Little Claire Cutie

Just a quick post to show case a second card that was released by Little Claire's in December.

The stamp happened to go quite nicely with this bird paper!

Coloured as usual with Pro Markers, this card was fairly quick and easy to complete.

Hope you like it!

Sharon x

Merry Christmas!!

I'm sitting here on Christmas Eve and glad to say that I have finally finished work and the snow is starting to melt again. I don't want to be a humbug, but Bing Crosby needed to get his head tested when he was dreaming of a white Christmas. We are not used to large amounts of snow in these parts and it has been a complete nightmare for us!!

Anyway, I just wanted to wish anyone who happens to pop by this blog a Happy and Peaceful Christmas and a healthy and prosperous new year, with special wishes going out to my fellow Little Claire's teamies.

Thanks for visiting and I look forward to lots more blogging in 2011.

Sharon x

Too much snow!

I can't believe the amount of snowfall we had yesterday! Usually in thispart of the country we get off fairly lightly with the snow, but yesterday we had a massive blizzard, and yours truly happened to be out in the carat the time. Scary stuff I can tell you!

So today, I'm looking out of the window at a very festive scene, but I find myself thinking of Spring and a little bit of sunshine and warmth!

So, with that in mind, here are a couple of cards that I made with some of the recently released stamps from Little Claire's.

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

Floral Frenzy

That's the name of this week's challenge on Cute Card Thursday, and here's the card that I have entered, using another of the gorgeous new releases from Little Claire's.

This stamp is really easy to use as there is very little colouring needed to get a lovely effect so it's great for one of those 'in a hurry but want to make something nice' situations.

So I coloured this one in with promarkers as the fine tips are better for getting in to all those little areas of detail, and the papers are from Do Crafts -soory I forgert which 6 x 6 pack it is, other than it's one of the Forver Friends one. You can't miss it if you are out shopping for it as it's the one that is very pink!!

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

Gotta love that dog.......

It's me once again, making up for the lack of posting over the last week or so.

Little Claire's have just released and extra batch of stamps for December, and I was lucky enough to have a play with them beforehand.

One of them was a gorgeous little dog, which happens to go very nicely with some of the other dogs which are already in the range. It's cute, without being too cute and I have to say that, every tmie I look at this image it just brings a smile to my face.

So here's a little something that I made using my trusty Cuttlebug and some ribbon, which I stamped with some paws and bones. For the images themselves I stamped them on different types of paper and then coloured them with promarkers and cut them out and decoupaged them on to the round disks.

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

Last of the December club stamps

Hi all,

I have one more sample from the Little Claire's December club stamp which I forgot to post.

Hope you like it!

Sharon x

Teddy Stampers Challenge

It's been a while since I've done any challenges so I couldn't resist having a go at the Teddy Stampers challenge this week - the combination of bears and Christmas was just to tempting and I certianly have enough stamps that fit in to that category!

So here is my entry using one of the lovely Popcorn Christmas stamps. As the image itself is quite big this actually ended up being an 8 x 8 inch card and I will be giving to my son this Christmas.

Surprisingly this is the first time that I have used alcohol markers to colour an image of this size, but I was really pleased with how the card came out, so I will definitely be doing it again.

If anyone else wants to join in with this challenge, you can find it at http://teddy-stampers.blogspot.com/

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

Not everything in life is as simple as black &white...

..........but this is!

Here is my second card uisng the December club stamps from Little Claires. Since monochrome seems to be all the rage on the challenge blogs lately, I thought I would try something out in black and white, which is a bit of a first for me. It turned out to be very quick and simple as I just stamped the image using black distress ink and then just dragged the colour with a damp brush for some shading - couldn't be easier!

I then just added a tiny splash of pink for the flowers.

Thanks for looking - hope you like it.

Sharon x

Little Claire December Club Stamp

Hi all,

Well after a week of being frozen to the bone, I can't tell you how glad I am to look out of the window this morning and see thatthe ice is finally manging to melt! I shouldn't complain though as I think we have had it easy up here in Milton Keynes as we only had about an inch of snow, whereas the rest of the country has really been in trouble.

