Polkadoodle Party Time!

Time for another Polkadoodle challenge and this week Tracie chose the theme Party Time, she wants to see your party related projects.
I think I got a bit carried away with the Party Time theme this week as I have made a cutlery holder, goodie bag (using an A5 envelope), a lollipop cover, wrappers for a chocolate bar and tube of sweets, a treat bag topper, a pin the tail on the elephant game, a tic, tac, toe game and a memory game (pairs).
I used a paper from the Sundae of Seasons CD Rom and lots of images from the new Paper Boutique III CD Rom.

Head on over to the Polka Doodles challenge blog to check out the rest of the Design Teams projects and then show us yours.
Also watch out for Nikky on Create and Craft on Saturday at 11am and 3pm, she'll have loads of goodies to show you and a couple of demo's too.

Teddy Bo Tuesday

Make sure you go and check out the Teddy Bo store, there's more fabulous new stamps and our second challenge is up today on the Teddy Bo challenge blog, but before I give you the details I would like to send big congrats to Lim who won our first ever challenge with her beautiful card and receives super candy from Wild Orchid Crafts, and Kathy, Wendy and Ellen our top three who are lucky enough to all get to pick a Teddy Bo or Bea image from the store, also a big thank you to everyone who entered the challenge, all the cards were brilliant, and picking a winner was a very hard job, but if you love the bears, then it's definitely worth having a go at the challenge, you might get to win yourself one.

The theme for this week's challenge is Seeing Double, your card or project must have two items that match on it, and we are being sponsored this week by McMahon Five Designs.com, the winner receives a $15 gift certificate, they have a great selection of  products, so it's a prize well worth having.

Here's what I made for this weeks challenge.

As you open it up, two little shutters slide apart to show the second image and a sentiment in the middle of the card.

This week instead of colouring Teddy Bo I made him sepia and just coloured his flowers, I think he looks fab, what do you think?

Digi papers came from the Clipart Fairy, self adhesive pearls and flowers ( I brushed them with watered down pva glue and dipped them in glamour dust, to give them lots of sparkle) from local craft shop and stash, heart pin from the Ribbon Girl and ribbon from stash. I also rubbed Color Box liquid chalk inkpad over the edges of everything.

Don't forget to check out the new images in store and enter this weeks challenge for a chance to win some fabulous prizes.

New Home Project

Well, another week has flown by and it's Polka Doodles Friday once again. The theme for this week's challenge is 'There's no place like home' and we want to see projects and cards suitable for a new/moving home gift.
I decided to decorate a bottle of wine, make a keyring and give a small card which will hold a gift card. I used products from the All around and Everywhere CD Rom - Magical Days collection.
The keyring was made with Shrink Plastic by enlarging the house stampie (in photoshop) to twice the size I wanted the finished design to be, adding the sentiment, then flipping the whole thing horizontally to give me a mirror image. I printed this out and traced over the design onto shrink plastic with a black Staedtler Lumocolor pen. I coloured the image with Sakura Stardust gel pens, cut out the shape I wanted, punched a hole for the keying to go through and then used my heat gun to shrink it.
The keyring is one of those trolley coin keyrings, (lots of places seem to give them away to advertise their company or products, and they are brilliant for altering, as the coin comes off easily). The house on the little card is layered to give it some dimension and the card has a little pouch inside to hold a gift card. It's the kind of gift I would like, (particularly the wine, mmmmm!).

 Pop over to the Polka Doodles challenge blog to see all the other Design Team inspiration. It would be lovely if you could join us in the challenge this week too.

More Teddy Bea!

When making the card for the Guest Designer spot mentioned in the previous post I was inspired to make another version of the pop up box featuring Teddy Bea. I have been dying to use this fairy image, she really looks like she is staring up at the stars, which gave me the idea to have some stars floating above her head, and when colouring her in (digitally) I just felt an overwhelming desire to put yellow spots on her boots!!!! this then became the underlying theme for the rest of the card. I decided purple card with yellow spots was needed, but didn't have any in my stash, so made my own (insert proud grin here LOL!), then decided that I also needed ribbon to match (more grinning!), so whipped some up and there you have it. The sentiment circle comes from the Colour Your Own decoupage sheet from Teddy Bo and Co, as does the fairy Bea image. I think she looks super cool with her spotty boots!

