Play Date Cafe #128

Yay, it’s Play Date Cafe day today so time for some more gorgeousness in terms of colour.  I LOVE this week’s colours. 


I always swoon over cards made by Dawn McVey and wanted to try my hand at one in her style where she has the layered panel at the top.  This card came together fairly quickly, the central panel was just script paper that I distressed with the Tim Holtz distress tool and then inked it up with tea dye. I then overstamped it with the sentiment. The various die cut elements were then just stacked up layer on layer.

I hope you’ve enjoyed popping by today and that you will play along with this scrumptious colour palette.  Our suggested colours this week are flamingo pink, bright orange and white.

Pop on over to the main blog to see some inspiration from the rest of the DT girls and details of the prize up for grabs, PDCC is the sponsor this week!
I look forward to seeing your creations in our gallery!

Thanks for popping by.  (If you need any supply details just drop me a note)

Gorgeous Colours Over At The Play Date Cafe!

Yay, it’s nearly the weekend!  I’m really ready for it, it’s been a full on week so far, but in a good way. 

It’s time for some luxurious colours at The Play Date Cafe this week, think rich, deep and exotic.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them (as Sav would say!)

Here is my interpretation of these beauties.. (sorry my photo of the card is a bit wonky, it is straight in real life..honest)

I’ve been doing a lot of cutesie lately so thought I would mix it up with a bit of elegance and this Skipping Stones butterfly came to mind.  Have I told you that this is one of my favourite images to colour?  (umm yes Ruby, toooo many times lol).. Well just in case I haven’t I will tell you now.. this IS one of my favourite things to colour!
I needed to get over my CAS single layer card from the other day and add some layers so this is layered up and up this time!

Here’s my step by step..

1. Mat card base with purple patterned paper
2. Mat again with a smaller piece of gold patterned paper
3. Die cut patterned paper with Button Boutique tag dies so that the bird cage pattern shows on the left, ink edges with distress ink
4. Tie twine around the label before attaching to card with pop dots
5. Die cut doiley in plum, attach directly to label
6. Stamp, colour and cut out butterfly, attach to card base using pop dots
7. Add gems to butterfly
8. Stamp sentiment, ink edges and attach to card to finish

Here is the gorgeous inspiration picture, the suggested colours are Burgundy-Gold-Plum.

We are being sponsored by Simon Says Stamp this week, so don’t forget to pop on over to the main blog to find out what the prize is and grab yourself a chair and a cuppa to peruse over all of the other DT projects for this week, they are all so inspiring.


Before I go though I thought I’d share my creative goals for 2012.  My friend Lisa Arana of dahlhouse designs created this lovely little graphic for me.  She matched my blog colours so well, didn’t she?  I LOVE it!  Thank you Lisa, you’re a sweetie.  She does the most amazing cards and creates watermarks too, you should pop by for a visit.  

I’m hoping this will keep me focused in the right direction.  It’s very easy to get distracted in this blogging world with so much inspiration everywhere you look!



Well I’d better go, it looks like I have a lot to get on with!

Ciao for now.

InLinkz.com

A bit of hot pink

Today I have a bit of hot pink to share with you.  For our latest Color Me Creative challenge we are using hot pink, black and white as our colour story.

OUR SPONSOR FOR THIS CHALLENGE IS

GUYLOU'S INIMITABILITY DIGI STORE

The DT girls were all given some images to use (Thank you GuyLou’s for sponsoring us!)  I got this elegant lady all dressed up, hopefully with somewhere lovely to go!

Can I just say that pink Copics are REALLY tough to blend, I used RV17, RV13, RV11.  I do have RV14 which would have helped but do you think I could find it when I needed it, na!  So plan B … work harder blending lol.  To blend pinks Suzanne (Dean) teaches in her Color Me Creative classes that you need to use a bridging technique where you take a lighter Copic to a darker one to get the colour that you need.  Sounds easy, huh?  Nope, it’s not!!!  I’m sure with practice this technique gets easier, but phew this card was hard work!

