Something Stencilled with Bubbly Funk

This week over on Daring cardmakers we have an awesome prize challenge!!

"This week we have a pre-Christmas treat for one of you - a beautiful crafty gift you could win, thanks to our lovely sponsor,
 Bubbly Funk

Recently celebrating 10 whole years selling crafty stash on-line, Bubbly Funk has had a slight change of direction and is now specialising in selling stencils and the paraphernalia that goes alongside.  You'll find a huge range of stencils and masks in many different sizes, plus the inks, paints, sprays, mixed media goodies and the tools you need too. 

Caroline, of Bubbly Funk has put together a special prize pack which includes

3 stencils to play with, plus chipboard mini albums and keychains,
 crystal flowers, ink and ribbon

Wouldn't it be good to find that little lot arriving at your door?  All you have to do to be in with a chance of it being yours is to join in with this week's challenge over on:

http://www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

 - leave a link to your card and at the end of the week we'll use a Random Picker to select our winner.  We can't make it easier than that, can we?

The Challenge:
Something Stencilled
Just use a stencil in some way on your card. It's not a problem if you don't have any ready made stencils - you could use a die cut, or the die itself, a doily, or anything else that you can paint, ink or trace through.

 This week the DT were each sent a stencil of their choice from Bubbly Funk 

to use on our cards, so look closely to see all the designs we went for and check our blogs for more info about the ones we used

We're really looking forward to seeing what you make. 

Have fun, and Good Luck for the draw

 

OK back over to me! I went for a Christmas themed stencil from The Crafters Workshop called ''Twas the Night' you can get here, http://www.bubblyfunk.co.uk/crafters-workshop-6x6-twas-the-night-p-8465.html

 

The stencil is available in 12x12 too which would be great I think for anyone doing December Daily in an arty style!

 

I'm a total stencil newbie so if you are too then take heart in that I found this stencil genuinely very easy to use and I didn't attempt anything really arty. I had a little think about what I wanted to use and I decided on using ink and then going through my inks I went to my Versamark inkpad and then got to thinking of making some heat embossed images which when using glitter and/or metallic embossing powders I think are perfect for Christmas! All I did was to hold the stencil over the top of, in this case a tag I wanted to make the impression on and then dabbed the Versamark straight from the inkpad, (I used one of the mini cubes for precision) over the stencil. Then I sprinkled on the embossing powder, tapped off the excess and heated with my heat gun and job done! I think for me it actually looked neater than some of my stamped embossing I've done. I think I tend to be good at pressing too hard with stamps and that can sometimes feather of squish the ink more which when it's fine writing like this can look too splodgey so using the stencil worked better for me to make a finer impression for heart embossing.

 

I also made a little tag heat embossing with some glitter embossing powder and using the tree design. It's not here but I also experimented with stencilling and heat embossing on glassine bags, I got a bit obsessed with seeing what else I could stencil!

 

Don't forget to have a go at this weeks' challenge and be in with a chance of winning the goodies, http://www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

 

Daring Cardmakers - Cuddly Creatures

Hi!
Nat has set the challenge over on Daring Cardmakers this week and the topic is 'Cuddly Creatures'. It's a great opportunity to use those extra cute and cuddly stamps, die cuts, papers, whatever you want!

I used a very recent purchase I just couldn't resist because of it's super cuteness. It's the Pink Fresh Studio Christmas Wishes stamp set. It's one of those stamps though that doesn't have much room for adding colour to so at first I was a bit stumped on how to use it. I went to an idea I used before of adding the colour to the card first then stamping over the top. Kind of like a reverse water colouring in.
I placed the stamp above where I wanted to stamp it and then added the colours referring to the stamp picture to get them roughly in the right places. The whole idea of this was to just give it a hint of colour so it's never an intention to get it super neat and tidy. With the first one I stupidly didn't give it enough time to dry before stamping and all the ink ran into the colour so definitely leave the coloured bits to dry completely first before over stamping! I was using a mix of watercolour paint and spray inks for the colours.
Here's my final finished card. I just added a bit of Stickles glitter glue and some washi tape underneath to give the stamps an anchor.

Fashion Week Daring Cardmakers

Hi! It's my week to set the challenge over on Daring Cardmakers this week and here's what I picked out:

Fashion Week

This week London Fashion week kicks off and last week we had New York Fashion week, (piccys above are from New York, loving the socks and sandals, that's defo the look I'm rocking this week in the lovely UK crazy transitional hot then cold weather!) so inspired by all the fashion fun for the challenge this week I'd like you to create a card that features a whole outfit. It could be a stamp you want to use or have a go at making your own outfit from patterned papers or just incorporating a cool image from the web or magazine you like.

Here's the card I made:

I actually had a whole other plan for this week and started out hand painting lovely pictures of dresses and got totally caught up in it all before I knew it a couple of hours had passed by and when I stopped and looked at what I'd done it was all on a really large scale, like A4 size and even after chopping around for a while there was nothing that looked right to be use for a card. I think my brain must have just wanted to do some pretty dress painting not thinking about cards! So anyway back to the drawing board and because time was running low at this point I grabbed my trusty stamps box to see what I could find and luckily had a few fashiony ones to use. The big greeting is a Lawn Fawn one and the little one is a really old Papermania one and then I used a little dot stamp to stamp all over the background. The paper in the background is Basic Grey Barista, which if you've not checked out has some really lovely individual papers in it well worth a look at.

