Through the house

I made this card for the monthly competition at Card Making Downloads. The card elements are from a set called 'through the house' by Anni Arts. I printed out 2 sheets of the main card, cut out the window panes of one sheet, stuck a clear transparency behind this top layer, then raised the layer with foam tab onto the bottom layer. Some of the elements in the picture were also raised with foam to create a 3D effect. The usual 'bling' was added (can't make a card without glitter!), and this is a super Christmas card.

Oooops (CDAC3-5)

This card, the 5th (and the last) for the CDAC Progressive Challenge, was quite fun to make. I used the digi from Gurukitty Designs, glued her onto an embossed background with scattered glittered flowers, added silk leaves, and a sentiment.

Don't forget (CDAC3-4)

And .... here is the 4th card for the CDAC Progressive Challenge.The lovely image is from Lia Stampz, and again, I had to wrack my brain to think of what type of card to make. I think that little pointing finger threw me off a little, until I thought, what if - instead of a reprimand - I make a card with a sort of reminder? The background behind the lady was embossed, the lace cut with a MS punch, and the pointsettia flowers cut in the Cuttlebug with my first ever Marianne die! So glad I bought that!!!

Fruit bowl (CDAC3-3)

My 3rd card for the CDAC Progressive Challenge #3, and made with a digistamp from Glitter Babes. The pink lace border was made with my new MS punch. The pastel pink and blue are a colour combination I've never used before, but it doesn't look too bad.

Farewell (CDAC3-2)

This is the 2nd card for the CDAC Progressive Challenge #3, and was made with a digistamp from NiceCrane Designs. At first I wasn't too sure what to do with this well drawn image, and then decided to turn it into a rather masculine 'farewell' card by backing the image with a piece of hessian. A 'no-fuss' card with minimal embellishments, but it still looks ok.

Congratulations card (CDAC3-1)

CDAC has opened the 3rd progressive challenge with 5 super digistamps again. However, as this is rather a mad time in my life at the moment (new grandson due any day, mad work schedule, preparations for a flea market) I have not put as much effort into the 5 cards as I normally do, but they have still come out ok. So, here is the first card, made with a super digi from JustInkLined. The fence was cut with my Cuttlebug.

A DT member of Patties Creations

What a super surprise I received in my email box - I was chosen as one of the new DT members of Patties Creations! I love her digis, so cannot wait to get started. For those of you who don't know her work, please pop on over to her Challenge Blog, and then head over to her SHOP as well, and just take a squiz at the lovely digistamps there! I will be regularly posting (on my blog) the cards I have made for her challenges, so do pop in here and take a look, and we'd love it if you entered the card making challenges on her blog as well! See you soon.

My Moment-In-Time in Kenya

This is a LO I made for a competition at Fruitful Hands.  The competition is to purchase a kit (stunning contents!), then make up a LO with ONLY the kit items, for the theme Moments In Time. I found this a real hard challenge – being restricted to what I had in front of me, and made me really think out-of-the-box this time!!! My entry is about a visit to Kenya in 2006, and I thought the papers suited the giraffe “theme” I wanted to create. This was one of my personal “moments in time” that I will not forget. I used:

7gypsies papers – (gondola) - for the hills and giraffe, (canal) for the hills + flower, (marco) for the hills, bottom border, and flowers.

Plain cardstock – brown for background, green for photo backing, and beige for giraffe and journaling.

Celebr8 – this chipboard cutout was so perfect for the layout theme (colour and burnt edges) that I just stuck it on ‘as is’. I felt any colouring of the item would take away from it!

Buttons – used as the centres of the flowers.

String – made a bow

Lettering – never seen these before so were fun to use to create the word Kenya

Brads – placed top left of title

And last but definitely not least, my little giraffe (close-up photo below). I used the pattern on page 183 in Marina du Plessis’ first book “Creative Scrapbook Piecing”, chalked the edges, and used a white gel pen for highlights. Then I got a little stuck as I needed white and black paper for the muzzle and hooves! Light bulb moment – use the backing card for the Celebr8 piece which just happened to be black one side and white the other!

