Another Card & A Winner!

Happy Saturday!

Today I have two cards to share with you, one for The Stamp Attic and the other for Color Me Creative’s latest challenge.

If you’re here for the Color Me Creative Challenge card then please click here

So first it’s time to announce the winner of my giveaway for the My Memories digital scrapbooking software and the winner is ….

Carol of Inky Fingers!  Congratulations Carol!!  Drop me an email and I will get a code sorted for you.

I have made a quick card below for The Stamp Attic, full details can be found by popping over to their blog.

I don’t often emboss on cards but I just love embossing with black, it’s sooo glossy!

I’m entering this card into Simon Says Stamp challenge of Anything Goes.  My friend, Laurel Beard, has just signed up with them as an Affiliate so if you want inspiration pop by her blog to see what she’s been creating!  She also runs the fab Lawnscaping Challenge blog.

I’m also entering this into WEE Memories challenge of using Brads, Buttons or Bows.  As you can see I used a bow on my card.  It was quite tricky to work out what to use because I love all of them!!  It’s been a while since I’ve had chance to play along with WEE Memories, well with any challenges really.  Life gets so busy sometimes, doesn’t it!


I’m running some Christmas card workshops over at The Stamp Attic on Monday 7th November, so if you fancy having a giggle over a cuppa while getting organised by making a couple of Christmas cards get yourself booked in.

I’m also running some Christmas Tag workshops there on Monday 21st November.  I love adding tags as a finishing touch to presents, it’s so nice having tags to match your cards/wrapping.  I hope to put a few on here soon, if I can squeeze in an extra five minutes to play.

Ian is taking a few days off next week so we are hoping to crack the back of some housey jobs and I have some crafty business stuff to catch up on.   Who knows I may get time to play along in a couple of challenges too.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Having a bad day?!!

Today over at Color Me Creative we are going boy mad!  We were all asked to choose a boy image called ‘Two Toby’ from Mo’s Digital Pencil, our sponsors for this challenge.  This little boy image tickled my sense of humour.  When you’re having a bad day wouldn’t you just love to throw yourself on the floor and have a tantrum like this?!!  As grown ups we mostly act with self restraint but it would be so much fun to just let it all out sometimes!!  Thank you for the fun image Mo!


There’s not much to tell you about this card on the design side as I kept it quite simple, there is a lot of colour on the main image so all I did was distress the edges of all of the patterned papers, die cut a star and added some button detail. For the image itself I used a range of colours, see info below.  My daughter Natasha suggested colouring him in with odd socks, she thought it looked like that could be why he was so upset!  The sentiment is just printed from my computer.

As time is going on I’m starting to feel more confident with colouring images, slowly my skin is getting a little better, as is my blending.  The tricky part of this image for me was the grounding.  I wasn’t quite sure how to do it so I used some of the warm neutral colours, firstly dark, then medium, then light (T1, T3, T5) and blended as normal.  I then used my colourless blender to remove some of the colour by adding random dots, trying to keep it a little bit darker nearer to the image to keep in line with the shading of where his body would be nearer the ground.

Hair is always still a bit of a challenge, but I find Copic colouring is a bit like souffles.  You hear that some particular technique is oh so difficult (like a souffle) but with a bit of practice and determination you will perfect it eventually!  You just need a ‘can do’ attitude!  Suzanne says in her videos if an image is becoming annoying because it’s not quite right then walk away, what a great piece of advice!!

We have a silly thing that we do in our house when something is really annoying us, we hiss!  I know you’ll think we’ve all gone completely nuts but you would be surprised at how much better you feel when you do it!!  Go on, try it next time you’re feeling cross, I dare you!

Here’s the challenge info, it’s all about BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! BOYS!

NEW CHALLENGE #30 will run until November 11th! So your images should be all about BOYS!  BOY THEMES, BOY IMAGES, BOY FUN!!!  We want to see you use YOUR COPICS, COPIC REFILLS OR COPIC AIRBRUSH SYSTEM (Or ProMarkers if you have them)
Use Inspiration Pictures Below as well!


So make sure you pop by the girls’ blogs to see what they’ve been up to, they have a plethora of wonderful boy images to share with you.

