The 'Bear' Minimum

Just a very quick post today as the internet is painfully slow and I am very close to throwing my laptop across the room!!! (I pay for 10 meg of speed and get 1.5 if I'm lucky - but best not to get me started on that one!)

Anyway, back to the card. There are  quite a few bear related challenges, plus Christmas, plus simple layouts so I thought that I would combine them all, and came up with this, using a LOTV stamp. I have stamped and coloured with Promarkers, as per usual, and I have used mu nesties and Martha Stewart snowflake border punch for the gold  bits. A little bit of doodling and a lovely sentiment stamp from Stamps By Judith, and Bob's your uncle!

So I'm going to enter this one for the following challenges:

• Crafty Calendar - Let Sleeping Bears Lie
• Southern Girls - Anything Goes
• Allsorts - Keep it Simple
• Magical Monday - Christmas in September
• Crafters Companion - Christmas Wishes
• Cupcake Crafts - If you go down to the woods.....

Thanks for looking !

Sharon x

Quick and simple - easel card

Today it's a very quick and simple offering with no stamping (shock horror!).....bu at least I have managed to move away from the Christmas theme for a day.

everything on this card has come from the lovely Humphrey's Corner CD, using the decoupage, backing papers and borders section.

Other than that, there's really not too much to say about this one, other than I am going to enter it for the following challenge....

One Stop Craft Challenge

Thanks for looking.

Sharon

Aqua, white and a bit of Glitter....

This lovely colour scheme is the subject of this week's challenge at LOTV. I love aqua and white, particularly for snowy christmas cards so I thought I would go with something clean and simple.

So for this card I have picked one of the beautiful LOTV images and used some of the lovely blues from my Spectrums to colour her in. I cut her out with a circle nestie and the mounted the circle on to the white card, which gave me a guideline for where to stick my little punched snowflakes to make the wreath.

I am going to enter this card in to the following challenges:

Crafty Calendar
Lili of the Valley
Southern Girls

Thanks for looking!

Sharon

Challenge Time!

Today I thought I would show a card that I have made for a few of the lovely challenges that are going on this week.

As you can see, it Christmas again, using one of the lovely LOTV Christmas Bear stamps. I thought that this stamp would match really well with the lovely My Minds Eye papers that came free with one of my magazines (Card Making and Papercraft I think!) as I thought the Christmas tree theme followed through nicely.

As luck would have it, I have some lovely promarker colours which matched perfectly with the paper and the layout is from Passion for Promarkers so this card was relatively easy to put together.

I am going to enter this card for the following challenges:

Crafty Calendar - Let Sleeping Bears Lies
Papertake - Creature Comforts
Passion for Promarkers - Sketch

Thanks for looking.

Sharon

Card Maker of the Year - my entry

As promised....finally a 'non Christmassy' card!

Here is my one and only entry for the C Mand P magazine card maker of the year competition. At first I wasn't going to bother entering as the competition will be foierce and there are so many talented cardmakers out there! But then I thought I would give it a go, and had plans to make a few entries for the different categories, but,in the end I only managed one card and here it is.

This is my entry for the Lily of the Valley category (as you know, I am a big fan!) and I have to admit that this was rather a labour of love!

I started out with a plain piece of card and created the archway and stepper base for the card. The background papers are from some of my staple NitWits collections and I selected three of the beautiful LOTV girls for the images.

Each image was coloured with promarkers and cut out and decoupaged on to one of the layers of the base card.

Finally, I punched branches to frame the card and added individually hand stamped and coloured leaves for a little extra dimension.

This turned out to be quite a big card - approx 8'' by 8'' and it took quite some time to make. I was quite sad to let it go, but at least I have a nice photo of it.

In the meantime, I will keep my fingers crossed and dream that one day I may get to see it again, but this time in print in the C M and P magazine. Like I said though, I can only dream.........

By for now and thanks for reading my ramblings!

Sharon xx

Red, White and Green, plus a Sketch

Another quick post to show another Christmas Card (sorry!) that I have madeto enter a couple of challenges this week.

For this card I have used one of the wonderful new Sugar Nellie stamps and water coloured her with my Whispers pens (I am geting right back in to the water colouring at the moment!). I coloured her on water colour paper but then cut her out and mounted her on to some embossed spotty white paper and a nestie.

The beautiful papers that you can see are from the NitWits Joyful Hearts collection - you can't see  it too well from the picture but they are lovely and textured - almost like material.

My one regret on this card is that I didn't edge the holly paper in green. I think it would have looked a lot better, but hindsight is a wonderful thing!

I am going to enter this card for the Sugar Nellie Sketch Challenge , the LOTV Red, white and green challenge, plus Cute Card Thursday - Anything Goes.

Thanks for looking once again!

Sharon xx

My cards on Telly!!

Stamp Addicts have had 2 shows on Create and Craft TV today. The first one was at 10am (probably repeated later tonight) and there is another show at 3pm.

The shows feature the lovely Christmas stamp stes that we have been working on lately and I was so pleased to see one of my cards there on the screen when I flicked on the TV this morning!

To top it all, the thre cards of mine that were shown were all praised by the lovely Nigel, and I was so chuffed to hear that my Christmas scene card was Sarah's favourite example from the set.

This is the card that was showcased as a favourite.......I can't tell you how chuffed I am!

