Follow Your Dreams

Happy Sunday!

It’s been a lazy day here for us today.  I seem to have done nothing all day lol.  Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing!



I wanted to make a CAS card for the CAS-ual Fridays challenge for which the theme is graduation.



I decided to use the bike from Lawn Fawn ‘Cruising Through Life’ set. I wanted to move away from the traditional graduation type card with a mortarboard and do something a little bit different and thought this little sentiment says it all.  Lawn Fawn images are always such good fun to colour in too. 

I was inspired by Kelly Marie Alvarez’s one layer card with the bike and thought I would have a go.  I’m not sure I’ve actually made that many one layer cards.  Yay, another thing ticked off my to do list! I used one butterfly from ‘Blissful Botanicals’ and another from ‘Critters in the Burbs’.  I love how you can mix and match all of the sets with a bit of thought. I added grass from a Hero Arts set, Stamp a Garden.

I’m also going to enter this card into Just Some Lines for their graduation theme.

I’m not sure if any of you have seen it, but we’ve been watching ‘Britain’s Got Talent’.  The start of tonight’s show made me wonder if we have lol.  Do any of you watch it?  I’d love to hear what you think!

Color Me Creative Challenge – Fluff your Feathers!

Hi there

This is a long post, I’m in a chatty mood lol



Today over at Color Me Creative we are having a new challenge which is all about fluffing your feathers! Each month  EVERY CMC Challenge Entry for that month gets the chance to win a prize and we also pick a random winner!  That winner will win a Gift Certificate to Oozak.com!

So we will have 1 Challenge Winner for EACH Challenge (prize listed below each challenge) AND 1 winner from all that month's challenges to win the Oozak Gift Certificate! Two ways to win, but you gotta play!!



This new challenge, #19, will run until June 10th!

‘Use the Inspiration Photos below to inspire your project if you'd like but your image should have feathers on it or something needs to be colored feather-like!!  If you don't have an image with feathers, than color feathers on a skirt, a flower, be CREATIVE!!!’



This challenge could be the technique feathering or just colouring feathers on angels, birds, fairies, it’s up to you.  When I heard what the challenge was I have to be honest I was worried!  I remember doing my Copic certification class where everyone was really good at feathering, and well to be honest I was amateurish!  I decided this was a technique I was going to crack!

A couple of weeks ago I decided to sign up to all of Suzanne’s online Copic classes, you can find more about them here. There were things I wanted to colour but wasn’t sure about. Now I can just pop in and out watching video lessons as and when I want to try out a new technique or learn about how to colour something.  For this card I watched a video in Class 2 which showed you how to feather.  My images started off absolutely appalling, but after several attempts I finally feel like I managed to learn how to do it properly.  I truly believe this is what Copic learning is all about, practice, practice, practice.  I don’t tend to get frustrated with it at all, I just think ‘ok, this/that didn’t work, I’ll try it a different way next time’.  Eventually, it finally comes together.

The advantage of being on Suzanne’s team, or even just joining in all of these challenges, is that you have to learn how to do it, you move outside of your comfort zone and it ‘makes’ you learn which often is the best way!

I’ve learnt so many things since doing the courses, one of which is that it’s ok to darken shadowed areas. When I first started I was a bit wary of adding too much shading, now I’m slowly starting to get a bit more adventurous .  More importantly though as you use your Copics you start to feel less intimidated by them, or by how well other people colour.  You just get on with it lol.

I’m not sure if you cantell from my photo but I ran out of black printer ink when I was printing off this cute little Hula Girl digi image from Make It Crafty, so I used navy instead!  That then triggered off the fact that I wanted to use some blues so I pulled out the fab new Echo Park ‘A Walk in the Park’ which worked really well with it.

With this card I’m not sure which was more exciting, the fact that I now ‘get’ feathering, or the fact that I managed to colour the whole image in using Sketches which I’ve been collecting for a while now.  I am so excited to share this little pot of colours with you. I know that’s sad, but it’s just so fun being able to show them all off in their glory.  A pot of total yumminess!  Yes, I’m an addict lol.



All of the DT girls have made their feather projects pop on by and let them know how lovely they are.

