'Perfect day' . . for Candy

Here's Melinda blowing kisses again (highly unusual for me to use a stamp again so soon!) but doesn't she look different when you add a background to her. . . and what a background! The gorgeous little grassy knoll and the beautiful sentiment are all from a new set of Whiff of Joy 'extras' stamps which will be released this Friday. They all go beautifully with the rest of Elisabeth Bell's stamps but I'm thinking of using them with some of my other stamps too. As well as this grass, there's a pile of books, heart cushion and 6 sentiments all in this lovely font. I'm sure if you check out the rest of the DT over the course of this week you will get to see them all in use at some stage hopefully!

Back to my card; I have stamped Melinda then masked her and stamped the grass onto watercolour paper for a change and used my distress ink pads and twinkling H20's for added sparkle. The paper are scraps from my last Charlie card and I've made it more girly by toning down the black and using a soft pale green base card. The scrolls are a Quickcut die. Flowers and brad from stash.

CANDY NOW CLOSED.

Right, onto the candy give away. This is it:

You'll get Melinda blowing kisses stamp (new, not my used one obviously!), a few flowers and silver charms from my stash, all tucked into this folder card plus a few other stamped images not shown .



All you need to do to enter is leave a comment on this post only and that's it! Spread the news on your blog if you like, but not essential. All I ask is that you only leave one post and only comment here if you want to be entered. All entries welcome, worldwide, and you don't need to have a blog. Open till Mon 6th Oct 8pm UK time and I will draw random winner sometime after that.


Edited 1/10: to answer some of your questions;

• Whiff of Joy stamps are available at their online shop here and will ship worldwide but for those in America/Canada who want somewhere closer to home 'All that scraps' stock some but I've just checked and some are out of stock so you may just want to buy direct.
• The metal spacers around the centre of my flower are bead spacers used in jewellary making so most bead shops will have them or just shop around on ebay. You want the flat spacers and at least 8mm for it to show around your brad and for the centre hole to be wide enough (Although the ones I've used on my card are actually smaller at 7mm and I managed to use a small brad on it)

Hope that helps and if there are any more questions I will add to this post. Thanks for all your lovely comments.

Fri Sketchers#21: Cheers!

Fab sketch by Mumur this week over on Friday Sketchers and I was determined to take part this week, as I missed last week!

I've turned the sketch upside down (and left out one of the flower bits as I didn't think it needed any more embellies so hope it still counts!) and used another of the Whiff of Joy 'Oct release' stamps.

I just love this Charlie stamp, he is soo '007' but I decided not to put him in a black tux and I think he's ended up more retro in his teal combo and probably more 'Sat night/stayin alive' than Bond LOL

All DP and ribbon from DCWV 'all dressed up' range. Loving the little matching sentiments you get with these stamps. All I've done is coloured image with my Promarkers then added faux silver stitching round the edges and matted and layered it all with the main image raised onto 3d foam to give it a bit more dimension. The little sparkle in the corner is a sizix die.

I've been busy playing with these babies so am running a little behind but I will be back later this afternoon to host my blog candy from the last release so come back if you'd like a chance to win an angel . . here's a hint as to which one it is . . . " Mwargh x"

Whiff of Joy challenge 1 with new release!

What better stamp to use for the first Whiff of Joy challenge then to use one of the 'soon to be released' Charlie stamps!

I've used this sketch by Katharina before and for some reason I just keep turning the sketch into a money/voucher card each time!

It's a regular square card:


but I've turned part of the sketch into a flap so that it lifts to reveal the hidden pocket bit for the money/voucher:
This Charlie, plus others will be available this coming Friday (the 4th) and all us Whiff of Joy DT will be giving you previews of them all this week (links to my fellow DT teamies and the shop where you can view all cards in the gallery are on the right of my blog)

Don't you just love him? He's perfect for older boy cards I think. Hence I've not added any frilly embellishments and kept it to quite clean bold colours but I couldn't hold back on the sparkle as it is a christmas card! Paper is from DCWV christmas wishes pack and have just used some brown cardstock for the cardbase and the embossed strip down the side. Only other thing I've used is my circle nesties to cut out the circles as didn't think it needed much else. The cute little sentiment has been cut out with my SU word window punch and came with my stamp, isn't it fab?!