So enough about the weather! - here's the first of my December club stamp samples featuring a cute little elephant.

I've actually remembered to make a note of which Copics I used for this one, so here's the list for anyone that's interested: Greys - C3, C5 ; Blues - B32, B24; Pinks - RV02, RV06; Greens - YG11,YG23,YG06.

Hope you enjoy this sample. I'll be back with more from the Club stamp and also some of the other December releases soon.

Have a good weekend all....

A 'deer' little card

Hi all,

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately, but I have been quite busy making cards for a number of new releases coming from Little Claire's in December and January. I can't wait to show them to you as there are some really lovely stamps to look forward to, but I have been sworn to secrecy so I will start to post them as soon as I am allowed.

In the meantime, here is a card that I made using the recently released Adorables range from Jayne Nestorenko and Crafter's Companion. I lovethe way that you can use these stamps to make your own compositions and, as you can see, they are quite traditional which is a bit of a change for me.

I have coloured these stamps using water colour pencils, which gives a lovely effect and is easy to do as these stamps aren't too big. I have also punched out a mMartha Stewart snow flake border and used the little snowflakes that were punched out as well.

Thanks for looking and hope you like the card.

I hope to be posting again soon as December is nearly here and then I will be able to show you some of those lovely new releases I mentioned.

Bye for now.

Sharon x

It's raining today but soon there could be snow!

It's a very gloomy today with loads of that drizzly rain, but when I think back to a year ago I realise that we had the first massive snowfall just a few weeks from now! Hard to beleive isn't it?

But with that thought in mind, and the festive season approaching, here is a lovely snowy card for you. This card is actually very well travelled as it has gone all the way to Australia to my Aunt and Uncle (hand delivered by my mum and dad no less!). I hope they will like it and it might remind my uncle of good old Blighty (or at least the rose tinted way we like to think of it!)

Thanks for looking and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Sharon x

A little LOTV cuteness!

I don't know about you but I just love the range of Stamps that Lily of The Valley are coming out with these days.

Here is a card I made using one of the lovely Christmas stamps. I coloured her in using Promarkers and I couldn't resist splashing the glitter on her hat!

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

Christmas is coming - whether we like it or not!

Well with Halloween and Bonfire night out of the way, our attention is definitely turning towards Christmas now. Suddenly the wrapping paper is in the shops, the Christmas adds are on the telly, and my son is adding to his Christmas list on a daily basis!

A work colleague of mine was kind enough to inform me that there are only 11 weekend shopping days left until Christmas! That was last week so, as of tomorrow that figure will only be nine. A very sobering thought, which has propmpted me to booka few days off to get on with my Christmas shopping!

That said, I am less worried about Christmas shopping than I am about getting my Christmas cards done! With that in mind, here is a card that I made using the recently released Adorables range released by Jayne Nestorenko and Crafter's Companion. I have also used the accompanying CD for this project, which has some really beautiful papers on it, plus some decoupage of the characters (a first for Jayne's CD's I believe) which is great for people who aren't so keen on stamping.

For my card I have stamped out the elements in stayzon and used watercolour pencils for the colouring. I had forgotten how enjoyable colouring with watercolour pencils can be - especially on smaller images, so I think I will definitely getting back in to this again. I also used the little corner border stamps which I really like, and finished of with a little glitter.

Thanks for looking and I hope you like the card.

Sharon x

Little Claire November Club Stamp - the third card

Here's my last card using the Little Claire Novmeber club stamp. I used the same colour scheme that I used for my first card, but a slightly different look.

Hope you like it!

Sharon x

Little Claire's November Stamp - Card Number Two

Hi all,

Here's my second card using the Little Claire's November club stamp.

This time I have gone for something a little different, a kind of sepia effect.

Thanks for looking.

Sharon

Little Claire's Novmeber Club Stamp

Hi all,

Just a very quick post today as I am goingto be heading off to Hobbycraft at the NEC shortly (much better than a normal day at work!!)

The November club stamp is now available on the Little Claire's website and, over the next few days I'm goingto be posting a few cards which I made with it.

