DCM Bling Card

OK - here is the *Bling!* card for this week's Daring Cardmaker's challenge. I stamped the butterfly, coloured it as a Ulysses Butterfly from Far North Qld with watercolour pencils, attached the 'Got Flowers?' flowers with beads, then used gold lettering stickers for the Happy Birthday. I sponged around the edges of the butterfly with black and blue ink (ruined my blue ink pad, too! hint - use lighter colours BEFORE darker colours) then stamped some Kaiser stamp leaves on a piece of gold paper, and attached it all to white glossy cardstock. Voila! A beady bling card just right for my MIL's birthday :-D She does love Ulysses butterflies.

AEzine Challenge: one little word

Thank you, Paula, for telling me about the AEzine/Life Artist Newsletter. I have now signed up to receive it and participate. I have some work to do this week, to keep up with Daring Cardmakers AND the Aezine challenges! Here is the first Aezine challenge for 2007:

"one little word

A single word can be a powerful thing. It can be the ripple in the pond that changes everything. It can be sharp and biting or rich and soft and slow.

This week your challenge is to create something, anything, that celebrates your chosen word for 2007. Maybe a layout. Maybe a blog posting or a journal entry or a simple post-it note that you put somewhere you can see it each day. Make sure to journal about why you chose your word and what it means for you - the more you let yourself explore the more benefit you will receive in the end."

The word I chose is GENTLENESS.

I need much more of that in my life. It is linked to serenity and calm, and noticing, and being. I am so not like this. I would like to be more GENTLE and notice more GENTLENESS. The world can be a rough, fast, cold, hard place. My little corner can be more GENTLE perhaps...

Will be thinking about a LO or another way to show GENTLENESS on my blog in the next few days.

Bling & Beads

Daring Card Makers - Bling & Beads

"This week's challenge is set by Lynda and I want you use... Bling and Beads. You can use micro beads or threading beads. Any sort of bling: glitter, sequins, crystals brads etc. Have fun!!! "

OK - I am off to have fun with this challenge. Will re-edit this post later when I have something to show.

Thank You Card

From Daring Cardmakers: 'This week's team dare is easy, peasy, lemon squeazy, just to ease you gently out of 2006 ! We are daring you to make and ultra simple Thank You card. Just simple and straight forward....'

I was determined to finish this challenge before I went to bed tonight! And here it is! I had a lot of fun reviving that old trick of making your own paper lace by folding a long strip of paper and cutting into it strategically. The stamp is from the SU! 'Nice & Easy Notes' set (so is the birthday card stamp for the four year old in my previous post tonight).

Birthday Card for a four year old

I've just been having fun with some stamps I got around Christmas time. I have made a birthday card for a four year old friend, CASEing the layout from another (adult!) dear friend who sent me a wonderful card for Christmas. Carla alwasy insipres me and gives me ideas about how to make cards - without her encouragement I would probably only have started stamping after I retired! I plan to make a Thank You card next for the Daring Cardmaker's challenge as I know there will be a new challenge tomorrow and I don't want to get behind.

Birthday card

Well, I haven't done this week's challenge with the Thank You card yet, but I did make a birthday card. I was lent some retired SU! stamps by a lovely friend so decided to try some of them out on this card. I wanted the stamps to be part of the background but they just didn't 'pop' so I put them on different layers. Would try embossing or something else next time as I ran out of time to play. I had fun with the water colour background - just love those watercolouring pencils!!

New Years Card

This week's Dare was to make a New Years Card, with a recipe of:

• 2 printed papers,
• A Die cut,
• 3 brads or eyelets.
  

I used two patterend papers but their pattern is so light I am not sure it got picked up in the scan. The flowers were punched, as were the corners of the blue patterned paper, and the brads are in the centre of the flowers. The sentiment is computer generated as is the Happy 2007! I do wish all of you a happy New Year!

A special tag for a special present

Tuesday's challenge on Daring Cardmaker's was:

"We'd like you to make:
a special tag for a special present
be it for Mum or Dad, for the Love of Your Life or even for your Best Friend in the Whole Wide World, this year make sure their present has a special finishing touch and join in with this week's midweek mayhem."

I made a tag for my Mother's present. I scanned a photo of a tree I know she will like into my computer, then ran it through the photo prgram to emboss it, then printed it out small, used layers and a heart punch that I shaped to suit my purposes after punching out, and the ribbon is fabric ribbon with loopy lacey edges.

