Phindy's Place Challenge #35 - All Creatures Great and Small

Good Morning and welcome to a new Phindy's Place Friday Challenge.  This week our theme is All Creatures Great and Small, which is a great excuse to use one of Phindy's many fabulous animal images.  I've chosen a stunning new image called Peace and Cheer and had fun blinging it up with Stickles and silver embossing powder in addition to the Copics I used to colour it, the background uses Distress Inks.

I've based my card on this week's Sunday Sketchers Challenge and I'm entering it for the following challenges:
Sunday Sketchers Challenge - sketch
Simon Says - silver, blue, white
Dutch Dare Challenges - Winter
Copic Creations - sparkle
Digital Tuesday - sparkling Christmas
Cupcake Craft Challenges - non traditional Christmas

Cheers my friends

I made this card for a friend, no particular occasion, just a random "Hello" card and I think this is just a brilliant image, I must have used it lots of times. I'm entering it for the Secret Crafter Challenge, which has Friendship as its theme this week. Image is from Shirleys2Girls and it's called Friends

. I used the colour scheme from Copic Colour Challenge of B02, Bv02 and YG02 and then took ages to find DP to go with my image. Eventually I used a couple of pages from an Artylicious pad called Echoes of Italy that I bought at the NEC and have been too much in love with to cut into. Sad isn't it :).

I've based the card on the sketch at Card Positioning Systems this week and that's about it!

Oh, sentiment is computer generated (though I do have a stamp for this - somewhere) and card candy is from Craftwork Cards. Cheers!

On a Carousel

I've made another carousel card using Wings of Hope digi image, which is on sale to raise funds for Red Cross in Haiti, such a lovely image and a good cause purchase too. If you've not already bought your stamp you can get it from Whimsy Stamps here.

I made this card to enter the Copic Colour Challenge, which uses E18 Copper, E42 Sand White and E77 Maroon, which sounded perfect for the horse. Then I realsied that, despite my ever-growing collection, I don't own any of these colours! Oh well, I used E51 Milk White, E33 Sand and E57 Light Walnut, hope that's ok :). I used masses of Stickles in Cinnamon and Gold for the wings and a couple of contrast greens and yellows on the image. The DP is Basic Grey from Nook & Pantry, the copper embossed sentiment is Elusive Images. Ribbon is from stash and card candy from Craftwork Cards.

I'm also entering Papertake Weekly's Challenge, Dawn's sketch was ideal for this image, and Digital Tuesday's It's All About the Animals theme.

Happy New Year and First Card of 2010

Happy New Year to everyone and I hope you had a wonderful start to the new decade, whether you were partying or spending time quietly at home. We've had the most frustrating start to the New Year, having planned to go to the racing at Cheltenham after collecting sons from various parties this morning. There were two inspections of the course, we had just about arrived when it was confirmed at 11.30am that the racing was on. The first race was run and it was clear that some trainers and jockeys were unhappy with the ground and there was a delay of nearly 3/4 of an hour while a deputation walked the course and finally agreed that racing continue. But over a third of the horses due to run were withdrawn, including most of the star horses we'd travelled to see. Whatever the decision, the racecourse staff would be unpopular, this seemed to be the worst of all worlds though... Oh well, such is life:).

Back to cardmaking, I finished this card last night, which began when I read Crafty Cardmaker's Challenge, which is called Favourites of 2009. No, I'm not listing my favourite cards, this is about new/favourite products or techniques and I've included several in my card. 2009 has been the year that I reverted to my childhood and enjoyed colouring in :). So my favourite new products have to be Copics, which I'm beginning to get to grips with. An also-ran for 2009 is Spellbinder dies; I'd just begun to use Nesties last year and they are high up on the favourite list. The technique that I've really enjoyed using is masking, following a demo I bought some Frisket mask and have really enjoyed combining images ever since, as I've done here with the two Whiff of Joy stamps.

I've used Nikki's sketch from A Spoonful of Sugar for my card, tweaking the circle into the large snowflake. The colourway is based on this week's Copic Colour Challenge, which uses YG03, BV02 and B93. I must be slipping, I only have Light Crockery Blue and had to substitute for the other two :). Lovely colourscheme though, which gave me the chance to use the spotty Fancy Pants DP which I bought and stroked but hadn't cut into. The green DP is a Magnolia paper that, again, I hadn't cut into. Small snowflakes are from a Woodware punch, large flakes a Spellbinders die, ribbon from stash.

Winter Willow

Today I got the chance to play with some of my new acquisitions from the NEC, as well as my Whiff of Joy Winter Stamp Kit.

I began with the Whiff of Joy Challenge's very pretty sketch by Jane.
The colourscheme came from this week's Copic Colour Challenge, which uses rose red, spectrum green and robin's egg blue and
Saturday Spotlight's Challenge is "repeatedly useful" - using an image repeatedly, the snowflake stamps were ideal for this.

