WOYWW 201

Ooops. The mess is starting to encroach a little again!

 

 

In my defence, it's been a crazy busy couple of weeks, with Easter and then my DD1's birthday (and birthday party). So much so that I've not done much crafting for the past few days... although I have spent this evening finishing up a scrapbook page (woot, an actual paper scrapbook page - I never seem to get around to doing those much anymore!) which is sitting on the desk while some silicone glue dries. It's not something I can share just yet though, hence why I've haphazardly covered it with a random instruction leaflet (from the kiddy digital camera I got DD1 for her birthday! :lol:)!

 

Ooh I did do one other bit of crafting in the past few days though... I managed to find time in the day before DD1's birthday to make her a birthday card!

 

 

I was struggling for inspiration at first but she had been banging on for weeks about wanting an Octonauts birthday cake for her party so I thought, why not go with the same theme for her card? :) I googled for the image and used a SU stamp (it reminds me of bubbles!) for the background and cut the name and number 4 on my Cameo. Simple, but effective - and she loved it.

 

Oh and the Octonauts cake? Was. Awesome.

 

 

I'd never had a cake professionally made before but I googled for local cake makers and called Sara's Celebration Cakes. I'd left it a bit late to order but, bless her, she said she could squeeze us in. She'd never heard of the Octonauts (it's an animated show on the pre-schoolers cBeebies channel, for those not in the know!) but she went away and googled it and came back and suggested that she could make the Gup-B ship with the 3 main characters sitting in it. And that's exactly what she did. I was - and, quite frankly, still am -  amazed by it! It totally exceeded my expectations. The level of detail was incredible (down to teeny tiny icing Octonauts logos on the tailfin of the ship!) and it also tasted great! DD1 *loved* it. :)

 

 

So thank you, Sara, for helping to make my little girl's first proper birthday party absolutely brilliant. :)

 

And on that note, I shall sign off and head to bed. Hope you enjoy your skip around the craft desks of blogland and that Wednesday is good to you.

A Rose By Any Other Name

I love working with Sweet Pea Stamps... not only because of the gorgeous stamps I get to create with, but also because of the awesome team of creative ladies I get to work with and the fabulous inspiration I get from seeing their creations.

This week I have taken a bit of inspiration from one of my fellow-DT members and done my own take on Milo's gorgeous, super-detailed style:

 

I have to admit that I love how this turned out. :)

I've used Ching Chou Kuik's beautiful Red Rose digi stamp. I love the Dia de los Muertos sugar skulls influence of this image. I coloured her with Promarkers, using red and gold colours and keeping her skin super-pale.

 

 

I teamed the image with a red and black colour scheme and lots of texture and detail for a rather gothic/baroque feel.

 

 

I cut a card shaped card blank with My Cameo and layered some gorgeous Basic Grey paper (from the Boxer collection) onto it. I then added lots of texture and dimension with flowers and lace and fabric and trinkets, cutting out the image and layering it over the top of it all:

 

 



I added lots of little decorative touches like a little metal pendant which I filled with more of the patterned paper and layers of UTEE, into which I set a paper rose, and a little shrink plastic butterfly.

 

Other additions include a little wooden key with I coloured black with my Promarkers and coated with Glossy Accents...

 

And some heart-shaped decorative pins and a ticket stamped onto kraft card.
 

You can buy this gorgeous image in red rubber or digi format from the Sweet Pea Stamps store. Hope you like my card and that Milo doesn't mind me "borrowing" her fabulous style. :)

 

Butterflies and Bling

Time for another challenge at One Stitch At A Time and it's our most popular theme - Anything Goes! No restrictions - you can make anything you like, using anything you like! :D

 

For my card this week I chose to work with this lovely Butterfly Frame image by Floppy Latte Designs:

 

 

I love this image so much, it's so versatile! Every time I look at it I get another idea for how I want to use it. :D (I'm currently thinking of cutting around the aperture and layering patterned paper behind it! :D).

 

For this card I printed the digi stamp 3 times in the same size and used my Promarkers for colouring. I also printed the stamp again on copy paper and cut out a mask for the section of leaves/butterfly inside the frame and masked that area while I stamped my sentiment (a Tim Holtz stamp) inside the frame:

 

 

I coloured one image as the base image (and stamped my sentiment onto it) and then with the second image I coloured just the butterfly and leaves, and cut them out, and finally I coloured and cut out just the butterfly from the third image. I then bent up the leaves/wings for a bit of dimension and layered the sections on top of each other:

 

 

I decorated my card (a cream card blank) with some gorgeous paper from DCWV's Mariposa stack and border punched a sqaure of orangey-gold card using Martha Stewart punches.

