.....and the three bears!

Just a quick reminder that you still have until Sunday midnight to enter the latest Teddy Bo challenge,

Buttons and Bows,

with a chance of winning a great prize of a £10 voucher to Bunny Zoe's store and a couple of images from the Teddy Bo store.

This week I have made three cards using some of the images from last Tuesday's new releases, Christening Bea, Christening Bo and Communion Bea. Also found some lovely crosses at Clipart Fairy which are just perfect for these cards, papers used for all three cards are also from the Clipart Fairy.

  Christening Bea digi, paper from Button It Pink interactive set here, pink cross here, Marianne dies for circle and corners, pearls and ribbons from stash, and lots and lots of glamour dust, which isn't showing up too well in the photos.

Christening Bo digi, background paper is a freebie from here, blue cross here, ribbon and pearls (teddy Bo's buttons) from stash, used nesties for circles and plenty of glamour dust.

Holy Communion Bea, pink cross as before, spotty paper from here, insert paper from here, ribbons, flowers and pearls from stash, Bea's shoes have been painted with pearly watercolour paint and I used Tulip pearl fabric paint on her headress, and lots and lots of glamour dust.

I am going to enter my cards into the following challenges, for most of the challenges any one of the cards would be suitable, but for the odd ones that ask for something specific to just one of my cards I will list the appropriate card next to the challenge.

Craft Your Passion - use a bear
House of Gilli - Ribbon and Pearls
Paper Playtime - Anything Goes
One Stitch at a time - Mothers day or Babies
Pink Gem - anything but square - Holy communion card
Delightful Challenges - Pastels and ribbon
Dutch dare - Celebration
Paper Romance - baby themed easel card - Christening Bo

Stashbox Stamps - Spring has Sprung!

Try saying that after a couple of glasses of wine LOL!

It's that time of the month again, Stashbox Stamps Friday, this is something new we have recently started doing at the Polkadoodles challenge blog to show how versatile the Polkadoodle CD's are alongside any other rubber stamp companies products.

This week we want to see cards or projects using your stashbox stamps around the theme of

"The Spring has Sprung"

Check out the Polkadoodle challenge blog to see what the other DT members have come up with.

This week I have used the Ursula template set from the Get in shape section of the Back to Nature CD rom, I have replaced Ursula the cow, with a Magnolia stamp coloured with Promarkers. The dragonfly is from the Sundae of Seasons CD, it has been printed onto pergamano paper, cut out layered and glittered. The flowers grass and sentiment circle have all been layered up with foam pads, the fence is hinged onto the card at the side, I have attached a little concertina of card between Tilda and the card to hold her and the fence slightly away from the front of the card. I just can't seem to get a decent photo of all the dimension though.

Don't miss Nikky on Create and Craft tomorrow (Sat 26th) at 12pm, she will be launching her Alice in Wonderland stamps and CD rom of co-ordinating papers.

I will be entering this card into the following challenges.

Crafty Purple Frog - Green

Creative Cottage - Spring has sprung

Paper Pretties - Spring

The Paper Shelter - Flower Power

Scrap Creations - Spring has sprung

Creative Craft Friends - Spring

Stamps R Us - Spring

Stamp Something - Spring

Sheer Flowers Butterfly Cards

Ok as promised another post for today, I'm still bored with the wedding invites, will have to get stuck in again tomorrow though as I really need to get them done. As a break from the invitations, today I have made a couple of cards using the Sheer Flowers Blue Butterfly interactive set from The Clipart Fairy.

All papers and images used are from the kit, the extra layers for the butterflies have been printed onto pergamano paper, I have added pearls to the butterfly body on the Butterfly Wishes card, and a couple of rhinestones to the sentiment panel on the Mother's Day card, oh and lots of glamour dust to both cards, they are very, very sparkly. All sentiments have been computer generated.

Butterfly Wishes

I made up the butterfly wishes sentiment, which starts on the front of the card and follows through to the inside, it reads as follows :- Butterfly wishes are coming your way... filled with happiness to brighten your day... wishing you joy, and love and laughter, for today and ever after!

My second card is for Mother's day, which is not that far away for us here in the UK.

I made the above card first and after it was finished the insert gave me the inspiration for the butterfly wishes card.

These two cards are a great example of why I love digital crafting so much, you can buy one kit and use it to make a whole variety of different things, the images, papers etc, can be sized to whatever you need, rotated, flipped whatever, they are just so, so versatile.

Hope you like my cards I am going to enter the Mothers Day card into the following challenges

Crafts and Me - Anything Goes

Creative Craft World - Mothers Day and Bling

Flutterby Wednesdays - anything but must contain Butterfly, Fairy or Angel

The Pixie Cottage - Sparkle

Simon Says Stamp - Mothers Day/Girlie

Papertake Weekly - It's a Mum thing

Die Cut Dreams - Mothers Day

Wendy's March Workshop

In my post last friday I mentioned that I was off to Wendy's (clipart Fairy) Workshop on the saturday, well finally got around to taking photos (am supposed to be making wedding invitations, but I find it so repetitive and boring, I'm taking a break, I'm one of those people who doesn't usually make the same card twice LOL!)