You can see lots more inspiration at Little Claire's where you can also join the club and receive new stamps every month, plus a few project sheets and materials to make one of the cards to get you started.

Anyway, hope you like the card.

Will show you another one tomorrow.......off to the NEc now!

Sharon

Keeping it simple....

Today it's just a quick post from me, and I thought I would go for something clean and simple.

I have used one of the lovely Lili of the Valley Christmas bear stamps, coloured with promarkers and mounted it on to white card embossed with the cuttlebug snowflakes embossing sheet. I also sprayed the embossed card with iridescent glitter spray, but I am not sure if you can see that in this picture.

Although it's plain and simple I was quite pleased with this card as you could use any old stamp in the middle and change the colours and mounts to suit male and female recipients. I think I may be making a few more of these to send to my work colleagues this year.

Thanks for looking, and I hope you like what you see!!

Spooky Happenings at the Goold Household

Well it's that strange time of year again when the Goold family mysteriously turn in to the 'Ghoulds', and although I'm a bit previous for this weekends spookiness, I thought I would share with you some spooky shenanigans from a couple of years ago which I only got around to scrapping quite recently. The reason for the delay was that I was looking for some lovely pumkin stamps and I finally found them in the form of Stamps by Judith at Stamp Addicts. Even the little tiny pumpkins were from the Stamps by Judith stubbies.

You will see that some of my pumpkins are green - that's because when we went to visit the Garden Centre they had a fantastic display of pumpkins in various shades of orange and green so I thought I would incorporate this in to my scrap pages.

Anyway, as you can gather from the pics, great fun was had making 'mummy', 'daddy' and 'boy' pumpkins!

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

Teddy Stampers Challenge

Well once again I'm going for it with another challenge. This time it's with Teddy Stampers, which I am sure I will be entering regularly in future as I have tonnes of bear stamps - thy're just one of those things I can't resist.

Anyway, for this week's challenge you can do anything you want as long as it includes a bear, so I've opted fortwo of the gorgeous Christmas Bears from Lili of the Valley. I've coloured with promarkers as usual and deccoupaged the bears on to the background. I'm not sure if you will be able to see it too well, but I've embossed the snow area with snowflakes using a Cuttlebug embossing folder.

This is a nice departure from the usual pastel colours for me,so I really enjoyed making this card!

In case anyone is interested , here is the challenge website for you.....

http://teddy-stampers.blogspot.com/2010/10/challebge-22-cheries-challenge.html

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

Crafters Companion Monthly Challenge

And here's another challenge from me. This time it's following the Sketch on the Crafter's Companion's challenge for this month. An excellent excuse to get out the lovely SWALKs again as far as I'm concerned. I've also used the matching papers from the SWALK CD, and....an all time first for me, I've used some Wild Orchid flowers, which happened to match perfectly with the colour scheme.

The image is coloured with promarkers and (I know I've said it before) these images are just so easy and quick to colour! For anyone who want's to get some ideas, Leanne does some great demos on Create and Craft with this range and she usually tells you what colours she is using so it's a great starting point. (And it justs so happens that they are releasing a new range this week!)

Anyway - thanks for looking and hope you like the card...

Pear Tree Designs Challenge - Anything Goes

I thought I would have a go at the Pear Tree Designs challenge this week as it 'Any thing Goes' , so I thought I would do a scrapbook page for a change.

So, here it is! Apologies for the rubbish picture, but I had a little trouble with the reflection from the original photo on the page!

This is a pic from the 'big snow' that we had just after Christmas and it gave me an excellent chance to use my Stamps by Judith Snowman and fence posts, which I coloured in using Tombows.

Hope you like it!

Sharon

Lili of The Valley Challenge

And here's another card from me, whilst I'm on a challenge roll! It's Lili of The Valley this time, and another lovely sketch. I have to admit, I really enjoy doing the sketch challenges as they really help to get you started on a card.

For this card, I used the gorgeous christmas choir stamp, recently released by LOTV. It takes a little while to colour in, but I think it's really worth the effort!

Thanks for looking!

Pink Gem Sketch for Fun

Hi all,

There is a lovely sketch on Janet's Pink Gem site at the moment, so I thought I would have a play around with it.

