Black, White and a Splash of Orange

Hey there!

It's challenge day over at the Play Date Cafe today, so make sure you pop over and have some fun. This challenge was an interesting one for me, black, white and only a splash of orange. Scary! I usually only do colour, colour, colour! My original card idea was absolutely nothing like this.  I was going to go for animal print, but then I changed my mind at the last minute.  Actually, it turned out better than I expected, but I enjoyed adding the orange on the card the most. I'm sure you'll understand why if you follow my blog and see all the bright colours that I normally use!  I know PDCC is a challenge blog, but Sarah..no colour?!!  Now that is a challenge for little ole me!!

Here is the card that I came up with..  The orange actually looks brighter in real life... now there's a surprise lol.

Here are the card details

1. Pour yourself a drink, you will need one if you don't normally work with no colour!
2. Cut out a black square, mat with black and white paper and adhere to the card base
3. Cut out a black rectangle to put your nestie label onto
4. Stamp your yummy 'You are fabulous' sentiment, colour in heart with orange Copic
5. Using nesties cut out the sentiment, and cut a scalloped border in orange, stick together and raise using pop dots
6. Using Martha Stewart punch cut out black border, and some black and orange butterflies
7. Stick orange butterflies directly onto sentiment label, then fold black butterflies down the middle and attach.  Lift their wings to give them a 3d effect
8. Add swarowski crystals to each corner of the sentiment label, and an orange crystal on the last butterfly of the border
9. Attach black butterfly border, raising alternate butterflies
10. Grab some coloured paper so that you feel back in your comfort zone again, and be proud of yourself for rising to the challenge!

Dies: Nesties
Stamps: Ippity
Paper: Black and orange Bazzill cardstock, Basic Grey paper from stash, think it's Scarlett's letter,
Accessories:  Swarowski crystals, Martha Stewart punch

I'm really looking forward to seeing this week's entries.  I might learn some ideas of how to do monochrome as it should be done!

Pop by all of the DT's blogs and leave them some lurve.  They will all love your comments just as much as you do I'm sure.

Julie Ranae (Senior DT)

Mona Pendleton (Senior DT)

Sarah Anderson (Senior DT)

Lisa Somerville

Savannah O'Gwynn

Stephanie Kraft

Suzanne Czosek

and of course our guest designer, with a fab set of stamps for a giveaway!

Kelly Marie Alvarez of Lawn Fawn

Have a fantastic day and join in on the fun! 

My Best Friend

Hi everyone!

I would like to share a card with you that I made for the Get Sketchy Card Challenge #19. I haven't done a challenge on this blog before but was inspired to join in when I saw the sketch. I am determined to keep up my New Year's resolution to make cards and blog them! I also want to keep doing challenges so that I move out of my comfort zones a bit! It's so easy to get stuck into doing the same old cards, don't you think? I love trying new ideas.

I had to be a bit creative with the four dots top and bottom though. If you look closely at the card you may be able to make out that I have three flowers at the top plus one itsy bitsy dot, and then a few itsy bitsy dots at the bottom, hope that counts lol.


I had fun with this card. I've been wanting to play with some chipboard pieces for ages. I always think they add such great dimension and this pack from Cosmo Cricket just couldn't be left behind at the shop, it would have been such a terrible shame ;o) I've actually had the pack for a couple of months, but again another New Year's resolution is to use what I have before rushing out to buy something new. It's about time I 'shop' in my studio instead of spending more money!! I'm sure you guys all know exactly what I mean!

Let me know what you think of this card. I'd love to hear your comments, and also tell me how you are getting along with your New Year resolutions. One of mine was to drink more water. Well I have drunk more water, but I should have been more specific in saying I want to drink a minimum of 6 glasses of water a day, as I'm only up to about 2 or 3 at the minute! My goal for this time next week is to be at 6 glasses a day! I hope your weather is good where you are, we have about 5 inches of snow here at the minute, but have everything we need so it's a great excuse to take some time to create. Yay!!

Wild Thing

Happy Sunday!

