Gah!

I've just realised that my blogger profile wasn't showing my blogs!!

That will teach me NOT to mess around with my settings in an attempt to be clever!!

So...I apologise to everyone that tried to track me back through my comments in the last week or two!!

Black and White….

….and one other colour is this week’s challenge from the Papertake Weekly blog. Having sorted out my colours the other week, I knew I didn’t have much in the way of black paper, but I didn’t realise just how little black paper I had!!

Nevertheless, I knew I had a black pen, possibly some black ribbon, and most definitely black stamping ink (no respectable stamper is without a black stamp pad!!). So I sat down at my desk, which after only a week or so of crafting needs tidying again, and thought about what to do.

The above photo is the result of a few minutes thought (do click to make bigger if you need to!) and I am very pleased with this as black and purple always goes well together. The roses are on white paper although it looks more creamy in this light and those two studs are white of course – are they called studs? Do they have a proper name – I don’t know!? EYELETS!!! Yes, I knew I knew that – had just forgotten ha ha!

Anyway – you see that black paper cut out using the biggest nestability? Well, it’s not. It’s white paper coloured black on the edge – I really must go and get some black paper – or even better some of that lovely polka dot paper.

Sketch Saturday

This time I thought that I would try the latest sketch to appear on Sketch Saturday. This time, to make one of the many Christmas cards I am going to need this year!

The sketch looks like this…..

And my card looks like this….

It is not as close a match as I would like in that the three embellishments are supposed to be below the scalloped top edge, but hey – I think that it is close enough!!

I am not entirely convinced by this card, I think that something is not quite right about it, but I cannot work out what that is! In any case, I am most definitely enjoying making more cards again – it is fun and I am having a great time exploring what little creativity I have – I can’t paint or draw or create anything else, so this suits me very nicely.

The only trouble with that is that the more I get creative, the more I spend on this hobby!! Still, sometimes I come across some good bargains – there is a shop in the high street that is phasing out their wooden stamps and selling them for half price!!! I bought several of them, including the image used above.

A little luck!

One of my younger friends is off to university soon to study law and so I thought that I would make a card to send her on her way!!

This one took a bit of coming together as I couldn’t work out what to use as a background – I started off using all pink paper but quickly discovered that there is such a thing as too much pink!!

The green paper works very well and I embossed the plain paper with my newly purchased swiss dots cuttlebug folder. I also remembered that someone 0n one of the many blogs I follow said that stamping is not just for paper, so I tried to stamp the ribbon and while it looks ok, I don’t think that grosgrain ribbon is the best ribbon for stamping!

Mojo Monday

Ok, so it’s Tuesday, but the Mojo Monday blog post goes up on Monday and we have all week to make a card that fits the Mojo sketch.

Anyhoo – this week’s sketch looks like this….

And my card looks like this…..

The making of the card was both easier and more difficult that I expected!! I know, I know, that’s a funny thing to say, but I bet that many of you out there have had the same experience. Anyway, the tea set (it could be coffee, but I prefer tea!) stamp was my first choice, particularly as I hadn’t used it yet, so it was a good opportunity.

Colouring it in was the next job, but dammit, I really really need Copics!!! ;-) Putting it all together was the hard bit, I just couldn’t decide what colours or patterns to use, but eventually I settled on the picture that you see above. Only……it was never meant to have that little half flower on the side. I need to practice sticking ribbon to paper as it went funny and ended up being a bit short, so I needed something to cover my mistake!! (I wonder just how many embellishments are mistake hiders!! ;-) )

Anyway, the result is what I think must be my most embellished card ever and I like it!

Challenges

I am sure that I have mentioned challenges before on this blog….just that I haven’t taken part in many of them yet. Which quite likely explains my sheer lack of inspiration as there is nothing like a challenge and a bit of pressure to get the brain cells firing!!

Anyway, this little face must surely be one of the most recognised teddy bears in the world (aside from old Winnie the Pooh that is!), yes, it’s Paddington Bear.

And the reason that I have chosen this stamp for this card is because there is a challenge called Beary Nice going on on the One Stop Craft Challenge blog. As it happened I had stamped and coloured in old Paddington the other day but put him aside as it wasn’t really appropriate for the card that I had in mind, so he was all ready to go!!

The layout is a very specific one too! The layout comes from the Card Positioning Systems blog (yes – two challenges in one!!). The second photograph is not all that brilliant as the lighting is all wrong, but I think that the card would be good for a third birthday – seeing as there are three candles!!

Finally – a question for you – just what am I supposed to do with this stamp!!

