A few thank you cats.......

...yep, thank you cats, that's right. What says thank you more than a fat cat with flowers on? Well, OK, I'm stretching it a bit there, but hey, you work with what you've got, right? And at our crafting day on Thursday at Michelle's, Kay had brought her fat cat stamp, so I took full advantage!!

I needed 5 thank you ATCs all together, so I made three of this first one......

......plus one of these........

............and finally one of these..

Backgrounds on the first 4 are made by just plonking some Stampin' Up ink pads onto the card. They have a kind of woven pad on them, and it makes a lovely pattern. The background on the last one is smacked acetate technique with a lovely diamond pattern stamped onto it.

The swirl stamp round the edges is one of my bargains from Whitby, by Inkadinkado. Best go and get them ready to post, before I forget!!!!

I'm entering the first ATC on this post into the following challenges-

Drunken Stampers- Cats
Speedy the Cat's Friends Challenge- Think flowers
Crafty Catz- Animals

Ice cream colours....yum

This card started with the backing paper. This is a piece I've been saving for ages just because I liked it. You know that feeling right? Keeping some piece of card, or paper or stash because you like it too much? Well I'm fighting the urge and using my stash at the moment. I've got waaaaay too much, so I have to use some before I get any more.

The flowers are punched, and I used brown to make the colour scheme a little bit less sickly, lol.

Ingredients
Stamp- Sweet Pea's Purple Woods
Promarkers- Vanilla, Ivory, Saffron, Cool Grey 1 &2,  Pastel Pink, Cocktail Pink, Antique Pink, Cocoa, Terracotta, Buttercup, Tulip Yellow
Papers, pearls and ribbon from stash

I'm entering this into:

Papertake Weekly challenge- Ice cream colours (neopolitan!!!)
Sweet Pea Stampers- Sketch
Ooh La La- Flourishes and pearls

When stressed......get the stamps out!!!

I've had a bit of a stressful evening, well stressful in principle because my son and husband were both at their grading exam for their blue belts in Tae Kwon Do. I was at home with Little Legs, and once she was asleep I got really nervous for my boys. Ridiculous isn't it, but still, I needed distraction. SO in actualy fact, once craftily distracted I wasn't as stressed......

Distraction required, distraction arrived in the form of a list of blog challenges I'd written down earlier. I thought I'd have a go at making one card to fit several challenges at once..........

I'd already coloured a smashing Kraftin Kimmie image with Promarkers, and I wanted to use one of the new tan cards I bought for a song in Cardiff at the weekend. They've been lying on my desk ever since we got back, and I wanted to prove to myself that they were worth the 66p I paid for them (BARGAIN!!!!). The papers are from Stampin' Up, and the swirly stamp images are from Basic Grey- I looooove that stamp set, very, very versatile.

The swirls and inked edges of the main image are echoed on the couple of mini tags with the sentiment on. I added a couple of punched flowers, charms, lots of blingy gems and some punched swirls- my favourite punch at the moment, from Papershapers, it's huge and scrumptious......

I am entering this into the following challenges-

Kraftin' Kimmie- Charming (key and heart charms)
Allsorts- Tag/ticket
Totally Gorjuss- Bling it up
Stamp something- 2 of something (charms, flowers, papers, tags)
Fussy and fancy Friday- Recipe (3 images- Kraftin' Kimmie, sentiment, swirl; 3 embellishments- charms, flowers, gems; 3 Design papers)
By the Cute and Girly- Celebration (2nd entry, different craft item)
Passion for Promarkers- Anything goes

Last minute...again!!!!....and I won a prize.....again!!!!

OK, so I was doing really well with not being so last minute about making cards......until last Friday when I realised I'd wrapped a present for my friend's son and not made a card- all the cards I've got made up are girly ones, so my next task is to make up some emergency boy cards!

Ah well, at least it allowed me to tailor make one for him, and I quite enjoyed myself in the process! He's recently taken up Judo, so I spied a reason to ink up my karate/judo/TKD Luca stamp from Sugar Nellie. He's come in very useful has this stamp.

Backing papers are from my stash- the image is coloured with Promarkers, and stamped 3 times to decoupage up slightly. The extra swirls and the sentiment were from a Scrappy Cat clear stamp set. I stamped them in Onyx Black Versafine and highlighted the swirls with white gel pen. I managed to smudge a bit of ink on the sentiment, so to cover up my mistake I used a sponge with lots of  holes in it (you  know the cheapo nylon ones that look like really expensive natural sponges), ripped a bit off and sponged on some Pumice Distress Ink.

The challenge over at Crafty Cardmakers at the moment is to decorate the inside of your card as well as the outside. I'm guilty of neglecting the insides- so it was a nice change to take some time to make the inside a bit posh too!!

On reflection, it was totally the wrong paper to choose, try writing on those stripes, lol, but I won't make the same mistake twice!!!!


