Monday 23 January 2012

You're my No 1!

Front and inside of the card

Ingredients

Plain white cardstock
Backing papers and digi image from Polka Doodle Pretty Tuff CD
Black ink for distressing
Grey and black ProMarkers
Spellbinders labels eighteen
Swiss dots embossing folder
A piece of black spotty ribbon
You're my No 1 stamp

I have entered this card into this weeks Tuesday Throwdown Challenge 81- Neutral colours.

Pretty Sweet

Inside and outside of card



Ingredients

Plain white cardstock
Purple cardstock
Designer paper from my stash
Scalloped oval nesties and Lacey ovals dies
Image from Polka Doodles Pretty Sweet CD
Various ProMarkers
Embellishment from stash

I have entered this card into this weeks Papertake Challenge.

Jo xx

Celebrations!


Ingredients

Plain white cardstock
Backing papers and digi image from Polka Doodles Pretty Sweet CD
Spellbinders dies
Two hat pins and a sticky diamond
Milled Lavender distress ink for the edges
Brown fine liner pen for the faux stitching
A selection of ProMarkers to colour the digi image.

I have entered this card into the following challenges:

Raise the Bar - "Ring" in the New Year
Polka Doodles - Sketch
Allsorts Challenge - 138 Needles and Pins
Joanna Sheen Monthly Challenge - Celebrations

This Weeks Willow Sketchie Card

Here's the sketch that we had to work from.


And here's what I came up with.

Ingredients

Dark brown cardstock
Designer papers from back issue of Making Cards magazine
Frayed Burlap distress ink for the edges
Spellbinders in spades border and large leaf dies
Digi image from the Pretty Sweet CD from Polka Doodles
A selection of ProMarkers to colour the image

Hope you like it?

Jo xxx

Wednesday 18 January 2012

What With The Olypics and all !!!

This year is going to be a year of celebration or that's what they say, although we have got a couple of big events coming up. It we be a year of immersing ourselves in everything that is British. Red, white and blue, cups of tea and big red buses. I am so glad I like the colours or by the end of the year I could go quite mad.

Talking of big red buses, here's a card for you. They say that you can wait for ages for a bus and all of a sudden three turn up, that's the theme for this card, hope you like it.



And the inside.


Materials

Plain white cardstock
Porobello Road 6"x6" paperpack from Papermania
Portobello Road Urban stamp set from Papermania
Spellbinders Postage Stamp die set
Promarkers - ruby, pastel blue, cool grey 3+4



Challenges I've entered this card into:

Raise The Bar - A Banner of a New Year
Allsorts Challenge Blog - Celebration of Nations

Getting Back Into The Challenge Mode

After a week of looking after hubby with his bad back I'm trying to get back into making my challenge cards. Finding my mojo can sometimes be difficult after a little break, but this time I am very pleased with the results.

While out of it for a while I did manage to sit and do some colouring and get a stash of images ready for cards so this really helped when it came to putting them together. I think I will do this again as that was probably the answer to the loss of my mojo sometimes, I wasn't starting from scratch.

Well here's what I came up with. Hope you like them.



Materials:
Creams and dark brown cardstock
Papers from my stash
Beaded circles Spellbinders die
Creative Expressions floral embossing folder
Campervan from Stamposaurus Stamps
Boy image from the Polka Doodles Pretty Tuff CD
Happy stamp and buttons from my stash
ProMarkers to colour
Edged with Frayed Burlap distress inks



The inside of the card to match.

I have entered this card into the following challenges:

Willow Designs Sketchie Challenge
The Alphabet Challenge - Y is for you can choose
Polka Doodles - Week 2 Vintage/Retro

Saturday 7 January 2012

First Challenge of the Year


My version of the sketch using We R Memory Keepers - Travel Light papers and Polka Doodles Pretty Tuff CD for the character, coloured with ProMarkers.



Hope you like it.
Jo xxx

Thursday 5 January 2012

Happy New Year!

Well I'm finally back to it after the break and I hope everyone has enjoyed the holiday season and looking forward to a great 2012, I know I am. Here's to lots of new crafty projects and trying to finish some that have been put to one side for a while.

I did however start two new projects over the holidays. The first was out of necessity and the second was just because I wanted to have a go. Both are messy projects but I had a ball getting all inky and gluey.

Project No 1

For sometime now I have, at the end of a project just whooshed all my little flowers and die-cut left overs into an old take-away tub and shoved them onto a shelf out the way, but I wanted something that looked more me and in keeping with what I do, so I have set about to change all my containers (big project I know, but you have to have a go). I made a little drawer easel card a while back with chocolates in and that's what gave me the idea.




I have used torn pages from an old novel and decoupaged them to the outside, when dry I used my distress inks and aged the paper. A screw head brad was used for a handle and small die-cuts in gold mirri rubbed over with sandpaper to give extra detail.


I have made three in total and they sit on my shelf above my work area and computer. I can easily make more and keep adding to them, well that's the idea anyway.

Project 2

Well this started out as one idea and now is another.... oh well artistic licence I suppose.
Yet another thing that I have been watching out there are the art journals and junk journals, so that was what I started out doing.

A while ago I found in a charity shop this ring bound A4 notebook, thinking it would make a good journal.

This is the back cover. In my eagerness to get started I forgot to take before photos, but I think you get the idea.

The cover has been created using the same technique as the drawers. I've been playing around with the Spellbinders flower dies and made several different types and sizes. I stamped one of the Tim Holtz sayings onto a die cut shape and grunged it to match the rest.

Now here is the change. I new once I had filled this book it would be very full, so I just needed to take out a few pages to make space, then I had the idea of cutting the pages down and using them to create the pages to another book. After taking out quite a few I just kept going and then another idea struck me, I could make this a free standing picture. I would do another design on the back but in landscape and when I wanted a change I would just turn it over.

I think I may be mad, but who cares I am having lots of fun and it's something I can work on inbetween other things. I will keep you posted just in case I come up with yet another idea for this project.

I hope this may inspire you to just have a go this year and bye the way have a good one everybody.

Jo xxx