Let's get fruity!

Welcome to challenge #102 on House Mouse and Friends!

The lovely Lorraine Aquilina has chosen the challenge this month with...."Lets Get Fruity"!

Use any of the House-Mouse & Friends stamps that showcases any type of fruit(s) and create a fruity project. Hehee.
 
The sponsors of this challenge are:

K n' K Designs

knkdesigns.blogspot.com

Offering ONE lucky winner - 3 Digi Stamp Sets (excluding the charity set called "Hope")

*** A N D ***

Pizzazz Aplenty

 

http://www.pizzazzaplenty.blogspot.com/

Offering ONE Lucky Winner a $10 Embellishment Gift Package

So that's 2 great prizes!

As a Guest Design Team member for August ;-) here is my card for a little inspiration. I splashed out and went shopping for this challenge, and this is what I got. Isn't it adorable!

 

 

For more, have a look at the House Mouse & Friends blog!

I'm entering this into some more challenges as well:

Charisma Cardz: distressing

A Spoonful of Sugar: birthdays

Truly Scrumptious: lace

Patriotic simplicity

This week Less Is More is asking for a card in the colours of our national flag, which, my being English, is red, white and blue. I'll be honest, I have never been less proud of my country than I am now, after those disgraceful riots and looting in London which spread to Bristol and Birmingham. I feel disgusted, and almost ashamed to be English. Maybe after this, our police will be permitted to adminster justice, the schools will be allowed to keep discipline, and parents will be encouraged to teach children the basic principles of respect and right versus wrong, instead of sticking to the ridiculous political correctness which has turned our country into a lily-livered soft-touch and is ruining a generation.

But enough. This blog is about creativity and making the best of things. And this is about the best I could do at this time of night with only hours to spare until the end of the week's challenge. And another broken punch, the second punch I've broken in 2 weeks! It was expensive - over $20 - so it is going back to the store tomorrow. Grr.

I ended up with a die cut by Marianne Design which actually worked even better, a fuschia stamp and sentiment by The Craft's Meow, and liquid pearls. The background card is actually white, but it is pearlescent so the camera has interpreted it as greenish for some bizarre reason. I love how it has turned out.

I'm also entering it into Cute Card Thursday's challenge of "clean and simple", Simon Says Stamp's of "all white" (except for the stamp) and Stampin' for the Weekend's "spots'n'dots".

Citrus Henry

I was working on this yesterday while I was Skyping my Mum. She's quite happy sitting on my craft desk watching what I'm doing while we're chatting away from 9000 miles apart! I decided to give Henry some bright colours to cheer him up on this easel card, along with the buttons and bows which is Whiff of Joy's challenge this fortnight, a sketch from Sketch Saturday and Creative Card Tuesday's "best foot forward".

Christmas in August

I've been so busy this week with extra church work. We had a Parish Council meeting and the resulting minutes had to be typed up, the funeral of one of our elderly parishioners, and another extra meeting to discuss the hymns while I'm back in the UK on my house renovation trip. Between all that and the usual production of the weekly pew sheet and service slides, AND the new Bible Study group, my housework has gone to the dogs. I should be cleaning right now but I have some crafting commitments which will miss their deadline if I don't do them right now. So sorry again DH for the dust.

Here's a quick pile of Christmas cards for Fab's Big Christmas Cards Challenge for August of using a card kit. I got this kit with a magazine - must have been Christmas before last. There are 9 of them which is 1 more than I need for this month, but you know how these things grow so quickly, and you can't stop once you get started. LOL Aren't they colourful?

Summer citrus

Just a very quick card I made for DH's godson, for the Stampavie Summer challenge. I used DCWV Citrus paper, and stamped the sentiment with StazOn on the ribbon. Not very exciting, but the colours are boy colours. I hope he likes it.

Fruity lemonade

I've been really fruity today! I've made a batch of fruit slices with banana, pumpkin, sultanas, prunes and apricots - mmmmm, AND I made 3 and a half jars of lemon curd using eggs from C's chickens, and lemons from her mother D's tree. And yes of course I'm going to take a jar to church on Sunday for C and D. My kitchen smells like lemon heaven right now.

I made the lemon curd to go into a cake I'm making tomorrow for a friend's birthday. I haven't decided yet whether to make a layer cake with the lemon in between the layers, or whether to pipe the lemon curd into the cake mixture before it goes into the oven. I'm hoping for a gooey, marbled effect through the cake, but this is all experimental and it might end up being a gooey mess at the bottom of the cake! I'll let you know how that turns out.

Since I'm a fruit roll, here is this week's Less Is More card with the theme of "feeling fruity", along with Basic Grey's sketch using Lemonade papers. There isn't as much white space as I normally leave with CAS cards, but there's enough and I'm hoping it still qualifies. I used a Kaisercraft stamp and E pearls from Prima.

House Mouse & Friends GDT for August!

Yes, this is what I was hinting at in my last post. I've been invited to be Guest Designer for the House Mouse and Friends Challenge blog for the month of August - and I'm lucky because August has 5 Mondays so that means 3 challenges!

This fortnight the challenge is to create an ATC using, of course, House Mouse, Happy Hoppers or Gruffies stamps. An ATC has to be 2.5"x3.5" in size, which is actually surprisingly difficult.

I used "What?" and "Boring!" because even though Monica is supposed to be yawning with boredom, I thought she could just as easily be singing so I gave her some notes. She is being watched in awe and bemusement by a Friend. I stamped both images onto the card, coloured them with Copic markers, then masked them off before I misted the top of the card with gold and the bottom with Smooch "limolicious" which are not that much different in colour. The music paper was a tiny scrap, the flowers are Prima, the green gem centres are EK Success and the marble centres from Queen & Co.

And slightly tilted to show the glimmeriness.

Now show us what you can do! Create your own mini masterpiece, and link it up to the House Mouse and Friends challenge blog by Monday August 15th, and you'll be in with a chance to win a fabby prize. Good luck!