Post it!

This week over on Daring Cardmakers HQ Rein has set the dare to create a card with a 'postage' or 'postage people' theme.
Here's my go:

I didn't really know where to go with this one so I started by digging out some postage bits and pieces from my stash. I found a bunch of postage stamps that were leftover from the September Quirky Kits, a shipping tag, a postmark clear stamp and I had a postage stamp die, (it's the Cuttlebug one that came free with the machine when I got mine a few years ago). I picked out a yellow patterned paper, (October Afternoon) to go with the tag and added it to the card blank front. I then had a play around picking out stamps and there wasn't one that I didn't like so I ended up sprinkling them all over the background. I used the die to cut a window out of the tag and put a little bit of paper behind it, (chevron is a yellow paper bag). The tag is fixed to the card with foam pads then I just added the extra stamp with the postmark stamp in the corner in a soft iridescent ink and finished it off with the message printed onto white card and cut out.

Pop on over to daring cardmakers HQ to have a go at this weeks challenge. You can also pop onto the Facebook page to show us your cards too!

Daring Cardmakers - Hearts and Doilies

Hi!

I've been scrapping most of this week so I had to get my head back into cards for this weeks lovely daring cardmakers challenge set by Nat to make a card featuring hearts and doilies.
I started after scrapping with a messy desk scattered with off cuts and the papers happened to have both hearts and doilies on them so that seemed like a good opportunity to use these off cuts. I started by cutting the strips into 1" squares and then cut a panel of white card to fit over the front of my card blank. I cut the scallop shape out of the front of the panel of card with a Nestabilities die. I used the squares of paper to make the pattern on the card front cutting some of the squares into triangles then layered the panel of card over the top. Really simple but I like it. I think it'd maybe look better with more like coloured patterned papers too so they worked tone on tone.

Grab your hearts and doilies and have a go at this weeks challenge over on daring cardmakers HQ, www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

x Leo

Wishi Washi

It's Friday so it's time for another Daring Cardmakers challenge! This week Jo has set us the task of making a card featuring washi tape. Here's my go at the challenge:

I do have quite a few rolls of washi tape to play with. It's great stuff for pretty packaging and just for having around to provide an instant pop of colour to your projects, I love it! I tried to carry on with the stationary theme of the tape and I picked out a label sticker, (Crate Paper) some grid patterned paper, (Pink Paislee) and then used the washi tape for my colour folding it over a piece of twine to make a little banner. The little scallopy bit at the bottom is actually a stand it's not part of the card. My shelf is all clean and polished which is not conducive to making cards stand up on it today so I had to use my little metal standimajig.

Pop on over to Daring Cardmakers to have a go at this weeks challenge and to see the stunning cards the DT have created.... www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

x Leo

Daring Card Makers - Kitchenalia

This week we've been sent to the kitchen to look for inspiration for our cards. :)

I began with the super cute Modern Homemaker papers and went for a fun retro look. The main retro lady is from the October Afternoon Modern Homemaker sticker sheet as is the paper with the kitchen goodies on it. The floral paper is from the October Afternoon Sidewalks collection and the other pinky paper is a Sassafras one. I went for a pop up card and made the banner the pop up piece so as well as being a decorative bit that's the bit that makes the sticker pop from the card front. It looks like she's steppng out of the card to mop the surface the card's sat on lol.
I don't think I've ever made a 'happy new kitchen' card but why not? :-D
Check out all the lovely DT cards this week with their kitchenalia inspired designs and have your own go leaving a link so we can come and peek, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

x Leo

Daring Cardmakers - Miraculous Social Networks

Hi!

I'm back to update my long neglected blog. I haven't had much time to do anything over Christmas and new year and to be honest I also needed a break from everything. I wish I could say I feel refreshed and ready to tackle the new year but I've been so busy catching up this past week I'm shattered! lol

Well here we go with another daring cardmakers challenge. This week we have a fantastic challenge from Zuzana to make a card inspired by the social networking sites we know and love {?}.
I had to really think about this one but then I had a brain wave as I'm still making one or two more thank you cards and this idea just popped in my head to use the Facebook like button.

I used lots of leftover bits of paper, a Sassafras boarder sticker and some October Afternoon mini market alphabet stickers. The felt flower is homemade.

Hope you had a lovely holiday time! Don't forget to have a go at this weeks DCM challenge, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com
x Leo

Daring Card Makers go Nordic this Christmas!

Hi!

Here's my go at this weeks Daring Cardmakers dare set by Fran to make a Nordic themed/inspired card.

