Easy Peasy - it's a Squeezy!

Yes it's a Squeezy Frame card that's the subject of my post today, made from scratch by my own fair hand! It took a little time I have to admit, but I think that the result was worth it.

I have tried to take a picture from a few different angles so that you can see the 3d effect and also the mechanics if you fancy having a go yourself.....

So here's the front view to start with......

For this card I used the lovely winter scene stamps from Stamp Addicts which recently featured on one of their TV shows. I stamped various different elements, coloured them with Spectrums and then cut them all out so that I could create a little scene.

To make the card itself, I took a C6 card and cut it at the fold, so that you have a fromt and a back piece. I then scored and cut out a window on the front piece and matted paper on to it for the frame.

I then made two concertina pieces for the sides by measuring two pieces of card to match the height of my base card and cutting the width to 6cm. I then scored the card at 1cm intervals and folded concertina style.

Once folded, attach the concertina's to the back of the card first and then matt patterned paper over the top so that the mechanics are hidden.

Next is the fun part - take two pieces of card and cut them to fit the width of the card. Tear and glitter to create a snow effect and then start sticking on your stamped elements to create the scene. Yoy can stick some pieces on 'flat' and some with stick pads to create even more layers. Hopefully this picture will give you an idea of what I mean......

Next, you need to attach the two scene sheets to the concertina pieces where the folds point inwards. Work from the back forwards and use a strong double sided tape for this job.

Once this fiddly bit is done it is simply a matter of attaching the frame on the front to seal everything in, and Bob's your Uncle.

Here is a final picture (which isn't very good but hopefully gives you another view). It's looking downwards in an attempt to show the dimension once again. Ypu can also see the conertina's on the side.

This card is now on it's way to the house of Stamp Addicts as part of my DT assignment, but I have to admit I was sorry to let this one go! I will definitely have to use this technique again - time permitting of course! - an maybe with a larger card base next time!

I am not sure if my description of how I made this makes any sense, but if it helps anyone out I would love to hear from you and see what you have created.

Have a lovely evening everyone!

Sharon

Better late than not at all.......

I nearly didn't get aroud to posting again today as I have been busy making some cards for Stamp Addicts for the last couple of days..... my first official assignment as a DT member!

Anyhow, it's 7pm and I find myself all alone in the house, (which doesn't happen very often!) so I thought I would enjoy my short lived solitude and do a quick post. Oops - too late.......my son has just returned from a fishing trip with his friend!

Oh well - here's the fist of my cards for Stamp Addicts, using their Penguin set. It's very simple - a scalloped easel with one of the main Penguin images as the center piece. I have also dotted glitter glue all around for a snow flake (ish) effect.

I thought I would enter this one for the One Stop Craft Anything But a Square Challenge.

Thanks for looking and enjoy what remains of our last Bank Holiday till Christmas (scary or what!!)

Sharon xx

No Stamp Required

Today, just for a change, I thought I would load up a card with NO STAMPING! Sometimes, after a hard day at work, I don't want to be making decisions about choosing colours and colouring in loads of detail, but I still need something to help me wind down, and this is just perfect for that.

I'm not really one for buying decoupage sheets, as lovely as they are, simply because you use them once and then they're gone. However, the digi world offers the perfect alternative, where you can buy the set and ptint off as many times as you like.

This particular card is made using a digi set that took my fancy from NitWits and it's called 'Tattered Frannies'. I love the little rag doll and the muted colour scheme so, for this card, I printed the doll out 4 times and decoupaged her before mounting her on to come of the coordinating backing papers. Easy peasy!!!

Well that's me all done for today - thanks for looking.

Sharon xx

The last of my cards from my Stamp Addicts Set

Remember the 'crazy' set of stamps I got from Stamp Addicts?

Well I just remembered that I never showed you the third sample that I made for them, so here it is......

When I first set eyes on the man with the rifle, for some reason it put me in mind of Elmer Fudd and (I'm gonna catch that wabbit!!) So my strange little mind was ticking away with 'That's all for now folks' and the famous Warners Brither jingle when the target used to appear on the TV screen. So, to cut a long story short, that's where the inspiration for this card came from.

