Shell card a winner

Wey hey, I had to put up a third post today as my shell card won the beach theme challenge at Creative Inspirations Challenge Blog. I am so pleased to be rewarded in this way, and I get to choose $10 worth of goodies from Simon Says Stamp - so I have chosen the Tim Holtz 'Nostalgic' Tissue Tape.

I shall love playing with it when it arrives. Thanks to everyone at Creative Inspirations and Natalie for emailing me all the info.

Bye for now.

Luv and hugs. Brenda xxxx

Miss Sparkle 2

Hi there.
This is the second of my Miss Sparkles and this time I have gone for the vintage distressed look.

The promarkers I have used are Ivory, Blush, Dusky Pink and Pastel Pink for the cheeks. The dress includes Pumpkin, Honeycomb, Peach and Burnt Orange. The wings include Azure, Denim, Powder Blue and Pastel Blue. The head-dress has Burnt Sienna, Cinnamon, Tan and Shale.

To achieve the sparkly look I have used Broken China Distress Stickles on the wings, Cosmic Shimmer Autumn Twinkles on the head-dress and Sakura pumpkin coloured Gelly Roll glitter pen on the stamens.

I am not so happy with the face this time, the colours seem to have bled in with the photocopy ink, and what annoys me is I am using the real Epson inks and not the look alike ones. Anyone know how I can stop this please?

I really like the Nellie Snellen embossing floral punches and have used them on both cards 1 and 2. On this one I have used them with bought ones (no name on the box I am afraid). I have included my usual butterfly and bird, both cut out and covered with glossy accents. I edged the scalloped die-cut with clear crackle paint and rubbed in Interference Blue Pefect Pearls. The edge of the circle die-cut was distressed with Vitage Photo DI. The flourish is TH Swirly. I also tried something completely different again on this card. I had a frame downloaded on my computer, so I printed it onto the DP as part of the background. Backing papers were edged with Star Dust Stickles and Frosted Lace sprinkled with glitter.

Well that's my second sample for the OSAAT DT call. Wish me luck.

Have a great weekend when it arrives, the weather looks quite promising for the festival, so fingers crossed.

Luv and hugs. Brenda xxxxx

Challenge List
A Spoonfull of Sugar #107 - Floral Delights
Tuesday Taggers - All that Blooms
Everybody Art #94 - Things with Wings
The Crazy Challenge - Distress It
Pollycraft Challenge - Ribbon and bling
Corrosive Challenge #67 - Die Cuts
Bee Crafty #31 - Bloomin Marvellous
Stamp, scrap, doodle #43 - Handmade Embellishments
Stamp Something - Digis

Miss Sparkle 1

Good evening, how have you been today?

This is sooooo exciting. I have created a couple of Miss Sparkle cards for a DT call at One Stitch at a Time. This one should be sub-titled 'Almost clean and simple' could also be known as 'Dare to dream' - dare I?????

This lovely stamp is from 'Stitchy Bear Stamps' and is called 'Sparkle'. This is not my usual style of card but I have been collecting promarkers for a while, so this has given me a good opportunity to play with them. I think the colouring has worked quite well. I approached the making of this card in a different way to usual and have learnt many lessons. Usually I collect all my papers and things together first, but for this one the beautiful image reminded me of one of my favourite flowers, the Fuchsia, so I set about gathering the colours in promarkers and completing the image only to find it has taken me days, literally days to find the papers and layout I am happy with and yet it is so simple. But I have got there in the end - perseverance is the name of the day. Because of this pretty fairy's name I have used Sakura glitter pens and Stickles on the image and green mount and the sentiment is from Raindrop Echo Designs, where Ann often puts out some freebies.

I am experimenting with some other layouts and am posting another design using the same stamp. I have been having great fun, so have a look and see what you think.

Have a lovely week. I am really looking forward to the weekend - Ken, my friend Yvonne and I are off to the Isle of Wight Music Festival. I went last year for the first time in my life and enjoyed the atmosphere and listening to some fabulous music, so I just had to do it again. Of course there is a treat in all of this - on the IoW you can get bed and breakfast and not have to sleep in a tent. Yeh, music, fun and a decent bed to sleep in.