Here's what I came up with, using one of her lovely snowman stamps......

Penny Black Challenge

Here's my card for this week's Penny Black Challenge. The challenge was to use two or more Penny Black images on your card. Hopefully my card looks like one big image but it's actually made from three separate stamps as the little floating mice are each from spearate stamps.



The lovely papers are from the Milton range by Wild Rose Studios, and of course I have coloured the image using my trusty promarkers.



For anyone interested, here are the colours that I used:



Flowers: Amber and Saffron

Branches: Cocoa and Putty

Mice: Blush, Sandstone and Soft Peach (doesn't sound very mousey I know!!)

Dandelion seeds: Tea Green

Leaves: Lime Zest and Pear Green

Berries: Crimson and Burgundy.



It's a lot of colours for a little image but hope you like it!



By the way, here's the website for anyone who fancies a challenge.... http://pennybfriendssaturdaychallenge.blogspot.com

Sharon x

Pink Gem Sketch Challenge

Hi all,

Here is my first attempt at a challenge since setting up my blog.

I decided to enter the Pink Gem Sketch challenge which you can find at:

http://pinkgemchallengeblog.blogspot.com/

Hope you like it.

Sharon

Hogging the Limelight.....

Hi,

It's back to Stamps by Judith today and something out ofthe archive that I made before I discovered alcohol markers. This card has been made using the hedgehog, baskets and a variety of the sticks and stubbies. What I like about this one is the backgound paper which was made entirely from stamping the sticks and stubbies, so this card was made from nothing but plain paper.

I'm going to have a go at a challenge blog today, so I thought I'd have a go at the Penny Black challenge and see how that goes. Watch this space.......

Sharon x

Boys like cards too!

I thought that it would be nice to post a 'boy' card for a change as this is a difficult subject for many of us, and since I have an 8 year old boy myself, I know just how tricky it can be to create a hand made card that is 'cool' enough.

With that in mind, I came across some fabulous stamps at Stamposaurus which have enough cuteness to satisfy my creative whims, but cool enough to avoid one of those 'oh mum you're so embarrasing' moments.

For this card I picked the papers out first, and these came from the Papermania For Him pack - a very useful pack of papers that I have come back to time and time again for 'boy stuff'.

I have used Letraset promarkers to colour in the image, and for once I remembered to keep a note of them so, for anyone that's interested, here's a list:

Skin: Ivory, blush and soft peach.

Hair and shoes: Tan and Cocoa.

Eyes and skull: Arctic Blue.

Jeans: Midnight blue and denim blue.

T Shirt: Amber

Outline / shadow: Cool grey 1

Hope you like it and thanks for looking.

Sharon x

My first little kiss......

I thought that I would show you the first card that I have made using the lovely SWALK (Sealed with a little kiss) stamps from Crafters Companion.

A friend of mine was poorly, so I made this card to cheer her up.

Alongside the stamps is a lovely CD containing coordinating papers and this is what I used for the backing papers. I also used the papers to do some paper piecing for the dress, hair bows and the bear's bandage which really cut down on the colouring, and also helped to pull the card together. As usual, everything else has been coloured in using my current favourites - alcohol pens

Anyway - I hope you like it, and thanks for looking.

Sharon

Little Claire's October Club Stamps

At long last I can show you the cards I made with the gorgeous stamp which is now available from Little Claire's for the monthly club. It's called 'Owlgate' and I think it's just lovely - especially the little extra details such as the mice in the hole in the face.

I have coloured the stamps identically for both samples but have come up with two very different looks. I hope you like them.

Another appearance from the giraffe

Here's that Giraffe again, but this time I've stuck with a yellow and brown background to complement the little lad himself!

By the way, if you pop over to the Little Claire's blog you will see loads of cards featuring this little fella and one very imaginiative one where he has been changed in to a football fan!

That's all from me today!

Sharon

Apparently Giraffes Like Christmas too!!

Here is a lovely new stamp from Little Claire which features of all things, features a Giraffe at Christmas!

