we live.

Have a great weekend.

Craftilicious x

Sad cat

I've done a couple of entries to Crissy Armstrong's DT call featuring her dog images, and being a cat owner, I thought it was about time I redressed the imbalance with a cat image.  I thought this image with the big sad eyes would make a perfect belated birthday card, which is always a useful thing to have in your stash for the inevitable birthday you just miss.

I coloured the image with pencils and blending solution to create the under-fur, but then added some texture with the same coloured pencils on top to give more realism to the fur.  Who could stay mad at that face - even with the broken pot!  I matted and layered onto plain and patterned DP using a nestie, and then added a simple sentiment onto a matching mat over some paw print ribbon.  I see some ladies have entered lots and lots of entries to the DT call already - I don't think I'll have chance to catch up now....

I do have a few more cards up my sleeve though so watch this space :-)

Craftilicious x