After colouring the image I needed to do a bit of a cover up!  You see I have a really bad habit of doodling around the edges of my images when I’m colouring.  In this case as I was doing my bridging technique I was scribbling around the edge to clean my pen off and then had some serious covering up to do!  Enter the black flourishes (Sizzix ‘Vine’) and flowers (Sizzix Flower 3d).  I love how mistakes in card making can become happy accidents!  The sentiment is by PTI, ‘Communique Curves’.  The Nestabilities are Labels 23.  Other Copics I used were C9, C7, C5 and C3 for the hair/shoes and E11, E00 for the skin.

One of my New Year resolutions is to work harder on my Copic colouring.  I’m signed up for all of Suzanne’s classes so need to get cracking with learning some new techniques.  She also does DVD’s now so I will be ordering those and then I can replay to my heart’s content.
The rest of the DT girls have used various images using the gorgeous retro colours so pop by and visit them, see links below, and also say hello to our Guest Designer, Wendy Keenan of Lolly Dolly Crafts and leave her some love too.

Charlene Randall

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

Your challenge this time is all about

** RETRO FUN--Hot Pink/Blacks/Whites**

Show some retro fun by using a hot pink-black-white combo!  Pull out your fave image & give it some funky sass!
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!

-Image MUST be colored with Copics or ProMarkers or Colored Pencils! 
You have until Jan. 19th at 8:00 pm EST to enter.  For information on prizes etc visit the main Color Me Creative blog.

I’m entering this card into the following challenges..

Card Crafter’s Circle – ‘Make it Colourful’
Crafty Ann’s – ‘Let’s Think Hot’ (my hot pink)
Sassy Studio Designs – ‘Use Something New’ (my new Authentique 6 x 6 paper pad for the background paper)

Oh yes and before I go I did promise a little simple thank you card in my last post.   I was in the fortunate position to receive lots of lovely Christmas presents but unfortunately didn’t have the luxury of time to make very detailed thank you cards so I came up with this simple design using Lawn Fawn’s Judy’s Blooms.

Sorry for the picture, my lighting was really poor.  This is a mini 3 x 3 card, a simple stamp, colour and send card which is great when you’re pushed for time.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another mini card, for now have a good day/evening!

PDCC 78 & Some News

Phew, what a week!! I haven't known whether I'm coming or going half the time!  It’s been SO full on!  I hate that, it feels like you’re either going to mess something up or you’re going to forget something!
 
I have a quick card to share with you today for the Play Date Cafe challenge this week but before I do I just want to tell you some fun news about what's been happening in my little world!

I've been asked to join The Stamp Attic design team!  For those of you that live near Oxfordshire you will know that The Stamp Attic is a fantastic shop in Wantage for crafting supplies.  I've been going there ever since I met Sarah from Play Date Cafe, she was the one who told me about it :o)  I am SO excited because not only will I be on their DT I am also going to try out a few workshops there too, a first time venture for me, but I can't wait to get started!  So if you live near Wantage and want somewhere to buy all of those yummy crafty goodies you just have to pop in, or if you want to come along to my first workshop (eek!) for a giggle and some crafting then check out more information on their website here.   Just as important is that there is also a Costa nearby where you can pop in for a lovely Cappuccino to make a little outing of it all!  My kinda perfect shopping trip lol.

The colours Julie picked are just gorgeous, and my new PTI stamps arrived just in time for me to play, but I have to say the mojo just wasn't happening for me. I can't make up my mind if I like this one or not, I kind of do, but kind of don't!!

Here's Julie's yummy pic..

What I do know though is that I just LOVED playing with those itsy bitsty stamps, how much fun are they?!!!!  All of the stamps are from the Papertrey Ink 'Postmarks' set, with the exception of the text stamped on the pink polka dot paper which is a text background from Hero Arts, very VERY old!  I'm not even sure of the name of it now.

I dry embossed the polka dots with a Cuttlebug folder, added a Martha Stewart die cut and tied on some East to West polka dot ribbon.  I used Tea Dye distressing ink around the edges to give it a bit of an aged look.

So pop by and see what the rest of the team have concocted with this fab colour combo, I know you won't be disappointed, they are all fab!