Charlene Randall
Brook Guinn
Anary Baumgarth
Melanie LaBelle
Tracy Valure
Marie Gamber

So even if you’re terrified of colouring feathers please join in with our challenge, you really will surprise yourself what you can do with just a little practice!  I have!

Play Date Cafe #83 & Skipping Stones Design

Hi there everyone!  I hope you’re having a good week.

Blogger is having yet more issues so if you’re not able to see the Play Date Cafe post when you click my link below then please bear with us.  We are working behind the scenes to get everything up and running, but it might be a little bit late in posting. 

You don’t need to miss out on all of the fun though because we have a blog hop for you today, you will find all of the links below.  We have lots of exciting things happening (more to be found on the main blog) but it’s also a sad day for us at the Play Date Cafe because our fabulous Sarah is stepping down so that she can pursue other things.  We are REALLY going to miss her, she’s always got some fun ideas and challenges us with her quirky colour palettes, some more challenging than others! Sarah, you know the ones I mean! It just won’t be the same without you Sarah, but the good thing is we will still be in touch.

Today I have an elegant card to share with you that I made for her.  You’ve probably noticed I’ve been trying my hand at CAS lately but I fancied doing something with a few more layers for this challenge.


Our blog hop is in celebration of our Sarah, we are so happy to honour her with this week’s colour splash.  You should have come from Fiona’s blog and your last stop is Julie Ranae.  If you have only just started here you can see the full listing here.

in Alphabetical Order..

Andrea Ewen
Libby Hickson
Colleen Dietrich
Jaclyn Miller
Michele Gross
Jinny Newlin
Savannah O'Gwynn
Tracey Kuzniak
Fiona Shultz
Ruby McGuire (that's me!)
Julie Ranae  

and obviously you need to pop over to see Sarah Anderson!

If you leave a message on each post then you have the chance to win an additional prize.


We were lucky to be sponsored by Skipping Stones Design this week and we got to choose a set of stamps to play with.  I chose the ‘Healing Wings’ set, I just LOVE the stained glass window butterfly in the set.  The only trouble is because I’ve been playing with my Copics I just haven’t been able to stop colouring in the butterflies with different colour schemes.  I’m addicted! I have quite a few now, pink, blue, purple, orange, red lol.  They are just GORGEOUS, I can’t get enough of them, and it’s so therapeutic to just sit and colour them in.  You must grab a set, they are FAB! Thank you SO much Skipping Stones for sponsoring us, I’m having so much fun colouring in your gorgeous stamps!

All of our cards were made this week using Sarah’s favourite challenge, the ‘Color Splash’. This week our splash of colour is green.


Each of the PDCC have chosen their favourite project that Sarah has made.  Mine is this one that she made for our one year anniversary at the Play Date Cafe.  I just love that she used our colours to create little birthday cupcakes!!  That’s our Sarah, queen of mixed media lol


(Looking at this picture is making me feel hungry now!)

I had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know Sarah in real life through a workshop that she was running not far from me.  She is so lovely, full of fun, always smiling, but on top of that she is an inspiration.  Her passion shines through as she speaks about her journaling and painting, she just makes you want to get busy creating canvases and journals and playing with different things to get texture and pattern!

Sarah helped start the Play Date Cafe blog with Julie and I know she will be really missed by us all, but especially by Julie.  She is embarking on a super fun adventure working in a job that involves getting her hands dirty with paints and things, she will be totally in her element!

My card was really simple to make, the time consuming part of it was the colouring, but that was the best bit too!  I used labels 16 for the black central panel, topped off with PTI’s ‘Limitless Layers' in black and white as shown.  I used Cuttlebug ‘Roses’ for the embossed background and a Martha Stewart punch for the border.  To add a bit more interest I distressed the edges of the white panel with Ranger ‘Bundled Sage’ distress ink and assembled it all adding pop dots for dimension.  To finish I stamped ‘Live the life of your dreams’ which I thought was a wonderful sentiment for Sarah.  I added a piece of lace that I coloured with my Copics (G28, G24, G21, G20)and that was it all done!

I also made a slightly different version, not sure which one I like best!