Ooo, just had the rest of my DT stamps land on my door today and they are GORGEOUS, just wait till you see them all! Think Katharina's going to be one busy bee this coming weekend :)

Silly Monkey DT call, round 2!

Whoohoo, just found out I've got through to round 2 of the DT call for Silly Monkey so I can show you the card I entered for round 1 (which was following a sketch):

Forever friends stamps coloured with promakers and stickles added to the hat trim. I added falling snow to the image with white gelpen which you might be able to see if you click on photo. Faux stitching added to all papers with silver gelpen and the papers are from DCWV christmas wishes stack. Ribbon from stash.

Next round is going to be tough now judging by the other 17 successful entrants (all on Silly Monkey's blog here) plus I've got to pick 3 creations I'm proudest of - best get my thinking hat on! Good luck to all the other ladies!

Ismaki#32: 'Just for you' part 1

Love this week's Ismaki sketch as it was a chance to make a DL size card rather than a square which is what I seem to end up making all the time these days! Even managed to fit in the optional extra of 'tags' too.

Materials:

• Images: 'Melinda blowing kisses' Guardian angel stamp from Whiff of Joy. Flourishes around Melinda are from Inkadinkado set. Sentiment is Hero arts stamp
• Colouring: promarkers and stickles on the wings
• Papers: Crate Paper Kaitlin collection. green piece is cardstock embossed with cuttlebug folder twice and the join is hidden behind the DP (never know the correct names of them all sorry!)
• Others: flourish is a sizzix die. Tags are cut from cuttlebug die and ribbon and brads from stash

Apologies for the poor photo but this card was actually made to go with my 'Whiff of Joy' Oct project which I will show on Wed 1st (can't believe it's Oct already!) and I was so busy making it all that I kinda ran out of steam by the time I came to taking photos and it was nighttime so lighting wasn't great.

Whiff of Joy October release

No cards from me this weekend I'm afraid, well not ones I can show you yet anyway ;).

Have got some fab news though;

official release date for the next Whiff of Joy stamps designed by Elisabeth Bell AND Alison Acton, will be the 4. October 2008.

Just look at this cutie . .

and not forgetting this lil rascal . .
Come back next week for more sneek peeks and cards made with these fab stamps plus I'll be hosting my candy from the last release and I've also got the Oct Project of the month to show you too (see, I have been busy)!

Have a great weekend (especially those of you lucky enough to get to the Ally Pally craft show - it's probably best that I'm too far away now to attend as I used to go both days and spend far too much there!).

CCT#29 & Sketch Sat: 'don't mean to bug you. . '

Combined my DT card for CCT with the sketch over on Sketch Sat. CCT this week is lots of sparkle, so out came my holographic embossing powder and lots of stickles and cosmic shimmer paint.

Materials:

• Images: Hanglar stamp. Sentiment from a crafty secrets bug set
• Colouring: Promarkers with a touch of cosmic shimmer paint over the light bit of his bee costume and lots of stickles on his wings.
• Paper/card: dark brown cardstock for base card, the scallop circle is scrap from earlier card which I then picked out co-ordinating cardstock to mat and layer. The beige cardstock has been embossed with cuttlebug folder then heat embossed with holographic powder. It's super sparkly IRL and so am I, as the powder gets everywhere :)
• Others: EK success 'bubbles' corner punch, SU word window punch, fiskars threading water border punch and cuttlebug border embossing folder. Bit of wire curled round for his antennea.

sweet award and more candy news

Just a quick post with couple of things. One, look at this lovely award I got from Marcea - thanks so much!

As with most of these awards I tend to get them after it's done the rounds and most people I know have already had this so I'm going to take a leaf out of Annie's book ;) and not pass this on but to leave it open to anyone passing through who would like it- you are more than welcome!

Second thing is I forgot to tell you about the next Whiff of Joy candy which is being offered by Kimmie here - but don't worry, you've got till next Monday to enter (then it's my turn next Tues - don't say I didn't give you a heads up).

Think that's it apart from getting my hair chopped today. It was getting really long and I got fed up with it so got it all cut off into a bob (not had it this short since my wedding 8 yrs ago). It wasn't planned so hubby might think he's walked into the wrong house tonight LOL.