Friendship Photo Card

I discovered the lovely Photo Cards from Creative Memories recently and just had to make one for my good friend for Christmas. Thanks to another friend Vanessa for making it possible for us to work shop today and get it done! The picture of the whole card is a little blurry - the quote says "Remember, the greatest gift is not found in a store or under a tree, but in
the hearts of true friends." Cindy Lew
I included a better picture of the front cover for you to see how the embellishment is done.

Black & White Christmas card with a splash of colour

Another challenge answered!

Black and White Christmas cards with a splash of colour

This card was inspired by gum leaves of course - I thought the gum nuts looked kind of like Christmas bells. I used gold as my splash of colour.

Christmas Tags

"This week we'd like you to make 3 tags for your Christmas Presents using this list of words to help you; holly, gift, snowflake, ribbon, tree, silver" - that was one of the challenges on Daring Cardmakers last week, and I am just getting to it now. I chose silver and ribbon from the list and came up with these quick to make little cards. They are stamped and I used wooden silver stars to embellish them.

Stars and Stamping with a Twist

I have been playing with a new toy - a mouldable foam block that lets you use whatever image you have lifted from somewhere in your home, as a stamp! I heated it up with a hairdryer and then pressed it on to a doiley on one side, and flipped it over to press it into some woodwork on the other side, then stamped the backgrounds of these cards with it. The blue card has the wooden bg and the pink has the doiley bg. In real life, the bg images are more obvious. Now I have two more cards to send out to friends - thanks for the incentive!

Instead of making cards, I have been using every spare moment to finish a Hope album project for Christmas - my DSS Nathan is going to receive this album. I was so happy with the result! I sure hope DSS likes it too. There are two more albums to make for the other two 'kids' in 2007.

I also need to work on my own family album – I am just starting out with Creative Memories techniques and materials and the task before me is enormous as I am a compulsive phot-taker and have boxes of pics to sift through, but I think I will just take one little bit at a time – what I get done will be better than never doing anything, right?

Will be back making cards again soon, all you lovely people at Daring Card Makers!

Blush!

Thanks to all of you lovely people for leaving such wonderful comments on my blog! I was overwhelmed and delighted to receive your feedback. Being a member of the Daring Cardmaker's has been an amazing experience for me - it's lovely to have found you all! (I actually blushed with pleasure at reading all of your comments.)

I have been doodling another card in between all the other activities around here today. I am usually very slow at making my cards but am getting a little speedier. Sometimes I get an idea and everything just flows - other times it's painstaking work that takes DAYS! Kwim? The fast ones are few and far between. Anyway, I took inspiration from a biscuit tin I have all of my pens in for the broder of this one. It's my interpretation of their Victorian embellishment. I used copper, green and gold gel pens and a fine black felt pen to make the designs. The whole card is drawn work 'cept for the brads and paper/vellum/ribbon. It's a bit sparkly too - though there is NO embossing powder on this one :-)

Doodling

Thanks for the doodling challenge, ladies at Daring Cardmakers! I drew this pair of boots after I saw a stamp that I absolutely loved once, and couldn't buy the stamp. I used water colour pencils to shadethe doodled boots and then did doodles in the background too (the fence and grass and shadows etc). The flowers are stamped.

Sparkle Card!

OK - you ladies at Daring Cardmakers asked for Sparkle, and I think you've got it in this card! Talk about daring - all that gold embossing powder - I nearly set my kitchen alight using the toaster to 'cook' it! (Would that have counted alongside the coffee quirks I read about tonight?)
Anyway, here it is, in all its glory. I didn't do anything too technical. I used ordinary writing paper to print the words with Word Art, then jazzed them up with gel pens. I used embossing ink on the rest of the card, then gold embossing powder (did you notice??) Next I stamped the Merry Christmas sentiment on white cardstock, enhanced it with gel pens, pinked it, pinked the edges of the main matt, then jazzed it all up with some ribbon and wooden painted stars. Out with the glue stick and voila - one Sparkle card. Thanks for the idea - I now have a total of ONE Christmas card for my box! Gotta start somewhere, right?

Thank you for your comments, Daring Card Makers!

It was wonderful to log in to my blog today and to find three lovely comments from new stamping friends! It's fun to be part of a new community of Daring Card Makers. Here is the link to the Daring Card Makers blog for anyone else interested in having a look: http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com/

I think I'll just travel on over and see what this week's dare is...