Charlene Randall (head gal)

Brook Guinn

Anary Baumgarth

Melanie LaBelle

Marie Gamber

Pat St. Martin

Jenn Cochran

Michele Spera

Sandie Dunne

Dana Joy

Steph Lee

Suzanne Foard

Andi Murdock

Shelby Goolsby

Hazel Parr

Renkata Pacheva

I’m entering this card into Digital Tuesday challenge to make a card using button/twine.  My main image is digital and I added the little button with some baker’s twine.

The second challenge I’m entering is a colour challenge over at Paper Makeup Stamps.


Finally I’m linking this up over at Make It Monday where anything goes.

I’ll be back soon with a card for a couple of challenges and information on the winner of the My Memories digital scrapbooking software giveaway!

Have fun!

InLinkz.com

Copics used..

YG03, YG06, YG07 & R24, R27, R29, R39 & BG10, BG13, BG15 (socks)
YG61, YG63, YG67 (dungarees)
T1, T3, T5 (ground) plus colourless blender
E11, E00, R20 (skin)
YR04, YR07, YR09 (t-shirt & sock)
E25, E49, E53, E59 (hair)

Play Date Cafe

Happy Thursday!  It’s half term here this week so we are just catching up with friends and chilling out so my post will be fairly short (well short for me that is!)

Here is today’s card for our The Play Date Cafe challenge this week, don’t you just love that blue?  So fresh.


For some reason my card looks a bit wonky on the right but playing around with it in Photoshop doesn’t seem to be making much difference.  It’s weird because it’s totally straight in real life!! Quite a simple card from me this week as you can see.  A patterned paper base, with a cute little owl stamp.  The background behind him was created using the Hero Arts woodgrain stamp, something that’s been on my wish list forever so it was great to get to use it!  I’ve become addicted to Jinny’s bows, I love them so it got another airing this week too.

These are our colours, the suggestions are kraft/taupe, flesh and cadet blue.


Now you may know I’m a caffeine addict so I nearly did a coffee theme but for some reason my owl was calling to me lol, but then so are those coffees!!

The Kraft Outlet are our sponsors this week and are offering up a yummy prize!


Pop on over to the main Play Date Cafe blog to find out all about what you could win and to get some delicious inspiration from the girls too!

Don't forget I have a fab giveaway on my blog, click here to find out more!  It only runs until tonight.

InLinkz.com

Digital Scrapbooking?! Fancy winning a fab giveaway?

Hi there

I am mixing it up a bit today, I’m going to share a couple of pages I created using My Memories digital scrapbooking software.  My Memories Suite is rated #1 by Amazon and TopTen Reviews. You can do so much with this software, you can photo books, cards, calendars and gifts but I chose to do scrapbook pages because I keep saying I will and don’t ever quite get around to it!

Now I’m guessing there may be a few of you out there that have your wonderful photographs stored away carefully as precious memories for bringing out to share on occasion just like me.  If not in the drawer are they sitting on that hard drive, or on a memory stick somewhere?

I know I have a drawer AND computer full of them!  I always have the best intentions to start scrapbooking or gathering those precious memories but never quite get around to it.  Well this package really does get you creating some fun projects without any effort.



I started by using a template within the programme, this one is called Princess Diva!  All you do is choose a template that you like and then ask it to add in photos that you’ve chosen.  The programme creates the different elements for you, each page a different design.  I chose some photos of a fun shopping trip that I had with my daughter Natasha last year.



I love that you can keep everything as simple as possible, or you have the flexibility to add in lots of different elements yourself, like ribbons, brads, word art, background textures etc. 
Swopping photos is really easy too.  With this layout I had another photo in one of the frames, all I needed to do was select photo settings and choose an alternative pic.



With this photo the word ‘Beautiful’ was part of the template but because my picture is a little crazy I wanted to add some extra wording.  With the WordArt function it was really quick to type in some text then rotate and move to where I wanted it.  I played around with a few colour ideas for the font before settling on black, there are lots of colours to choose from.



I just left my final picture as it was set up in the template.  To add text you simply create text boxes and can then change the font size, make it bold, centre it etc. The original template had a long text box so I just shortened it and changed my text around as I wanted it.



So onto the goodies!  My Memories have very kindly given me this special discount code (STMMMS16336) to share with you, which will give you $10 discount off the purchase of the My Memories Suite Scrapbook software and a $10 coupon for the My Memories.com store - $20 value!) 