The characters have all been stamped, cut out and coloured with promarkers, and the target has been made by cutting out nestie circles and layering them all one on top of the other.......simples!!!!

Moving on to some over 'Crazies' - here's a piccy of my son and the infamous Brion the dog, taken just a couple of days ago. As you can see - they are best buddies!

That dog has such a serious face!!!

Anyway, I'm off now as I have some lovely Christmas stamps from Stamp Addicts to play with so I am sure |I will be back soon to share with you the fruits of my labours......

Have a nice evening everyone.

Sharon x

Creating a Scene

Hi all,

Just a quick post today to show you a 3d scene card that I have made for a couple of challenges this week.

I started with a pice of plian A4 card and created a 3 step concertina base which I then added torn paper and glitter to for the snowy effect.  The elements are all digi stamps printed from the Magical Winter 2 CD Rom from |Polka Doodles and I have coloured these in with a combination of Copics and Promarkers.

I am going to enter this card for two challenges:
Secret Crafter - Create a Scene

Winter Wonderland - Card for a man or boy

Hope you like it.

I'm off  to grab a cup of tea after a hard day at work!

Sharon x

Super Sized Pink Gem Phillip

The challenge over at Winter Wonderland is to create a card for a boy or man, so I thought this lovely digi stamp from Pink Gem would be perfect. This is actually a large version of the digi as I sized him to fit an A5 card, and as you can see, the image has still come out lovely and clear.

I have coloured him with my Spectrums and created the background using some paper printed from my Snowman CD. The snow on the ground has been simply created by tearing and layering white paper and then applying glitter.

I hope you like this card, which I am entering for the Winter Wonderland  and  the Christmas Card Challenge this week.

As it is Sunday, I shall also confess to you all that I have been a bit naughty and popped over to theCuddly Buddly website to buy some of their gorgeous Liliboo Christmas digi's following seeing the wonderful cards that Lolly Dolly had made on her wonderful website. I was not too naughty though as the digi's are a bargain at only 99p each. They also have loads of lovely freebies over there as well so it's well worth taking a look - and don't forget to pop by Lolly Dolly's blog too - you will love her stuff!

Well it's back to work for me tomorrow so I guess that this blog will be a little quieter again now.

Thanks for joining me this week!

Sharon x

Summer Challenges

As you may have noticed, I have been doing quite a lot of posting this week....that's because I have been on holiday, so I am making the most of it, before I go back to work again next week and come home cross eyed and brain dead from a day of computers and multi currency financial accounting - yuk!! Don't get me wrong - I enjoy my work, even though it can be quite pressurised, but boy, it feels good to escape from it sometimes!

We have spent the week doing lots of fun stuff like cycling, playing crazy golf, going to parks and baking cookies, but I have been staying up late, getting in to my card making (and sleeping in late every morning - but we had better gloss over that!)

So this card was the product of last night's late night labours and it is based on a sketch from this week's Cupcake Challenge.

I have used a beautiful LOTV image, teamed up with some more of the papers that I got for my birthday. Plus I have stepped out of my personal box and used a combination of two different types of alcohol pen. I  know that this is 'allowed' but for some reason I really struggle with the idea of mixing up different brands. However, this time I've managed it, using a combination of Sprectrums and Promarkers - what a break through!!

Hope you like the card. I'm going to enter it in to the following challenges:

Cupcake Crafts
My Mum's Craft Shop
Stamp Something

Thanks for looking.

Sharon xx

A little bit of sugar - but calorie free!

Have you figured out what the sugar is yet?

You've got it - it's the wonderful Sassy stamp from Sugar Nellie. I really love colouring this image in using nice bright colours for a change, to match this tropical paper. This card has been made for someone special, who likes bright colours, and I have taken inspiration from the sketch over at the Sugar Bowl Challenge this week.

Luckily my good old Promarker stash happened to have some colours thar matched this paper perfectly, and this image is really enjoyable to colour (also giving me a chance to practice colouring hair once again!)

