CCT sketch

This week on the Cute Card Thursday blog we have a sketch for the challenge. Our sponsor is Katharina from Whiff of Joy with a fabulous choice of a stamp as the prize.

I have made another small square card to help use up my stash of envies, thankfully the Nellie's Choice stamps are quite small so fit this size beautifully. I've inked up Dawn with kitty then coloured with my Copics: skin tones with E00 & 01, with E11, 15 & 18 for her hair, hat box and shoes. I used E93 & 95 with the E01 for the peach tones; E50, 51 & 53 for the bunny and kitty; Y11, 15, 17 & 19 for the yellows, and YG03, 06 & 25 for the touches of green. For shadow and shading I've used warm greys.

My papers are more from the Nitwits Spring Whimsy Too collection printed on to cream paper for a warm feel, and I've inked all my edges with Sahara Sand Versamagic chalk ink. The diecuts are all from various Marianne dies: the swirl layer is cut from LRO116, the butterfly is from LRO158, and those tiny flowers with leaves are from the new Craftables set CR1210 - you get a leaf shape and a flower shape die and each of these has 5 seperate areas to cut out either small flowers or leaves. I use scraps of card and my old red Sizzix machine with the adaptor plates, it has to be a really tiny scrap of card to end up in my bin these days! Three of the little flowers are embossable and for that I use a small hand tool rather than fiddle about with embossing pads in the machine. After I've embossed I ink the flower whilst still in the die to make it show up more, on this flower I've used a yellow chalk ink. To finish I've used my Waco pearl maker pen in cream - but it's a new pen and not going so beautifully round as my old one .. .. not sure of the solution to that problem. I also added a snip of pearl string to cover the cut edge of my swirl layer. The text is stamped, coloured then 3d mounted over the smallest diecut flower from CR1203.

The Papertake Weekly challenge is an anything goes week, so I can enter with them, and Divas by Design would like to see your favourite things - mine is my Marianne dies along with my Copics for colouring.

I ended up at one of the local cottage hospitals yesterday having given in and made an emergency dental appointment. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as I feared, the dentist put in a couple of temporary fillings on teeth that I've cracked because I've started to grind them .. .. the stress of the past year's events I'm afraid. I have to go back for an x-ray as she suspects there is an abscess under another tooth, although it doesn't bother me unless I accidentally bite down on it .. .. but then I guess that's what teeth are for! I have a big phobia about needles in my mouth (anywhere else no problem) and react badly to the anaesthetic they inject, which is probably how the phobia started, so I am not looking forward to going back for the treatment, but I can't afford the private alternative with the more expensive anaesthetic that they 'fire' into the gums with an 'air pistol' - sort of. Anyway, it's not until April so no use worrying about it just yet!

Ribbon and Lace

This week on Lili's Little Fairies our challenge is to incorporate some pretty ribbon and lace into your design, and we are being sponsored by the Ribbon Girl with a fabulous prize in pink.

I have made a wedding card with the adorable 'I do' image stamped in black Momento to tie in with the printed text that was a freebie by Bev on the LOTV Ideas to Inspire blog a while back. I coloured with my Copics: skin tones with E000, 00, 21 & 02; his hair with E40, 41, & 43; her hair with YG61 & 63; his tux with cool greys; and her gown with R0000, 000, 00 & 21. For the ground shadow I used warm greys and there's a touch of green but I forgot to note the shades.

And here's the card - taken in the bright sunshine in the conservatory where it's finally warm enough to craft, at least during the day. I've avoided too many embellishments as I want the card to be able to go through the post in just a gusseted envelope. The paper is a piece from Nitwits Thimbles Too collection, edges inked with pink petunia Versamagic chalk ink then matted with dust pink textured card. The pale pink ribbon and the lace are from my stash, the corners are cut with an old Squeeze die, and the little roses are from a new Marianne die CR1210 - a bit fiddly to emboss and ink but a great way of using up tiny scraps. The butterfly is punched from the smallest Nellie's Choice set and I couldn't resist adding a touch of diamanté bling!

And here's a couple of blog challenges I can enter with my card: Crafty Catz challenge is to use dies/punches this week - I've used lots of different dies and punched my tiny butterfly. The Incy Wincy challenge is to use something old and something new (rather apt for a wedding card don't you think?) - most of the elements on my card are old from my stash, but the paper and the die to cut the little roses are both new.

Less is More in Chocolate!