So hope you like this – I am very pleased with the end result (click on the pic for a larger view)

Clever Boy

Now that the wedding album of my SIL is completed, it's time to catch up on my daughter's 2010 year album! This 1-page layout is just of one of those FUN photos that were taken, this time of my grandson after he had made a caterpillar with a ZOOB set I bought for him. I used a LETS SCRAP sketch again for the layout. The circle background was made by photographing a few scattered ZOOB pieces on a white bedsheet. All the wording was cut with my SLICE, and the pinwheels were handmade.

Welcome Back

CDAC is currently accepting entries for their 2nd progressive challenge. Not only did they provide 5 free images, but if you make and enter 2 cards, you receive the bonus image on the card below. As I made cards from all 5 images, I am entitled to the bonus image. The irony here however is that this image is actually my own design and I donated it as a freebie bonus image to CDAC! But, as I followed the rules, I am still 'legal' and so here's my card. Oh, btw, this image will go into the Digistamps4Joy site when the challenge ends.

Rocker Girl

CDAC is currently accepting entries for their 2nd progressive challenge. This is my fifth entry, made with an image from Tortagialla. I decided to make a real 'mod' girl with pink and purple hair and she 'rocks', and then make the card into a rocker card as well. Bit of a play on the word, but hey, it works!

Back to School

CDAC is currently accepting entries for their 2nd progressive challenge. This is my fourth entry, made with an image from Sweet Stamping Treats. This is an easel card.

ABC tag

CDAC is currently accepting entries for their 2nd progressive challenge. This is my third entry, but instead of a card, I made a tag with an image from Stamp n Doodle, and with a hidden sheet to write the message. Just something nice and small to add to a gift for the teacher!

A praying Mom

CDAC is currently accepting entries for their 2nd progressive challenge. This is my second card made with an image from Ellephantastic. I then found this super mom quote and thought it fitted it perfectly.

School is Cool !

CDAC is currently accepting entries for their 2nd progressive challenge. This is my first card made with an image from Digistamps4Joy (artist=Jen). The bookworm reminds me so much of the old kids TV character called Bennie Boekwurm" - he's cute isn't he, and those glasses are to die for!!!!!

Summer 1954

I love anything ‘vintage’, and as I had a shoebox full of old family photos, I thought it would be fun to make up a layout of my mom and I, on the beach in the UK in 1954! All of the albums my mom made up during that time, consisted of black paper backgrounds with writing done in white ink, and white lines drawn around the photos. So, this layout, using a sketch from Lets Scrap is meant to emulate her style.

I scanned in 4 tiny black and white photographs, converted them to 246 colour, then using Photoshop CS2 I only coloured in the costumes, to create these unusual b/w photographs. The edges were torn and the photos mounted onto black cardstock, and white gel pen lines drawn on opposite corners. After trimming, these were mounted onto larger pieces of white cardstock which had already been embossed with a Cuttlebug border (Iron Works) on one side, traced with a glue pen, glittered, then cut out. The main background paper is plain black cardstock, with rectangles cut out of Fancy Pants (Rough & Tough) and some b/w paper from my stash. The little fence was cut out of FabScraps paper with the Cuttlebug, using a die from Seart Craft (Lace#53). All the seashells and starfish were cut and embossed out of white cardstock, using a Cuttlebug die (from the sea). The raised edges were traced with a COPIC pen (E25), then the whole image was distressed with Creamy Brown pastel chalk from Color Box. The sandcastle and bucket/spade were cut with the Cuttlebug die ‘at the beach’. The title boxes were cut out of white cardstock with the Cuttlebug ‘hearts & stamps’ set, then mounted onto smooth black card, and the writing was done with the white gel pen.

I fell in love with the vintage embellishment set designed by Rosey Posey ("seashore"). The chosen images were sized to fit, printed out three times on photographic paper to give that glossy feeling, and then just simply paper-pieced to create a 3D effect. The signboard image was embellished further by adding tiny ‘real’ shells I found at my local scrapbooking store! The bunting was probably the easiest to make in the whole layout, as I drew black triangles in Powerpoint, added white text and printed them on white card. When cutting out the triangles, a tiny white border was left around each black triangle.

 

I achieved what I set out to do – to re-create my mom’s artisitc flair, yet with a modern touch. Hope you like it!