What I love about this stamp is that it looks just as beautiful stamped in one colour too, this is what I did for the inside of the above card and I also stamped the front of the envelope so that everything co-ordinated.  (I cut off the sentiment bit of the photo because it was a bit of an afterthought to show you the inside and I’d already written the card for posting lol)


For your chance to win pop on over to the Cafe for more information and to link your post.  If you use an online gallery, please use the keyword PDCC83, and remember to use our inspirational colours to be eligible to win this week's prizes!

I do hope you’ll play along with us and pop by to visit Sarah and leave her a sweet farewell message.

Have a fun day.  I’m hoping to get more postings done this week, I’m still trying to get into new routines where my hours have changed, but I’m slowly starting to catch up

Etsy Inspired Challenge #139– Paula Art

Hi there

I wasn’t around to join in the last Etsy Inspired Challenge so you may not be aware that the challenge is now running bi-weekly instead of weekly.



Our challenge this week is based on the shop,  Paula Art, that sells recycled pipe vases, contemporary wall clocks and mixed media originals.






I was inspired by the blue vase and decided to colour my little lanterns in blue and yellow.  I also love the dots on the clock which made me think about how I could bring in some polka dots.


Our sponsor is Shery K Designs, she is offering 3 of her best selling packs as a prize.
I thought I would see if I could combine a few challenges for this card, not something I do often because generally any more than one or two completely confuses me lol.  My poor little head can’t cope with it all!!

The first challenge is CAS-ual Fridays. This is a card-making style I really want to develop, I love the fresh style of CAS cards.   I just missed their button and twine challenge last week, grrr!  Their challenge this week is to use bling so I added some crystals to my little lanterns from Lawn Fawn's 'Lunar Lights' set.



I also want to enter this card into the Lawnscaping Polka Dot Challenge.  I’ve been trying to play along with this one for a few weeks too. I used my Cuttlebug 'Seeing Spots' embossing folder for the background.



Don’t forget to pop on by to our Etsy Inspired DT too to see some more projects inspired by this week’s shop.

Angi Barrs
Carole Chesser
De Swanick
Emily Branch
Jackie Bowman
Joy Stagg
Kerry Angeles
Ellie Augustin (May Guest Designer)
Ruby McGuire (that's me!)
Savannah O'Gwynn
Sherry Campbell
Virginia Lu


If posting to an online gallery please use EIC#139.

Join in the fun and tell your crafty friends all about our challenge too, the more the merrier! 
On a side note my little princess starts senior school in September, which makes me sad because she’s growing up.   I really want to make sure I spend as much time as I can with her(while she still wants her Mummy around)!  It’s a time of change, which happens to every Mum and I know that with change come good things too but it doesn’t make it any easier.  She truly is such a wonderful little person to be around and I guess I’m scared that could be different as she gets older.

This card sentiment is for me!  I don’t know if you remember at the end of last year I set myself a word for the year which was ‘happy’.  Well, I’ve been making a few changes in all sorts of areas to make that word come true.  Silly things like getting into better routines with household chores, paperwork, that kind of thing, and bigger things like work.  I feel really pleased with how everything is working out.  It’s definitely helped me make better decisions and take baby steps towards what I want to achieve long term.  It’s amazing how empowering just having one goal word can be, it really helps you to focus on what you want.  

If you haven’t done it already think of a word that would help you describe what you want to achieve, see how well it can work for you too!

Play Date Cafe #82

Yay, it’s Thursday!  I LOVE Thursdays, I get time to play in my studio and it’s Play Date Cafe day too!
This week I got to create the colours for the challenge.  I’m really a novice at this but I’ve enjoyed playing




I made this CAS card.  I had lots of different ideas for these colours and it really took me days to decide what to make!  Then I woke up and decided that actually I needed to use my Warm Happiness teacup dies to make a card, I don't use them enough!

I showed Ian my card and he said, ‘Well that’s not very lady like, where are the saucers?’!! He’s so funny! 
What are your plans for the weekend?  Tinks is having a friend over for a sleepover on Saturday and we are going to see our grandson (oh boy that sounds SO weird when I say that) and the girls on Sunday plus my gorgeous Marmie is coming to stay too, yay!

Our sponsors this week are Discounted Cardstock and we have a fantastic guest designer, who I’m sure you will all be familiar with, Laura Davis!  Laura has always created such beautiful work, it’s an honour to have her playing with us this week!