It's also so lovely to see what amazing cards therest of the DT have come up with too.....I feel quite in awe of their artistic talents!

I will be recording the 3pm show to have a look at later, and get a bit more insipiration from the ideas that the other girls have come up with.

PS- I know I promised a 'non christmas' post, but I promise to come back with one later!!

Sharon xx

Polkadoodles meets LOTV

Today I thought I would show you a card using items by two of my favourite companies - in this case Polka Doodles and Lily of the Valley..

The Christmas scene has come from the Polka Doodles Magical Winter CD Rom and the image is one of the lovely LOTV christmas releases.

Actually I should really throw in a mention for another favourite company of mine as the snowy background paper is from 'The Snowman' CD Rom by Crafters Companion, and the image has been coloured in using my Spectrums - so all in all quite a combination.

As you can see, I have decoupaged my stamped image and offset it so it actually goes outside of the framed scene.........I think this looks quite nice , so I will probably do it again!

Over at Cute Card Thursday they have an 'Anything Goes' challenge, so I thought I would enter this card.

In the meantime, I am sure you are already getting fed up with my Christmas cards. Brace yourself...there are still more to come (especially as the lovely Humphrey's Corner Xmas stamps and CD are winging their way to me as we speak!), but perhaps I will post something 'non Christmas' tomorrow!

Thanks for looking.

Sharon x

My First Octaganol Stepper!

Here it is - my first attempt at an octaganol stepper card, and I am quite pleased how it came out if I say so myself.

I wanted to have a go at one of these cards, but there was no way I was going to be able to do it by measuring and drawing line with a ruler and pencil so I got myself a template from BCE. I was really impressed as it was so easy to use - I was expecting my first attempt to land up in the bin, but there was no need!

So, having got my card base sorted out I have used some lovely backing paper from one of my NitWit downloads (either Simple Joys or Merry Christmouse - can't remember which!) and I have edged them all with hand drawn faux stitching.

The lovely image in the middle is from Sugar Nellie - and how cute are these little penguins. Again , I was duly impressed with this stamp as it is quite a sizeable stamp so it makes a really good focal point. I have gone for a water colouring option this time round, using my Whispers Pens - as you can see, I am need of a little more practice with these!

Anyway - thanks for looking, and hope you are not getting bored with the Christmas stuff.....I seem to be on a Christmas roll at the moment!

Bye for now.

Sharon xx

Christmas Card Challenge - Something Vintage

The Christmas Card challenge this week is something vintage and although I am often more of a contemporary girl when it comes to Christmas, for some reason this year I am really being drawn back to the lovely Greens and Reds and lovely Christmassy scenes. That said I think I am veering more towards traditional than 'hardcore vintage' if there is such a thing!!

So here is my card using the lovely Cute Companions Christmas set and the matching CD. The scenes and characters are so lovely that you really don't need to do much else with these cards....

For this card I have coloured the characters with water colour pencils and mounted them on to the backgound scene, finishing off with a generous sprinkling of glitter.

So I'm entering this card in to the vintage challenge as mentioned:

Christmas Card Challenge

Thanks for looking!

Have a happy Sunday everyone.

Sharon xx

Wish I was there.........

After the week I've had at work, I have decided that I would quite like to live inside this little snow globe!

As you may have guessed I am particularly glad to have made it to Friday this week, and I'm looking forward to a couple of days off!

In the meantime, here's another one of the cards I made using the Stamp Addicts Mini Village kit. This time I have stamped out a Judikins snow globe (also from Stamp Addicts) and have created my snow scene by decoupaging various bits of the mini kit within it.

Everything is coloured with Promarkers and, I am not sure if you can see but there are little snowflakes in the sky. These have been created using Nicky Hall's '1,2,3' technique where you hold the tip of a blender pen on the sky for the count of three to fade the ink and create a little snow flake. Very effective in real life, although you can't see it so well on my photo.

Well I am hoping to make some time for a little craft this weekend (fingers crossed), but in the mean time, I'm going to enter this card for the Papertake Allsorts challenge.

Thanks for looking!

Sharon

P ...P... P ..Pick up a Pengin!!

Time to showcase another Stamp Addicts card today, using the lovely Penguins set. There are loads of images in this particular set, and it's great for making up little scenes. I really enjoyed putting this particular card together, and it is quite sizeable (being an A5 card) but I don't think that the images are lost in it at all.

As you can see, I have done my favourite paper tearing and glittering technique for the snow and the snowy background paper is from my Snowman CD Rom. The Red paper is from a Foerver Friends Christmas pad that I had. I dn't know if it's still available but I am pretty sure you can get your hands on something similar.

I have stamped a selection of images, coloured them with my Promarkers and cut them out and decoupaged them for a little bit of lift. I have to admit though, that I draw the line at cutting out the little sticks on the skiing penguins though so I drew them in by hand afterwards. A little bit of a cheat but hopefuly you can't tell!

I thought I would enter this card for the two promarker challenges this week, which both happen to be 'Anything Goes'.

http://ilovepromarkers.blogspot.com/2011/08/challenge-81-anything-goes.html

http://promarkerchallenge.blogspot.com/2011/08/week-115-theme.html

It's turned in to a rainy old day over here today, whichs that my son is allowed some extra time on his Playstation, and I get some free time for card making. Wha hooo - I'm off!!

Sharon xx