Flat for posting

Side view

Stars floating on acetate

I am going to enter Teddy Bea into the following challenges:

Pile it On - Anything Goes

Prairie Fairy Fridays - Birthday

Totally Papercrafts - Happy Birthday

The Sisterhood of Crafters - Birthday

Incy Wincy Designs - Bears, bears, bears.

Guest Designer Spot

Today I have a guest designer spot on Penny's Paper - Crafty Challenge blog. I was lucky enough to be picked to be the featured artist last month and, from now on, the featured artist is being given the opportunity to be a guest designer the following month.
The challenge today is Anything Goes and is being sponsored by Whimsy Stamps, I used the Loving Ewe stamp by Meljen, coloured digitally in photoshop and papers from the Clipart Fairy to make a pop up box. The sentiment was a freebie from Meljen and the arch of hearts was made using a Wizard,- hearts of love die (don't think you can get this any longer), flower and gems are from stash, then because I loved the image so much, and also to show the versatility of digi stamps, I made a second card. This time I enlarged the image to make an A5 card, scored and folded it, then cut around both layers at once, printed the image out a couple more times and layered up the design. I was really pleased with the way they both turned out. Hope you like them.

The whole thing folds flat for posting.

And the second card -

The quality of the image is just as good at the larger size as the smaller, and you can't do this with rubber stamps!

I am going to enter the pop up box card in the following challenges:

Papercrafting Journey - Let's get digital
Marks Finest papers - Hearts
Phindy's place - Valentine or for a loved one
Lexi's creations - Say it with Love
Delicious Doodles- use 3 colours - Red, White, Black
Secret Crafter Saturday challenge - With Love
Southern Girls - Totally Loved Up

and finally  Meljens Designs - Round or square, hope the box counts as it is square when popped up, with a semi-circle (circle!?!?!?!) of hearts

It's Teddy Bo Tuesday!

Well folks, another Teddy Bo Tuesday, I can't believe how quickly this last week has gone.
Head on over to the Teddy Bo store and take a look at all the new digi's, they are totally fabulous! Bo and Bea are getting all romantic in the run up to valentines day, so if you are in the mood for a little romance, go see what they are up to.
There is only four days left to enter the first Teddy Bo challenge, and we have lots of beautiful entries already, if you haven't entered yet, why not! LOL! seriously though, if you make a card using a Teddy Bo image, make sure you enter, after all you've got to be in it to win it!

Here is my card for this week, made using one of the new images, Bo and Bea dancing, don't they look sweet.
I made a little gazebo for them, with candlelight and everything, so they can do lots of smoochy dancing, maybe even a Rum-bear (Rumba, get it!). The gazebo is a shadow box card, which folds flat for posting.
Bo and Bea were coloured in photoshop and their clothes are paper pieced using papers from the Clipart Fairy. Bea has matching boots, and both the dress and boots are extra sparkly, (Bea was up all night sewing every sparkle on by hand, she told me so herself), and Bo looks very handsome in his stripey tails. Candlesticks came from the Bathroom Accessory pack. The roof was made with papers again from the Clipart Fairy, punched with a Martha Stewart border punch and layered in alternate colours.

I'm going to enter this card in the Free for All challenge at Pear Tree Designs.

Come back tomorrow for another Teddy Bea card, one of my favourites so far!

Wendy's Workshop

I've had a madly busy weekend, mostly cardmaking but also having to catch up with things at home too. On saturday I attended Wendy's (the Clipart Fairy) second workshop. In six hours we made six cards, a box for one of the cards and a wall hanging. It was a very busy, but enjoyable day and a big thank you to Wendy for getting it all together, also a quick hi to Donna and Sue, hope you managed to pop along and have a quick shufti at the blog. Anyway without further ado here is what we produced.

Brilliant cards, and all the sets are available at the Clipart Fairy store and if you pop on over to her blog there is lots of pictures from the workshop, thanks to Harri, Wendy's daughter who was photographer for the day.

Hope you can come back tomorrow for Teddy Bo Tuesday, with Teddy Bo news and another card to show you, and then on Wednesday I am guest designer over on Penny's Paper-crafty challenge blog, so there will be more cards to look at including yet another Teddy Bo card, which I absolutely love to bits, and can't wait for you to see!

Bye for now!