Another batch of CAS Christmas cards

Hello! Hope you are enjoying the last few hours of the Halloween weekend.
Did you remember to change the clocks around your house this morning, or like me, realised you could have had an extra hour to sleep by 2pm??! Doh! :-)
Here's another batch of CAS Christmas cards.

Polka dot embossing folder; Labels Nestabilities; I think the stamp is Papermania; green dotty paper from Docrafts; green ribbon from my own stash.

I would like my cards to enter:
Magic in the Air - Die cuts
Fab'n'Funky - Clean and simple
Stampavie - Christmas
Bee Crafty - Christmas

Thanks for your comments!

More CAS Xmas cards

Keeping it simple in order to achieve the 50+ Christmas cards I need to get ready for this year :-) here's a batch of Red and White cards that I finished last night.

The polka dot paper is a freebie (it may not be clear from the photo but all the dots are covered in glitter, as are the snowflakes die cuts); the white ribbon is from my own stash; the sentiment is I believe from Papermania, stamped in Red Docrafts Ink; the oval die cut is Nellie's.
Dots, snowflakes and sentiment border are all glittered up with Diamond Stickles.

My Red and White batch of Christmas cards enters the following challenges:
Craft Your Passion - Glitter
There's Magic in the Air - Die cuts
Frosted Designs - Die cuts
Pals Paper Arts - Bling
Southern Girls - Glitter it up
Totally Gorjuss - Sparkle
The Lollilop Ladies - Strawberries and Cream (my design does not include any image of strawberries or cream, but I believe the colours on the card are very relevant to the theme)
Thanks for your comments!

Clarification

On my post from Wednesday Oct 20th I featured a card with a super cute image of a little girl with a wheelbarrow (Soft Pastel Birthday Card). Unfortunately I could not remember the name of the stamp/designer so I asked for help.
Fellow crafter CraftBunny has very kindly clarified that the stamp is from Alota Rubber stamps, and you can find the particular image I used for my card here. Thank you very much for the information, Lisa. :-)

Black and White Xmas cards

Good Sunday to you!
Yeps, I keep working on my Christimas cards - 3, 4, 5 a day maybe, different designs, different colours... I seem to get easily tired of repeating the same over and over so I try to come up with quick, clean and simple yet effective and varied designs and cards every day.
In the last 3 days I have managed to finish over 20 Christmas cards, not bad :-) One of the finished sets was these Black and White ones. Unusual, I know, but why not? Black and white happens to be one of my favourite colour combinations. And it does not always have to be red and green for Xmas, right? I actually quite like them.

So here it is, another batch of Christmas cards, which I would like to enter into the following challenges:
Annabelle Stamps - Black and White
Crazy Amigo - Black and White
Stampin Royalty - Ribbons
Sarah Hurley - Xmas cards with no red or green
Oh Alice - Chessboard (b&w, rows of images)
Meljens - Anything goes
Dottie's World - Xmas Anything (please see their page for the chance to win fabulous candy: a gorgeous kit from Bo Bunny with 18 12" x 12" sheets of premium quality double-sided designer paper, including journalling card paper, and one 12" x 12" sheet of coordinating cardstock stickers! You have til 7th November to enter!)

The backing black and white Christmas paper in my card is a free download from Docrafts; black ribbon and black cardstock from my own stash; sentiment created in Word, mounted on 3D pads; Circle Nestabilities; white pen.

Procrastination

Last week I made a necklace with turquoise stones for a lady who turned 40, you probably remember. It worked like that: I needed a gift, got my tools together, looked for the right beads and material, got to work and - done in a matter of hours! Easy!
Today, however, I -f-i-n-a-l-l-y, yes, I hear you, Ana!- fixed this other turquoise necklace. You see, I made this particular necklace probably a year or two ago for one of my best friends, and when the clasp got broken a few months later she asked me to fix it... Reluctantly I must admit that the poor necklace has gone from one shelf to another, from one excuse to another until today, when my good friend asked me about the status of her turquoise necklace... Oh, the guilt! So I got working and managed to re-make it and fix the clasp. Proud of myself? Well, I could be, I did fix it, eventually! but I feel so ashamed of my procrastination... :-)

Announcement

Today I can finally share some fantastic and exciting news with you: I was recently asked to join the Ooh La La Design Team and of course I accepted! :-)

Ooh La La Creations offers a great range of CD's for all your papercraft masterpieces. Each CD comes with a wide variety of design sets, papers, toppers, inserts, decoupage, etc. You can find more information on all OLL CDs available on this site. They also run great challenges every fortnight, and the winner gets the chance to choose a couple of pieces from their OLL shop! So what are you waiting for? Go and have a look! And don't forget to visit the DT's members' blogs for great inspiration!

