Blog Candy Winner

A big "Thank You" to all who joined in my blog candy giveaway - it was lovely to see your flower creations! I put all the names in a bowl and had my husband do the draw, and the winner is

GILL!

Congratulations, Gill, please send me an email with your address and maybe a quick note about your favourite colours, so I can make your little book as quickly as possible and send it off to you. You'll find my email address link on my profile page.

Bye for now, better put the tea on!

#3 - Most Distressing

Finally, I have managed to complete a DCM challenge on the day it came out! They're asking us to make a "distressed" card, i.e. to use some sanding, tearing, curling, inking, distress inks, that kind of thing:

My card is not too distressed, I've kept the colours quite cheerful ;-) Oh dear -moving on... I embossed some DCWV cardstock with a Cuttlebug folder and then sanded over the embossing to reveal some of the white core. I've also taken some paper flowers and curled the petals a little, and the handcut leaves have got some ink around the edges. Sentiment was cut with a QK Revolution die, ricrac came free with a mag, and brads and button are from stash. Thanks for stopping by!

#2 - Cute Girly Card

Over at Cute Card Thursday, the theme this week is "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"! So I made this rather girly card:

I came across these "Dinky Dolly" stamps at Lakeland - I'd never seen them before! It's a set of clear stamps that contains 3 Dinky Dolly's, 3 different sentiments, 4 smaller accessory/complimentary stamps and 2 (short) floral borders, plus an acrylic block. And the whole set only cost £5.99!!! What a bargain! And they're really cute!

So, anyway, I coloured Dinky Dolly with watercolour pencils, I used purple cardstock from Little Sizzles pad, dotty paper from Costco pack, ribbon from ASDA, some brads and a Whispers sentiment stamp. The colours are a little deeper in real life, and there's glitter on all the flowers that doesn't really show in the picture, but I hope you like anyway. Thanks for stopping by!

#1 - Tilda ATC

I've been busy making stuff for three challenges over the last couple of days, but have not had time to post anything! Something always gets in the way, quite often in the shape of kiddies or husband wanting computer time as well... How very inconsiderate!

So, without further ado, here is the ATC I made for the latest challenge at Tilda and Friends ATC Challenges. The theme is "Going Dotty":

There aren't a lot of dots, I know, but I quite like her spotty top (which was paperpieced, btw, something I don't think I'll be doing very often, the word "fiddly" comes to mind...), and there are three round brads, which make rather nice dots, too. I'm afraid the layout is pretty much the same as on my first Tilda ATC, but my collection is still very limited, so I'm struggling for ideas as to what to do with my stamps. I think I will really need to add to my Tildas very soon! But hey, this could be the second in a series or a set (or whatever it's called), so I might actually make a few more - same but different :)

Thanks for looking, post #2 will follow shortly.

Hot and Spicy!

Made a card for the main challenge at DCM entitled "Hot and Spicy". I liked the sound of that challenge from the word go and envisaged a creation with peppercorns or some such thing, but alas, I went down a simpler route in the end.

I remembered I had some Junkitz paper called Madras - well, it's actually called Salsa Madras, so how much hotter and spicier can you get? I used an orange card base, some deep pink paper embossed with a Cuttlebug folder, a bit of orange ricrac, a big Bazzill bloom, a smaller orange flower and an orange button. Sentiment is stamped with a Studio G stamp. I really like it! Thanks for looking :)

Oh, and I'm going to extend the blog candy challenge for a few more days to give more people the chance to enter. If you want to take part, please leave a comment with a link to your card here by the end of Sunday, and I'll do the draw on Monday. Thanks to all who have taken part so far!

Girly But Blue!

I've not taken part in a Tilda & Co Challenge for quite a while, but when I saw this week's theme, I remembered that I already had a Tilda ready, stamped and coloured, and mainly blue! I picked some papers, and here's the finished result:


Papers are from Little Sizzles pads, sentiment stamp is Studio G, brads are from stash, and the two flowers are Stampin'Up. Tilda and flowers were stamped on watercolour paper and coloured in with watercolour pencils.

Thanks for stopping by! Oh, and don't forget to check out my candy alert!

A Couple of Challenges

I'm finding it hard at the moment joining in with all the challenges. There were quite a few that looked fun to join, but somehow, life just got in the way. I did manage to make a card for Cute Card Thursday where the theme is "It's a Man's World" - I needed a card for my dad's birthday, so that was very handy.