I stamped Willow and masked her so that she could sit on the sledge and I coloured her with Copics. The snowflakes were stamped in Broken China Distress Ink. Papers are Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses. The ribbon is organza coloured with spectrum green Copic (came out darker than I expected) and the sentiment is from Craftwork Cards, again coloured with Copic. I punched a couple of snowflakes from white card and added some Stickles to them and to the stamped snowflakes.

Copic Colour Challenge #36 - Join me for a spell

I was lucky enough to be invited to be a Guest Designer for Copic Colour Challenges for this week. This week the colours to use, if you have them, are Adele's choices: G99 Olive, V17 Amethyst and YR68 Orange. If you don't have them, use the closest you've got, as long as you use Copics :).

The colours just shouted out Halloween to me, so I reached for a Jinx stamp from Shirleys2Girls, you can buy them here and, even better, they are on special offer, 25% off until 31 October. Jinx is, of course, coloured with my Copics, there is some Glossy Accents on her hatband and the bubbles. The background to the image is painted with watercolor paint in a blotchy olive.The cobweb DP is a free download from the generous Summer Driggs, purple and green are from a Bearly Mine Designs CD. The ribbon is white organza that I coloured with my Amethyst Copic, it's stiched down with a decorative machine stitch, as are the other papers.

Hope you like my card and that it's inspired you to join in this week's Copic Colour Challenge.

Cupcake Daydream

I've been meaning to use this image ever since I saw it used by Ann, a very talented fellow blogger. I finally got round to using it with this lovely Truly Scrumptious sketch. The Challenge also requires doodling which is not my strong point. I did a few doodles with my white pen on her coat and brolly, hope this counts! As I worked on the card it turned out to fit quite a few challenges...

• Truly Scrumptious Sketch Challenge (with doodling)
• Pile It On Challenge - let them eat cake
• Copics Colour Challenge - G02, Y11 & V15
  
• Basic Grey Challenge - embossing (I dry embossed)
• One Stop Craft Challenge - die cuts (yellow border)
• DareU2 Digistamp Challenge - punched shapes or diecuts
• Charisma Cardz Challenge - decoupage
• Crafty Cardmakers Challenge - 3D elements

Whew! I don't think I've ever fitted eight challenges into one card before. Here's how I made it:
Digi image from Hambo Stamps was coloured with Copics - hooray I had two of the three colours, my collection is growing :). Umbrella and some of the cupcakes cut from second image and decoupaged. Cakes, umbrella, hat and coat have Glossy Images to give them a sheen, coat has white stitching doodled on it. Basic Grey Cupcake papers used - of course :) - with their edges distressed. The yellow has been dry embossed with a swiss dot Cuttlebug folder, dots emphasized with the distress ink, then a die cut border added with a Woodware punch. I've decoupaged more cupcakes at the ends of the ric-rac, they looked unfinished without.

I had so much fun making this card, I hope you can tell from the end result :).

Three Challenges - One Birthday Card

This week I have the exact match for one of the colours for Copic Colour Challenge this week and two others that are close - hooray! I have Pea Green and I used R32 Peach and YR02 Light Orange with the green.

I followed a very nice Sketch from this week's Simon Says Challenge, first time I've entered this one, though I've seen Dawny P's sketches all over blogdom, they're always good ones to work with. I'm also entering the card for Papertake Weekly's Challenge, which is a take your pick colour combi from any or all of: pink, black, white, yellow, green, grey and lilac, plus any other colours. I've used pink and green from the list.

On to the card: I chose to use one of my favourite Leanne Ellis images from Sugar Nellie - she's called Poise. As you know, I've coloured her with Copics. Other colours I've used are skin white, chamois and pale blue. When I'd coloured her, I didn't like the plain background so I coloured it blue. I was worried it looked uneven and went over it with the blender pen. It's still uneven but now it's in a nice mottled way, not a nursery-school colouring book way. At least I hope so :). I think I need to learn more about the blender pen, it doesn't work the way I think...

The sentiment is from Dimension Fourth and I've used pearl gems on the flowers and beside the entiment. The papers are lovely double sided papers by Crate Paper, from Stamp Attic, all edged with Distress Ink, and I've added some blue grosgrain ribbon.

Soft & Sweet

I've been looking at the Copic Colour Challenges for a few weeks, now I'm getting to grips with my pens, but I've not entered until now as I've not had anything like the right colours. This week I'm in luck, Challenge #22 is to follow a sketch. I've flipped the sketch on its side and I've used my Copics, mainly in the skintones, to colour in a new Penny Black stamp that I got at Newbury. The theme over at the Penny Black Saturday Challenge this week is "Soft & Sweet", which fits the image perfectly, I think.

The image is stamped with Cocoa Brown Memento inks and coloured with Copics, with the exception of the grey around the image, which is a Promarker. The chocolate and gold paper and the butterfly sentiment are from Craftwork Card's Chocolate Goodie Bag, the two patterned pink papers are K&K and the flowers are Prima.