Still got the blues

My friend liked the kangaroo card so much that she asked for a few more, so I'm making a few blank, adaptable cards for her to choose from. Here is Willow all cosied up for the cold weather.

I'm entering her into these challenges:
Basic Grey: shabby chic (Wisteria papers)
Bizzy Becs store challenge: create a tag
Stampin' for the Weekend: blue, buttons and bling
Whiff of Joy: sketch

Aussie sunset

Just one challenge for this card, which is a commission from a friend of mine. She wanted a card to send back to Wales with an Australian theme. Like the way this sketch from Sketch Saturday has evolved?

And today I'm a robin

When I was about 9 or 10 I got a crochet-for-beginners kit for Christmas. I didn't open it at the time, but a few months later I was woken up very early in the morning by the sun shining brightly through my curtains, and I couldn't get back to sleep. Wide awake, I went searching through my room for entertainment and I came across the kit under my bed. When Mum came in to get me up I was sitting up in bed, half-way through making a hat for my little toddler cousin. I never got into knitting, although my Mum tried to teach me - crochet was always my "thing", after paper of course!

I tried to make a paper scarf for this card first but it just didn't look right. After a bit of thought, out came the crochet hook, but I only had one reel of crochet cotton (and no wool at all) so my lipstick red Copic marker was used for the red stripes. Well I haven't crocheted for years and years, but it's funny how a skill learned at age 10 never leaves you. This was such fun.

The card is for my brother-in-law who is a fervent Bristol City football fan (or soccer to you American folk!) Their colours are red and white and they are known as the robins.  I used this amazingly versatile House Mouse stamp which is one of my favourites, stamped on Kraft paper and coloured with Copic markers. Stamping on Kraft was last week's challenge for Cute Card Thursday but I didn't get it finished in time to enter it. Ah well. The greeting is stamped with EK Success alphabet stamps and punched with my $2 store star punch. It's simpler than my usual style, but that's appropriate, being for a blokey.

Charisma Cardz: male card
Colour Create: white, brown, cream + one other colour
Creative Card Crew: anything goes
House Mouse: football colours
Simon Says Stamp: stars and stripes
Spoonful of Sugar: things with wings
Truly Scrumptious: anything goes

BG in pink

This card is not for anyone in particular, I just made it because I felt like it. And because I love pink and sparkles. Here is Whiff of Joy's Willow with her basket coloured with Copics, with American Crafts buttons, Coffee Ice Stickles and the greeting from Lili of the Valley.

It fits into the following challenges:
Basic Grey: mix'n'match (Indian Summer, Kioshi and Green at Heart papers)
Charisma Cardz: birthdays in pink
Creative Card Crew: cute'n'girlie
Simon Says Stamp: sparkle and shine (there is glitter on all the edges and the buttons are glitter buttons, although the photo doesn't show it up very well)
Stampavie: summer
Sketch Saturday: sketch
Truly Scrumptious: anything goes

Butterflies at LIM

Yesterday evening I made this beautiful, beautiful butterfly card, and I fell asleep planning a hundred more. This morning I can remember 2 or 3 of them and I came up with another in the shower. I love how showers get my brain working, but you can't exactly write things down in there, can you? And sometimes my ideas evaporate like the steam. Ah well.

Here is yesterday's card - isn't it dramatic!

I used a stamp from Inkdinkado's Utopiary collection, a butterfly punch and my latest holographic embossing powder. I first saw this stuff on a card from a scrappy friend back in 2009, and I've been looking out for it ever since - I just didn't know what to look for. I struck gold when I was asking in our LSS for white embossing powder last week. At last! I stamped the butterflies in black, then stamped them again in embossing ink/glue, and sprinkled them with the holographic powder and heated them. Then I punched out the butterflies and stuck them down. The greeting stamp is one I was given so I don't know what it is.

It's for these challenges:
Less Is More: butterflies
Simon Says Stamp: sparkle and shine
Spoonful of Sugar: anything goes
Truly Scrumptious: anything goes

Dark, damp and dreary

Today began in a yellowish haze of rain, and it has been dribbling off and on all day. Often only enough to darken the ground rather than make it shiny, but I won't need the retic on. The dam capacity for Perth is down to 22.7% - about the lowest in the country - we need this rain so badly. More is forecast for the rest of the week, along with wind. It's a good thing I'm pretty up to date with the laundry. It was dark before 5:30 tonight.

The only thing to do on a evening like this when the man is away, is to snuggle up with lighted candles, hot soup, Antiques Roadshow on TV, and make Christmas cards. Even though it's the wrong time of year, the shorter, darker days jerk me back to Novembers in England and preparing for the festive season.