So, I thought I would enter this card in to a couple of challenges today:

Crafty Calendar Challenge

The Sugar Bowl

Before I go today I just wanted to say thanks for the lovely comments that I received following the news of my joining the Stamp Addicts DT. Special thanks go to a person who still found the time to congratulate me, even though they have so much stuff going on in their life at the moment, and also to my blog buddies who have been my DT team mates on the Little Claire's DT who also left me some lovely comments.

Thanks!

Sharon xx

Exciting News!

Just another quick post to let you all know some exciting news.

I am very proud to announce that I have just been accepted as a DT member for Stamp Addicts!

I can't tell you how pleased I am to be joining them as I have been a fan of their products for years - you will no doubt have seen from my cards that I use Stamps by Judith sticks and stubbies as part of my essential kit, and they also carry many other wonderful brands including Denami, and of course their own exclusive stamp range.

As you may have guessed, that's the reason why I received the 'Crazy' stamp set as this was a challenge that I needed to complete, along with twelve others, before the final selection was made.

So at the moment I am happy, happy, happy and can't wait to start showcasing some lovely Stamp Addicts stash for you all to see!

Sharon xx

Sketch n Stash

I love the Sketch n Stash challenge blog as they have some  lovely sketches to follow, which are not too fussy and that suits me. 

So this week they have a lovely little sketch which looks like this......

So, for my take on this particular sketch, here is what I came up with, using a gorgeous Humphrey's Corner stamp which I coloured using my Spectrum Noirs.......

I have teamed this little cutie up with some backing papers from the backing CD, and, just for fun, I doodled my own little flowers in the bottom corner of the image.

So finally, here's the link to the challenge that I have entered......

Sketch n Stash Challenge 68

Can't wait to see what sketch they come up with next week.

Sharon xx

Post number 2 - At the Beach...

My second post for today is another challenge card, but this time opoles apart from my previous card, as we move from snow to sunshine (but knowing our weather here in England, I guess nothings impossible!!)

For this card, I have used a FREE digi stamp which came from Digi Stamp Boutique. This was actually the July freebie, but when I looked on the site the other day it was still there, so you may still be able to get you hands on it.

Here's what I did:

• I printed the image twice, coloured with Promakers and decoupaged it.
• There is a little bit of sea in the image but I made my won by colouring some paper with two shades of blue promarkers. I then tore the paper in 'wave shapes' and then decoupages on to the image, before finally adding glitter to the crest of the waves.
• The backing paper with the bunting is from my Cute Companions Summer stories CD.
• All this was matted on to a 6 inch square card, and Bob's your Uncle as they say......

I'm going to enter this card in to two challenges:

By the Cute and Girly - The Sea
One Stop Craft Challenge - at the beach

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

White on White and Christmas is Coming.....

Pink Gem have a challenge going on called 'White on White', where you are required to have nothing but white in the backgound and can only apply colour to your stamped image. I thought this would be pretty much impossible tor me, but once I had a look at the beautiful examples by the DT, I couldn't resist giving it a go.

I have to say that mine didn't come out half as nice as the samples - I think I made a mistake in using alcohol pens when I should have gone for something softer such as water colour pencils or Whispers pens.

Anyhoo - here's what I did:

• The background paper is embossed with snowflakes using my cuttlebug embossing folder. I had to make to sheets to cover the base card so I cover the join with some white satin ribbon.
• I also cut a nestie oval as the background for my image and sprayed it with gold spray and sparkle for a bit of definition.
• I punched out some snow flakes for the corner and also sprayed them with spray and sparkle (boy that stuff goes to your head - I now have gold grass though as I sprayed mine out in the garden!!)
• Finally, the Pink Gem snowman image is coloured with Spectrum Noirs. In hindsight I wish I had gone for something a bit softer , colour wise, but I was trying to avoid my pink / purple habit!

So that's the card in a nut shell.

Here are the challenges that I am entering:

A Gem of a Challenge - White on White
Secret Crafter - Christmas is Coming

That's it for this card - but will be back with another post in a bit  ( I have been a busy bee!!)