The theme for this fortnight challenge (#65), my first one as part of the OLL DT, is SCARY STUFF, and here is my scary design, using OLL papers and images:

I would like to enter my easel card onto the following challenges:
The creative cottage - Halloween
Moving along with the times - Halloween
2 Sisters - Halloween
Bee Crafty - Halloween
One Stop Craft - Halloween
Stampin' for the Weekend - Halloween or Fall

Stamp Something - Halloween
Inktegrity - Halloween or Fall
Double Dutch - Scary Halloween creation
Crafts and Me - Halloween
Stampin Royalty - Halloween
Fussy and Fancy - Halloween
If the Shoe Fits - Holiday
Really Reasonable Ribbon's Ramblings - Halloween with ribbon
Easy Craft Projects - Halloween
The Latte Lounge - Fall or Halloween
Creative Craft Challenges - Trick or Treat
Inky Impressions - Anything goes

Thanks for your feedback!

I won last weeks Little Paper Shop challenge!

With this birthday card, featuring challenge LPSC88, a Sketch by Pam! Yeps! And I am delighted!
Thank you so much, Pam and the Little Paper Shop team!

Turquoise necklace

One of the ladies in my son's school is turning 40 this week and some of the mothers have decided to give her a surprise party on Saturday evening. She is a really sweet girl, always ready to give anyone a hand, so I jumped to the opportunity to celebrate the big day with her as soon as I heard. I think the plan is to go to the local Chinese restaurant and to the pub for a few drinks afterwards.
I will be making a card this evening or tomorrow for her; however, since I have a few busy days ahead, I needed to get started with a present today. The usual problem - what should I get/make for her? I do not know her that well but all girls tend to love jewellery, right? so I ended up making a turquoise necklace.
What do you think?

Thanks for your comments!

Stampin FluffnStuff Sugar Rush

Stampin FluffnStuff will be 1 next week and Faye is offering some candy to celebrate. What do you need to do to be in the draw?
- Become a follower of her blog, if you're not already
- Display her button on your sidebar if you don't already
- Put a quick post up on your Blog about the Sugar Rush and link back
- Add your name to Mr Linky.
- Candy closes at 8pm GMT on Wednesday 20 October

Nice treat, eh? Well, what are you waiting for? :-)

Halloween Tag

I am not a big Halloween fan, I must admit, but when crafting, one gets into the swing of the season, whatever that season might be, and right now, it is Halloween!
So here's my creation for today, a Halloween tag - not sure about its usage, but it was fun making it and it is fit for a few challenges :-)

Simon Says Stamp - Halloween

Aud Sentiments - Halloween sentiment

Paper Romance - Halloween

Stamp Insanity - Trick or Treat

Tree House - Spooky colours

Fussy and Fancy - Halloween

Bee Crafty - Halloween

3D - fruit (are pumpkins a fruit or a vegetable? lol)

Aifactory - Embossing

Moving along with the times- Anything but a card

Fairy Fun Friday - Tickets or tags

CES - Create a tag

Inky Impressions - Anything goes

Ellephantastic - Anything goes

Black cardstock; Labels Nine from Nestabilities; Cuttlebug embossing folder; Luna Bitterfrost's Pollycrafts digital image, coloured with Letraset Promarkers and mounted on 3D pads; Hebbie Jeebie sentiment printed on orange cardstock; spiders handrawn with white pen; orange ribbon from my own stash.

Thanks for your comments!

Sketch and a few challenges

Hi there!
It's been over a week since I produced a card and posted on my blog - sorry, but life has been fairly busy and I hardly got a chance to read mail or comment on other blogs for days!
This morning I created a birthday card for my partner's niece, who will be 10 next week. Hope you like it.

I used FairyCakes' Little Musing digital image as a centrepiece, coloured with Letraset Promarkers, highlighted with Diamond Stickles and mounted on 3D pads; Nellie's die cut oval frame; circle and scalloped punch; Fiskars border punch; polka dot Cuttlebug embossing folder; the flower paper is Daisy and Dandelion; blue cardstock and ribbon from my own stash; the sentiment created in Word.