Take care, have fun and let me know if you are going to the festival as well.

Luv and hugs. Brenda xxxx

Challenges
The Creative Cottage #14  - Pink
A Spoonfull of Sugar #107 - Floral Delight
Tuesday Taggers - All that blooms
Everybody-Art-Challenge - Things with wings
Ooh La La Creations #55 - Colours of their blog
Cupcake Craft #94 - Dazzle Us
Corrosive Challenge #67 - Die Cuts
Bee Crafty #31 - Bloomin Marvelous
Stamp, scrap, doodle #43 - Handmade embellishment

New home card

Hi Everyone

Sunday after a great BBQ with family and friends last night. We sat outside and lit all the candles we could find, it was a lovely evening. So relaxing, just wonderful.

 I found a free pic on the internet, printed it off, cut it out, then stamped the cage over it which is from the TH Artful Flight set. The background was rubbed with distress inks very lightly then spritzed with water, dabbed off with paper and heat dried. This has given it a light but vintage effect. I used Spellbinders and TH dies to cut the shapes to mount the parrot and cage on and the backing papers again are downloads. I used Photoshop Elements to crop the little butterfly and darken it and printed it out separately. having covered it in glossy accents I added it to give more dimension. The sentiment is from Raindrop Echo Designs, Anne often offers freebies either on her challenge blog, Sentimental Sundays, or on her own blog, they are easy to use in Photoshop. The ribbon was pleated and sewn to cover the join in the two papers.

I have this cute little bird feeder so I took a photo of the card behind it.

Neat eh?

Other materials used

Distress inks - black soot, shabby shutters and aged mahogany

Stickles - cotton candy and star dust

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening and hopefully shower free, though the rain and clouds are starting to roll in here. I can just hear some thunder in the distance, but otherwise we have been lucky and had quite a nice day. I managed to get lots more gardening done.

Take care. Luv Brenda xxx

Challenge List

Creative Card Crew #51 - Pink and green

Gingersnap Creations #57 - Wings

Craftalicious - New
Crazy 4 challenges #40 - Pleats

Flowers and sparkle

Good morning to another bright and sunny day, although thunder storms are threatened for later. Still the garden is looking good and I have nearly finished organising it. So much so I have taken my recent photos outside.

Well you know how I love sparkle, so when I saw Paperplay's challenge was flowers and sparkle I knew I had to design a card for that one. I also saw this sketch at Moving along with the Times and another theme of flowers at Charisma and Nordsalten Hobbyklub so I decided to combine them all. I had downloaded this gorgeous sheet music cover of 'Roses from Picardy' from Antique Images and a pink and green theme fitted perfectly, linking with the Creative Card Crew challenge.

I have used two DPs and some sheet music for the backgrounds. I couldn't make one of my own frames to fit this so I used double-sided tape to frame the green paper and cover it with glitter. I distressed the image, the rose paper and the music paper and used stickles on the edges of two of them.

The roses I had in my collection and I spritzed the lighter ones and the music paper with Tattered Angels water melon glimmer mist. I experimented with several things for the ribbon effect across the lower part of the page, but nothing seemed quite right until I die cut a long scroll shape to look like a stem effect for the flowers....... and so it all came together.

Supplies used
Stickles - Star Dust and Cotton Candy
Mireille glitter
Distress inks - Fired Brick and Vintage Photo
Glimmer Mist - Watermelon
Sizzix swirly decorative strip

Enjoy the weekend. Hopefully we will have a BBQ tonight and sit outside again, as we did last night with the family. Love the summer.

Love and hugs. Brenda xxxx
Challenge List
Paperplay Challenges #22 - Flowers and Sparkle
Moving Along with the Times #49 - Sketch
Charisma Cardz Challenges #22 - Flowers
Nordsalten Hobbyklub #8 - Flower Power
Creative Card Crew #51 - Pink and green

Summer theme - shells

Is it really Friday of half term? Oh my goodness, another week gone. We had a great couple of days with Ben, Bev and the girls last weekend down at Seaton, the weather was lovely and we were able to get on the beach. Fantastic. So when I saw that summer and beach themes were coming through in the challenges I decided to focus on a lovely little vintage picture that I had downloaded from the internet and a sketch that had caught my attention at Sketchy Colours. I get alot of my free vintage pics from The Graphics Fairy.