New stamp maker

I went to a craft fair today and found this clever little sponge that takes on impressions you push it into. First you heat it, then you press it into something (like a brick wall or straw or a leaf) and it takes on that shape. Then you use it just like a stamp! When you are finished you just wash it out, reheat it and re-press - it takes on the new shape. And you can use both sides of it. It's called a 'make-a-stamp mouldable block form' and I got it from a lady who owns a scrap booking shop. Must go try it out - results to be posted later :-)
Meanwhile, here's a picture of my little dog Trixie playing Only Queen of the Old Back Yard Stump.

Hope, till tomorrow at least

Tomorrow I plan to make some more pages.

Hope so far...

Hope evermore

Hoping still

Continuing Hope

More Hope

Hope album

I'm part way through the album I am making for DS. The colours are nice - blues and 'cement' and a buttery yellow, mainly, with sprinklings of black. Once I make the 'hope' pages, I will start adding photographs. Most people probably do this as they go along, but not me. Maybe next time. I think this album is going to have quite an impact - "I Hope"! It seems like such a special thing to do for your children. I CASED nearly all of the layouts but they wound up not being exact copies :-)
Anyway, here are a couple of the pages so far.

A card & a photo journalling window

I just made a card witha fish hook in it. I found a turtle stampe that was really calling to me to be used, and so I combined the stamp and the hook with some twine, and voila - a card for a man's birthday. I would have positioned the stamps a little differently and also tried to stamp more 'cleanly' if I had had time to recreate the card. How do people get such crisp, clear stamps every time, anyway?

I also had a wonderful experience learning that working with photos, telling a story and using my card making 'skills' is very satisfying - I always thought I would not be interested in photo journalling/scrap booking - but a friend has introduced me to this craft in a lovely way, and I think it is going to continue to be a part of my craft life! I am making a 'Hope' album for our son who recently married, and want to do 'Hope' albums for our other son and daughter. It is such an inspiring thing to do for someone, and so special. Will post some of the results another time when I have had a chance to scan some pages of the album I am working on.

The Wedding Card

This week was a lot better craft-wise. Here is our DS's wedding card - it is a larger than average card. I found a special something to put inside too, about the Marriage Alter - it's a lovely bit of wisdom about how you have to put more into a marriage than you take out. A lady I just met in a Creative Memories class sent it to me - how wonderful and how timely!

I will post my creative memories page here once I work out how to scan it satisfactoriy - it is too big to fit on my scanner. The class was such an enjoyable experience, I'm going back for more. Real soon.

Till later.

Stamping and scrapping - Nil

I am working a lot this week so have had no time to do anything crafty - will have to be sure I include some fun time soon, or I will suffer withdrawal!!

Scrap Book Plans

OK. I have consulted with my friend and am about to start a scrap book for my first son. I have decided to do three scrap books, one for each child, and to have them ready for Christmas. It isn't as easy as it looks - I am now on the hunt for the right photos and thinking about how best to tell their stories. I have a lovely example of a Hope book that I want to try out for each of them. I have settled on which album to do first, the colours of that one, and some of the embellishments and photos, but still need to play some more. I want to stamp some of the pages as well, of course. I always take ages to think about how best to do things. Projects seem to have to percolate in the back of my mind for awhile till they can become 'real'. Will post some of the results as it goes along though :-)

Scrap booking tomorrow!

Tomorrow I get to try scrap booking with a friend who has been scrap booking for years. She is going to help me put together a gift for our DS who is getting married in less than 3 weeks. I have been gathering old photos of him today to see what we can come up with. I plan to make an album to give them too - for the wedding photos. Will post up the results when I have played for awhile. It's been a busy week as we have our church camp on at the moment. It's a lot of fun and a lot of work! Maybe there will be a scrap booking project that comes out of that as well..hmmm...stamping and scrap booking do go together pretty well, don't they? Must make a birthday card for an Aunt tomorrow too. More later.

Red Hat Day

Today was a lot of fun - a bunch of us got together to welcome one of our friends to the Red Hat Society! It was a fun day. I made a card for her that I have posted for you to see. We all dressed for the occasion, with four Red Hat Ladies being present and about another 10 Pink Hat Ladies also coming along to enjoy the day. I've posted a picture of my own Red Hat look for today.
Have any of you ever taken part in a Red Hat Society event? We are not a registered chapter, but it looks easy to become one! If you want to know more about the Red Hat Society, click on this link:
http://www.redhatsociety.com/