Sharon x

Stamp Addicts as promised

As mentioned yesterday, the nice people at Stamp Addicts gave me a set of stamps to play with, and challenged me to make three cards. Now the stamp set was slightly unusual, consisting on a hunter with a gun, a bull dog carrying an ammunition pack ad a duck in a straight jacket!

Hmmm - not something that I would necessarily choose (me being a cutie tootie kind of girl!) but, once inspiration hit, I had a great time with these stamps as they really are quite comical.

So here is the first of my three cards.........

As you can see, this card features the hunter, looking for the duck, who is hiding behind the bushes!

All of the background, including the bushes are made with distress inks and I have used my Stamps by Judith stamps to create the brush and  the leaves.

But there's a little bit more to this card than meets the eye, as the duck also moves in and out of the bush - so here's a shot of him briefly out of hiding!

The greeting that you can see on the cloud, also comes with this stamp set and you can also have 'Have a Crazy Birthday' as well........quite fitting for the duck I think!

Well that's my post done for today.

Have a nice Sunday, and hope you will pop back soon.

Sharon x

A bit more SWALK

As you all know, SWALKs are one of my favourite stamp ranges....and who can blame me when you look in to the eyes of these cute little kids!!!

Here's a card that Imade to say thank you to a friend of mine who gave me some lovely flowers. She had wrappes them with the wrapping paper that you see on the card, so I thought it would be nice to save some of the paper and use it on the thank you card to send back to her.

Luckily, I managed to salvage a 5 x 5 inch square pice that was flat, and not wet......and this is the result.

I coloured the image with promarkers, which happened to have some colours which matched the paper perfectly, so I was quite pleased with the final result, and my friend was chuffed as she got to keep a bit of her own wrapping paper!

I'm hoping to get a bit more crafting done this week as I now have a week off work (yippee!), so hopefully I will soon have some nice things to show you.

Finally I would like to enter this card for the LOTV 'Thank you' challenge.

Call back tomorrow as I will have something quite unusual from Stamp Addicts to show case..........

Thanks for looking.

Sharon xx

Red Card

The latest Alssorts challenge is 'Red Card', so I thought I would give this a go using some of the lovely stuff from the PolkaDoodles Magical Winter 2 CD Rom.

On the CD there are some beautiful papers in a muted red colour and, hopefully you can see in the picture, some of them have some gorgeous 'linen' textures. So I decided to use this as the base for the card and print one of the lovely digi's as the main image. There are also some colouring tutorials on the CD so I decided to follow one of these to colour in the girl with my Promarkers.

Finally, I have recycled a bow that came off of a hot water bottle cover of all things - quite appropriate really considering the girl is freezing in the snow!

As mentioned, I am entering this card for the following challenge.....

Allsorts Challenge

and also.....

Stamp Something
Thanks for looking!

Sharon x

I'm a Winner

How lucky am I  - I just found out that I won the latest Card Makin Mamas challenge, which was on the theme of Food Glorious Food.

I always have a little heart flipping moment when I see one of my cards on someone elses blog, as it's always such a nice surprise.

So I would like to say thank you very much and I am looking forward to claiming my prize!

Sharon xx

Simply Black and White

Today's offering was created for a challenge at the Secret Crafter which allows you only to use black and white.

I thought I would dig out one of my Stamps by Judith stamps that hasn't seen the light of day in a while, and I stamped him with black soot distress ink. I then used the same ink pad and a water brush to add in some shadow. I have to admit, this only takes a few minutes to do, but it's extremely gratifying as you end up with something that looks almost like a pencil drawing - particularyl if you chose a stamp which has a 'sketchy' style as I have done here.

For the little bit of background matting I have used one of my stubbies (I think it is actually a bear paw, but that's just a technicality!!). Finally a bit of matting, a bit of doodling and one card, ready to go......

I am going to enter this for the following challenges:

Secret Crafter - Black and White

Catch the Bug - Anything Goes

Thanks for looking.

Sharon

A barrow of fun.....

Just a quick post today to show a card that I made a liitle while back, using a lovely wheelbarrow stamp from Little Claire's.

