3 CHALLENGES

Dear Reader
Here's a card I've made to fit three challenges. They are Simon says StamP, Creative Card Crew Challenge and Sketch Saturday. Thank you to all the design teams.

I've used a Sugar Nellie Leanne Ellis stamp. It's Annie with a bottle of champagne - nothing could say celebrate more to me than that! I've coloured her in distressinks and stickled the champagne 'bubbles'. Papers are My Minds Eye and the sentiment is Woodware. I've used nestabilities to mount the image and Martha Stewart double loop punch for decorating the 'strips'.

Beary Nice

Dear Reader

I've had quite a crafty weekend. Up early this morning so got the essentials of life out of the way and started on the good stuff! Made a few more ATC's for the May RWS Challenge, then altered an Ikea mirror for the new craft room. That seemed to come together quickly (I'll post it tomorrow) so decided to make a card. I'd had a look at the Magnolia Challenge blog yesterday morning and there was a post saying that they had come 5th in a poll of the top 30 challenge blogs. Well I thought the top five place was lovely for them and well deserved too. I'm very fond of the Magnolia Challenge - as you know I love my elves! But what surprised me a bit was that they'd printed all the top thirty blogs for us all to go and visit. Which was extremely kind of them and perhaps it's me and I've been in the business world too long but isn't the main point of their Challenge blog to get people to enter their competition, not other peoples, and so use Magnolia images? Anyway,I'd had a wonderful half an hour checking out all the various challenges and decided on three to enter, two of which I'd not come across before. So here's the card I made and it's going to go into Sketch Saturday (really lovely sketch to work with I thought so thanks to them), the Cupcake Craft Challenge which asked for 3 papers, 3 flowers and 3 ribbons and a Spoonful of Sugar Challenge which asked for a "Furry Friend (animals)"

I used tonal Craft Works papers, painted my image (Sugar Nellie) with distress inks in Tattered Rose, Spun Sugar and Victorian Velvet and made a small sentiment tag and distressed it - again with my Tim Holtz inks. Both image and tag were die cut with a Nestability. I used a large pearl brad from my stash to hold the sentiment in place. The three flowers were made using Woodware punches and I embellished with pearls from RWS. I added two rows of smaller pearls to give definition to the three papers. The ribbons are also from RWS - two are used as border edgers and one as a bow. I stickled the balloons to highlight them. Thanks for looking and please leave a comment....

FIRST OF FIVE !

Dear Reader
As promised I'm back with my challenge cards for this week. I've crafted all weekend (it kept my mind off other things) and the following five cards are the result. As granny would say 'No point in sitting about moping, best keep busy'. So no moping for me - instead lots of crafting and hence lots of challenge cards! Out of adversity etc etc. Although looking at the state of the house I probably ought to have been busy hoovering lol. Crafting - hoovering..... no contest!!!

I really think this week's going to be a better one. First appointment of the week was with a caterer (what could be better than talking food and yes there are cupcakes on the menu!) and the second with a magician. He came in today to discuss our Awards 'magical evening' but we spent the first half an hour rolling around laughing at his jokes and Tommy Cooper impersonations. "Two fish in a tank - one says to the other you drive and I'll man the guns!" .... etc etc he he he I just love Tommy Cooper jokes. Anyway, he's going to get the evening off to a good start with an illusion. The choise was making someone disappear 'just like that!' or sawing someone in half. What a choice! Good job he didn't come in last week I could have give him a list of names for both lol.....

Anyway, here's the first card which is for the Sketch Saturday challenge. It somehow felt right to rotate the sketch 90 degrees so I did. Papers are by Martha Stewart and I've used a Whiff of Joy stamp coloured in with distress inks. I made some paper flowers and used pearls to give a soft look, which is also helped by all corners on the card being rounded off. The tag I also made and fixed in place with a large pearl brad to keep the pearl and rounded theme going. I've used a Woodware sentiment stamped with grey ink, again for a softer look. Hope you enjoy this card and the ones that follow it. I'm now crafted out so you probably won't see any more cards from me for quite a while! Although I might be back with another Tommy Cooper joke!!!