Tilda & friends ATC: ' . . something different'

This week's ATC challenge is to do something different with your ATC other than for swapping. Which is great as I just make them for the challenge blog and not swapped any for a while so have accumalated quite a few! So, after much thought of something where I could use up quite a few of them, I decided to turn my ATCs into a calender.

Been wanting to try to make a desktop flippy type one anyway so decided this was a good one to try it out on. I went through all my made ATCs and found 11 that were all portrait sized and fitted the months. The only one I was missing was one for Feburary so I quickly knocked this up

then proceeded to put it all together, using lots of coloured A4 cardstock, the calender months I got off microsoft powerpoint and just adjusted the size before printing it off, and my bind-it-all. This is my finished month for feb;You'll have to excuse the poor photo skills but it was really sunny today and with 12 months to photo I didn't really have time to take loads of photos and select the best one that I usually do!

I have put all the months onto a slideshow below and you can see that I have used alot of my old ATCs on the other months.

The calender stand itself is just thick A4 card scored at 4.5" either end then folded into a triangle, then it's all been punched & bound with my BIA.

As you can see, this is still a little rough in places and not that neat as I was making it up as I went along and tried to finish it all in one evening so didn't use designer papers or embellishments etc - just stamped my own background and accents with matching magnolia stamps. I'm pretty pleased with it, considering the lack of pre-planning, and can see me making some more of these desk calenders but with flatter images so I won't need to cut the pages in 2 to accomadate the thickness of the ATCs (I've actually cut away the back piece of the stand behind the ATC half of the calender so that they sit in the hollow bit of the triangle IYKWIM). Although this way you could flip the months and keep the ATC bit to whichever one you fancied looking at or you could have less pictures and only make say 4 pictures - 1 for each season.

Hop on over to the ATC blog to see what all the other DT's have come up with, they're fab, and hope it inspires you to join us! Don't forget, it isn't just magnolia stamps anymore even if I do keep using just them - Will try and use other stamps next time!

Another late card!

Knew I forgot to do something yesterday! This was supposed to be for the spoonful of sugar challenge which was to make a Christmas card but the new challenge is up now!

Oh well, I need to start building up my christmas card stash anyway and it finally gave me a chance to ink up one of my Elzybells which I've had a while now but this is it's first outing!

Not much to this one really. coloured with promarkers and some stickles. The 'tis the season' is from one of those studio g's 99p clear stamp sets - love them. The papers are scraps from last year's Pink Petticoat christmas downloads and then just added some brads from stash.

Right, need to go finish my DT stuff and try and fit some surfing in between getting some stuff done for the shop (making spring rolls! - very boring after I've rolled my umpteenth one but I least I can watch tv whilst doing it including 'it takes 2' later tonight - Anyone else sad like me and follow 'strictly come dancing' it's about the only one of these type of shows that I love) and enjoying this little burst of sunshine we've been having for the past few days. No doubt, I'll get incredibly behind again but we'll see.

late Ismaki #31: 'heartfelt wish'

Just finished this last night so think I've just made it to enter the Ismaki challenge, I even managed the extra option of using 'stars'! Materials:

• Image: 'Melinda blowing kisses' Guardian angel range of stamps from Whiff of Joy
• Colouring: promarkers and stickles for sparkle
• Paper: from scrap box (again, pink petticoat downloads from last year, think it was 1 of the christmas ones)
• Others: pink card is Core'dinations which is great for embossing and sanding down as the core is a lighter colour which makes the embossed bits 'pop'. Used one of the new Halloween embossing folders just didn't use the edges which have lil skulls on them! stars are a punch and the sentiment printed off my dymo. All edges have either been torn, or distressed with my Heidi swapp distresser tool.
  

It's another glorious sunny day here today so going to make the most of it. Enjoy your day, wherever you are!

Hugs,

Sketch Sat#16: F. Friends 'Christmas joy'

Lovely sketch over on sketch Sat which I didn't want to miss so made a quick christmas card with 1 of my forever friends stamp. Love them- they are so quick to colour. I kept it simple to make a more contemporary card but I've been so used to lots of bits and patterns on my cards recently that the background looks a bit bare (haha just thought I could have said 'bear', get it?!!).