The theme on the Less is More blog at the moment is for neutral colours. I should have been working on my DT cards for March this afternoon, but got sidetracked into fiddling around with bits and bobs. I had a couple of scraps of rough kraft card that aren't any good for colouring with Copics and rather than throw them in the bin I got to thinking what I could do. On one piece I've stamped the Elusive Images daisy flower then coloured in with my pencils: ivory, brown ochre, raw umber and burnt umber - then cut out the flower and inked the edges with brown chalk ink. I ran the bigger piece through a bubbles embossing folder in the bug, then inked with Versamagic chalk inks in Sahara Sand and Jumbo Java, tied some twine around it, matted with dark brown card and then matted onto plain caramel card. I've stamped the greeting, added the little butterfly charm on a tag, fixed the daisy with 3d foam pads and finished with the Marianne diecut leaves. I knew it wasn't going to be big enough for a standard card size so instead I created a little thank you gift .. .. ..

So what do you think, is it less enough for the challenge, although the chocolate is certainly a little bit more - it says so on the wrapper!

The ABC challenge blog are up to the letter 'K' and have a kraft challenge so I'll enter my creation with them too.

We're getting there .. ..

Ever so slowly, and here in Cornwall things are certainly done 'drekly' .. .. .. but at last we have the garden bench in place on the gravel so Mum can sit in the sunshine. It took a bit of digging out to create a wider path than was there originally, and my arms are still aching - but worth it! I also got a couple of big clay pots and re-potted the box and bay so they shouldn't fall over in the ever present sea breeze .. .. ..


I've planted up one of the old plastic tubs with miniature spring daffs and a couple of summer flowering plants to carry things on .. ..


And at last the garage door is in place, although the electrics aren't working so the men have to come back to fix that .. .. drekly! Excuse the pots by the porch - they are work in progress, probably for the bin but I might try and rescue some of the contents. The birdbath in the middle of the rose bed is something my Dad made from concrete, but it leaks so I need to fix that before filling it with water. Oh, and the car on the driveway isn't mine .. .. far too low down for me to get in and out! The garage isn't any use as a garage any more as half of it will be the new bathroom, and it was always a bit of a tight squeeze getting the car in and out anyway, I expect it will get filled up with boxes and junk and the beach paraphernalia! The builder should be arriving any day now to start digging the footings for the new bedroom extension .. .. he reckons on about 3 months, weather permitting, before I can start decorating them - I can't wait!

it's the f*** up fairy!

I've been after some of the grumpy old farts digi images from Bugaboo for a while, and have just discovered that each week there's a special offer - so I got this image half price! It's a very apt card for me just at the moment - building work just never seams to go according to plan and as for the internet .. .. I can go and make a cuppa while it's loading a page, and it took 3 attempts to get just this one card pic onto the blog. I was going to share some other pictures with you, but it could take a week of Sundays to get them up - argh!!! We should have had the new garage door installed on Friday but it didn't happen - next Tuesday they say .. .. should I hold my breath?

I printed out my digi and coloured with Copics: yellows with Y15, 17, 19 & 35; peach/rust with E93, 95, 97; and her hair in cool greys. I can't remember the green, my first attempt was too bright so I went over with a darker olive shade - and I've had to clear the dining table as half the family have arrived for lunch. Poor Aidan has been throwing up so has stayed behind with his Mum - but I have a large leg of lamb in the oven that will feed an army and take an age, guess we will be eating it cold for a day or two! For the papers on the card I printed out the Nitwits Spring Whimsy Too papers on to cream paper for a warmer look, then matted with yellow cardstock. I've inked my edges with an old chalk ink with no colour name, glazed her specs and the fairy wand, and added Stardust Stickles to her wings. I've embellished with Marianne diecut bits and pieces: flowers are from LR0107, leaves from LRO142, swirls from LRO116 and the star border is LRO134. I used a couple of the stars that cut out from the border as the centre to the flowers with a gems to finish off.

Now I've a Bugaboo image to play with I can enter the March challenge of anything goes on the Catch The Bug challenge blog. The Allsorts challenge is titled ' spread your wings' so my grumpy fairy should do ok! and as the Flutterby Wednesday challenge is an open theme this week, I can join in with them too.