For your chance to win pop on over to the Cafe for more information and to link your post.  If you use an online gallery, please use the keyword PDCC82, and remember to use our inspirational colours to be eligible to win this week's prizes!

---

Supplies:

Dies: PTI Warm Happiness
Papers: Cosmo Cricket ‘Togetherness’, Echo Park ‘A Walk in the Park’
Stamps: PTI Warm Happiness Too & Signature Greetings, Happily Ever After (heart on cup)
Accessories: White liquid applique for the froth, Smooch paint for heart centre, butterfly and windmill punches, button and 'The Twinery' twine, e.Pearls

Card Patterns #115

Hi there

Are any of you still having trouble with blogger?  I went into to update a post and it removed two posts and saved them as drafts again??  Really odd.  I'm hoping this post will stay live.

I have a quick post for you today, things are a little bit busy around here.  I made this card using the latest sketch from Card Patterns.

 As I’ve been popping around blogland I’ve seen some beautiful creations made using this sketch. 

I decided to make something cute using my Lawn Fawn ‘Plus One’ and ‘Bannerific’ stamps.  For some reason I have a really hard time remembering the name of this set, I always end up calling it ‘bun in the oven'!

I used my Copics to colour the images and played around with my newly learnt technique of colouring white from the Color Me Creative challenge, see my post here for more information.


I will be back tomorrow for another Play Date Cafe challenge.  Have a great day!

Ciao for now!

Color Me Creative–Colour with White?!!!!

Hello, I hope you all managed to recover your blogger posts.  How frustrating that was!  Talk about being addicted to technology, it’s like having your arm cut off when it’s not working lol.



This challenge over at Color Me Creative terrified me!  How can you colour white?  Where on earth do I start?!  I then watched Suzanne’s video in Class 2 about colouring white and hey presto, fears alleviated!  It’s really simple (when you know the right people to ask lol).   My card was supposed to be white with a pop of colour, but my pop of colour got a bit ‘Rubied’ (as in it became more than a pop).  I just love colour and when it was white I just couldn’t help but to add more colour!  Hope I’m forgiven Suzanne!

So pop by and see what the other girls have created for you, you won’t be disappointed.

Charlene Randall
Brook Guinn
Anary Baumgarth
Melanie LaBelle
Tracy Valure
Marie Gamber
 
If you love colouring with your Copics then come and join in the fun with us!  For more information check out the main site here.  I do hope you get time to play along, I just love seeing what people come up with and with the Copic colouring I get to learn lots of great ideas on how to use them too!

Supplies:
Stamps: Lawn Fawn ‘Happily Ever After’
Dies: MFT Frilly Frames
Papers: Bazzill Cardstock
Copics: C00, C1, BG10, BG11
Accessories: Ribbon from local haberdashery, Prima e.Pearls

Play Date Cafe & Stampotique

Post republished due to blogger issues…

Hello!  It’s been a busy week, I’ve had a few card orders to get ready and some design team commitments to get done, all will be revealed in due course   Today it’s time for our latest challenge over at the Play Date Cafe!  We are being sponsored by Stampotique and I got the cutest stamps to play with!  Thank you Stampotique, I can see me returning to these stamps again and again!

Do you ever get stamps that you could just sit and play around with and want to make up a card in each colour?  Well these Stampotique stamps are those!  I had such good fun colouring the little image and the wording just makes me laugh.



How cute is that little phone stamp?!  I think the card is pretty self explanatory so I won’t go into step by step details but I will leave a supply list at the end of this post. The one small bit of detail I will say is that used Enamel Accents for the little phone buttons, it just gave a bit of added dimension, I love that stuff! I also recycled some purple ribbon which was wrapped around some stamps from DeNami, lovely quality.

These are the colours by Sarah, I just love purple and lime together, a really nice combination. 

I hope you’ll get time to pop by to visit my teamies and to play along.

We have a great prize on offer from Stampotique, see the main blog here for more information.  We also have R Maria Sabina as our guest designer so do pop by and see her fab work.