I would like this card to enter the following challenges:
Little Paper Shop - Sketch by Pam
Pink Elephant - Childhood
Sweet Stampin - Punch it out
Flutter by Wednesday - Fairy/angel
Stamps fun = Creativity - Embossing
Creative Inspirations - Birthday
Fab'n'Funky - Digital image
Incy Wincy - Sparkly glitter
A Spoon full of Sugar - Sparkle and shine
Paper Playtime - Ribbons, buttons or gems
Digital Tuesday - Ribbon, buttons or bling
Stamp, Scrap and Doodle - Anything goes
Glitterbabe - Glitter and Anything goes

Thanks for your comments!

Newborn card and Album

Hi there
I finished this commissioned job last night: a card and an album for a cute newborn (the photo has been blurred a bit for privacy reasons).
I played with cream, blue and olive green colours in both the card and throughout the album (the album has 12 pages, which have been decorated with punches and stamps and have room for the parents to include photos of their new baby). The die cut frame is Frameabilities Spellbinders; Circle and Scalloped cricle from Nestabilities; alpha stamps from StudioG and the baby's details were created in Word; the digital giraffe image was coloured with Letraset Promarkers.

I would like to enter my project onto the following challenges:
Creative Belli Blog - Numbers
Lexi's Creations - Picture perfect
Pear Tree Designs - Celebration
Create with Connie and Mary - Anything but a card (my project consists of a card AND and an album, so I hope that's OK)

Thanks for your comments!

First batch of Christmas cards 2010

Some of you may have all Christmas cards for this year made and ready to be posted, but I don't ever seem to get started with them until October or November the earliest. So given my record, this year I am doing pretty well! I guess I know I will be busy in a few weeks time and need to get going :-)
I don't receive many orders for Christmas cards to be honest, I think people tend to buy them in bulk at very cheap prices, especially in the last few years with the recession, so it is not usually a busy season for me card wise. As a family, we usually send about 50 or 60 cards to friends and then I make another 10, very special ones, for the closest relatives. I tried to design 5 or 6 different sets every year and keep them as CAS as possible, while the family ones are usually bigger, more ellaborate and often have a photo.
So this is my first (small, I know, but hey, it's a start!) batch of CAS Christmas cards, which will go to friends.

I used dark green cardstock, which I embossed with the Snowflakes Cuttlebug folder; the candy image is digital but I do not have the name of the designer, apologies; coloured with Letraset Promarkers, layered with 3D pads and highlighted with embossing fluid and Stickles; the sentiment stamp is Stampingbella, and the pretty holly ribbon is from Craftyribbons.com, bought during my visit to the Crafts Fair in the NEC in Birmingham last year.

I would like to enter my Christmas cards onto the following challenges:
Sentimental Sundays - Dimension
Craft Your Passion - Clean and simple
Squigglefly - Favourite embellishment (ribbons for me, thanks!)
Christmas Stampin - Photo inspiration
Stampin'B's - paper piercing
All sorts - Plain and Simple
One Stop Craft - Snowflakes in September
Scrap and Stamp - Embossing
Stamp Insanity - Embossing
Charisma Cardz - Anything goes
Incy Wincy Designs - Anything goes

Thanks for passing by!

Delicate lilac card

Good morning! It's been a busy week and didn't get much time to post. I am hoping to catch up with a few bits today, so let's start with posting one of the cards I made recently.
For this order (a birthday card for an elderly lady), I wanted to give a delicate look, so I chose the beautiful Geranium from LittleClaire stamps. The light purple and lilac colours, together with the use of chalks in the background give a soft feel to the card.

I coloured the image with Letraset Promarkers; Manuscript Background stamp by Hero Arts, one of my favourite, stamped with Versamark and coloured with lilac chalk; Fiskars punch; oval Nestabilities; I believe the sentiment is from Docrafts.

My card enters:

Cute card Thursday - sketch 131

Sisterhood of Crafters - Birthdays

A spoon full of Sugar - Anything goes

Charisma cards - Anything goes

Tuesday Taggers - Anything goes

Aifactory - Anything goes

Have a fabulous weekend!

Funky birthday card

Here's the second part of yesterdays order - a much funkier birthday card, with a much younger feel to it.