Signs of Spring

We are looking for Signs of Spring this week on the Cute Card Thursday blog, this is a new cutie Daisy stamp Marianne has just released, and seeing those pretty Spring crocus flowers I immediately thought of purple and yellow as my colour scheme. I've used my Copics to colour the image: skin tones with E000, E00, E01 & E21; hair with E50, E51 E53 & E55; yellows with Y13, Y35 & Y38; greens with G20, G21, G24 & G28; purples with V12, V15 &V17

I've yet to add any of Marianne's papers to my stash so dug out some pieces of polka dots and gingham along with plain card in white, green and lavender. In addition to Marianne's cutie image I've used the new Creatables CR1203 square doily behind the image and the smallest of the flower dies that comes with it to cut the solid flowers. The other flowers are from LR0112, the pretty scallop cut in white is LR0201, and the ivy with birdhouse and bird are all from LR0206. I couldn't waste the little heart that cuts out from the birdhouse so have put it in the top corner of the image. I've finished with my Waco white pearl maker pen to make the centres of the flowers.


The purple crocus flowers in my garden have started to bloom, but as they don't get a lot of sunshine they are rather reluctant to open for more than a few hours each day, thankfully the sun shone so I could take a snap. The daffs behind should be open in a few weeks, the straggly grass looking leaves in the middle are actually garlic chives and they don't flower until late summer, to the left is a clump of large leaved thyme, and to the right is a patch of marjoram - both starting to freshen up over the last couple of days with the sunshine we've been enjoying down here. Fingers crossed it continues so I can persuade one of the boys to cut the grass .. ..

Peaches and Cream

It's time for another challenge at Lili's Little Fairies - the theme this time is 'peaches and cream' and we are sponsored by Which Craft UK with a pack of super pop up cards for our winner. Some of the DT have been having fun with them too .. .. so pop over and take a look.

Back to my card, I have used one of the new LOTV baby stamps and coloured with my Copics, although deciding what shade peach actually was caused me some head scratching and a couple of mishaps! In the end I went with the soft shades of R00, R20, R21 & R22 for my peach shades and E50, E81, E51 & E53 for the creams. My circle sentiment is from the clear LOTV set I've just acquired and it's matted with a circle cut from the Marianne snowflake die LRO124.

But, when it came to finding papers I was well and truly stumped ... and in the end ordered the Thimbles Too paper pack from Nitwits as it looked peachy on my screen. However, when I printed out the papers they looked rather pink, but hopefully still looking peachy! I've inked the edges of the papers and the image with Sahara Sand Versamagic chalk ink and I've used textured cream and peachy pink cardstock for matting and cutting my embellishments, plus a length of peachy pink ric-rac I found in my stash and 3 little peach gems to finish off the flowers. The floral sprays are created from Marianne dies, LRO106, LRO142, LRO156, and LRO157 layered with 3d foam pads to give some dimension and interest but they will squash down for posting!

Both the Allsorts and Creative Inspirations challenge blogs have an anything goes theme again this week so I can enter my card with them. And a new challenge blog I just discovered is the Cutie Pie challenge, so here's my first card for their floral theme.

I'm having internet problems again - buffering is what my son says is happening. It does mean that trying to load any pages with graphics takes forever, or just doesn't happen. And shutting down the pages can take just as long! We have to wait until the end of this year for the local exchange to be upgraded and then hopefully it may improve, although as we are several miles away from it, who knows! It does mean that I'm not able to get around to everybody leaving me comments, or to post comments for the DT blogs I'm on - I am sorry.

Stampin' at the Weekend

I've been trying to get ahead with my DT cards this weekend, but things kept going off in a different direction .. .. you know how it is .. .. I am sure once I've stamped an image it takes on a life of it's own when I start colouring! I coloured the image with my Copics (sorry no list as I kept mixing them up and blending shades so it's hard to tell) but when it became obvious it wasn't going to work for my DT creation, I popped it onto a small 5" square card base as I have piles of envies this size that need to be used up! Some of the newer stamps coming out are far too big for small cards, fortunately this is an older one from LOTV called Emma with presents that just about fits.

I've used a piece of freebie magazine paper, but couldn't say who it is by, inked the edges and layered a horizontal strip onto cream card where I've used a MS lace border punch to make it pretty. I also added a length of cream gross-grain ribbon across the layer and created a little button from a LOTV sentiment and a couple of Marianne diecut flower shapes. The flower embellishment is more little bits cut from Marianne dies: LRO105, LRO112, LRO142 & LRO116.

Stampin' for the weekend have a bingo card challenge and with a little bit of artistic licence I can enter with either the ribbon, pearls, pink line - or the pearls, lace (punched paper lace), polka dots (on the present) - or flowers, polka dots, die cuts - or ribbons, lace, die cuts - or flowers, lace, pink! Had I added a little sparkle and a few butterflies I'd have had all the options covered!