This is the result. I used a DP with shells over it to give me the colour theme, the picture and the postcard were both printed from my file of free vintage downloads. I made the frame and first of all lightly covered it with blue and green glitter, but it didn't give me the effect I wanted so I painted it with old paper distress crackle paint and rubbed distress inks into it when it had dried. I have some clear square dome stickers, so I put one over the stamp on the postcard to give it some dimension and got out some shells from a box of them that I keep. (You just never know what you are going to need do you???) I love the starfish which I had bought in Swanage the year before last.

Other supplies used

Stickles - lime green and star dust.

TH distress inks - frayed burlap, peeled paint and blue china.

Sakura glitter and glaze pens.

I love the colours and the beachy feel to it.

I hope you are enjoying this lovely hot weather we are having at the moment, must remember to water the plants though.

Take care, enjoy whatever you are doing.

Love and hugs.  Brenda xxxx

Challenge List

Sketchy Colours #26 - Sketch

Cupcake Crafts #92 - Summer Delights

Everybody Art Challenge #93 - Summer

Tuesday Taggers - Touchy, feely, texture   and a great prize this week from Tanda Stamps, check them out to see what goodies they have.

Papertake Weekly - Fun, fun, fun

Stampavie and more #97 - Summer

Crafts and Me #5 - Distressed

Creative Inspirations #63 - Beach theme

The Treehouse #52 - Beach/vacation theme
Raise the Bar #21 - Celebrate Summer

Vintage Birthday

Saturday greetings to you, I hope it is more sunny for you than it is here at the moment. I can't believe where this week has flown to, it's been so busy that I haven't had a chance to get to my craft much, but I have made a card for Jayne, who works at the same company as Ken. It is her 50th birthday on Tuesday and I have managed to get this in the post for her today with some notelets I made, as a present. Just remember Jayne, age is a state of mind, continue to have fun and enjoy yourself and have some wonderful birthday celebrations.

I have used the shabby vintage style, which I am soooo into at the moment, and I deceorated the inside of the card too. The die cut bird is the from the TH new alterations range, the one with the bird cage that I am so fond of. The ticket is also the same range, taken from the ticket strip, and I stamped it with a paper artsy ticket shape I found and added the lettering myself. The flower I made using the spellbinders nestabilities scalloped circles, I die-cut two sizes of tissue paper and used about 13 layers together. I sprayed the tissue with cosmic shimmer mist and put them together with a brad. I then scrunched each layer individually starting with the top layer first and unruffled it a bit. The frame is also one of mine using the spellbinders dies and covering it with glitter.

As you can see I have used vintage pictures, lots of butterflies and glitter, die cuts using the cricut and some stamping to complete the inside.

Enjoy the Bank Holiday weekend, we are off to Seaton late afternoon to spend tomorrow and Monday with Ben, Bev and the girls, so lets hope we see some sun.

Take care. Love and hugs.  Brenda xxxxxx

Challenge List

Daisy Doodles  -  Anything goes

Little Paper Shop  -  Pink, Craft and Blue

Method Playground  -  Love antique

Crafty Cardmakers  -  Inside Out

Stampavie -- Happy birthday for a girl

Crafts and me  -  Distressed

Creative Inspiration  -  Distressed

Flutterby Wednesday  -  Open challenge

The ABC Challenge  -  V is for vintage

Caged Butterfly

Firstly I chose five challenges from Wednesday's challenge list to create this card. Color Throwdown where the colours to use are pink pirouette, melon mambo and baja breeze. Stampavie and more want you to use flowers. Flutterby Wednesday challenges us to use flowers with a butterfly, fairy or angel!  Fab 'n' Funky challenge us to make our own embellishments and Gingersnap Creations have asked us to create our art around our favourite quote. I knew I wanted to play with the TH birdcage again and this is what I ended up with.

I heat embossed the cage with a sparkly embossing powder and decided that I would put a butterfly in the cage rather than a bird. Quite inspiring for me I thought!! I made and added my own charms from beads and I made my own flowers.

