Sketch Saturday 143

I've joined in again, yes yes ye-es!

Except maybe this time I'll actually link up, as it appears that last week I epically failed in that department....ROFLMAO.

This week's sketch on Sketch Saturday is as follows:

and this is my entry for it.

Image is by Mo Manning, best wishes stamp is a Papermania one, as are the papers I think.  I've added some card candy, some Prima flowers, three lengths of peeloff and some punched fronds which are done with the McGill pine branch punch. 

Hope you like it!

WOYWW #90 – the one with all the cards

Here we are again! Greetings and salutations my fellow WOYWWers! And how are we all this fine Wednesday morning?

For those random individuals who’ve landed here totally by accident or out of general curiosity, and who haven’t got a CLUE what I’m on about, please go to the dazzling Mrs Dunnit’s page HERE to get more info and start the magical mystery tour. After you’ve read my entry, of course…. LOL….. mwahahahahah….

My desk this week is looking a trifle….sad…. There’s a lonely CJ on it, still awaiting my undivided attention. Mainly because my mojo is geared towards cards at the mo, but also because the idea I have is fermenting and I REALLY don’t want to screw up the final entry into Sarah’s CJ. And a fabulous one it is too, there’s so many brilliant entries! It’s unlikely to get done until the weekend, too, but more on that at the end of this thread.

This week has been all about the cards, and I have managed to turn out three. Three fab cards for three fab ladies in my world.

First up is a card for my bud Debs who is just amazing and has had a tough year and still come out smiling. I have a problem though – I cannot, for the life of me, remember who the stamp is by. But at any rate, it’s a tree of life (came with a set that said Goddess, if anyone can help me out!) and I’ve stamped it with Versamark and used one of the Moonglow embossing powders on it. Imperial purple I think. I really ought to make a note of these! I did also use a sketch from someone other than Sketch Saturday (shock horror!) but stoopid me also failed to note down which one. So, not only can I not tell you who, I cannot enter it into their list of participants. Definitely a Doh!-head-smacking moment. Oh well.

Second card was made for my gorgeous god-daughter Steph. I hope she liked it. In case you can’t tell, Steph is a bit of an emo/goth/rock chick. Image is one of Kenny K’s fabulous creations “Star” (coloured with Copics, and I know it’s not brilliant but I can live with it), and the “You Rock” is from the Inkadinkadoo Rock Star set. Papers were a free download from somewhere, punch is MS, plus some card candy. And a peel-off. See, judicious use of peel-offs CAN be acceptable. I really like this card, and Lil' Miss B is peeved that she’s not getting it herself.

 

Finally, a card for my buddy Jayne. I’ve know Jayne a LOOOONGGGG time. Long enough to remember when she was like the little girl on the card. Not that she ever did Irish dancing to my knowledge, but she was definitely “perky”. She is also Irish, so I kinda got a link/relevance thing going here. ROFL. The gorgeous little girl is by Mo Manning, papers by Papermania. Best Wishes is either Papermania or Inkadinkadoo or similar. My bad, I know…. More peel-offs, more card candy, some prima flowers, a little bit of bling, and the punch is a McGill one – pine branch.

 

Now all I need to do is work out how to convert my PSP watermark into one I can use with Photoshop Elements. Answers on a postcard to…..

Oh, sorry, I nearly forgot to say. This is my craft room.

Say goodbye….. This week (today and tomorrow) it’s being moved. We’ve booted Lil’ Miss B out of her big bedroom, and are shoving her into this little single bedroom, to give us more space for work. It’s not a bad thing – other than costing us a load for new furniture as the double bed she’s using will have to go into the loft, and we’ve bought a Cabin bed off eBay (she’s also going to need a wardrobe, desk, chest of drawers and a bookcase…. Ouch……and we will need to buy a sofa bed for guests. But it will mean we’re not cramped and can make better use of the space. We’ll also have more natural light as the room we’re going into has a BEEEG window. Hurrah.

See you next week from the new room!

Sketch Saturday #142

Have I mentioned before how much I love Sketch Saturday?  Well I do.  It's such a mental boost to have a pattern to work to sometimes.  Particularly if you're in a hurry and don't really have much time to think.  I've taken part this week with this sketch...