Andrea Ewen 
Colleen Dietrich 
Fiona Shultz 
Jaclyn Miller 
Jinny Newlin 
Julie Ranae
Libby Hickson 
Michele Gross 
Ruby McGuire (that's me!)
Savannah O'Gwynn 
Tracey Kuzniak 
Sarah Anderson
 
Hannah Craner is our Guest Designer, her work is lovely. Pop on over to her blog to see her lovely interpretation of the colours.

Our sponsor this week is Market Street Stamps who have a generous prize to be won, so pop on over to the main blog for more information.

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 PDCC78, and remember to use our inspirational colours to be eligible to win this week's prizes!

Etsy Inspired Challenge #131 - Dollbirdies

Hi there & Happy Weekend!!

I hope you've all had a great week and you're looking forward to the weekend now! We are having a totally lazy day because we've had a lot on recently, time to relax.  It's Saturday, so that means it's time for another Etsy Inspired Challenge.

Today's card is quite bright so you may need to adjust your monitors!  However I have some pastel colours to share with you later for my Color Me Creative card, so that should make up for it!

 

This week our shop is Dollbirdies.  I was spoilt for choice in terms of inspiration for this shop!  I LOVE my bright colours and retro patterns so this was right up my street!  Lots of loveliness all in one place!  I decided to use this picture.  I love these bright and happy colours.

 As you can see, lots of fun items!  There is the opportunity to win a passport case, see the main blog for more information.

Our sponsor is SRM Stickers.  SRM Stickers are widely used by many papercrafters and it has a blog every weekday with paper crafting projects using stickers! Bookmark, follow the SRM Blog as you don't want to miss a tutorial, feature, challenge!

So don't forget to pop on over to check out what the rest of the DT made and then check our main blog for all of the prize information.  

Ashley N. Newell
Angi Barrs

Carole Chesser

De Swanick
Emily Branch
Jackie Bowman 

Joy Stagg
Kerry Angeles  
Libby Hickson {March Guest DT}

Ruby McGuire (that's me!)

Savannah O'Gwynn
Sherry Campbell

Virginia Lu

Deadline for entries is Friday 25th March at noon PST. If posting to an online gallery please use EIC#131.

Have fun and don't forget there are some fab prizes to be won!!

Supplies:

Stamps: 'Dot Spot' & 'Signature Series: Butterfly' by Papertrey Ink
Dies: Sizzix, 'Flower, Stem & Leaves', Leaves, Swirly', 'Blossoms' Nesties, Cuttlebug 'Blooms & Dots' embossing folder
Papers: Basic Grey 'Sugar Rush', pink bazzill cardstock
Accessories: Martha Stewart punch, The Twinery bakers' twine, white acrylic paint, button from stash

Back later with my Color Me Creative card :o)

PDCC 71

Hi everyone, I hope you're having a good week and time to create too!

'Tailor's Dummy' or 'Dressform'??  Now that is the question.  You see, as you all probably know I'm English so I should (I suppose) use the Tailor's Dummy, however I am so used to seeing it written as Dressform in blogland that I use that now instead.  In fact I've started using quite a few American colloquialisms since starting blogging!

It's time for another fab Colour (or is it Color?!!) Splash over at the Play Date Cafe this week, and this week you get to pick what the extra colour is that you use!  I love the colours on this butterfly, isn't it fun?  Now I know I challenge you all with my colours, but my challenge colours are these weeks with the black and white, so it's my turn to get stressed lol

We are being sponsored by The Twinery today and I received a lovely parcel of some gorgeous colours, of which I used my Pink Sorbet Bakers' Twine. We get twine over in the UK, but it's not as soft as this one, yummy! Ruby likey!

As I'm typing this post up I am having to put up with (yes, put up with!) Ian on his computer.  Now that is usually totally fine, however he has this REALLY annoying computer man pop up every time he gets a comment on a post.  Annoying because he shouts 'hello' every time!  Ugh!  I asked him if he could change it, so he did.  Now we have the sound of an airport flight announcement instead lol.   Who thinks up these silly little noises for computers?  Don't they realise that when you're popular they can become quite annoying lol

Ok so I guess I should really tell you about my card lol.  As you can see it was a very simple card to put together.

