Wednesday 30 January 2013

The beauty of simplicity


Sometimes the simple things in life are the best, and that is exactly what I had in mind when I created this card using a beautiful heart stamp sent to me by Stamp Addicts.

Those of you who visit my blog regularly will have worked out that I am more of a cutie / character kind of person when I comes to card making, so this particular stamp is a little out of my comfort zone, as it strikes me as being quite vintage. So I decided to keep the card very simple and the the beauty of the stamp speak for itself.

I dug out some of my old stash for this card including my once much loved embossing powders and some gorgeous ribbon that I found lurking in the bottom of my ribbon box.

Once I had stamped and embossed the heart, I then matted it on to some matching card before carefully sticking ribbon on each of the four edges, to frame the central image. The entire panel has then been mounted on to the base card using sticky fixers to give that little bit of lift.

Here are some challenges that I would like to enter today:
Make it Monday
Created with Love - Anything Goes
Sweet Stampin - Ribbon
The Squirrel and the Fox - Anything Goes
Simon says Stamp - Anything Goes
Natalie and Amy - Something Old / Something New
Anything Goes - Monochrome

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x






Saturday 26 January 2013

It's all about the Golf


Although I don't play the game myself, golf is quite a big thing in my family as both of my parents and my son enjoy whacking that little white ball around the golf course.

So, as you can imagine, I was more than pleased when Stamp Addicts sent me these two stamps to make some samples with.

They each come separately, but I think these comical little chaps are a perfect match for each other.

I decided I wanted to created the effect of looking down the driving range and I thought an easel card would be just perfect for this.

So  I used some of my favourite cloudy sky paper from NitWits (Just Hatched I think....) and the rest is all made by me. Plain green paper worked perfectly for the carefully manicured driving range and I made the sand bunkers by colouring some white paper, cutting to shape and adding dotted shading to the edges. The flag was also made out of plain paper, cut to shape.

Finally I made a little stopper for my characters which were coloured with alcohol pens.

Here's a side view for you.....



There are some nice male challenges around this week, so I would like to enter the following.....

Cupcake Challenges - Make a Scene
I Love Promarkers - Anything Goes
The Paper Shelter - Anything Goes
Stamp n Doodle - A boy's card
Created with Love - Anything Goes
Allsorts - Masculine Cards
Make it Monday

Well I am very proud that I managed to get my post done early (ish) on Saturday morning. Time to get busy now, preparing for a family party tomorrow in honour of my son's birthday.....so much to do, so little time!!!

Bye for now.

Sharon x


Tuesday 22 January 2013

Cute and Girly....and lots of pics

 Well it's a day late but, as promised I am back with a bit of girly cuteness, in the form of an oh so cute dog from the Mulberry Wood range at Crafters Companion.
 I thought it was worth a close up on tis occasion as I was quite pleased with how my colouring came out......I think it's quite hard to do white animals. I only hope that I can remember what I did the next time round!
 I also had to go with just a touch of glitter on the flowers just to add that little bit of sparkle.

It might not be obvious from the first few pictures but this project isn't actually a card - it's a kind of open sided bag / box, built specifically to house a birthday present for my niece. You can see the inside below.

 I am feeling pretty pleased with myself as I also made the bracelets inside....a little something that I got in to over Christmas.
I was so pleased that my niece seemed so pleased with her gift and that she wore her new bracelets for the rest of the day. It makes all the effort worth it.

 
 
So now on to some lovely challenges which I would like to enter this in to.

Natalie and Amy - Favourite Things
Make it Monday
Papertake - Tie up your loose ends
Passion for Promarkers - Favourite Colour Combo
Allsorts - Flowers
Stampin for the Weekend - Something Girly
Crafters Companion - Anything but a card

That's all for me today. Thanks for stopping by.

Sharon x

Saturday 19 January 2013

Still on the Golf


I'm back with another golfing card today, made from one of the stamps that I recently received from Stamp Addicts.

I am so gutted, as I have made loads of cards in readiness for a Create and Craft show next week, and I was due to drop them off at the shop today, but the deluge of snow meant that the shop couldn't open, and I would have struggled to get over there anyway. Oh well - them's the breaks as they say.

Perhaps my cards will be on one of their shows another day.

In the meantime, a little bit about this card. The recent breakdown of my printer caused me to have to use up some of my scraps and this is where I found these backing papers which, I thought, were just perfect for the theme. My golfer is coloured with Spectrum Noirs and I have used candy dots for the wavy line. I tried to make them look a bit like golf balls by adding dots with my super fine promarker nib.

So a very clean and simple card.....but it would be a good one for my dad I think!!

Here are a few challenges that I am going to enter:

Inky Chicks - Anything Goes
Card Makin Mamas - Clean and Simple
Make it Monday

So that's the end of my little post for today.

I hope to be back tomorrow with something a little girly.

Thanks for stopping by.

Sharon x


Wednesday 16 January 2013

Feeling on Par......

Goodness - I hadn't realised how long it had been since I last posted on my blog. I guess things have been a little busy lately and although I have been making cards, I haven't seemed to find the time to post them.

So I thought it was time to get back in the habit today and I have started by posting a very simple card which was inspired by the latest Less is More Challenge.

As you can see, I have simply stamped two of the new Golfing Stamps from Stamp Addicts directly on to my card and coloured them in with my alcohol pens.

I little doodling and a 'Happy Birthday' stamp and job done!

Time to enter a few challenges I think:

Card Makin Mamas - Anything Goes
Inky Chicks - Anything Goes
Less is More - One layer with sports
Tiddly Inks - Anything Goes

Make it Monday

So it's a quick card and a quick post from me today.

Thanks for stopping by.

Sharon x


Sunday 6 January 2013

 
 
Despite the foggy and grey weather in these parts, I am looking forward to Spring time, and I thought it was time to get those 'springy' images and colours going  again, so this is my offering for today.......
 
The lovely papers are from my ever expanding Nitwits Digi collection and the image is a lovely little Stamping Bella.
 
Hopefully you can see that I have paper pieced the culottes and the shoes with the blue backing paper, just to pull it all together.
 
I thought I would enter this card in to a few challenges, so here goes.......
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thanks for stopping by. Hope to be back soon with some cards created using some lovely new images from Stamp Addicts. Watch this space.......
 
Sharon x

Saturday 5 January 2013

Bloomin blogger!!

 
 
Something must have changed on blogger recently as, like a number of others, I found out today that I couldn't upload images from my PC..........aaarrgghhhh!!!
 
Luckily I had read that there was a way around this on someone else's blog, and it worked for me, so now I am going to pass it on to anyone else that might need it.
 
Before you load you picture, go to the top left of the post screen and switch from 'Compose' to HTML'. You can then load up your picture. Once this is done, go back to 'Compose' and you will be able to change the size and orientation of your image as normal.
 
Hope that helps anyone out there who might be about to pull their hair out  :o)
 
 
Now on to today's card. I have made this using a lovely Denami Mimi stamp and coloured it all in with water colour pencils, with a smattering of glitter on those indulgent bubbles.
 
I also took the opportunity to put my bubbles embossing folder to good use, as it fitted with the theme.
 
So here are the challenges I am going to enter today:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
That's all for me today. Thanks for looking.
 
Sharon