 

 

I finished things off with lots of lovely bling from some gemstone flourishes:

 

 

As ever, you don't need to use a Stitchy Bear product to enter the OSAAT challenge - but if you do you'll be entered into the draw to win the main prize of a bunch of fabulous Stitchy Bear stamps! Entries without a Stitchy Bear product will have a chance to win a $3 gift voucher for the Stitchy Bear digi outlet. :)

I'm entering this card into the following challenges:
613 Avenue Create - Spring Fever
Challenges 4 Everybody - Anything Goes
Joanna Sheen Challenge - Spring Into Spring
Lacy Sunshine - Anything Goes
Robyn's Fetish - Anything Goes
Scrappy Frogs - Think Spring
Allsorts - Spring Has Sprung

 

My birthday girl

Yesterday was DD1's 4th birthday. Still can't quite believe it... my little girl is getting so grown up! :)

 

I took some really lovely photos of her yesterday - my mum bought her a gorgeous floaty, flowery dress and she just looked adorable in it.

 

So I just couldn't resist doing a quick scrapbook page last night:

 

 

I used paper and elements from the Elegance kit by Valentina's Creations and used Photoshop Elements to put it all together.

 

I know I'm biased - as is every mum - but she really is just beautiful. :)

 

The celebrations continue this afternoon with a birthday party with some of her pre-school friends. Should be fun. :D

 

And I'm sure I'll come away with some more great photos to scrap.

 

Scrap Map Challenge

A new month, a new Scrap Map challenge at Creative Craft World! :)

 

I've gone digi again for my layout this month - much as I love papercrafting, digi is quicker to do and I've been soooooo insanely busy over the past few weeks, mostly due to Easter, school holidays and DD1's birthday! :)

 

 

I used some photos of my two girls having fun hunting for Easter eggs in the garden last weekend and used digi papers and elements from the Sweet Easter kit from Peppermint Creative.

 

We're once again blog hopping around the DT blogs this month, each of whom will be sharing their layout for this challenge. Leave a comment on each blog in the hop to be in with a chance of winning a prize. You should have come here from the Creative Craft World blog and your next stop along the hop is Jen. If you get lost along the way, you'll find a full list of all the blogs in the hop at the CCW blog.

 

Don't forget to enter the challenge yourself to be in with a further chance of winning some goodies - just make a project using the sketch as inspiration - you can check out the sketch at the CCW blog.

 

 

WOYWW 200

Wow! 200! Where do the weeks go, eh? :)

 

This is a quick WOYWW post from me before I head to bed (as per usual, much later than planned!).

 

The desk has remained reasonably tidy... the bits and bobs on ongoing crafting are building up a bit around the edges but I'm keeping fairly on top of it and a workable crafting space remains:

 

 

There are a few projects in-progress on the desk - coloured digi stamps, a completed card (turned away from the camera, I'm afraid, as it's a DT one), and a newly-made card blank. And can I just say, once again, how freaking awesome my Cameo is? :D The card blank sitting on the desk is a centre stepper card. And instead of the usual fiffing and faffing of measuring and scoring and cutting, I simply cut it out on the Cameo. Bish bosh bash, done! :D

 

I'm busy not only with crafting these days but also with planning and organisation for what's turning out to be a very busy month! We're off for a week's holiday en famille at the end of the month, including attending a family birthday celebration, hubby and I are leaving the kids with my mum overnight to swan off to a friend's weekend in a couple of weeks.... and on Friday of this week, this wild-haired little lady is going to be turning 4:

4 years old. Wow. How on earth did that happen? I can't believe she's so grown up. She's going to be starting full-time school in September! Eeep!

 

So, on top of everything else, I'm busily organising a party for 15 or so 3-4 year olds, sorting out and wrapping presents, ordering a cake etc etc etc! :D

 

Oooh I did find time tonight though to make a very quick card.... I had ended up with lots of bits and bobs of scraps lying around on the desk from various projects and I decided to challenge myself to make a card using nothing but what was sitting on my desk - that includes paper scraps and tools:

 

 

So I used a white card blank, a pale pink inkpad and a Stampin' Up! stamp (from the Lovely Trees set), some pink Stickles and some negative leaf flourishes and punched butterflies. I quite like how the leaf flourishes turned out... they started out as scraps of card from which I had die-cut leaf flourishes and I decided to fussy cut around the cut-out sections to give myself a sort of outline shape.

 

 

The butterflies I punched from the remaining scraps of card using a Stampin' Up! punch which was still on the desk. :)

 

 

Anyhow, that's enough from me. A busy Wednesday awaits so I really must head to bed! Thanks for stopping by - hope you're having a fab WOYWW.

Captured

For my Sweet Pea Stamps card this week I used this gorgeous image by Karen Middleton called Captured:

 

 

I love how Karen draws faces. The images are so striking and after colouring this image with my promarkers I felt it didn't really need much in the way of embellishment to make a beautiful card.

 

 

I used a DL card blank and matted patterned paper (steampunk-themed paper by Kanban) onto  textured silver mirri card. I also cut a decorative frame from the textured mirri card - I love how this card picks up the light and shines but with a lovely matt effect rather than bold gloss.

 

 

I edged the image with a silver metallic pen before layering it over the decorative frame and for a simple touch of detail added silver brads in the corners of the cards (I never seem to use brads much these days... time was, I put them on everything! Bring back brads, I say! :D).

 

 

And that was my fairly quick and simple card using this gorgeous image. You can buy this stamp in either red rubber or digi format from the Sweet Pea Stamps store.