Color Me Creative meets CAS-ual Fridays!

Hi there everyone!

I hope you won't be too sick of me this week! I have another post scheduled for tomorrow and possibly Saturday too!

Today's card is all about clean and simple. I saw a fun challenge over at CAS-ual Fridays where the sponsor is Lawn Fawn. Well you all know I'm a HUGE fan of Lawn Fawn so I just had to play along.  The challenge is to create a card 4 x 9 leaving as much white space as possible, ooh la la, that's a toughie!

When I first started colouring I thought of Copics just for bigger projects like large coloured images etc, but they work just as well for these little ones too. I coloured my flowers using the 'rule of three' technique, which is just a dark, a medium and a light colour. I varied the little flowers, then added some dots with my white uniball pen and added some enamel accents to the centre. That enamel accents takes a bit of practice doesn't it! I had the pot in one hand, a pin in the other, and a piece of card to scrape off mistakes next to me. I learnt that the secret is to push the 'nib' into the centre of the circle and then lift, that seemed to make a better 'pearl', for me anyway!

I've been wanting to try the hand drawn frame shown by Nichole Heady over at Papertrey Ink, so gave it a go. It still looked a bit too much white space for me so I added a few bits of faux hand stitching and some pearls to finish off. I know who this card is going to, a friend of mine who is always really generous. She's been owed a little thank you for a while.

We still have a fun challenge running over at  Color Me Creative's beautiful colours, aqua, red and white/cream, they look so fresh.  So grab those Copics and join in the fun, even if it's only to colour in tiny little flowers like me!

Stamp Attic Crinkly Ribbon Test

Hi there

Edited: Updated links!

I have a card to show you that I’m sharing over at The Stamp Attic blog today.



I haven’t played around with making crinkly ribbon for a while so called on my Play Date Cafe teamie and friend, Jinny Newlin for a bit of help. She always makes the most amazing bows so I knew she would be the girl for the job!!  I had remembered how to do the dyeing but she gave me some great tips on how to make my bow fuller, unfortunately I had already cut my ribbon before I read them so mine isn’t quite a flouncy as it could be, but it’s not turned out too bad, has it?! … please be nice!! ;o) Thanks Jinny, you’re a star!!!

I used this sketch from Card Patterns but unfortunately found it too late to enter my card.


Anyway, for all of the deets about how I put this card together pop on over to The Stamp Attic blog.

If you follow me on facebook you may have seen what Suzanne Dean from Color Me Creative has planned?!  She has started a Cyber Book/Crafting Group "BookEndz" ! A book club with a twist, don't you just love that!  Hope to see you over there!   I'm just trying to get hold of the book now!


Happy Monday!

The Play Date Cafe #92 & The Scrapbooking Studio

Soft and elegant – our colours over at The Play Date Cafe.  I really enjoyed making something a little bit different this week.



Our suggested colours for this challenge are;

Coral, Petal Pink & Antique Gold

I didn’t have quite the right petal pink so I used a slightly stronger pink.  I needed to make a gift card for someone from a few of us so decided to pull out my Go-To-Sketches mag that a very dear friend gave to me, thanks Sav!!!  I just LOVE this magazine, as you probably know I’m a bit of a sketch girl.  They just give me the mojo that I’m looking for and trigger lots of ideas for me.  I made the gift card so that we could put a gift token inside attached to the tag and then write the message inside the card.  I hope the rest of the girls like it!

It’s been a funny week this week for me, a bit up and down.  We had a lovely weekend with family visiting and we visited friends too, which was beautiful, but the downside of that is my back pain flares up, so while I’ve been trying my hardest to keep a happy, smiley face I just want to snuggle up under my duvet and only come out for coffee and chocolate lol.  I do find it frustrating sometimes that I can’t do ‘normal’ things, but then I also remember how bad I was at one point when I could hardly walk at all. We were reminiscing the other day, Tinks, Ian and I, about how I used to take so long to cross the road that it was debatable if I would make it to the other side of the road before the traffic lights changed, that’s about 3 minutes to cross the road!!  You have to see the funny side of it really.  Now I do deal with being in pain all the time, but I’m kind of used to it, you do just get on with it.  Every now and again though, like after a busy weekend, I go into flare up and to be honest it sucks!
Anyways, you’re not hear to listen to me moaning (thanks if you got that far though lol), it sometimes nice just offloading.  I don’t tend to share much personal stuff on here, I’m never sure if you would all be interested!