I started off with the red and white colour scheme collecting bits and pieces to use then set about laying them out on my card base. I started with all the embellishments at the bottom then decided just before I stuck them all down to flip it around and have them at the top kinda like they're hanging I guess but I'm not sure it's worked because my eye keeps thinking there's something missing? Once they're stuck down, (and stitched down in this instance) there's really no going back!
I made the little felt heart adding some stitches with embroidery thread but the crochet snowflake I cheated and bought from Paperchase. The red dotty paper is Echo Park Holly Jolly Christmas and the kraft dotty paper is MME Kraft Funday. The greeting is ribbon but it's all stitched so it's got that lovely Nordic/stitched kind of look.
Pop on over to Daring Cardmakers to have a go at this weeks challenge, we can't wait to see what you come up with! www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com
xx Leo

Merry Christmas Card

Well I've been getting on with some Christmas cards again this week. I made another following the challenge on Shimelle's Christmas crop to cut out an image from patterned paper to use as a motif. I used some lovely Echo Park Holly Jolly Christmas papers to cut out the baubles from then stitched them together with my sewing machine to make a little garland. All the other papers are the Holly Jolly ones too, really lovely collection pack I'll be using all of it for cards this year! The greeting is a stamp from  Kaisercraft pack of mini clear Christmas greeting stamps.

xx Leo

Water Water Everywhere - it's another dare...ing cardmakers!

Hi!
Sorry I missed posting up last weeks dare I did manage to finish a card for the DT I just didn't get a chance to post it up on my blog but go an check out all the yummy jewellery cards from last week, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com/2011/11/bejewelled.html

This week the theme is 'water' and here's what I came up with....

This weekend just gone I had a peek at some of the challenges on Shimelle's Christmas crop and made this card based on this challenge, http://www.shimelle.com/paper/1289/woven-christmas-card-tutorial-by-melissa-mann/ picking up on the paper weaving idea. Any excuse to get the sewing machine out works for me :) The watery bit is the snowy/ice theme that's still water it's just frozen, right? I used a real mix up of papers, the pink dot is Kesi'art the grey is 4heures37 and the blue is Lily Bee. The little embellishments are Pink Paislee from the Snow Day ephemera pack. I added them with 3D foam pads to help them stand out from the background a bit. I added the crochet doily because I was trying to give it a more cozy feeling but I guess it could've worked without it?

Anyway pop on over to Daring Cardmakers to check out this weeks dare and all the stunning cards from the DT to inspire you and have a go at a watery project! www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

xx Leo



December Daily in progress

This weekend I got to dig in to my December Daily project. I've tried to get a few photos but between being without my regular camera and the dark evenings we've got now it's proving a difficult task!I tried my best anyway. Here's what I've got so far.
I decided ages ago on a 6x4 inch format because I had lots of blank postcards I wanted to use as pages. I've supplimented the postcard pages with pieces of cardstock, (doubled up to make them thicker) and acetate pieces.

The cover is made with a Hambly transparancy as the base the piece of kraft cardstock is a blank page I've left behind it. The full pile of goodies I used is on an earlier post bellow. I've mixed up supplies I already had with a few new purchases.

I'm keeping most of the pages quite simple because I've got a small format so I need to leave plenty of room for a photo and some journalling or maybe just one or the other.

Here's one of the postcard pages. I'm going to use the space on the left for a photo then the lines on the right for the journalling. The little postmark stamps worked out just right for the stamp space in the top corner. I've used my date stamp, (it's just one of those from the office supply stores) alongside it to date the pages.

I dug out my Smash book stash, some of the things like the note pages make fun little journalling prompts to fill in.

I'm adding some little kind of divider pages in between each of the daily pages. Some with little reminder like the one above, (time to make cards) then there's the little 'days to go' pages like the one below.

 

xx Leo

Daring Cardmakers November Flowers

First off a big massive happy birthday to Daring Cardmakers! I can't believe it's been so long well done guys.
This week it's all about the flowers as we work our way through the flowers of the month in the first week of every month. This week it's the Chrysanthemum. Here's what I came up with this week....

I made the flower from scallop circles cut out with my trusty Nestablities dies. I just snipped into the scallops at a slight angle then layered them all up gluing them in the center and then modeled it into the flower shape bending the paper with my fingers. Really simple thing to do but I was really cuffed with how it turned out. All the papers are leftover bits I've got hanging around from my Quirky Kits. It's a mix of Studio Calico and Lily Bee I think and the greeting is a Pebbles duplicate rub on.

Head on over to Daring Cardmakers HQ to check out the details of this weeks dare and have a go yourself.

xx Leo

Fantastic Felties

Hi!

It's Nat that has set the challenge this week over on DCM HQ and this week Nat would like us to make a feature of felt on our cards.
Now I've already admitted in my last post I've totally caught the Christmas bug early so yes I'm breaking out of my habit of rushing doing cards at the last minute and I've actually made a Christmas card, in October!
It's the stupid shops that have set me off with all the decorations, I'm a total kid in a candy store. In Paperchase they had some really cute kawaii decorations so when I grabbed my felt bag and set about making a card all I could think about were kawaii Christmas puddings! I think I'll have to do a set of them, maybe a bauble and a gift box and a stocking and a cracker?

