My first sneak peak....

Today I thought it would be OK to give you a sneak peak of one of the Christmas designs that I did for Stamp Addicts, and take the opportunitiy to enter a few lovely challenges too.

Here's a stepper card that I made using the lovely Santa set that will be coming up on the Create and Craft show on Monday.

I really love the Santa in this set and he also comes with a 'Mrs Claus' which I will show you another day. The parcels that you can see are an inividual stamp in two sizes, so you can stamp away till your heart's content and make a massive pile of presents. The greeting also comes in the set, so you really have everything that you need to make loads of lovely cards.

How do you like my doodling around the main image? It's my latest thing, so no doubt you will be seeing quite a lot of this kind of thing over the coming weeks!

So here are the challenges that I am going to enter today....

Bearly Mine - Anything Goes
I Love Promarkers - Anything Goes
Secret Crafter - Christmas in June.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope thart, wherever you are, you are not being blown away by the gales and you are enjoying whatever sunshine might be coming your way.

Sharon x

An old sketch for a new challenge

A couple of weeks ago the Catchthe Bug challenge had areally nice CAS sketch which I just never got round to use it, but since it was perfect for a rectangular card, I decided to keep hold of it for another day. Here's what I eventually made with it......

It's made using a digi image and papers from Polkadoodles Pretty Sweet, once again and a few Candies stuck on for good measure. Sorry for the poor quality of the picture, but after a lovely sunny day, it has suddenly turned awful dull around here!

Anyway, I would like to enter this card for a few challenges that are out there this week:

Delightful Challenge - Anything Goes
Card Mad Fairy - Do it with Digi's - Something Girly
Di's Digi Downloads - Spots and Dots
Bearly Mine - Anything Goes

By the way - about those Christmas cards that I mentioned the other day - you can see them now on The Purplezone (Stamp Addicts Blog) as they are being shown as sneaky peaks. The show on C&C has now been scheduled for 2pm on Monday so be sure to hit your record button as I am sure there will be some lovely stuff on there from the rest of the DT and, of course, you will be able to get your hands on some of those lovely stamps!

Thanks for stopping by today.

Sharon x

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.......

Remember that song......it put's me in a good mood just thinknig about it!

Sorry to be bringing that winter event up already, but I have spent the last week working on Christmas cards with some new sets of stamps that Stamp Addicts will be bringing out very soon. Thr stamp sets are really lovely but, sadly I don't think I'm allowed to show you them yet - although I have it on good authority that they will be making an appearance on Create and Craft this coming Friday, so keep your eyes peeled.

In the menatime, it seems I'm not the only one who's thinking about Christmas as OneStop Craft have a Christmas challenge going on this week, so, on the basis that it is NEVER too early to start on your Christmas crafting, I have entered the card that you see below.

It's one of my 'labour of love' box cards featuring the adorable Humphrey anda certain Christmas figure in elephant form!

Here's a closer shot of the image which I stamped, coloured with Promarkers and decoupaged to give it a bit of lift.

And of course, this kind of thing doesn't fit in to your  average envelope, so I made a keepsake box for it as well.

Well I wish I could say I was all Christmassed out now, but sadly not, so don't be surprised if you see a few more Christmas postings winging your way soon!

Thanks for stopping by today.

Sharon x

Still looking for Summer

What a day we have had today - one minute bright sunshine...and the next it is pouring with rain!! I am wondering if we are ever going to get our proper summer!

At least for us crafters we don't have to rely on the sunshine to be able to pusue our passion in life!

Today, I am back with the girlie themes again, but still on a Polkadoodlesrun - this time using the Pretty Sweet CD.

I have picked one of the lovely digi images and printed it out quite large this time so that it almost fills an A5 card. The lovely bakcing papers are also from the CD and I have to say that this pattern is a particular favourite of mine.....it comes in loads of lovely shades too.

I have found a couple of new challenges today and I thought I would enter this card in them:

Delightful Challenges - Anything Goes
Card Mad Fairy - Girly Challenge

......and an old favourite...

Stampin For The Weekend - Show us your style.

Thanks for looking today!

Hope the sun shines on you tomorrow

Sharon x

It's that boy again....

If you are a follower of my blog, you will no doubt have seen this boy a number of times by now. I make no apologies as he is one of my favourite boy digi images ever!

In case you didn't know, he comes from the Polka Doodles Pretty Tuff CD and so do the backing papers, and the wall that he is sitting on.

I have kept it all fairly simple, as boys generally don't like the frilly stuff, but managed to get a bit of ribbon and some candy dots in there for good measure.... not to much girliness I hope!

I'm going to enter this for this week's challenge at My Mum's Craft Shop , which is 'All About The Boys'.

Thanks for stopping by today and hope to see you again soon.

Sharon x

Summer Scenes

My final post today is made to enter the following challenges:
Polka Doodles - A Summer Scene
The Ribbon Girl - Purple and Greem.

This lovely scene comes from the lovely Sugar Plum Fairies CD from Polka Doodles and the little girl is a digi image from the same CD. I have coloured her in with my Promarkers and have used on of Nikki Hall's techniques of dotting with a blender pen to make the polka dot hat and wings.