As promised here is today's card for the Corrosive Challenge Blog #26, 'Welcome to the Jungle'. I really enjoyed making the card for this week's challenge. I thought I would try and do a scene. I don't often do them, but I came across one of Natasha's little pack of stickers so asked if I could 'borrow' it. Well, she does that to me all the time so it's only fair I get to do it back every now and again, don't you think?!

For this card I cut a rectangular piece of dotted glitter cardstock and using my Martha Stewart punch I cut a green strip to stick along the bottom border. I then cut out a frame using my Nesties and backed the gap with some stripey glitter card just to give a different effect. I stuck on the lion and palm tree stickers and then cut out some extra branches using my 'Tulip Dance' cutter. (if you look at my last posting you will be able to see that the leaves are from the same cutter). All I did was cut some pieces out of them to make them look a bit more jungle like. Now, I am SO not a jungle kind of girl, much more a five star hotel with a hot bubble bath, so please go with it if they're nothing like jungle leaves lol. I cut out a couple of red dots to add a bit of colour on the leaves. I then attached the little 'Wild' brad using a piece of string and then stuck another little brad with the word 'Adventure' in the bottom left corner. To finish I added a plastic sentiment plate which I tied ribbon through, again to bring in some colour, because it was all a bit green!


Natasha and I went out for a coffee and cake yesterday, just us girls because Ian has been poorly, and afterwards we went into one of the little gift shops before heading home. I was looking at one of those little handbag hooks/holders, have you seen them? They look like this, you can get loads of different versions of them. Anyway, I haven't quite made my mind up if they are trendy or old fashioned, but I would really like one. I hate putting my bags on the floor when I'm out. So, we were looking through a basket at them and each was £9.00. I decided I wasn't keen on any of the patterns there so we headed home. As we were walking back to the car Natasha said to me, 'we need to get ones we like, that would have been £18.00 if we had bought those ones'. Umm, at what point had I said I was getting one for her too?!!! I think this is now the age where it starts getting VERY expensive lol. Anyway, I quite like the idea of this one that I found on line here, what d'ya think?

I'm going to have to grab the packet of sticky things off Natasha to find out all of the details for the card, so if you would like them just drop me a line. I'm off to get my forty (or more hopefully!) winks. Sweet dreams x

Spring Fever!

Hi again

I made it through the day without finishing off the chocolate, so I'm feeling very proud of myself tonight :o) I had just one piece, which I counted. (When I say counted what I mean is that I lost my weight through Weight Watchers so every food has a points value and you are only allowed a certain number of points each day). Personally I think all chocolate should be zero points but I guess it wouldn't taste so good if you could eat it all day...or would it?!!!

Rae has challenge #2 on over at her 'Use It' challenge blog. This week the challenge was set by last week's winner, Danni over at dannisdoodles. She made a lovely white card with pretty spring flowers on it. Her rules were;

•use spring colors on your card
•use 4+ flowers
•use a tag

Oh yes and because it's a 'Use It' challenge you need to dig into some old stash that you haven't used. Hmmm, now that shouldn't be easy really, should it? I am sooooo bad at buying things, putting them away and then forgetting what I've bought. It makes for nice surprises when you do actually rummage for bits though ;o)

I think I might have a bit of spring fever, I'm feeling very creative today! I wanted to do something with spring colours and a bit of black. I dug out some Cuttlebug cutters that I have been meaning to use for a while and this is what I came up with;



I started by cutting out a piece of Basic Grey paper from my Eva pad and inked them with charcoal chalk ink pad by Colorbox. Using my X-Cut punch aligner I cut out a border in pink. I cut out 3 yellow squares with my Nesties which I inked, and using my cutters I cut out the frog, butterfly and flower in different scraps of paper. I had the cute little boggle eyes in my stash and thought they looked fab as the eyes for the frog. I then added the necessary 4 flowers with stick on gems, and added a sparkly tag with the 'best wishes' sentiment.

Dies: Cuttlebug 2 x 2 'Garden Creatures'
Paper: Basic Grey 'Eva' 6 x 6 paper, Bazzill Bling
Accessories: 'Got Flowers Sm Mix Bright' by Prima Marketing, boggle eyes from stash, stick on gems by Mei Flower, tag by Express Yourself DIY cards

I really enjoyed making this card, the colours were fun to work with and I loved doing the boggle eyes on the frog. Zoom into the picture and you can see how cute they are! Thanks for the challenge Danni, it was fun!