Ooh yes, and I wanted to tell you that I won over on the Kraftin' Kimmie blog, where the challenge was to make something that wasn't a card. I entered Hattie's door name canvas. Woohoo!!! Doing the happy dance, la la la la.

A princess name plaque for my little princess

My lovey Little Legs (aged 4) has been a very big girl and has slept right through the night for a whole week. TO celebrate, she asked me for a pink picture with her name on for her bedroom this morning. Mommy worked her magic and Hey Presto! here it is......

It's a 10 x 30cm canvas (just under 4 x 12 inches), which I sprayed with Candy Pink Cosmic shimmer mist, then swished it around with a paint brush to make sure it covered all the white. Then I sprayed with more Candy Pink and a splodge or two of Mallow Blush. Once dry, I stamped over it with some foam swirly stamps and foam letter stamps in Blazing Red Stazon, I find anything less permanent doesn't stay put on the coloured canvas.

I'd already coloured a Kraftin' Kimmie image with Promarkers, so on she went, along with some paper flowers and a generous dotting of Stickles.

She is very pleased with it, and is already asking Daddy to put it on her wall!! Not bad for a morning's work, eh?!

I'm entering this into.......

the Kraftin' Kimmie challenge which is Anything BUT a card,
the Celebrate something challenge at Stamp Something,
Shiny, sparkly and special over at Papertake,
By the cute and girly's Celebrations challenge.

Phew! That's a lot of challenges, and a happy girl :)

Monday blues and a naughty cat

I think I have the Monday blues today, I'm hoping a quick blog post will cheer me up a bit. Woke up this morning to find a minor disaster awaiting me on my desk, courtest of my naughty cat. I've been working on a set of 10 tags for a swap with the Altered Art Tag swap group on Facebook, all of which were very nearly finished and were lined up drying on my desk. Dotty the cat had sat on my desk this morning, dipping her paw into my waterpot (I should have emptied it, I know!!!) and flicked water over 3 of my tags! They're drying on the radiator, and I'll see if anything is salvageable later on. Aaargh!!!

So, in the meantime, a couple of new ATCs to show off.

This is a little sneak peek at what my Tags will look like- a similar background and the same snooty lady stamp, but I won't tell you any more, as I want them to be a surprise.....

This is a Tim Holtz stamp, borrowed from my mate Kay, along with her background, so not much work in it from me really!!!!! Lots of beads in the corners.

OK, I feel a bit better now.....

A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

I've been adding a few bits and pieces to my Docrafts gallery, and thought I'd share a few bits here as well.


First there's this- made in December for my friend's little girl (she's also my little girl's best friend). It's a little 8x8" canvas. Painted, inked, stamped and embellished. Simples! Couldn't put it up before Christmas in case her Mom saw it....

This ATC is one of my entries for a swap (again on Docrafts)- for back to basics stamping, using just black and white. I've used a Stampin' Up dragonfly and clear heat embossed him to make him pop up a bit. I love my dotty stamp as well, so I used it on the flower too! Couldn't find any black ribbon so I took the scissors to the inside of my top and cut off the hanging ribbons......go on admit, it, you've all done it!!!!

And finally...... some tags that are works in progress.....

I made these after watching a Paperartsy tutorial on You Tube via their blog. Take a look it's fab. So, these are made using Ferro paste and stamping into it to get a raised effect. I used all Paperartsy stamps too. Once dry I rubbed darker colours of acrylic paints into the stamping and then followed it with lighter colours on top, so that the indentations stand out. The blue one has a smudge or two of silver Croco on it too, which is a Crackle paint I just had to try out...... So, my next move is..... well I have no idea what to do next. They need something else on top of them, but inspiration hasn't struck me yet!! Any suggestions?

In love with Gorjuss.....

I'm not normally one for really cute stamps, but I do love my Gorjuss girl holding a star...... whilst I had her out to make some Christmas cards, I thought I'd stamp a few extra images for birthdays I have coming up this month. Take a look, it's great to see how different one stamp can look just with different colours.

Of course, I have made a couple more Christmas cards too, but the Christmas stash is now firmly packed away until next year.

OK, so the last one was just to make sure you were paying attention. She's one of my Stampotique girls with a swirly background and a Christmas hat brad.

I think that may be my cutesy phase over for a while. I promise more arty stuff to come once Christmas is over and done......

Happy Christmas!!!!

Heir to the crown

I promised photos of the mdf crowns I'm working on, and here they are.

MDF crown before

I've made some progress today with my first one. It's painted in a raspberry pink and I've begun to stamp. After a bit of testing on some scrap card I decided to stamp in red Stazon. It's drying a dark pink colour, although I want to look at it again in the light of day- I can always paint over it!!!!

The crown so far....

I'll be in search of letters now to spell out the name, so watch this space.