That's my last post today - it's back to Christmas Time creations for me tihs evening!

Thanks for stopping by.

Sharon x

A little bit of Summer

Summer certainly seems to be a bit hit and miss so far this year, but at least we had the benefit of a reasonable day, without the gail force winds today!

Ironically, though, my cards this week have been focussing on Christmas and although I would like to say that I am really that organsied, the truth is that I'm doing some DT stuff for Stamp Addicts. I would love to be able to show them to you, but I'm afraid you are going to have to wait a bit longer as they are going to be released on a C&C show, scheduled  for 29th June, so watch this space!

In the meantime it's back to summer and a lovely LOTV challenge with the theme of summertime so I thought I would stamp up and colour this little cutie, using my Spectrum Noir pens.

For this card I have used a bit of a dotting technique to get more of a rugged rather than a smooth look. Also, how do you like my latest doodle style around the edge? I picked up this idea in a craft magazine lately and I am a bit hooked on it at the moment, I have to say!

So thanks for stopping by and I will be back shortly with one more post for the weekend.

Sharon xx

One for the boys....or rather men

Here's a card that I have made for my dad for Father's Day. It's Ok for me to post it now as I will be leaving the house to go and give it to him in a short while.

I have tried out a new technique for me on this card, which is creating the background with my distress inks and my inkilicious brushes. I saw a demo using these brushed on C&C recently and, it really inspired me to have a go with them as they had been sitting in my cupboard since I bought them at the NEC Hobbycraft. Now they are all inky as I absolutely love them!!

For this card I cut out some mound shapes on some scrap paper and used them as templates, brushing on two colours of green distress inks, plus a little swirl of blue for the sky above.

I have used another one of my Prairie Fairy images which is coloured with Pros and decoupaged for depth.

I'm going to enter this for the My Mums Craft Shop Challenge which is of course 'One For The Boys'.

Thanks for stopping by.

Sharon x

Winging it......

Another card for you today, featuring a digi and background from the Sugar Plum Fairy CD. Once again I have coloured the little fairy girl with my Promarkers and I have distressed the edges of the shaped card before adding the flowers and buttons for a final embellishment.

Once again, I am going to make the most of some of the lovely challenges that are out there and enter the following:

Make It Monday - Anything Goes
Crafty Calendar - Flowers in Bloom
Digital Tuesday - Anything Goes
Whimsy Challenge - Things with Wings
I love Promarkers - For a Little Girl
Southern Girls - Things with Wings
Polka Doodles - Lots of Flowers

Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Sharon x

With Father's Day in Mind

It's that time of year again when our thoughts turn to cards for men.....and we try to find images that will suit our loved ones.

I got lucky with a couple of more digi images from Prairy Fairy and here is the first of my Father's Day efforts.....

This card is made from quite a selection from my stash:

• The main image is from Prairy Fairy, and I have coloured it with Promarkers plus a little bit of decoupage for dimension.
• The little flies are from a stubby stamp from my Stamps by Judith collection (as you can imagine - the fly stamp doesn't come out of the craft cupboard too often!!)
• The little fish have been stamped from a very old Popcorn Fishing set from crafters companion, and coloured in with Spectrum Noir pens.

And finally the backing papers are scraps but have come from one of my Nitwits digi sets.

I hope that the recipient will like this card, but, in the mean time, I thought I would enter it in to a few challenges:

Make it Monday - Anything Goes

PaperTake - Anything Goes with a Fathers Day theme

Digital Tuesday - Anything Goes

Card Makin Mamas - Fathers Day

Thanks for stopping by.....if you like what you see, please leave a comment and come and follow me!!

Sharon xx

Green Fingered....not quite!

Today I have been doing something quite unusual for me....a bit of gardening!

Although I love flowers and gardening I am actually totally rubbish at it, but, around about this time every year, I see all the bedding flowers in the shops and I can't resist buying a few to add a bit of colour in my garden.

So, much to my son's disgust, I dragged him out to B&Q this morning where  we bought a colourful selection of flowers and set about planting them back home.....in between the showers of course!!

I am also very happy today as my strawberry plug plant, which I bought a while back, has not only survived, but I noticed today that the first strawberry has started to appear! It is smaller than a pea at the moment, but I have great hopes for it and I hope that we get to taste it before the bords or squirrels!!

Talking of flowers, it's time to move on to my card for today, which has once again come from  my Polka Doodles Sugar Plum Fairy CD.  I have selected another lovely background and coloured the main character with my 'Pro's'. The background papers are actually from the Pretty Sweet CD, but , as Nicky Hall always says, everything on her CDs is always interchangeable!

Finally I have topped it off with soe ribbon and some lovely flowers from Wild Orchid ( Idon't part with these flowers very often, so I will have to make sure this card goes to someone special!!)

And here is a close up of the fairy......

I would like to enter this in to these lovely challenges:

• Bugaboo - Anything Goes   Look here
• Secret Crafter - Anything Goes  Look here
• Crafty Calendar - Flowers in Bloom Look here
• Ribbon Girl - Use Ribbon or Lace  Look here
• Make it Monday - Anything Goes  Look here
• Crafters Companion - Time to Embellish  Look here

Thanks for coming to see me today.

Sharon x