And made this card which I'm entering for the challenge......

Made as a new home card (can you tell??? LOL) the house stamp is part of a delightful set I was given by my Dutch friends.  Papers are by Papermania, I think, which I've just distressed slightly using soot black, and I’ve added some card candy.  Chipboard flourish is Maya Road, triple embossed using gold EP. The house is coloured in using Copic markers, framed with a Nesties die (Labels 4, maybe?) and the sentiment had the corners shaped with a Fiskars corner empunch.  Love those – just absolutely fab.  Sentiment printed using the PC. 

Hope you like it!

Another Wednesday, Another WOYWW (#89 in fact)

Here we are again, Wednesday is upon us and it’s time to start the weekly desk hop brought to us by the rolltop revealing, lectern loving, desk diva extraordinaire, Ms Julia Dunnit herself. Is that enough of a entrance? LOL

I didn’t take part last week because, well, I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t have time to do a scheduled post (no word of a lie!) and there wasn’t anything happening on my desk anyway. I guess I could have recycled the previous week’s photo, but where’s the fun in that????  I did have a quick hop around a couple of blogs though...

Well, here’s my desk this week, and there’s plenty on it. A card I was in the throes of making (see completed card below – Sorry Debs, guess it got blogged before you saw it!) at the time of taking the photo, and two circle journals. One I have to do something to, but didn’t manage it this weekend past, even though I said I would on UKStampers. Hangs head in shame…. The other CJ is my own one back, and when I get time I will photograph it and upload it. Except that you can’t actually see it at the moment, it’s in that big jiffy bag! The one I have to work on is actually on the desk though. Well, on a pile of things on the desk.

I don't have anything else to report, so I’ll just show you the finished card instead.

I won’t say much about it other than you can find the deets HERE – I’m entering it for Sketch Saturday and it really needs a separate post.

Catch you on the hop!

Thanks Sandra.....

for tagging me!

I think it might be my very first.  At the least, it's my second, but if it is it's been so long since the first one I've forgotten who when and what!

Anyways, this is quite a special tag....

There are a couple of conditions attached to this award:

Once TAGGED and if you want to participate, then you create a post where you post the 'LOVE BLOG' image.

You should also blog the persons link that gave you the award and inform her/him that you accept the award.

You then choose 3 - 5 favourite blogs which you also link in your post, then inform each blogger that they have been tagged.

The aim of the award is that we bring good blogs to light, folks who are quite a small concern, who maybe haven't had many tags or blog awards, so I would ask you not to blog fellow bloggers that already have 3,000 followers. Just new blogs with a small group of followers.

First up I need to say a huge thanks to sandra de who is the sweetheart who has kindly tagged me.

Secondly, I've put the pic in once, but I'll go for a second shot for good measure:

And lastly,  I will pass the award along to:

Sasa who always exudes elegance with her craft, and looks like she's having a blast doing it....

Minxy for just being fantastic - she's not been so well, but has managed to run swaps etc and her style of craft is fab.

Lavinia definitely gets a shout from me - she shows just exactly WHAT is possible with things that some of the...erm....more snobby crafters amongst us will turn their noses up at.  Which is a shame.  Lavinia has vision and talent, and does not conform to the current trends.  Or another way to put it is that she has peeloffs and she's not afraid to use them.  To great effect, I might add.

Susan Raihala gets my next vote - talk about stripping back and laying bare crafting!  The whole point of her blog is to keep it simple, pare right back to the bare minimum, particularly with her One Layer Wednesday challenge.  It's quite liberating, and you soon learn not to fear white spaces.  Go Susan!

Finally, Voodoo Vixen.  I would tag her for no other reason than her fantastic work space, if there was no other reason.  However, the work she turns out is worth a look at and very inspirational.

If you don't want to participate that's ok -  the whole point is for you to know that your blog has been recognised and we want others to know about your cool blog .....

Sketch Saturday 140 - New Baby Card

I’ve actually got around to entering this once again! One of my longstanding schoolfriends had a second child at the beginning of January, and thanks to Panto, I’ve only just had the time to a) find out that she had a girl, and b) make a card! So, I thought I’d make the most of the opportunity and head over to my favourite sketch blog (Sketch Saturday) and take part this week in their current sketch challenge.