 The swirl and quote are also by Tim and I printed out a tiny bird to add to the overall effect with another small MS butterfly.

The coloured papers fitted the colour challenge and I have used more of my music paper, sewing them all together. The card and baja breeze backing paper were edged with copper Adirondack acrylic paint dabber, the pink paper was distressed and edged with cotton candy stickles and the quote was distressed and edged with stardust stickles. I added glossy accents to both butterflies and the bird, and sprinkled some glitter into the glossy accents on the large butterfly. I have also used the Sakura glitter pen in places.

We are off to Walsall tomorrow to stay with some friends and I am so looking forward to going to see Rod Stewart on Saturday night. Can't wait.

Have a wonderful weekend yourself. The forecast is good for the UK so hopefully we will see some extended sunshine.

Love and hugs. Brenda xxxx

Other challenges

Papertake Weekly - Say it with flowers

Tuesday Morning Sketches - Your favourite colour combo and glitter

Digi Doodle Shop - Sparkle, glitter, glitz

Retro Vintage

I hope your week is going well. I have had one of those days where I had an appointment all morning, which went well, and then I managed to get lots of little things completed this afternoon, making me feel I have achieved loads. It's a great feeling.

This is a different take again for me. Here I have mixed retro and vintage, and I think it has gone together quite well. The colours are certainly vibrant and the raspberry pink really stands out.

I have used a Llewelyn Bowen Retro Rose paper and chipboard flower, which I covered with rock candy distress stickles. The stamps are from the TH Mini Classic series and I put them all together on one acrylic block like Tim does and stamped them all in one go. I used tattered rose distress ink around the outside paper and vintage photo for the main one. I edged the main card with an Adirondack raspberry acrylic paint dabber. The frame I cut using the Spellbinders nestabilities and glittered it, then added a vintage image from a Debbie Moore collection. The chipboard mount, button, ribbon and word sentment finished it off.

Different, but an experiment waiting to happen.

Hope you like it. Thankyou for stopping by and taking a look, I appreciate any comments and love to read them.

Love and hugs. Brenda xxx

Challenge List
Your next stamp - Cut it out and pop it up   The frame and vintage image are 'popped up' using foam pads
Stampavie #94 - Pink
Lots to do #94 - Stamped collage
Pollycraft #44 - Summer blooms
Ooh La La Creations #54 - Bright and cheerful
Practical Scrappers - Patterned paper
Welcome Flourish - Use chipboard
Prairie Fairy - Flowers

Friend birthday card

Happy Monday everyone and Happy Birthday to my best friend Margaret. I have made her this card which I hope she will like, it's another 'shabby' creation.


I used three pieces of paper for the background, including a piece of music from Mozart. The sentiment is from the TH Shabby French collection and I have mounted it on a Spellbinders 'In Spades' pendant which was distressed with Tattered Rose and I edged it and the sentiment with Aqua Cosmic Shimmer Twinkles. The papers have been distressed with Vintage Photo and I made the embellishments adding a sticker, button and flower.


I feel the overall effect has worked well and I am pleased with the way it has come together.


It's beautiful sunshine in this neck of the woods, so I hope you are having some cheerful weather wherever you are.

Happy birthday Margaret, have a lovely day and to you all, enjoy the week and thankyou for looking.


Love and hugs.  Brenda xxxx

Challenge List
Papertake Weekly - Shiny, sparkly and special   Very special card for my best friend
Your next stamp - Cut it out and pop it up           The sentiment and the mini-tag have been 'popped up'.
La La Land Crafts Blog - Anything goes
For Fun Challenges - an anything card using a stamp   The sentiment has been ink stamped.
Cute Card Thursday - Someone Special               That's Margaret
Digi Doodle #7 - Ribbon       Yep that's there
Stamp Something - Celebrate something               Definitely
Allsorts - Birthdays                 This fits the bill
Stamp with fun - Stripes           Two papers have got stripes on them
Practical Scrappers - Patterned Paper    Four different ones if you include the music paper!
Sweet Pea Stampers - Paper piecing      Four papers pieced together her