Won't bother with a list, s there's not much to it! Bear's been coloured with Promarkers and stickles added to the fur trim. PP are from my scrap box (these are xmas downloads I got off Pink Petticoat last year). Holly is a punch with gems added and mini envelope is from stash. Think that's it. Oh, the flourishy bits round the edge are from an Inkadinkado xmas flourish set.

Finally, I got this lovely award off my friend Malin yesterday, isn't it sweet?

I would like to do what Malin has done, and pass it on to everyone who's on my bloglist but also to everyone who may have me on theirs, as it's your visits and comments which make me smile! So please take this award and pass it on.

Have a lovely day.

PTW : 'Fun Guy'

Didn't manage to do last week's PTW (autumn colours) but have incorporated that into this week's sketch by Katharina. It was just perfect for what I had in mind for some of my magnolia stamps in the autumn kit. As soon as I saw this Edwin with mushrooms I just had the perfect sentiment for him and needed a simple fuss free layout . .
Corny I know, but I couldn't resist :)

Materials:

• Images: all stamps from Magnolia's Autumn club kit. Edwin and the row of mush have been cut out and stuck on 3d foam for added dimension
• Colouring: Promarkers plus diamond glaze and glamour dust on the mushrooms
• Paper: Basic Grey 'archaic' and dark brown cardstock for base card
• Others: 'Fungi' cut from 'Cherish' sizzix alpha dies

Fri sketch #19: blue christmas!

Here's my take on the sketch over on Fri sketchers this week. (I've just rotated the sketch onto it's side and made a large A5 size card). The card base is navy but it looks black in the photo due to my poor lighting/photo skills probably!Materials:

• Images: 'Charlotte in sledge' stamp from Whiff of joy (all Charlotte & Charlie range back in stock)
• Colouring: Promarkers and a bit of stickles
• Paper: Dovecraft 'winter wonderland' pack
• Others: cream cardstock embossed with cuttlebug snow dots folder. Snowflake is a cuttlebug cut & emboss die. trees cut from the dp and brad from stash

Thanks for stopping by. I've been bit busier this week so haven't done all my blog hops yet but will try and visit soon!

CCT#28 Food: 'filled with fun & laughter'

CCT challenge theme this week is 'food', yeah, my favourite topic LOL plus I finally got to colour in my cute lil cupcake Tilda and used these fab downloads I got from designer digitials which I knew would be perfect for all my 'foody' stamps. They are mock nutritional labels (you know, the ones on the side of packets telling you the different fat, sugar etc content and what the recommended daily servings are) only these are for 'love' 'smile' & 'laughter'. Should be able to read them better if you click on photo.

Materials:

• Images: 'tilda with cowberry muffin', tea towel and cupcakes all Magnolia stamps. Faux stitching, and the sentiment are stamps from stash - not sure of make I've had them that long
• Colouring: Promarkers with glamour dust and sakura stardust pens on the cupcakes
• Papers: Papermania 'sweet nothings' pad
• Others: nutritional labels are digital download from Designer Digitals site called 'daily servings happy'. grey whisk is button from stash
  
  

Tilda & Friends ATC: pink, green & blue

Nice simple ATC challenge this week, to use the colours 'pink, green & blue'.

Warning: it's a bit bright!

I resisted my first instinct of using pastel shades and found this piece of scrap DP which was more vibrant, to say the least! So I grabbed one of the new tildas from my autumn kit and just coloured her in the same tones with my Promarkers. Cut her out leaving a thin white border, mounted onto foam pads, added a little circle sentiment and coloured the edge of my ATC to match. Nice simple one this week and this one can be used as a card topper.

WoJ New sneek peek and more candy.

No card from me today but just have to show you the latest sneek peek that Katharina has up on her blog of the next upcoming new release stamps by Elisabeth Bell

Isn't she gorgeous? She reminds me of those old hollywood starlets. Anyway, if you want a shot at being a guest DT for Whiff of Joy and a chance to play with these babies then check out this post on Katharina's blog.

Also, if you still haven't got the stamps from the current release then how about some candy? Bev is offering a gorgeous little candy package on her blog (ends 22 Sep) and Elisabeth, the one and only artist of these gorgeous cuties, is hosting her very first candy here too. So double the chance for you to win. Good luck!