I wanted to play with vibrant colours, and I really (over)did it?! But I like the result. In fact, I liked it so much that when I received another order for another birthday card from another client this morning I decided to follow a similar formula, use the same stamp and finish the paper I had left from the previous card! :-)

The sketch is slightly different, but the image in both cards is the Born to Shop from Docrafts and coloured with Letraset Promarkers; I remember printing the backing paper but I don't remember where I got it from; I also used Nestabilities, circle punch; red and orange ribbons and  green cardstock from my own stash; the sentiments were created in Word for one card and from Inkadinkado in the other. 

I would like to enter my card(s) into the following challenges:

Stampotique - Birthday

Totally Papercrafts - Happy Birthday

Sarah Hurley - Polka dots and circles

Inktegrity - Anything goes

Have a nice weekend!

Easel birthday card

Last night my neighbour and her mum asked me to make a couple of cards for them, a last minute job since they needed the cards for this evening (but I kind of like challenges, it pushes my limits and usually gets the best out of me :-))

Both cards were to be for the same lady, a relative of theirs who is turning 40, but mother and daughter wanted different styles. The mother preferred a more classic look and a more intimate message. And here's the result, from the mother to her cousin.

(Since this easel card is bigger than your average square card, I had to make the envelope too. I chose green cardstock which matches with the paper and contrasts with the pink that dominates the card.)
The beautiful butterflies paper is from the Summer Bloom collection, Docrafts; I also added small punched butterflies; Dahlia Nestabilites; Nellie's oval die; pink gems, ribbon, flower and button from my own stash; the sentiments were created and printed in Word.

I would like my easel card to enter:
Everybody-art-challenge: Other cardform
Crafts and Me - Easels
Flutter by Wednesday - Buttons and Butterflies
Cute Card Thursday - bird or Butterfly
Our Creative Corner - Fun with Folds

It's been a busy day craft-wise, so I am off to read and bed with a cuppa soon. I will try and post the second birthday card of this order (the funky one :-)) tomorrow.

Good night!

Purple

Good morning
I received a request for a birthday card last night, so I started working on it straight away... and for some reason I found myself rummaging through purple - purple papers, purple ribbons... :-)
Here is the result, a girlie and soft square card, sort of vintage looking, all very purple!!

The vintage image is from Digital Two, coloured with Letraset Promarkers; the beautiful purple paper is from the Capsule Collection, by Tina Higgins, Papermania; Lilac and purple cardstock; Nellie's multi frame; Fiskars corner punch; lilac ribbon from my own stash; I am afraid I can't remember where I got the sentiment from.

Some challenges:
Stampin for the weekend - Shabby/vintage
Your next stamp challenge - Anything goes
Die Cut Dreams - Sweet Little girl
Daisy Doodles - Keep it simple
Paper Romance - Clean and Simple
Tellens Place - Anything goes
Gingerloft - Anything goes

Leave me a comment if you are passing by!

Glittery Cupcakes

Here's todays card (which has been commissioned): a CAS birthday card for a Spanish girl.

The stripe backing paper is a leftover from my stash, as it is the pink cardstock; the digital image is from Little Musing, coloured with Letraset Promarkers; Xmas Red, Diamond and Platinum Stickles; Polka dots Cuttlebug embossing folder; Label Nestabilities; pink gems; the sentiment was created in Word.

I would like to enter it into the following challenges:
My time to craft - Jewelled
Passion for Promarkers - Sweet treats
Stamp Something - Spots and Stripes

Crafts and Me - Gems and sparkle
Cutie Stampers - Glitter
Crafts your days away - girlie and glittery
Aly's Sunday - Sparkly and glittery
Fab'n'Funky - Whateva!

Happy Sunday!

Little Snippets

Look what the postman delivered this morning!!!

Aren't they the most beautiful embellishments?

Geraldine over on LittleSnippets was offering blog candy a few weeks ago and I won 2nd prize! So thanks a million Ger for the beautiful snippets! I am already thinking how I am going to use them! ;-)

Little Knight

This card is for my friend's son. I purchased the SugarNellie stamp last winter in Birmigham but the poor thing never saw the light until last night, I guess it was difficult to find the right "environment" for the brave little knight. But yesterday I remembered about this castle entrance by Dustin Pike and it seemed perfect for a young boy's birthday card.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges:
PaperPlay time - Castles, knights and damsels in distress
3D cards - Children and layers
Stamp something - Cute
Challenge up your Life - Celebrations
Little Paper Shop - Clean and simple

Knight stamp by Sugar Nellie; digital Castle entrance by Dustin Pike, all coloured with Letraset Promakers and layered in 3d foam pads; sentiment created in Word, coloured with chalks and distressed.