Catch up Time!

Happy Sunday Blogland! It's been a busy ol' week with one thing or another. I even got to make a couple of cards this week - only thing is, I haven't had time to photograph them so I've actually missed the deadline for at least one challenge I played along with - what the heck, it was fun to do and it was a great sketch! This card is from Sketch Saturday's challenge no. 34

And so I went on and made one for this week's challenge too, which I did manage to photograph and upload in time! Many years ago I used to have a real thing about Clarisse Cliff designs and I would paint just about everything with these designs - plates, plant pots, cups - I even painted a mural on a bedroom wall once. Recently I picked up my pen again and made some drawings for a set of rubber stamps that I made using the Imagepac kit, and this is a card I made using one of those stamps:

Twinkling H20's are perfect for colouring these because of their bright vibrant colours, but I added some glossy accents to parts of the image to highlight some detail and I noticed that cracks had formed when it dried. Obviously H20's and glossy accents are not compatible with one another! Grrrr....

And finally I also made a card for this week's Ismaki challenge - I always love sketch blogs but for some reason keep managing to miss them, so I have promised myself I am going to be much more active with sketch challenges this year (along with everything else I've promised myself!!!)

Before I wish you a happy week to follow I'll leave you with this thought - my 7 year old son asked me, in all seriousness, this week "Do you think Henry VIII had so many wives because he liked collecting gold rings?" LOL!!

Have a great week and Thanks for popping in! ;o) xx

Inspirational Sketch Challenge

Dawn wrote:

"I'm starting up Inspirational Card Sketches in order to share my inspiration with you.
First and farmost there will be no compensation at this time.I'm looking for 6 designers who love creating cards.
Your term will be 4 months. Term is from Feb-May 2009
If you would love or like to be on a Card Sketch Design Team this call is for you.
Every Tuesday I will send you a card sketch one week in advance for you to work on. You however as a DT member will have to get your creations to me no later then Monday at 12:00pm (noon) Central Standard Time.
You will also get to embellish your cards however you want. My sketches are for your inspiration only. And to help others get ideas on how to use these sketches.
To start this call off I want you to make a card using this sketch below. Then I want you to
post it on your blog along with this call and leave me a direct link to your blog post in the comment section here."

So, without further ado, here are my offerings for this challenge:

This is such a lovely, simple sketch that I wanted to keep my cards as simple and uncluttered as possible. However, I did also do this card which is a bit more fussy but it was in line with my latest 'thing' about trying to stamp direct to card and not use decorative backing papers. I loved how it came out IRL but no matter how many photo's I took of it, none of them really do it many favours, I feel, but I'll show it off anyway!! LOL! Most of my sketch offerings have previously been shown on my other blog but who knows, I could be showing off many more on here during 2009?

Thanks for popping in, and good luck to all the other 'sketchers' who have submitted their own take on the sketch! ;o) x

A tag (for a change...!!) and a couple of cards

Over at Tag, you're it! this week the theme is "Lets Go Stripey". So that's what I did! I loved this striped cardstock which is from the DCWV "Pets" stack and I'm starting to manage to get away from Christmas colours at last!! LOL! The stamp is one of my current favourites from Gallery Textiles and there's more of those to come in the coming weeks so watch out for them! The flower and leaves are punched from my new Woodware punches, and at nearly £10 each, you can bet your life I'm going to get my money's worth out of them!!! LOL!!

This card was a forum sketch challenge and the perfect opportunity for me to use one of my new Sugar Nellie stamps by Leanne Ellis. I love her stamps and used the "Wish" one on a number of my Christmas cards - but wouldn't you know, I didn't photograph any of them!!! That's what you get for being so last minute!! tut!

This card was a challenge I set myself - stamping directly to card and using no papers whatsoever. No matting and layering although I did cut out the heart from another stamped image, but it fitted with the text so it had to be done! Again I used one of Leanne Ellis's stamps along with a Papermania stamp, a bit of bling and some Twinkling H20's. It was trickier doing this than I expected, but as it's not bound for anywhere, I figured I got away with it! LOL!!

I hope everyone is having a great weekend and looking forward to the week ahead. Thanks for dropping by!

Happy 2009!

It's been such a long time since I blogged. The last few weeks before Christmas really took me by surprise - it seemed to come from nowhere, completely took over my life, then was gone in a flash!!! It all kind of went belly-up when I got a phone call from my son's school informing me that he'd had an accident and could I get over there. He had apparently been running to his next lesson, slipped on some grit at the top of a flight of stems and belly-flopped to the ground taking a chunk of his leg out in doing so. I had to get him to hospital and hold his hand while they stitched him up - that was till they had to get a chair and open a window for me - Wimp!! LOL!! I'm dreadfully needle-phobic and I thought having kids would get me over that but no such luck! LOL!

Anyway New Year got off to a great start with the NY Honours list featuring Robert Plant MBE (good call!!!). I haven't made any resolutions, not real ones, but I do have a few ideas I'd like to put into practise. I certainly intend to do much more stamping - I had a horrid moment this morning while sorting through my stash when I discovered at least half a dozen stamps that I bought in the last few weeks to use on my Christmas cards and instantly forgot about and now I'm annoyed with myself! So first job this year is to organise my stamps better!

First pic of the year is my tag for this week's Tag, You're It! challenge - use your new stash! One of my Christmas pressies was a flexible art mold and I have been having some fabulous fun with it using polymer clay - more on that to come, but I couldn't resist adding one of my pieces to this tag, which also uses a couple of my new Purple Onion stamps - I love this vintage calendar in particular.

So, Happy 2009 to all who pass this way, I hope it proves to be a very happy, prosperous and creative one for you! Thanks for stopping by! :o)