I had one of those free paper pads from a magazine and I thought they were perfect as a background for this stamp, so I have simply coloured the stamp with promarkers, and layered up, finally finishing with some little punched lower embellishments - and voila!

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

My Sister ......my friend

That's the title of one of the lovely SWALK stamp sets which features two little girls sitting together, so I thought this would be a perfect thank you card for my sister who gave me some lovely birthday presents and a beautiful hand made card for my birthday this year.

So here is what I made.....

I have kept it really simple by just doing some simple matting and letting the image speak for itself.

I have coloured the girls in with Promarkers and decoupaged a couple of flowers whcih actually came from the SWALK thank you set.

Sometimes I think keeping it simple is best and that seems to have worked out in this case.

Finally I am going to enter this card in to the final Allsorts Free and Easy challenge. Thet are going back to their normal challenges next week so I am looking forward to seeing what the challenge will be!

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

Polkadoodles Home Sweet Home

My post today is a house warming card that I made for a friend who has just moved house. It seemed an excellent opportunity to get my Polkadoodles 'Be Neighbourly' stamps out, so here is what I have produced using one of the main houses and adding some of the little embellishment stamps that come with it. I really had fun with this and all those little extras, from the pebbles to the gates are really good for making a lovely little scene.

The papers that you can see were the ones that I mentioned in my previous post and were given to me by my in laws. It's a Dovecraft set called sugar and spice, and I think the colours are really gorgeous.

I am also entering this card for the following challenges:

Allsorts Free and Easy

Papertake - Anything Goes

Sketch n Stash

That's all for today.

Thanks for looking!

Sharon x

More crafty gifts to show...

Lucky old me - my birthday continued past the actual day and on in to the weekend, when we visited my In Laws. I had some lovely presents from them, including some gorgeous craft papers which you will see on a card that I am going to post next.

My sister in law, however, also errs on the crafty side but she is more of a sewing kind of girl, who like cross stitch and makes the cutest stuff using felt and other materials. So here is an example of what I mean as she made me this lovely liyyle cupcake keyring, which not only looks nice but it smells lovely too as it is fragranced.

But - there's more - My SIL is also a supremo cupcake maker and I am her biggest cupcake fan, and so..........

These one were made just for me! Mmmmmmmm!!!!

My picture doesn't do these justice but you can get an idea of what beautiful creations they are and - to top it all they are sprinkled with edible glitter. It just doesn't ger any better than that!

It's true to say that these are almost too good to eat, but I feel obliged to help these cupcakes meet their true destiny and so half of them are now but a memory!!!

If you like what you have seen, why not pop over to my SIL's  blog where you can see more of her lovely stuff and also link to her Etsy shop where she sells her wares.

You can find her here.......     http://thekraftycupcake.blogspot.com/

So why not pop over and have a look - you're gonna love it!!

PS -she also very generously gave me some crafty stuff and some smellies too - what a nive SIL she is!!

Sharon xx

It's 25 degrees out there and I'm doing snow!

Yes indeed it is true - the sun may be shining but I have been occupying myself with snow flakes and Christmas trees!

Here is a card that I have made using Magical Christmas CD2 from Polkadoodles. I love these CDs as they are jam packed with digital images and also loads of pre-coloured stuff which is great as a guide and also for a card if you're in a bit of a hurry.

For this card I printed of the background in the pre-coloured format, and printed the digi dtamp of the boy, which I have coloured in with my Copics. I then cut him out and decoupaged him on to the scene, finishing off with loads of Stickles glitter. I had intended to enter this for the Polkadoodles Christmas in July challenge, but, with one thing and another I just didn't get it done in time. No harm done though as I had loads of fun colouring in this character and I'm looking forward to colouring loads more of the other characters over the coming months!

Also - for anyone that is interested, I seem to have resolved my smudging problem when priniting out Digi's now. I am printing them on the 'fast draft' option on my printer. The image comes out just as well but it lays down a lot less ink. I then give a quick blast with the hairspray and this seems to resolve the problem. If anyone else has had the same problem as me, why not give this a try - I would love to know if it works out for you.

Bye for now.

Sharon xx