Thank you to Fab's Big Christmas Cards Challenge for satisfying my unseasonal appetite! The format is different this year. Instead of 1 card a week, which must have been crazy difficult to think up new ones, Fab is running monthly challenges, suggesting 1 card in January, 2 in February etc. If all of them are followed you should end up with 78 cards by Christmas.

I just couldn't get into Christmas when the temperatures were up in the 40s and the night-time temperatures didn't go below 30*c, but now I'm all ready to catch up, starting with my 5 for May, which has a subject of pastel colours and/or embossing. Here's one of them. I can show you the rest if you ask! Isn't that the cutest stamp?

LIM fever

OK I admit it. I'm hooked on CAS.

I went off and looked at some of the other beautiful creations, and fell in love with nearly all of them. The simplicity and drama of (the other) Squirrel's excited me, and I've shamelessly lifted her design. Hope you don't mind, my little furry friend!

I used verdigris and gold embossing powder with my Kanban Autumn Silhouettes stamp, which really goes well with the peachy pearlised card. Mmmmm.

Owl be embossed!

I love this week's challenge at Less Is More of embossing on a one-layer card. I used a lovely, heavy, navy blue card for my Cuttlebug owl embossing folder, and got out my heat gun and heat embossed the greeting in silver so it's a double embossing project. I painted Smooch Illuminate over the owl to give it a subtle glimmery emphasis - just enough so that it still works for my guys' birthdays. It/they. Um yes, as usual with my LIM cards, I couldn't stop at just the one!

You know what the biggest challenge is with these LIM cards though? Photographing them! I think I've spent more time getting a decent picture than actually making the card with nearly every challenge. There really is no darker border around the card, and the non-matching beige is my floor tile, not part of the card. At least I'm learning lots about lighting, white balance on my camera and photo-editing software. Roll on Saturday for the next one!

Willow shopping

A very appropriate image for DH's sister, because she loves shopping. In fact, we send money over for her birthday so she can shop for whatever she wants from us, and she shows us afterwards on Skype what "we bought" for her, which works very well when you live on the other side of the world.

I'm entering this into these challenges:
Creatalicious: flourishes
Cute Card Thursday: distressing
Spoon full of Sugar: sketch
Stampavie: ribbons
Whiff of Joy: aqua, pink and cream (Willow Shopping stamp from WoJ)

Scrap Whispers May Blog Hop

Hi everyone, and thank you for taking part in our monthly Scrap Whispers Blog Hop once more! If you've come here from anywhere other than Scrap Whispers, then please go back there and start again, and you'll see what this post is about - all will become clear.

Georgina is hosting the blog hop for May, and after all the activity of NSBD last week, she has combined something delightfully simple with your requests for new ways of using up scraps. Very cool! I followed the tutorial but to start with I got my twists too rounded and ended up with this:

The loops didn't sit nicely and the outside ones got squashed. I didn't twig what I'd done wrong, and decided to try another one with thinner strips of 1/2" and I got this:

Pretty and quite acceptable, but not like Georgina's, so I had a third go. This time I angled my loops so that each looked more like an elongated figure of eight rather than a rounded one, and bingo! I got this:

How cute is that! And having got the hang of it, and being the scraps-user-upper that I am, I'm going to experiment next on different sizes for my smaller scraps, because these little chaps are simply addictive. I'm thinking Stickles... inked edges... ribbon... stamps in metallic ink... oh sorry, where was I?

To find out how to make these gorgeous bows properly, go back to Scrap Whispers for the tutorial, whip up your own creation and post it on your blog. Then follow the links through the Design Team's blogs leaving some love on each. Don't forget to link back to http://scrapwhispers.blogspot.com/ in your post.

Scrap Whispers
Georgina
Nilsa
Kelly
Rosey (here)
and Sherri after a few Blogger problems!

We're missing Kimberly who is having a month off from blog hopping, and Helen who is in the middle of having new flooring fitted and has had to pack away all her stash - poor thing! Gah! Hopefully normal service will be resumed next month, and meanwhile we hope life, the universe and everything settles down for you girls.

Well I'll leave you all to fashion your own supply of gift toppers out of leftovers, because you won't be able to stop making these once you start. Link us up to your variations and show us your creativity!

P.S. You know in my last post I mentioned about that wet stuff which we've all forgotten about here? I can't mention it in case it hears me and goes away again, but it's actually coming down right now! And hard enough for me to hear without getting up and peering out of the window. Yay!

P.P.S. Edited to add: here's a tip for storing these little babies. Rather than putting them in boxes to stop them from getting squashed, put them in air-tight zip-lock bags. Blow the bags up so that there is enough space inside for the bows to rattle around before sealing them, then they won't get crushed in with the gift-wrap rolls.