1. Dry emboss white panel with Cuttlebug embossing folder
2. Add strips of black to top and bottom
3. Die cut blossom flower (Nestie) in black and add a Martha Stewart tag which has been sent to you by the lovely Sue Lelli.  I LOVE these tags and have oohed and aahed over them in blog land for a long time!!  Thank you Sue!!
4. Die cut Papertrey Ink's Dressform die in pink and black.  
5. Tie twine around the dressform (tip - cut little slits along each side of the dressform so that the twine sits into them, this stops it unravelling)
6. Add Prima flower and stamp sentiment (PTI Signature Greetings to finish)
7. Smile to yourself, you managed yet another black and white challenge and it actually looked the same on card as it did in your mind for once!

Our guest designer this week for The Twinery is our very own Julie Ranae!  How fun!!!  Julie is brilliant at putting a new twist on ideas with her twine, so pop on over and check out some of her creations, you won't be disappointed!

Our girls have come up with some really fun uses of twine this week too so grab a cuppa, pull up a chair and pop by to visit them for some inspiration!

in Alphabetical Order..

Andrea Ewen

Colleen Dietrich

Fiona Shultz
Jaclyn Miller

Jinny Newlin
Julie Ranae 
Libby Hickson
Michele Gross Ruby McGuire (that's me!) 
Sarah Anderson
Savannah O'Gwynn
Tracey Kuzniak

I'd love to see what you come up with for this week's challenge, you could even include some twine yourself if you're feeling brave ;o) 

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 PDCC71, and remember to use our inspirational colours to be eligible to win this week's prizes!

Card Patterns Sketch #97

Hi there

Happy Friday, it's the start of the weekend! Yay! I've not had the best few days with my back, so I have really enjoyed my time in the studio tonight creating this card, and my one for the EIC post tomorrow. It's such a great hobby for taking you away from what's bothering you, don't you think? Nothing quite like a bit of distraction!

This card was based on the Card Patterns sketch.  I always love these little patchwork type sketches, it's fun mixing and matching different papers.

For this card I dug out my Cosmo Cricket 'Pixie-licious' papers.  I then cut out two labels using my Nesties Labels 9.  I distressed the smaller one using 'Antique Linen' distress ink, and stamped some Waltzingmouse music notes ('Musical Backgrounds' onto it.  I then stamped the sentiment using 'Fancy Phrases' by Waltzingmouse, and tied on a ribbon which I'd coloured with my Copics.  I also coloured two little white flowers with the same purple copic, and finished off by die cutting a Papertrey Ink 'Signature Series' butterfly, and the smaller butterfly using my Martha Steward punch, all topped off with a little mini purple button.

Well that's it from me today, I will be back tomorrow with my Etsy Inspired Challenge card, see you then!

Lawn Fawn Challenge & Some News!

Hiya everyone!

Today I have two cards to share with you that I've made for the Lawn Fawn challenge.  This really was a challenge.  You were only allowed to use one Lawn Fawn set, and not combinations, and you weren't allowed to use patterned paper.  Eek, you all know how much I use patterned paper!

The first one is pretty self explanatory.  For the second one, I used Martha Stewart edge and corner punches, I made my own background paper using the hearts from the Bake a Cake Collection.  To finish it off I added a little bit of 3d foam on the top of the cake.  Cute stuff!

I'd hoped to post earlier today but my little princess has been poorly.  She seems to have a dizzy/headache virus, poor little thing.  It came on suddenly in the night.

I'm going to head off to bed myself now too, we might wake up to snow in the morning, watch this space!  What's your weather like where you live?  I'd love to know :)

I nearly forgot to tell you my news!  I am very excited to tell you that I've been chosen to be part of the Etsy Inspired Challenge team, see the link here!  I am soooo pleased, I am doing the happy dance!!!! 

On a separate note I am no longer on the Tiffany Doodles DT.  I found digital fun but not being very digi literate it was taking up a lot of my time trying to figure out how to resize/colour etc etc.  I will still be playing along from time to time.  Tiffany has such fun designs and I know she has chosen some fab members to add to the team, so do pop on over to see her.