Anyway here are some pics of the six fab cards we made at the workshop.


Bunny Fence card

Button It Pink Flower

ready to print here, interactive here

Shaper hollow frame On your special day card

Sorry about the glare on the acetate!

Ready to print here, interactive here

Sheer Butterfly card

Butterfly printed onto pergamano paper.

Ready to print here, interactive here.

Square Frame Boy Trendz

Ready to print here, interactive here.

Wedding Car

Top shaped car printed onto pergamano paper

Ready to print here, interactive here.

Wendy has some great tuts for most of these cards on her blog here.

It was a great day, hard work but lots of laughs, a big hi to Donna, Sue, Denise and everyone else, see you all in May!

Hopefully there will be another post later with a couple of cards I've made using the Sheer flowers Butterfly interactive set.

Teddy Bo Rocks!

Welcome to another Teddy Bo Tuesday, this week we have a new challenge,

Buttons and Bows

So lets see your cards or projects containing a Teddy Bo image and buttons and bows.

Our challenge this week is being sponsored by Bunny Zoe's Crafts,
Our winner will receive a £10 voucher to spend at Bunny Zoe's store and of course your 3 digi stamps from the Teddy Bo Store. Our 2 runners up will also get to choose a free graphic from the Teddy Bo Store and all our winners get a badge for their website or blog.

Click here to check what's new at Bunny Zoe's

This week I have made an 8 x8 inch easel card with dangly bits! using the Teddy Bo Rockstar image, which was coloured in Photoshop, all papers used for the card and paper piecing of Teddy Bo's clothes came from the Clipart Fairy's - Men in Mind papers, I used buttons from stash and added my sentiment to them using Safmat, the bows are jute string. I have added a couple of rows of gold glamour dust around the star to glam it up a bit. The easel has a shelf which I cut slots into, I added musical notes to acetate again using safmat and cut around them leaving a narrow strip of acetate coming out of the top. I pushed the strips through the slots and then attached a decorated card circle to each strip to hold them in place above the shelf, when the card is closed the acetate lays flat at the front, once opened up it dangles. There is quite a lot of dimension to this card as the star is layered up and then Teddy Bo is layered onto the star, unfortunately this doesn't show in the photos.

Card flat

Card open

Bows and buttons with Safmat sentiment

Side view showing the shelf and a dangle!

Inside - with room for a message

Don't forget to check out this weeks new images in store, there are some real cuties, here are a couple of my faves

and there are lots more!

I am going to enter this card in the following challenges:

MyPartner in Crafting Crime - 3 or more buttons
Pear Tree Designs - Happy Birthday
The Crafty Pad - Use a digi (Teddy Bo)
Creative Inspirations - Easel Card
One stitch at a time - Something for the boys
Crafty Emmas Store - Inspired by a song (Rock star by Nickelback)
Sugar Creek Hollow - Anything goes
Totally Gorjuss - Button It
Delicious Doodles - Dimensional
Totally Papercraft - Buttons

It's a Pirate's Life for me!

The theme for the Polkadoodle challenge this week has been set by Tracie and she wants to see

PROJECTS MADE WITH BOOKS IN MIND

Nikky is at the Harrogate show tomorrow and Sunday where she is launching a new range of stamps a CD rom containing loads of papers and lots of new bits and pieces.

If you want a sneak peak at the new stamps head on over to the Polkadoodle blog as a lot of the DT have used them for this weeks challenge.

I went for something a bit different - using an old hard backed book picked up cheaply in a charity shop, I stuck the pages together and cut out the middle to make a box, which I then decorated to look like... a book?!!!!!!

I've used a black and white stampie from the Spring section of the Sundae of Seasons CD rom removed the glasses added an eye patch and coloured it in photoshop, also using red polka dot paper from the same CD to piece together a bandanna. I paper pieced the stripe top, jeans and boots from the Not for Girls CD. The skull and cross bones were taken from  the Candy Doodles CD.

At this point I made the mistake of asking Will my grandson, what he thought of it, as I was really pleased with what I had come up with, but not Will no, "he needs a sword nanny, he can't be a proper pirate without a sword" so I had to rack my brains and ended up using a tree stampie (upside down) and two Christmas baubles from Sundae of Seasons winter section to make the sword, which I then coloured in photoshop, - unfortunately not the right kind of sword - according to Will  it should be a cutlass, but you know what they say... to Err is human, to Arrr is pirate! LOL!.

I covered the book with paper from the Paper Boutique Vol III CD and used a sizzix die from The Craft Bug to cut out the label shape using another paper from PBV-III. I printed a burgundy colour onto some leather finish card to make the spine, corners and fastener and used a piece of jute tape behind the pirate to add a bit of texture. Some magnetic tape holds the box closed.