Here is the sketch:

Eh Voila - the card:

Image is one of Mo Manning’s gorgeous baby girl digi stamps, coloured with Copics. I didn’t do what is the current Copic style, if you know what I mean – I wanted a more watercolour look so I stuck to very light colours, and very little of them. I also was careful, but not too careful, about colouring within the lines - water colours a rarely perfectly coloured.  There's a fine line between getting this right and wrong!  I then used my southwest corner punch and wrapped pink embroidery floss (it’s a DMC one, but I failed to make a note of the number at the time) around the picture and stuck it to a silver layer. The card has pale pink gingham paper as a base layer, with the lower element made up of white card punched with a Martha Stewart punch, pink card and a white Satin ribbon. There I deviated ever so slightly from the sketch by adding the sentiment “It’s a girl” which is from a Rubbadubbadoo set, and die cut with a Nesties labels die. Flowers and small brads finish it off nicely, methinks!

These photos have, though, made me realise that I REALLY need to sort out a decent light tent and lights for these sorts of photos!  Something to add to the wish list for this year...... hehehehehe

Panto Cards....

Well, I promised photos of the cards I made for our Peter Pan cast, and here they are. My apologies for the poor photography – I took the pictures for these on Mr B’s camera as my own was at the theatre in the dressing room. Tsk, stoopid me.

There’s also two cards missing. You know how it is. You run of four very basic and simple cards in a hurry because you’ve forgotten to do them the day before you need them, and then after you’ve finished and taken all the pics, you remember there’s two more to do. Fast. As you’re running late. I do remember that when we got to the theatre that afternoon, we arrived 30 minutes before the show, and got a round of applause for actually turning up. It appears they were just starting to worry about our whereabouts. Oops.

Anyway, onto the cards.

All the images were located via Google Images – I’m sure Disney would have a major problem with me using an image of Tink, but never mind, eh? It’s not like I sold them. I took basic images of Peter Pan, Tink and the Dames, matted and layered them with coloured and/or metallic card (or glitter, in the case of Tink), mounted onto either square or A6 cards, and then added card candy, ribbon or peel-offs. Or any combination of the above.

The two missing cards were for Smee and Starkey . So, for Smee I used a picture of, well, Smee, and as Starkey played a very camp gay pirate, I found an image of a rainbow flag with a black skull and crossbones on it. Perfect! That one was teamed up with plenty of pink, as that’s what was in his costume…

They all seemed to like them though, and I enjoyed the challenge of churning out as many as I could in the shortest space of time -  6 in 90 minutes!

WOYWW 87 - the it's behind you one....

That's it.

Panto is over for another year.  Oh alright then, 8 months, until rehearsals start up again!

Anyway, you've had enough of me blathering on about it for the last 4 months or so, so it's back to the creation station, and another round of WOYWW thanks to the delightful Mrs Dunnit.

So, just a quickie from me this week. Yeh, likely story I hear you say.... as I don't have an awful lot of time.  And I'm doing this before bed on Tuesday night because I probably won't have time tomorrow.

On my desk this week is.....

Ta dah!

Not a lot.  Unless you count the various backing papers and some Mo Manning digital images I bought tonight and printed off.  I printed several, cos you just know you're gonna cock up somewhere aong the line.  Anyways, I'm making a very belated new baby card.  So belated that the bambino in question is now almost a whole month old.  Still, it's good to start getting back into the swing of things.

I've also finally started to apply myself to my Photoshop Elements software, in the hope that I might master it enough to create digital scrapbook pages the likes of Cathy Zielske would be happy with.  I can dream can't I?

I can't remember who on my travels last week had a nice shiny new craft space and was trying to work out how to store her scissors etc, but here's a pic of what I do.  Admitted, the cable ties add a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole affair, but they're temporary cos we can't drill holes in our little rented walls.... I think the hooks were utensil hooks or similar - they're too closely spaced for cup hooks (in fact, we had to cut every other hook off in order to hang the scissors) but they do the job just fine.  as long as I don't buy any more scissors.



Well, that's me done.  Told you it was short and sweet this week. Catch you around on the blog hop!