Have a great weekend :o)

Simple Flower & Day 2 PDCC fun!

Yay, it's Friday! I've been doing a bit of work today, but I couldn't resist finishing off a little card I'd started, so will have to get back to it soon.

As you know it's our anniversary over at the Play Date Cafe this week, our first!  All very exciting!  You can read all of the details in my post here. 

I'm really hoping to join in the fun this week and get a few {ippity} cards made, so this is my first one...

I just LoVe this paper, it's fAb!  It's by My Mind's Eye - 'Fresh Beauty'.  The flower stamp I've used is from this Faith Blooms set.  Such a simple, yet gorgeous set.  I used a small SU! stamp for the sentiment, and SU! grosgrain ribbon.  Unfortunately you can't see the detail very well on this picture, but I have used a metallic Sakura pen to add detail to the flower, it's really pretty close up, but you will have to take my word on that ;o)

If you'd like this stamp set for yourself then just hit my Ippity link at the top of the page and you can buy one there. 

In the meantime don't forget to pop on over to the Play Date Cafe for some more fun!

So what are your plans for the weekend?  I have a school fete coming up at the end of November, so have a LOT of cards to make, plus I also have a few orders to get finalised.  Lots of fun crafting for me, hopefully I can get Tink (my daughter) to join me in the studio too, and I'm sure a sneaky bar of chocolate or two will get in there somewhere!

I also want to play with this label over at Tiffany Doodles.

It takes me a bit longer to work on digital, I'm still a novice, but this one will be nice and simple to work with, isn't it gorgeous?!  I will show you what I have made once I get it finished!  You still have time to enter our challenge over at Tiffany Doodles this month too, it's a fall theme.

Happy Friday!

Hi everyone, it's the weekend, yay!!

Please scroll down for Card Patterns and Everything But The Kitchen Sink challenge card..

Today I'd like to share a couple of quick cards I've made for some challenges. The first one up is for Rae Barthel's challenge.

So, I thought I was doing really well,  I pretty much stuck to the sketch which I don't always do, but there were 3 different elements to the challenge, you could do 1, 2 or all 3 which I'd forgotten about, it is only now that I'm uploading that I re-read the post and realised I could have made a non-Christmas coloured card.!!  Hey ho, I'm still pleased with how it came out.  I love the dramatic text of those stamps by Papertrey Ink.

I suppose with that phrase I could get away with saying you're wishing big for Christmas, that would work right???!   Ok, maybe not, but worth a go!!

Do you recognise the black flower?  I used it my PDCC challenge here, and as I'd managed to damage my little cake box I thought I would recycle the flower for use on my card. 

I used some patterned papers from my stash, the rectangle and scalloped rectangle Spellbinder Nesties, Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die for the flower (see other entry for more info) and the big scallops are also by Spellbinders.  To finish I used pink Prima pearls.

Ok, so hopefully I did better with my next sketch and colour inspiration.

I used this Card Patterns sketch...

and this colour inspiration from Everything But The Kitchen Sink's challenge

The colours aren't an exact match or anything, obviously, you can see that here, but the picture inspired me to pull out these papers again because of the busyness of the paper (is busyness a word?!!) Anyway, I covered my card base with two different Basic Grey June Bug papers, wonkily stitched around the edge, and added a ribbon that I had coloured using a Copic yellow marker.  I wanted to have two different coloured ribbons so tied the white one on afterwards to give the card a bit of a lift.  I then die cut my rectangle and scallop nesties and using Polka Dot Basics II by Papertrey Ink I stamped some Mustard Seed distress ink spots, and then distressed the edges with Tea Dye distress ink.  To finish I coloured some mini Making Memories paper flowers with Copics that the lovely Sav sent to me and attached them with a pop dot.

What are your plans for the weekend?  Natasha and I are meeting up with our friends for a bit of shopping in the morning, and a spot of lunch, then home to play with cards!  Ian has already been given a list of man jobs that need doing around the house, so no slacking for him lol.  Whatever you're doing have fun!