On a separate note when I was preparing for my post I was looking for my Play Date Cafe post from last week but it’s disappeared!  I have been working in Windows Live Writer to edit my posts and I think I may have deleted it in there which seems to have deleted my online post too!  If anyone knows how to get it back I’d love to know!

Supplies:
Stamps: Stampotique Bla Bla Bla, Call Me
Papers: Bazzill Cardstock
Ink: ColorBox Deep Grape, Memento Black
Accs: Ranger Enamel Accents
Copics: YG21, YG23, YG25, C3, C5, C7, V09, V17, BG10

For your chance to win pop on over to the Cafe and link your post.  If you use an online gallery, please use the keyword PDCC79, and remember to use our inspirational colours to be eligible to win this week's prizes!

Ippity Stamp Sale!

Hey there everybody!

I’ve decided to step down from being an {ippity} chick.  I love their stamps but it’s just not the right time for me now.  As they say every cloud has a silver lining so I thought it would be a great opportunity for you to pick up a few stamps at a discounted price!

I would love for them to go to a really good home.  Any items that do not sell will be listed on eBay at a higher price due to fees and actual postage costs.

All of the prices here include postage for UK shipping only.  I’m more than happy to ship internationally at cost, just email me at rubyrubis@aol.com.  PayPal only please.

Sale price - £10.00 plus £2.50 postage & packing

Sale price - £8.00 plus £2.50 postage & packing

Sale price - £3.00 plus £2.00 postage & packing

Sale price - £10.00 plus £2.50 postage & packing

I also have a variety of Ippity Demonstrator stamp sets ready to go.These are additional sets that have been used for my sample cards.  I am a very clean stamper, so most of these sets that have images used, are very clean!!!!

All of the sets are still in the original brown pouch.

First come...first served!

Sale price - £2.00 plus £2.00 postage & packing

Sale price - £8.00 plus £2.50 postage & packing

Sale price - £8.00 plus £2.50 postage & packing

Sale price - £2.00 plus £2.00 postage & packing

Shipping Rates;

First Set...price as shown
Each Additional Set... 75p
Order 6 sets or more for flat rate of £5.00 (UK rates only)

Please enquire for international postage

Any questions just drop me an email, rubyrubis@aol.com.

DeNami Blog Hop – Girly Girl

We’re so excited that you’re joining us on the DeNami Girlie Girl Blog Hop today.  For some of you I believe it’s Mother’s Day so if you’re a Mummy I hope you’re having a wonderful day, being treated like a princess and getting time to craft too!

I used TR03 Fashion Purses Stamp Set which I have to be honest hasn’t seen the light of day for years! I love that with DeNami stamps though, despite the stamps being years old they just haven’t dated at all

I used a Go Kreate Large Frame - 'Frilly #1' die for the black at the top to kind of resemble the top part of a handbag/purse, then I simply stamped, coloured (with Copics) and added the little bags.  The ‘Girly Girl’ was from some very old patterned paper in my stash, onto which I stuck one of the PTI 'Limitless Layers' dies and then matted it again onto a Nestie circle. Before sticking down the entire panel I tied on a bright pink ribbon to finish it all off.

I think I might enter this into the new CAS-ual Friday challenge which is to use text.  I'm not sure if it qualifies as CAS but it's a lot less layers than I'd usually use!  

Here are the details of the hop..

When: The blog hop starts on May 8th at 6 AM,PST. However, you have until May 9th, 2011, 11:59pm PST, to leave comments on all the blogs (to be eligible for a prize).

Why: To be inspired by beautiful girlie creations featuring DeNami Design stamps and also the chance to win mini shopping sprees on the DeNami Design website!

Prizes: We are giving away THREE $20 gift certificates to our website! We'll be giving away one gift certificate to a random participant (DT members not eligible) and then we'll also be giving away TWO gift certificates to TWO people who comment along the hop!  I won a $20 certificate last time which was such a surprise - I never win anything lol – I will share what I won with you at some point soon!  Natasha aka 'Tinks' (my daughter) and I had great fun choosing what to get!

If you've come from the lovely Paulina Nakamura’s blog then you're in the right place, if not pop over to the DeNami blog and start at the beginning.

Your next stop is Ruza Rebel.  Enjoy the rest of your day!

Happy Hopping!