I cut out all the bits of felt by hand and then glued them together. The eyes and mouth are just stitched on using french knots for the eyes. The dotty card is Kesi-art, the kraft card is Papermania and the alphabets are Thickers and October Afternoon minis.

Grab your felt and have a go! www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

Holidays are coming around again!

Wow it doesn't feel so long ago I was pondering the starting of my December Daily last year and here it is coming around again already! Ok so I know I'm way early and I usually don't start still November but this year I've got so much on I figure I need as much of a head start this year as I can get.
I've been having a play putting my goodies together for my journal base. I started off picking the colour scheme, red and kraft, then I picked out the papers, {American Crafts Hollyday Cherry Nose and Santa Claus, Crate Paper Peppermint Ski Lodge and St Nick, October Afternoon Sidewalks Hide&Seek and Red Rover} along with some red, kraft and white cardstock.

I picked out all the embellishment bits and pieces from my stash just rooting out colours that would work.

I've got some postcard blanks that I'm going to use as my base pages and some pages I'm planning to make just from cardstock and maybe some envelopes. To go with the postcard idea I treated myself to some cute little postmark stamps - these are from Whimsy Stamps. I'm going to make them do double, {or triple I guess it would be} duty though too because I'll use them for gift tags and cards.
For the cover I've picked out a Hambly overlay then I've got some large book rings for the binding.
Can't wait to start putting it together! It's sat on my desk now looking all expectant. :)
Have you caught the Christmas bug yet?

DCM - Sketch Challenge

Hi!
This week Kathy has set a sketch dare for us over on Daring Cardmakers, www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

I'm in the process of sorting out my kit scraps so I decided to make another card from leftover kit bits and pieces.

It's  a real big mix up of stuff from Cosmo Cricket, Pink Paislee, Kesi-art, Sassafras, American Crafts and Elle's Studio.

I like using up leftover bits for cards because I'm not bothered too much about what gets covered over because the goal is to use up what I have in front of me so it's a nice simple process. Kathys' sketch made it really easy to work up a design too and there's loads more sketches to play with on the Sketch File Blog Kathy has here, http://kathyswafflesketchfile.blogspot.com/

Don't forget to have a go at this weeks dare, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

xx Leo

P.S I've got a giveaway going on to win the latest Quirky Kit, you've got till 25th Oct 2011. to enter it's on the CT blog, http://craftytemplates.blogspot.com/2011/10/win-hazelnut-coffee-quirky-kit.html

A Little Bird Told Us...................

Over on The Daring Cardmakers it's Rein who has set the dare this week and has told us to make a card with a bird on it. So here's my got this week, better late than never right?

I had all these lovely papers from mixed up Quirky Kits sat on my desk to use so I set out to make a card just from patterned paper, so no card blank I just used the patterned paper chopped up. The base is a lovely Pebbles one so it's really thick and clunky just right for a card blank. I had to decorate the inside though too so there was somewhere to write on it. For the bird part I used a vintage postage stamp.

There's still time to make a card for this weeks dare and check out this week because there's a lovely ribbony prize up for grabs! www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

xx Leo

Daring Cardmakers October Flowers of the month

Hey there! I'm back with another Daring Cardmakers card this week.This week we're being inspired by the flowers of the month again which for October are 'Calendula or Cosmos'.
As a starting point I used my own inspiration for this month - I've decided to make October 'the month of collecting'. I've planned another Create 10 class called 'The Collectors Diary' so all this stuff is swirling around in my inspiration consciousness and it's come out in this card. I used a vintage botanical drawing image printed onto patterned paper then just layered it together with a collection of different bits and pieces. The papers are Crate Paper and Kesi-art papers and the little rose trim is Maya Road.

Pop onto the Daring Cardmakers blog and have a go at this weeks challenge, www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

xx Leo

Konnichiwa........

Or hello! I'm back with another Daring Cardmakers card. This week Lythan has set the dare 'Ooh la la and wunderbar!' The dare is:'As it is the European Day of Languages today I would like your card to feature a foreign language.'

I got this idea in my head right away to make the background with all different ways to say 'hello'. I just used alphabet stamps to make the words all over the card front then added the stickers and the tag to finish. One of those really simple cards to think of but in practice it took about half an hour to stamp out all the words and resulted in very inky fingers but lots of fun :)

The stickers, paper heart and tag are all from American Crafts. The stamps are Banana Frog Tiny Teen and the twine is Pink Paislee.

Pop on over to http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com to have a go at this weeks challenge!

xx Leo

Daring Cardmakers 'How Many Candles?'