Here'sa card that I made using the stamp and accompanying greeting and some paper which I printed from a Crafter Companion CD.

Thanks for looking.

Sharon

Anyone having trouble posting pictures?

Hi,

I'm feeling a bit frustrated right now as I have just tried to load a picture on my blog and they have changed the format for loading. I have  tried to load up a pic but all Iget is this little 'wait' circle  as if it's loading but it just goes on forever and still no picture.

Is anyone alse having a similar problem, or does anyone know how  to get around this?

Yours frustratedly!

Sharon

Magnolia in 3D

Today I thought I would post something which, I have to admit, is out of the archive, but looking back at it I'm still quite proud of it, so I thought it was worthy of a post.

This was a special card that I made for a friend's grand daughter who was mad about horses. I wanted to make it really spcial so I made a 3d pop up card, and went for the full works by making a detachable rosette and a presentation box. Afterall the effort that went in to this one, I found it quite hard to let it go, so I'm glad that I took some pictures.

I coloured this with the old faithful Tombow pens, using a water colouring technique.

Thanks for looking and I hope you like it.

PS - If anyone has any ideas on how they decorate the front of a card when they are putting a pop up inside, I would love to receive your comments.

Sharon x

My second blog award!

I am so pleased to have received another blog award from none other than the lovely Kay Carley, and here it is!

As the lucky recipient of this award, I have to thank the person who gave it to me - so thank you very much Kay!

I have to post the award on my blog......ta daaa!

I have to list three things I like about myself.  Hmmmm

• I like that I am left handed - it's good to be a liitle different.
• I like that I am a mum (my boy is everything to me!)
• I like that I am a big softie (although it can be embarrasing as I will cry at the silliest of movies - including when King Kong fell of the Sky Scraper!)

I have to post a picture of myself that I like.....This is quite hard as I don't like myself in pictures, but I like this one as it is kind of quirky. It was taken in the caves a Cheddar Gorge.



Finally I get to pass this award on the 5 deserving bloggers so here goes. I have given my awards to people who come to visit my blog and leave lovely comments, which is an honour as their blogs contain some fantastic work. Take a look and you will see what I mean....

http://craftinghelen.blogspot.com/
http://maryscardworld.blogspot.com/
http://carolscards.wordpress.com/
http://littleclairesdesigns.blogspot.com/
http://craftiegoddess.blogspot.com/

Sharon x



Time for a little Magnolia

I  don't think I have posted a Magnolia card on my blog yet, so I thought I would post one for you today.

I love these little stamps and you would be amazed at the size of their range - there are literally hundred of them.

Unfortunately today's picture is a little bit blurry but hopfully you will get the gist. I wanted to break up the edges of the topper a bit so I did this by dabbing my markers randomly around the edges of the white card with a couple of different colours, and then I dabbed some of them with a blender pen which fades the colour a bit more and adds more variation.

I hope you like the result!

Thanks for looking

Sharon x

Another of my favourites - Stamps by Judith

I thought I would introduce another of my favourite stamp ranges today, which is Stamps By Judith. They are a really quirky range of images from America and they include an excellent item called a stubbie which is basically a wooden stick with a little image on the end. These are only a couple of pounds each and they are worth their weight in gold as you can use them to create borders, backgrounds and all sorts.

For this card I have used the dog and the small flowerpots from the range and I have used stubbies or sticks (which are smaller versions of the stubbies) to create the flowers, foliage, bones and 'Woof'. The Happy Birthday was just another greeting stamp that I had. I coloured this using Tombow pens and stamped all the flowers and foliage using dye based ink pads. These stamps are so versatile as you can make some great little scenes with them.

You can get these stamp at Stamp Addicts and I beleive they now have them available  on their website, so it's well worth having a look.

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

A little more popcorn - but without the calories!

What can I say - I'm a sucker for cute bears and Popcorn fits right in to that category!

So today I thought I'd post another Popcorn card, but this time with a stamped image......

The stamp is from the Popcorn Romance range and the paper comes from the coordinating CD. The image is quite large, and I haven't really tried colouring images of this size with alcohol pens so I have gone for Lyra aquacolours for this image as they are great for covering large areas and they blend really well to give you some nice shading.