Gothic Fairy

Hi there

As promised I am back to post a card tonight. I made this card for Ian's daughter, Charlotte (hope she's not reading this!) It's her birthday tomorrow. She loves all things goth but still has a girly side to her so when I saw this fairy cutter I knew I had to do it for her. The idea for the 'dark' fairy itself is taken from my local craft shop, they'd made one up using a scallop circle behind her. I wanted to do something different though and have gone with a teen theme. Starting from the bottom up I cut out some 'texting' paper which I thought would be quite cool for a girl of her age, she's going to be 16. I then made up the gothic fairy and used my artistic licence with Kazan's Sketch #22 over at 2 Sketches 4 U!

This week 2S4U have a competition whereby the children can also take part to win a prize. I'm trying to talk Natasha into entering one, whether she will or not is another thing. So, for now, so that she doesn't feel pressurised I am just going to enter mine. If she chooses to do something later in the week she can. She's actually quite good at cards, you can see one of her creations here in one of my older posts.

So, back to the sketch... As you can see from the pic the sketch is to use 1 square and 2 rectangles. Well I've used the fairy as the main rectangle, the larger gift as the other, and the smaller gift as the square. (Hope that's ok Kazan!!) I cut out and embossed two squares using my Nesties and then embossed them using a hearts Quickutz folder. I then cut out two strips of sparkly card to make lids for the boxes, and attached the ribbon. Finally I added 3 photo corners and the letters/number 'HB2U' to keep in line with the 'text talk' on the paper.

Hope you, and Charlotte, like it!! I'd love to hear what you think!

I haven't listed the recipe because I'm falling asleep over my keyboard here but if any of you would like it just drop me an e-mail! If I remember I will edit it with the info tomorrow, but unfortunately I'm not an elephant and I do forget!!

Night night, sweet dreams! :o)

Fred!

My next card has been made because our friends have just bought a new dog and called him Fred. He has been poorly treated but is now with two of the nicest people you could meet. I think he's a long haired terrier. We wanted to welcome him to his new home so we are sending a card with a little gift.

The name Fred is always a source of fun in this house. Natasha, like any other girl of her age, loves cuddly toys, but more specifically in her case 'Yoohoos'. Now for those of you who don't know what a Yoohoo is here's a pic for you.
They are rather strange, but cute somehow too.. I think! Well, she has 53 of these things now. Pocket money/birthday money/good behaviour money has all been wasted, I mean spent, on these adorable little creatures. Each time she buys one I get asked what she should call it so I always say, 'Fred'. I usually get the 'Oh Mummy' face when I say it of course! Well, when she asked me what our friends' dog was called she didn't believe me when I said he was called Fred, which we all found highly amusing!

This card is for the Cupcake Craft Challenge #28 this week. I like the simplicity of this sketch, it's handy when you need to make up a quick card.

I cut the dog bone paper into two separate strips, cut out an orangey strip of Bazzill for the centre and added paw prints. I then used my NEW(!) Nesties for the background for the dog, which I cut in Bazzill Bling and cream linen cardstock. I added the Cuttlebug dog using 'pop dots' (3d foam pads to you guys - you'll get used to me, I have weird names for things!) and added a little brad at the bottom right (see mini pic) using my NEW(!) Nesties again!! I love them, they're fab!



I had to take a little pic of this brad, don't you just love it! It's so cute! By the way that isn't a dirty mark on the card around it, it's just a shadow! The perfectionist in me would die if I had a mark on it! lol

Dies: Cuttlebug 'Kids 2 Step Dog' (Hmmm, didn't realise it was for kids, oh well, still love it!), Cuttlebug 'Dog' Die
Paper: The Paper Company Studio 'Paws and Claws - Dog Bones', Bazzill Classic/Bling
Accessories: Nesties, brad from stash

I'm hoping to post something else later, but dinner is calling me right now. Maybe see you later for another posting :o)