This week Kathy has set the dare and we have to make a card using at least one candle. Myself and the rest of the team also got to try out some Funky Hand papers from the new 'Happy Happy Birthday' cd. Funky Hand are giving away one of the very same cd's this week if you take part in this dare so head on over to The Daring Cardmakers to check out the details and have a go!
Here's what I came up with this week:

When I set about to make the card I found out I only had small scraps of white card left in my stash eek! So I had a look around for some other things I could print the papers onto. I have a packet of white paper doilies and I do love a bit of an experiment so I thought I'll have a go at printing the papers on the doilies. I used small dabs of Pritt Stick to temporarily glue the doilies to a sheet of printer paper and then popped the sheet in my printer and printed the papers over the top. Once the sheet had printed I peeled them off the sheet.

 I got some really cool patterned paper doilies but I also got the pattern left on the paper too as a bonus!

I printed the other papers, (pink and orange stripe) on one of the scraps of white card I had left and used dies and hand cutting to cut out the shapes from them. The flowers are Sassafras Foldies and all the alphabet stickers are American Crafts. The little doily sticker under the candles and the heart sticker are American Crafts too from the Amy Tangerine remarks sticker book. I used real birthday candles tied up with twine and glued on.

Head on over to have a peek at what the rest of the Daring Cardmakers team came up with as we all had different paper to use, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

Daring Cardmakers 'Flutterby'

Here's my card for the first Daring Cardmakers dare from Keilly who has set the challenge of creating a card inspired by this image on Pinterest. The card also had to include butterflies.

I had the idea to go for the botanical style. I started off with the scrap of paper with the roses(?) on it's a Websters Pages one. I then added the newsprint paper in the background and the card is from a Jenni Bowlin memo block. I thought it kind of looked like a collection of butterflies, like those old Victorian ones. The butterflies are from Etsy; I got lots for Quirky Kits in bright colours and the lady who makes them sent me some more samples, some of them I guess are moths as well as butterflies but I think they're pretty all the same :). The label stickers that make up the greeting are October Afternoon I cut out the shape with my pinked circles Nestabilities from a scrap of Crate Paper, (Portrait I think?). I just added a bit of stitching underneath.

Ready to have a go at this weeks dare? You've got from now until next Friday to have a go check out all the details here.

Daring Cardmakers 'Feeling Krafty'

This week it's the turn of Fran to set the dare. If you've not checked out Fran's blog yet it's a real treat - full of gorgeous pretty cards!
Fran has set us the challenge of creating a card with 3 'natural' elements. I'm already a huge kraft card fan, (great colour as a base and these ones I used are made from 100% recycled paper so that is another fab plus) so I began with a kraft card base then had a look around for other 'natural' items to use. I love these guinea fowl feathers they're so pretty with their natural little dotty pattern so I decided to use one of those. I also had some new stash to play with; some of the lovely 'Happy Days' from Echo Park. It's bright and fun with a 50's kitschy twist - my favorite kind of twist! I also got a little bit of the Amy Tangerine American Crafts - just the stickers. I'll be getting some more for the next Quirky Kits so I'm being good and waiting to use more of it then.

I don't know if the woodgrain sticker counts as 'natural' enough so I also added a little wooden heart embellishment and some wool felt making a matt with it for the sticker.

Head on over to Daring Cardmakers to get cracking with your own card and remember to add a link to your blog so we can come and see what you've made! www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

DCM - Inspired by Banksy

This week on the Daring Cardmakers it's the turn of Samm and here's what shes's cooked up for us!

It's my turn to set the dare this week and my challenge is

'Inspired by Banksy'

If you're not aware of who he is, then pop on by Banksy.co.uk and take a look at some of his amazing street art across the world - you could also try a Google Image search on "Banksy" to find lots of fabulous ideas for your card.

So now is your chance to dig out those stencils, use that paint, throw in a few ironic sayings and give your card some 'street life' and show us what you've created.

So here's the card I came up with after lots of head scratching!

I started off with the idea of taking apiece of existing art work and doodling on it just like Banksy does adding his artwork as kind of like a comment on his surroundings..... but I couldn't get it to work in practice it just looked too random. I had to get my head out of literal Banksy style and get back to focusing on how I'd normally make a card but just adding a little bit of Banksy inspiration. I started off with the graffiti idea and used a Tim Holtz texture folder to give the white card a brick pattern. I then made a heart stencil and sprayed through some black ink and then added some water spray on top to make it run a little bit. I then added a bit of washi tape and the greeting then went about distressing it a bit more. I used the edge of a piece of card and scraped over some white paint to give it a bit more texture and sprayed over some white ink. I also rubbed some of the black ink back with a baby wipe. As a last touch I added the resin flower just to give it a focal point and I love the contrast of the bright red against the black too.

Have a go this week, it's a real challenge, maybe it'll help you break out of your comfort zone a bit, it did me! Check out all the details, www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com