Will thought it would make a great place for hiding his pirates, so that's exactly what we did. Will wanted some of his pirates guarding his 'treasures' when I took the  photographs, so I took a couple with them for him and then some without for blogging, but preferred the ones with the pirates so here they are.

Hope you have a great weekend, I am off to a Clipart Fairy workshop tomorrow which I am really looking forward to and as Meg is in respite for the week we are decorating her room while she is away including replacing her sink and radiator, so we (Eric) have a busy few days ahead. 

This project is suitable for the following challenges:

Charisma Cardz - Use die cuts

Digi Doodles Shop Best - Anything goes

Shelleys Images Blogspot - Show us what you've got

Paper pretties - Masculine

Scrap creations - anything goes

Incy Wincy Designs - for the Boys

Ooh La La Creations - It's a Man thing

Teddy Bea's been Mugged!!!!!

It's Tuesday again and that means new Teddy Bo and Bea images in store, look out for the pre-coloured images, ideal for making a quick card (or if you are not a colourer in-er LOL!), and beautifully coloured by FairyD, along with a great selection of new digi stamps.

For my mug I have used one of last weeks new Zodiac releases, Teddy Bea Taurus, coloured in photoshop, and a great Letraset product called Safmat.

*Blurb below taken from the Letraset site*

An acid free, self-adhesive, transparent film for use with your desktop printer.

Safmat film is virtually invisible when applied, so only your printed text or image can be seen!

Suitable for Inkjet printers or black and white Laser printers

You print on it just as you would normally, then cut around the image and peel the backing paper away and it sticks to whatever surface you apply it to. It is brilliant for getting images or wording onto items that won't go through you printer, thick card for example, and I am going to give it a go on acetate, as once applied I think you would be able to see the image from both sides.

I have applied Bea to a really cheap white mug, bought at Asda, and added Taurus personality traits to the back of the mug, obviously it can only be used for decoration as the images aren't heat set on the mug or anything, but I love it so much I am thinking of getting it made properly by one of those places that personalise mugs and stuff (Taurus is my star sign).

There is still time to enter the Teddy Bo challenge, you have until Sunday to get your entry in, so snap up one of the fab new images and get creating!

I am going to enter my mug into these challenges.

Craft your days away - Black and White (am hoping it is suitable)

Simply Create - Monochromatic

Paper Sundaes - Keep it Simple

Black, white and one other

Happy Friday! nearly the weekend again woohoo!
This week the Polkadoodles challenge is

Black, White and one other

We want to see cards and projects made using black, white and one other colour of your choice.

This week I decided to make an anniversary card, and use red as my other colour, I just think black,white and red look so classy together. Everything I used came from the Love and Cherish CD, I coloured the couple with promarkers, cut around the frame design, stuck it onto some red card and cut around again and then mounted the whole thing over the couple with foam pads, some polka dot ribbon (which was wrapped around some Primark pyjamas) and rhinestones in the flower centres, (from stash) finished off the card.

 I used papers from the same cd it finish off the inside of the card.

Check out Create and Craft tomorrow at 12pm and 6pm to see Nikky demonstrating some more great Polkadoodle products.

Teddy Bo Tuesday

It's that time again, another Teddy Bo Tuesday and a new Teddy Bo challenge. Congratulations to the top three from last week, your cards are just fabulous ladies, in fact all the entries for our challenges so far have been amazing.
Don't forget to check out the Teddy Bo store for new arrivals, there are some gorgeous new images that you will just have to have!
Now onto the challenge, this week we have a Guest Design Team member Kathy, and she has set the theme for this challenge, Kathy has made a sketch for us to use.

We are being sponsored this week by Crafty Emma's Store and she is offering as the prize the winners choice of 4 x 10m bundles of  Divine Twine. I wish I could enter the challenge myself, what a great prize.

Now I'm not a great lover of sketches, I know some people love them, but I find them a bit constraining, I like to go with the flow when making a card, so I have found this weeks challenge a bit of a struggle and am not really happy with it.

For my card I used the adorable Baby You're a Star image. I coloured Bea in photoshop and paper pieced her clothes with papers from the Sweet Candy paper pack from Clipart fairy, I used papers from the same pack to decorate the card. I used a Marianne creatables die to cut the fancy circle, which is decorated with glamour dust and pearls from stash. The lemon vintage seam binding is from The Ribbon Girl and the ribbon threaded lace is again from stash. The sentiment was made using peelies.

Don't forget to check out the new Teddy Bo and Bea images in the store and we hope you can join us for this week's challenge, it is such a pleasure to visit your blogs and see your beautiful creations.

I am going to enter my card in these challenges

Alphabet challenge Blog - R is for ribbon

KB Cute Monday - use the colour pink

Digis with attitude - anything goes

Paper playtime - anything goes