Just a quick card

for this week's challenge at Simon Says, where they're having on orgy of baby-worship after the birth of Abigail Ann, Heidi's (the owner) brand new arrival. Congrats Heidi and Mr. Heidi!

I made this to the same design as the pink one from the other week, only in green. Pretty isn't it?

By the way - do you see that?

<-

And that there too.

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What do you mean you don't know what I mean? Those wet cloudy things in the weather forecast for Perth for the next few days! They're saying it on the TV too, and the on-line news. Ooh... do you think that possibly, maybe... we might get a little rain.....?

80th in white

Next week is the 80th birthday of one of our choir members. We have no practise as the choir director and her sister, the treasurer, are going to the wedding of their sister - who must be in her 70s, which is all rather sweet. So we're having Jean's birthday a week early, and I was asked to make the card from us all.

I thought it tied in rather nicely with Less Is More's classic challenge of "white on white". Now I'm rubbish at taking pictures of white, but I think you get the general idea. I've used my Cuttlebug's music embossing folder with Silhouette-cut numbers and punched butterflies which are also embossed. With hindsight I won't do that again, but I've just about got away with it. A few dots of Stickles Star Dust to give it that magical touch, and it's done. I'm hoping for a few oohs and aahs tomorrow. ;-)

Slowing down time

That's what I need to do. I've just had 24+ hours without the ability to post anything on my blog, along with most of the southern hemisphere. That means I've lost out on at least one challenge which I created this card for:

It was intended for A Spoon Full of Sugar for their "white + 1 colour" challenge, as well as Truly Scrumptious with the sketch and Simon Says Stamp with "paper piercing/piecing", but thanks to Blogger I think I've crashed (like Blogger did) and burned. :-(

At least DH's friend will get his card though, and as he uses the "they're growing up so fast" every time we see him, I thought the snail was appropriate. 

My own NSBD LO

I was so busy this weekend working on the Scrap Whispers NSBD event that I didn't get much of a chance to play along with the others. But right at the end, with 2 hours to spare, I entered one of the Scrap Jazz challenges: to create a LO with a water theme, some bling, and a title from a given list. My biggest challenge was that I only had 2 hours to do it!

I used this sketch by Sketchy Thursdays:

Aren't those photos stunning? Ooh I just noticed that I left the photographer's elbow in that top one, oops! I was going to PhotoShop it out but I didn't have time. Ah well, it's done now. And it was so nice just scrapping for myself.

I couldn't post it last night because Blogger threw a wobbly for 24 hours, refusing to let bloggers from the southern hemisphere post new posts. Thank GOODNESS that didn't happen over the weekend during the NSBD event! It was still down when I got up this morning, but by the time I'd got back from my weekly meeting at the church, it had been fixed. I sent up a little prayer of thanks!

And.... just to make me really happy, my LO has won a random prize at Scrap Jazz! I think you could say I've had a good week so far. :-)

Wishing everyone a week just as good as mine! xx

It's not over yet!

Thank you to everyone who took part in our NSBD games challenges. We had 76 entrants which is amazing!

But the crafting challenges are still open! You still have until midnight British Summer Time on Monday (that's 9am Tuesday in Eastern Australia, 7pm CDT and 5pm MDT Monday in the US) to link up your crafting entries on the Scrap Whispers blog.

The more you enter, the more chances you have of winning prizes!

Scrap Whispers NSBD Challenge #14

Challenge #14 - Chocolate and more chocolate

Here it is - the final challenge of Scrap Whispers NSBD 2011!

And what an easy one it is, when you've all been working so hard on our brain-teasers and scrapping for the whole of National Scrap-Book Day. I mean, you really can't get more fun than scrapping about chocolate, can you? That's all you have to do for this one, and we're not giving you any extras to think about - unless you really want to crack open a box of chocs to keep you going. ;-)

Here's some inspiration: an account of my birthday last weekend, which was very chocolatey indeed.

I made those little wrapped "chocolates" by twisting gold mesh around large buttons and tying the ends with gold thread. The cup-cakes are Kaisercraft stamps, stamped onto different coloured papers and card-stock, cut out and mounted on foam for that 3D effect. I sprayed the doilies with Glimmer Mist in brown and gold, and punched the paper waves with my Macaron punch from Carla Crafts.

You have until Monday 9th at midnight British Summer Time (which is 7am in Western Australia and 7pm Central Daylight Time in the US) to produce your own chocolatey LO or card, post them on your blog, and leave a comment on the NSBD Challenge #14 post on the Scrap Whispers blog, linking us up to your blog post. Any comments you leave on the DT's blogs will be much appreciated - they have worked very hard putting on this event. I have a little prize for the winner - and everything in the prize is shown on this LO

No go! Scrap! And eat chocolate!

It's here!

Are you playing too? Come on, let's have a Scrap Whispers party!