Hope you like this one! Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

Back to School

So I think all the kids are finally back to school now and things can hopefully get back to normal again.

Luckily my son went back to school with no trouble and seems to have settled back in to the routine, although he's not to impressed with having homework on the very first weekend!

In recognition of the school term beginning I thought I'd post a card that we actually used to go with the goodbye gifts for the teachers fom last year. There's no stamping involved in this one though, as the decoupage and the backing papers all came from the Popcorn Kids CD from Crafters Companion.

The main departure for me on this card is the green ribbon, as Joshua wouldn't entertain any 'pinkness' on a card that he was giving away! (typical boy!!)

Anyway, here's the card - hope you like it.....

Sharon x

Cute new Owl Stamp from Little Claire

Little Claire's have just released a lovely little stamp called 'Night Owls' and it's a real bargain at only £2.99!

Here are a couple of cards that I made using the stamp. The first is made using the stamp exactly as it comes and mounting it on to some lovely moon and stars paper which I printed from a Cute Compnions CD.

For the second card I did something a little bit different. I embossed the tree using a Cuttlebug embossing folder and then filled the indented side with glue so that I could glitter the tree. I then cut out the owls moon and stars from the stamp to add as embellishments. Unfortunately the picture doesn't show this as well as I would have liked, but the glitter effect is quite subtle on the real thing because of using translucent glitter on a dark card stock. I takes a little time to do this but I would recommend giving this a go if you fancy something a little different. I think it would also look really nice on some ofthe other Cuttlebug embossed backgrounds too. Anyway, after all that waffle, here's the card....

My first blog award!

Helen (fellow Little Claire's DT member) left me a comment yesterday to ay that she had left something on her blog for me, and I was really surprised to see that she had passed on a blog award to me. It was a lovely surpise as I haven't received a blog award before, so thank you very much Helen. xx

So here's the award and the rules are that I now have to say why I started my blog and pass the award on to 10 other deserving bloggers.

Well the reason I started my blog was after some encouragement I received from a few fellow craft friends. I gave craft making 'superstar' Kay Carley a card that I had made to thank her for a lovely day crafting spent with her, which she published on her blog. I had told her I was thinking about starting a blog and she asked me a number of times if I had done it yet. My other carft friend 'craftnut' was also telling me to get on and do it, and after I recieved some lovely comments via Kay's blog I decided to go ahead and do it!

So my first two awards will have to go to Kay and Tracy (aka Craftnut)

 Tracy - http://craftnutdesigns.blogspot.com/

 Kay - http://www.kaycarley.blogspot.com/

Dawny P - http://pinkpiggywiggy.blogpot.com/

I'll be back later with my other nominations..

Little Claire's September club release

Getting Ready for Christmas

The September Stamp Club set from Little Claire's is now available and I recomend that you go over to their website and have a look as I think this set is really good value for money! There is a variety of images to suit every christmas taste but I have to say my favouriate is the cute little penguin! I made a card using the Ponsettia earlier this week but haven't had a chance to photograph it yet, so will post it in the next few days.

As usual I have used my current favourites - Copics and Promarkers to colour these designs, and I think the bright colours are just perfect for these designs.

 PS - in case you fancy  picking up a set of these stamps, here's the website for you - http://www.littleclaire.co.uk/

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

A little indulgence never hurt anyone.....

Hi all. We've been having a little trouble with our internet over the last few days, so I haven't been able to post anything, but we seem to be getting back to normal so fingers crossed! Here is a card that I made for my sister recently after she kindly baby sat my son (no mean feat keeping a lively 8 year old boy occupied!). After all her efforts I thought she  would probably need some relaxation time so I gave this card to her along with some fragranced bubble bath. This stamp is from the Joanna Sheen Diva range, which I coloured with promarkers, and the papers were printed from a CD ROM (Wild Rose studios I think!).

As you can see, it's an easel card. I love making these but only give them to people if I can hand it to them personally. I always worry that if someone gets one in the post, they won't know what to do with it....... the trials of being a crafter!

Until next time.

Sharon x