I seem to have loads of things to do right now but don’t know where to start, so I end up not starting at all!  I’ve decided that I need to take action!  I’m a girl on a mission again!  I’m trying to find a great way of organising the tasks that I need to do, but something creative rather than just a plain old diary.  How do you keep organised?  I’d love to know!  When I worked in an office job I was the most organised person, I guess I have a more creative head on now lol

Today we are being sponsored by



They have a fun prize for you, if you pop on over to the main blog you can see what it is and also check out the fabulous inspiration my teamies have for you.  Be prepared to be impressed!  I love being on this team, the girls are so talented, and all such lovely people too.

We are also welcoming two new designers soon, Denise January and Julie Day, they will start officially with us on 4th August, so watch out for them too!

Supplies:


Stamps: PTI |Signature Series Dressform, Friendship Jars
Papers: Prisma Fairy Flora, Bazzill Cardstock
Dies: Friendship Jars, I've misplaced my PTI Dressform die :o(
Accessories: SU! ribbon, Petaloo Flora Doodles (white flowers)

Thanks, you’ve been wonderful!

I have a quick card to share with you today for The Shabby Tea Room challenge.



The challenge was to use the inspiration picture below and include yellow, pink, green and any neutrals.  I have yellow in my bird, pink in the butterflies, green in the foliage and neutrals in the background.  The flowers on the towels look really similar to the flowers on my patterned paper.



I would actually like to thank all of you that read my blog, those that just read but don’t comment and those that leave me wonderful messages that encourage me to keep creating.  You truly are wonderful!  I aim to pop by to everybody’s blog that comments, but occasionally it’s not possible.  Please know that I appreciate each and every one of you!
I’ll be back tomorrow with a post for the new Play Date Cafe challenge, so watch this space!  Don’t forget if you haven’t played along with us over at the Color Me Creative challenge yet there’s still time.  The colours are SCRUMMY!

Have a great day!

Supplies:
Stamps: Waltzingmouse Stamps ‘Say It Loud’ & Musical Backgrounds
Papers: Bazzill cardstock & Prima ‘Paradise City Collection’ paper, Island Party
Accessories: Martha Stewart ‘Monarch Butterfly’ and SU! stripey grosgrain ribbon, pearls from stash

Color Me Creative–Aqua, red & white

Happy Sunday everyone!

Today it’s time for the latest Color Me Creative challenge.  This challenge is all about using the colours, aqua, red and white (or cream).  We are being sponsored by The Paper Shelter who very kindly gave each of the DT a digi image of their choice so I chose this scrumptious looking cupcake!  Oh to have one of these right now, mmmmm!



Now this card looks like I’ve done very little work with the colouring, but I have..honest!  Where you can see white on the cupcake I’ve used BG10 around all of the outlines so in real life there is a pop of colour.  I’ve outlined the entire image in C1 to give it some definition.  On the little red sprinkles I’ve added some sparkle using a red spica pen, and again with a clear spica pen on the candle.  

I never forget when Suzanne issued us our ‘white’ colour challenge a while back and I panicked thinking how on earth will I manage that?!  Now, it’s just so simple.  Her course makes you pick up those pens and actually start to use them properly.  I used to be scared to even try feathering, now it’s become one of my favourite techniques. I’m on class 2 now, although I haven’t done much yet, but that’s the beauty of the classes, you have access to them for a year, so you can go at your own pace.  If you need more than that you can get an extension too, I’m hoping I won’t need that though!  Having looked through the class 2 content I’m really looking forward to all of the new things that I’m going to learn.  It’s great that you can come along on the journey with me too.

Well, it’s time for me to stop talking now and get you to visit all of the other DT girls to see how they can inspire you with these gorgeous colours..Happy looking!

Charlene Randall
Brook Guinn
Anary Baumgarth
Melanie LaBelle
Marie Gamber
Ruby McGuire (that’s me!)
Pat St. Martin
Jenn Cochran
Michele Spera
Sandie Dunne

I'm going to link my card up to Paper Issues.  If you haven’t played along yet then you really should join in, it’s simple, you just link up one of your creations, this challenge is ‘Life is Sweet’ so my little cupcake should fit in a treat.  The challenge is running until 30th July so you still have time to play along.  Here’s a few more that I’ve linked up from old blog posts…



I'm also entering this card into the following challenges; Paper Cutz and Craft Us Crazy - both 'anything goes'.

So to win a prize make up a fab card using our challenge colours and you could win

A Prize from The Paper Shelter

$15 Gift Certificate to spend in their online store!!

Supplies:

Stamps: The Paper Shelter digi stamp, ‘Inked Birthday Cupcake’ 
Papers:  My Mind’s Eye ‘Life of the Party’, Echo Park ‘A Walk in the Park’
Accessories: Fiskars Threading Water, white ribbon from stash
Copics: