New sketch challenge blog

I've found this Norwegian blog that will have sketchchallenges every sunday. They are called skissedilla and they start tomorrow. If you help to spread the word you can get this candy if you're lucky:

Earth hour

I hope you're all joining in the eath hour. It's just about 20 min left and I'm turning off my computer.

THIS SATURDAY 28 MARCH AT 8.30PM YOU CAN VOTE EARTH BY SWITCHING OFF YOUR LIGHTS FOR ONE HOUR - EARTH HOUR.

I'm off to take a nap or a candle lit bath.
See you soon :)

Whiff of joy challenge #23

Prepare yourself for the best card you have ever seen - done by me. :)

I think I mentioned earlier that my fiancée asked me to make a card for his dad's 60:th birthday. I struggled because I wanted the card to be something I could be proud of and I wanted it to blow my socks off too - that's how I measure if it's good enough, lol.

The hardest part was to find a good image. I have so many cute stamps, images of Victorian women, animals etc, but nothing suitable for a guy. Then I came across this stamp from Whiff of joy and it was so perfect it was ridiculous. It conveys just the feeling I was looking for.

The next thing was what kind of papers I should use. I wanted to use bluish shades, but that is not my strong suit I must admit, so I was a bit worried. If I make something in blue I tend to make it cute somehow and I didn't want it for this card.

I started out by taking out the flowers. I had gotten them as a freebie when I bought other flowers. Good thing because I would have never bought them myself - not my style. Then I started picking out every paper that would match and was male enough. When I found the blue/lime/black striped paper I was in heaven because I noticed that the flowers had a whiff (pardon the pun, lol) of lime. And then I found this flowery paper that is in the background. It's dryembossed and looks so elegant. I didn't have any good blue paper so I went with the dark seafoam and decided on black and lime details. I had a pretty good green, but then I came across the PERFECT lime coulour. The only problem was I only had a smaller piece. But it was just enough! I just had a scrap left when I was done, so good thing I didn't make any mistakes, phew. The name and age on the tags is from a rubon alphabet. And I also found the perfect colourmatch for the jeweled brad. The black cardstock is bling embossed with a CB folder. Image coloured with promarkers. And it doesn't show that well, but the outer paper on the imagepiece is mirrorpaper. It shines very beautifully and makes the card even more festive.

I'm so happy with this card you can't imagine. I never knew I could make this kind of card I see around on my fav blogs. But now I know how it's done. I did soo many layerings, I think the card weighed 200g in the end, lol. The only thing I would have wanted is to layer the outer piece with lime cardstock, but I didn't have any extra, so that was the first thing to go.

I followed a sketch from the Whiff of joy challenge when I made this card. This week there is a GDT spot available so I figured I would enter. If I won't make it with a card like this I never will :)

So what do you think, have I outdone myself or what? It's awfully quiet in here, but I know you're lurking around, I have a counter so don't think you're invisible, lol.






This is the best photos I could get of the card since I finished it in the evening and the light was gone (it took me 2 days to make it with all the "big" decisions I had to make: Should the flower be a little more to the left or a little more to the right, twisted a bit more or not? You know the drill :D )

EDIT: I've got a question from Donna if I can do a card like this again. Hmmm... OF COURSE I CAN! :) Now that I know how a card like this is done and how much time I need to put in. Want to challenge me? Just bring it on ;)

Charisma cardz and stamp something challenge

EDIT: I noticed that on a spoon full of sugar the theme this week is easter, so this card fits that challenge too. Someday I have to make a card that will fit into as many challenges as possible. Now that's a challenge!

Phew, with two minutes to spare I managed to upload this card for the Charismacardz challenge. The challenge was to use a wonderful sketch and this card basically made itself. It was sooo easy (especially compared to the previous card I made that was a real pain in the you know what)




I also uploaded this card to stampchallenges because I thought of their challenge while making the card. Their challenge was to "think spring" and what is more spring than easter?!
I'm super-duper happy with this card. Think the purple shades and the yellow balance out perfectly.

Thanks for stopping by. Now I'm off to make another challenge and hopefully finishing on my secret easterswap project. It needs to be sent out friday, yikes! I also got an order for a male 60-year b-day card. Eeeeeek! Do you think it will be apropriate with cute animals, pink and a lot of glitter? Hmmm, I think not. Time to work in blue shades...

To be continued...

Sugarbowl challenge #6 - mother's day

This week the sugarbowl blog have "mother's day" as their theme for the challenges. I had this RAM stamp and the pink flowery paper I have had for a while now. I bought it to use for Valentine's, but I think it works even better for spring/mother's day.

I started out with the paper and chose promarkers that matched. Most of them are my new ones, so good thing I got them :) I wanted to have a heart, but didn't want it to be too obvious. Then I struggled a bit. I tore, dryembossed, embossed, glued and here's what I got:




I think the ribbon got interesting. It's laying over the embossed parts and looks embossed itself. I quite like the look.
A very different card for me with the layout. Not sure if I love it or not. The golden swirls might have been too much, but without them the card looked so flat and empty. I want to practice more on doing "busy" cards, so I thought: more is good and went for it, lol.

My birthday gifts :)

I haven't showed you what I got for my birthday yet, so here it is:

I found these "gloves" or whatever they are called in the Copenhagen airport when we got back from Barcelona. They were in one of my fav shops called accessorize. Guess what they have there ;) I'm having problems with my wrists and cold hands so these work great especially when I'm writing on the computer. Now I just need to learn how to make these myself because I want one in every colour. I love them!


Bengt's mom got me this great tool for threading seedbeads. It's the wooden thing you see to the left. You pour the beads in there and then you twist the bowl while holding down a needle and they jump right up. I was quite amazed it worked. It will be very useful since I haven't used my box (to the right) of seedbeads due to the extreme amount of time it takes to thread them! The best part is that she didn't even know if I used these kinds of beads, it was a shot in the dark, but she always comes up with the best gifts! HERE is a video if you want to see how it works.


I wished for some Whitesnake albums since I only had the three at the bottom of the pic. Now I got 8 more. Woohooo! Maybe now I will be able to call myself a fan, haha.


I have also been wishing for a smoothiemixer for ages (ever since we got back from Malta in august) The one we had was one of those you hold in your hand and it has just one rotating blade (which totally sucked) It couldn't crush ice or anything frozen which made it totally useless for smoothies. It actually gave up a day or so before my b-day. I promise I didn't break it, lol. So Bengt got me this one that crushes ice and is sooo fancy. I had smoothies for a week, barely ate anything else :) I LUV it!


In our local second hand shop I found this little lamp that I wanted for my hobbycorner. But I noticed it's the same colour as we have some things in the bathroom, so I might use it there. This was my gift to myself.


And of course it isn't a proper celebration without a new teddybear :) I named him Snowy.


I got some money from my mom and decided to splurge a bit on crafts (what else?!) I got some freshwater pearls that were on sale in my local beadshop. I especially like the turquoise ones. I got three different shades that I want to mix. I also got parrot charms. I know exactly how they are going to look when they're done.


And some more of the Tilda fabrics. I noticed I needed some that don't have too much patterns - to blend them out so to speak. The black one with roses I've been looking for forever. I think it looks beautiful with the pink. Can't wait to start on my next project!


Scrapaddicted had a 50% sale on everything exactly one day - my b-day, so I got myself the rest of the promarkers I've been looking for. I was missing a bunch of basic colours like pink, light blue etc, but every time I ordered them they were out. This time I got them all!


So these are the colours I have now + the new ones above. I'm glad they only come in 90 colours, lol. Copics have over 300 colours and they cost 2/3 more, so I'm glad I went with promarkers (although I must admit I would like to get some pinks that aren't available as promarkers)

Victorian bushfire donations

This is something I want everyone to know about. You can help by leaving a donation - I just did and you're even in a lottery of some great stamping stuff. You can read all about it HERE
100% of the proceeds will go to the Red Cross.

Bear lovers - don't miss this!

Ok, so it's technically a bunny, but it doesn't matter to me. I'm a lover of any stuffed animal (noone could guess I'm a grownup when they walk into my bedroom,lol)
I think this is so amazing I had to make a seperate post. It sure deserves its own place in the spotlight. Ginger is celebrating her silver anniversary of making teddybears. She has decided to have this amazing blogcandy where you can win something that she calls Easter surprise. And isn't it the sweetest eastersurprise you could ever wish for?!




I'm crossing everything I can so I will be chosen as the winner and become the "mommy" of this little fella.

Inky Impressions 1st Design Team Call

I just saw that Inky impressions are having a DT call and it ends tonight! The owner wants to see two spectacular cards with fabulous colouring and layout. Phew, it was hard to choose because I never know what others will think about my cards. I remember the card I've gotten most comments about is the one I liked the least, lol. Maybe you should decide which of the cards are top2?

I chose these two cards as my "official" entries, but I had to load up some that I'm very proud of, some because of the colouring and some because of the different style or colorscheme. Enjoy!




The mice are coloured with promarkers and the asian lady is coloured with twinkling h2o's.




Other great cards I'm proud of. I usually load up two images of the card, one showing the whole card and one showing a close-up, but here I just wanted to show the detail.




The image below is coloured with a new technique I tried: tombows on aquarelle paper. The rest of the cards are coloured with promarkers.

Whiff of joy and X-mas card challenge

This week on the Whiff of joy blog the challenge is to use green in your card. I still don't have any Whiff of joy stamps, sigh, so I'm hoping to win some as there is a great prize on the blog. The image I have used here I've gotten from my friend Coni. She has stamped up the image on watermark paper and since it doesn't work that well with my promarkers I used my tombows to color in the image. I found a great tutorial on Stampartic on how to color with tombows and I wanted to give it a try. I have the markers and don't want them to lay around and dry out. I also want to be able to use the stamped up images I got from my friend. I didn't use that much color since it's a snowman, but on the parts I did I think it turned out pretty good.

The few images I have from Whiff of joy are wintery ones so I decided to combine the challenge with just Christmas and birthdaycards challenge. where there was a sketch to follow. Actually you can win a Whiff of joy stamp there too, lol.