So what do you need you to do to be in with a chance to win a free copy for yourself? I will randomly choose one winner to win their very own My Memories Suite program! Here's how to win:

**Leave a separate comment for each. That's 6 ways to win!

1. Add yourself as a follower to my blog and leave a comment below on this page (22.10.11) about my pages
2. Visit my Ruby 2 Shoes Design shop on Folksy and subscribe to my RSS shop feed, leave a comment
3. Add my Folksy page as a favourite and leave a comment
4. Go and visit My Memories, choose your favourite digital paper pack and layout and then come back here leaving a comment telling me which one you chose
5. Like My Memories on Facebook. Leave a comment below
6. Follow My Memories on Twitter. Leave a comment below

**Giveaway will close on 27th October  at 11:59pm GMT. Winner will be announced shortly after.

So if you like what you’ve seen here’s a video telling you more about it.

I really enjoyed playing with this programme and will definitely be using it to create some more layouts and then start exploring other options like the books.  There is even an interactive video function that I'm looking forward to learning more about.

Finally I got some wonderful memories scrapbooked!

Play Date Cafe’s 2nd Anniversary

Hi everyone

Today is a celebration over at The Play Date Cafe because it’s our 2 year anniversary and we’d love you to join in on the fun!  We have three fabulous sponsors for you which means lots of goodies up for grabs.  So to join in all you have to do is create something in our challenge colours, link up over on the main blog and that’s it!

Jax has put together a beautiful colour story for us this week..

The suggested colours are mauve, egg yolk and artichoke.

I had been asked to make a cute card for a 30th birthday and thought this little dog stamp fit the bill perfectly.  I started by putting down a patterned paper base in the artichoke.  I stamped the sentiment in purple onto mauve patterned paper.  I then assembled the centre panel, with egg yolk die cut borders, using pop dots for dimension, wrapped with a dressy bow a la Jinny Newlin! (Thanks Jinny for your fab tutorial, I LOVE doing these bows!)

I die cut and stamped a mini tag in purple that I attached to the bow with two buttons doubled up and attached together with some Baker’s Twine.

Next I die cut a label in polka dot paper to which I added a die cut ‘3’ and ‘0’ in purple Bazzill cardstock.  I then stamped and fussy cut the little dog and parcels using various papers and attached to the label as shown, adding a twine bow to the parcels.  I stamped a little hat and then once attached to the panel I added a pearl to finish.

So be sure to pop on over to the main Play Date Cafe blog to see details of our sponsors, some wonderful inspiration from our girls and information on how to enter to win yourself some fab goodies.



I look forward to seeing what you create!

InLinkz.com

Altered Pegs

Today over at The Stamp Attic I am sharing a little project I made using wooden pegs.  I’m really pleased how they turned out.  I’m going to have to make some more of these.  So much more fun using pegs like this than using them for washing!

To see all of the details just pop on over to The Stamp Attic blog.

The papers looked a little bit too bright too so just by adding a bit of Ranger Distress Tea Dye ink everything looked a little bit shabbier.

Thanks to my teamies over at Paper Issues I’m trying to expand my horizons by doing things other than cards.  Their work is just absolutely outstanding, you can’t help but be inspired by them.

I’m entering this tag/peg into Top Tip Tuesdays where the challenge is to use patterned papers and create your own handmade flower.  I know there are a lot of these little handmade flowers flying around on blogs but I just wanted to show you how I use my curved tweezers.  I really find they help me get a better shape.

1. For my little flower I just cut out a circle (well let’s just say a circle even though as you can see it’s a very raggedy one!!) I wanted the flower to be a bit shabby so I wasn’t bothered about it being perfect
2. Starting from the outside I cut a raggedy spiral shape until I got to the centre. 
3. Using my curved tweezers I picked up the outer end of the spiral
4. Working towards the centre of the flower I wound the spiral around the end of the tweezers
5. Keeping the bottom part of the spiral level I continued towards the centre of the spiral (this makes it easier to stick once complete)
6. Once wound I gently removed the flower from the tweezers and let it unravel slightly to create a flower
7. You will see that the centre of the spiral becomes a base on which you can use some glue to hold it together
8. Once glued I squashed the flower down a little to age it

Hope you like!  Have a go, they really are fun!