I stamped and coloured Hamish in his kilt, cut him out and mounted him on an inked scrap of BG paper, embossed and inked the red scrap as well, cut a couple of Sizzix stars and added a Dymo greeting. Hope he likes it, he always claims to be hip and young at heart :)

I also made a card for Nicola's latest sketch over at My Paper World - she comes up with great sketches that are really versatile!

For this I stamped and coloured Tilda, used scraps of DCWV paper and a couple of flowers from stash. First time my new Nestabilities got an outing :)
Thanks for looking, and make sure you check out my previous post!

Candy Alert!

I've decided it's time for some blog candy! It was my 40th birthday two weeks ago today, and I never got to celebrate properly, because we were travelling back from the US that day and were utterly exhausted by the time we got back home. Yesterday, DH and I finally got round to a joint "my birthday-his birthday-our anniversary" outing (Ansel Adams exhibition in Edinburgh, followed by a meal in a lovely cosy restaurant), but I still feel the occasion needs to be marked a little more - after all, it's a reasonably significant birthday.

Here's what you can win:

I am also going to make a mini book using my shiny new Bind-It-All which DH kindly gave me for my birthday (don't worry, it'll not be the first effort, I will practise until I produce something decent that I'm happy to give away. You may therefore have to be a little patient while waiting for your candy to arrive, but it shouldn't be too long.)

What I would like you to do:

I love flowers! I'd therefore like you to make something that has flowers on it. It does NOT have to be a birthday card (let's face it, it's a little late, really), it can be anything at all and if you want to tie it in with other challenges, that's absolutely fine by me. Leave me a comment with a link to your creation by Thursday 24 April, and I will draw a winner sometime Friday afternoon. Oh, and if you wouldn't mind posting about this give-away on your own blogs, that would be great!

Thanks for taking part, and good luck!

Back from Hols!

Hello, I'm back! "Only" took me an extra week to get back into the swing of things, make cards and start blogging about them... And before I bore you with tales from our trip to the US, here are the cards I made yesterday and today:

This first one I made for the latest challenges at Cute Card Thursday, which was asking for cute images and wings, and at Daring Cardmakers, which was asking for a card with butterflies. Stamps are all Studio G, the spring one I got at Michaels during my trip (along with quite a few other bits and pieces, as you can well imagine :))

These two I made for my stock box and with the school craft fair in mind, where I will be having a stall together with a friend. The first one uses one of the lovely selection of images Andrea sent me. I coloured Edwin with watercolour pencils, the spotty paper is from Dovecraft, sentiment stamp is Studio G (again, my collection has grown considerably) and I cut a few Sizzix stars and doodled on them. It's simple, but I quite like it.

I'm chuffed with the second one, as I've been after this particular Magnolia stamp for quite a while, and when I saw it was in stock at Funky Kits, I just had to have it!!! So here is Brunte, Tilda's horse, again watercoloured, with spotty Dovecraft paper for the background, some pink cardstock, a Prima flower, gems and ribbon from stock and the same Studio G sentiment stamp as above. I'm really pleased with this one, and I can already think of a few horse-daft girls to give it to!

Well, we had a very nice holiday in the US over Easter! Even a selection of nasty colds and stomach bugs that affected pretty much everybody in the family couldn't spoil it for us, we just kept going as best we could. We celebrated Easter with our friends in Pennsylvania, and had a wonderful time catching up. Eldest daughter was delighted to be reunited with her good friend! We had trips to:

Gettysburg

Amish Country (Lancaster, PA)

Washington, DC, complete with cherry blossom

Cleveland, OH - John Carroll University, where I spent my freshman year

I hadn't been to Cleveland for 16 years nearly, so it was great to catch up with old friends! I really enjoyed it, and even my family said they had quite a nice time ;-) We were lucky with the weather, there was very little rain, and most days were bright and dry, although chilly at times.

Of course, quite a bit of time was spent shopping, the kids got some clothes and I treated myself to some lovely stash. Some things were just amazingly cheap, compared to here, and I was amazed to see that even Walmart had a decent craft section, with lots of big name items at very reasonable prices. I've not taken any pictures of my stash, but no doubt you will see it cropping up in future creations :)

Now that we're home the kids are back at school and it took us pretty much all week to get back into our normal rhythm. Jetlag affected us all, the girls were very tired (the little one threatened to nod off at nursery!), and I have had very early nights all week, but I'm still not fully recovered. Cold #3 isn't helping, I suppose... I have taken it easy this week, and didn't even have any inclination to craft, so I guess the cards above show I'm getting back to normal. So I shall post this now and have a blog-hop tomorrow to comment on all your lovely creations. Until then, thanks for looking!