I found in the bargain bin of the local Range and just giggled at the sentiment which is why I bought it. However – I don’t think that it really fits any occasion other than Halloween and we don’t tend to do Halloween cards in this country. But I just had to have this stamp – now I am looking for ideas!! (without insulting anybody of course ha ha!)

Cupcakes!!

I do hope that Katie over at My Paper Haven doesn’t mind that I have quite utterly and shamelessly CASE’d her cupcake cards!!

I needed something fairly simple to make (as I need six of them for gifts!) but ever so pretty and something that I knew that I would like and so would everybody else!!

Here is the complete collection – all six cards.

But this one is my favourite I think…

With this one following a close second!

Purple

I got asked the other day (twice in fact) what my favourite colour was and the instant response was purple!!

When I was messing around the other day trying to make a card for my uncle, I also made this one (purple of course!). The pattern of nine squares of flowers is from a stamp that I’d used at a card making workshop and have had rattling around in my box. Fortunately I’d made two copies for what ever reason I had at the time, cos this meant that I could colour in two of the squares and stick them on top.

I’d also used a couple of bronze-y brads on the popped out squares in order to jazz the card up a bit! The stamped images were then stuck in a square of textured purple paper and then finished off with a sparkly “Happy Birthday” and two pre-made embellishments that I got in my spring value box from Arty Miss.

All in all, a card that I am very pleased with. By the way, if you fancy wearing your comment finger to the bone – hop along to the JustRite Stampers blog where they have a blog hop going on with some amazing cards and projects. AND, if you manage to leave a comment on the right blog you might get yourself some blog candy!! (it’s a mystery blog candy you see – no one knows which blog will be chosen to select the candy winner from!!)

The drought has ended!

As promised yesterday, here is my first card in a long long time! However, it is not the card that I started off with yesterday as I kept changing my mind. Is it just me or are cards for men difficult!! I just don’t seem to be able to find the right kind of stamp, image or design. Of course, it doesn’t help that most of my craft things are quite feminine – pretty images or flowers and ribbons!!

Oh well, I eventually came up with this autumnal card that I thought wasn’t too bad – I stamped the background using different colours of green, brown and yellow and then used sparkly embossing powder to make the green ones sparkle.

The ovals were created using my nestabilities, the stamp was in my stash and the buttons are Stampin’ Up ones. I didn’t want to get too flourish-y with this card although I was tempted to add a bit of twine or autumnal flower but I held back!!

Although I wasn’t too convinced at first I think that I am quite pleased with this one as it is a simple card that I think would suit my uncle. It’s funny though…how the simplest cards seem to take longer than the more complex ones to finally come to fruition!

Tidying up

There are several reasons why I haven't made many cards this year, the main one being a terribly untidy person which means that I generally have to clear my desk before I can start again!! I really must clear away after each session otherwise I just wont bother.

In any case, one of the other reasons is that I just didn't know what paper I had to play with. The bulk of my paper was crammed into a box with no way for me to see what I had, with other bits of paper scattered about in smaller boxes and bags. Which meant that everytime I wanted to see what paper went with what design I ended up giving up because I wasn't getting anywhere.

So....as I was tidying up my crafts I decided to make better use of this little filling cabinet.

After all, it only held unimportant things like my birth certificate or bank details!! I knew that I'd kept a lot of junk, so I cleared it all out and shredded the stuff that I really didn't need so that I could keep all the essentials in a nifty little concertina folder (with a reminder to only keep what is strictly necessary and shred the rest - I mean, for goodness sake, I found paperwork relating to my first flatshare some 14 years ago!!).

All of which means that I now have the perfect place to keep my collection of paper as you can see from the photos below.

You can also see that Phoebe decided to get in on the act!!

Now that I am all tidied up I have begun to make cards again - it's my uncle's birthday this week so I am halfway through a card for him - will post a photo tomorrow.

hmmmm

It's about time I resurrected this blog!! I have neglected it terribly, along with my card making - I don't think that I have made more than five cards since the last time I posted. Which is not very good for the old inspiration as I find that the more I make the more I am inspired!

This time of year is always a good time for me to start thinking of cards again as Christmas really isn't all that far away when you know that you have a whole bunch of cards to make. Besides which, I am getting loads of ideas from all those fabulous blogs out there, and there are so many of them!!

If you are looking for beautiful cards you really need go no further than type in cards in the blog search section of google - I mean, there are truly thousands out there - I have over fifty of them in my feedreader, which does make it a bit difficult to keep up sometimes. Perhaps I had better start putting a few of my favourites in my sidebar so that you can get to see them too, but chances are that you already know about them!!