So in the end a pretty boring standard card but I did have fun looking at lovely fashion and sketching and painting and that's what crafty fun time is all about! lol

Daring Cardmakers - September week 1

It's that time of year again. I always feel more crafty in autumn. Summer just isn't a time where I want to sit and do crafty things and let's face it in the UK we have to make the most of our very few sunny days! As I'm typing this now it's raining, (again) so I'm going to officially call an end to the summer and declare it's autumn and so time to get some more craftiness going in my craft space! Luckily Becky who's set this weeks Daring Cardmakers challenge must agree with me because we've been given a lovely autumnal themed Elemental Inspiration image to kick off the month.

"So the summer is coming to an end and there is a nip in the air.   Small signs of changing colours are beginning but I am loving that the sun is still shining.  It's Beckie here today to share with you this very Autumnal Element Inspirational Dare.

We would like you to pick out a minimum of three elements from the picture to design your card with.

It could be the stars, the leaves, pumpkins, texture from the socks or simply the colour.  This mood board is to help get your creativity flowing."

Here's the card I came up with. I picked out leaf shapes, the orange, all the colours, stars, pumpkin and the wood textures:

The big message in the middle is a Woodware stamp. The leaf stamp I made myself with Speedy Carve and I've used Memento inks to stamp with, Pear Tart, Tangelo and Morocco.

The little bits and pieces around are all bits from past Quirky Kits, little gems, sequins and wood shapes and the little foil tape.

Head on over to Daring Cardmakers and post us a link of what you've made if you have a go. :)

http://www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

Ruby Rock-it and Daring Cardmakers Blog Hop!

Hello Ruby Rock-It and Daring Cardmakers Fans!  
We have a fun blog hop that we are kicking off today!!
Sit back, relax, and hop through the blogs of the Daring Cardmakers Team members as we show you what we have been creating!

Here’s your blog hop order…
Kathy          http://kathybsworlduk.blogspot.co.uk/
Erin          http://www.erinyamabe.com/
Lythan           http://slightlysquiffy.blogspot.co.uk/
Pattie           http://pattiebeltran.blogspot.com
Jo          http://jo-kill.blogspot.co.uk/
Christine     https://csantossite.wordpress.com
Nat          http://koolkittymusings.typepad.com/kool_kitty_musings/
Alicia           http://www.leishasblog.blogspot.com
Leo          http://scribblesnscrappin.blogspot.co.uk/
Beck          http://beckbt.blogspot.com
Sharon          http://glitterangel.typepad.com/glitterangel_blog/
Teresa Horner     http://victorianpaperqueen.blogspot.co.uk/
Miri          http://bastelmiri.blogspot.de/
Jenifer          http://stitchcutcreate.blogspot.com
Beckie           http://beckiedreyer.blogspot.co.uk/
Teresa Abajo     http://thetamarisk.blogspot.com
Svenja          http://www.millefeuille.eu/
Shannon     http://designsofapaddymack.typepad.com
Dawn          http://allthingsprettycraftee.blogspot.co.uk/
Ruby Rock-It      http://www.rubyrock-it.com/articles

Enjoy the hop and leave a comment for each of our fabulous designers along the way and be sure to leave one on your last stop, the Ruby Rock-it blog!  For those that follow until the end leaving your sweet sentiments along the way will be entered to win a fabulous prize from us!  We will announce our winner the first week of September.
Enjoy the hop!

So here you are on my blog, (Leo). Hi, *waves*. I made this card using the Fundamentals Birthday stamp set. For the cake stamp background I used the small confetti stamp and stamped all over on white cardstock in yellow and pink ink to make a background and then stamped on the cake image in black ink with the sentiment underneath. For the card background I used an ink dauber and stamped a polka dot background and then I over stamped with the hip hip hooray stamp ink black.

Then another one with a stamped background, this time using the tiny balloon stamp in the set. I then added some layers of paper, embellishments, stickers and a paper flower, all a mix up of Bella! and Fundamentals papers and embellishments.

Thanks for stopping by! Your next stop is with Beck at, http://beckbt.blogspot.com

Happy hopping. xx

Ruby Rock-it Birthday Rock!

Hi!

This week over at Daring Cardmakers HQ we're having fun playing with goodies from Ruby Rock-It and making birthday cards with a rock theme and featuring the colour ruby. We're blog hopping too so hello to you if you're new here I'm Leo *waves like a mad women* :)

Here is a little about Ruby Rock-it :

Ruby Rock-it Designs was created by Fynmark in Australia in 2008. Already successful with other mainstream papercraft brands in the local market Creative Director Joanna wanted to create a new brand that focused on all the things she loved – vintage style papers and richly textured embellishments – and so Ruby Rock-it was born. “It’s an acknowledgement to my grandmothers who were a huge influence in my life growing up – their tea-cup patterns, their love of all things olde-worlde.”

There are just oodles of wonderful products for all types of crafters so why not take a peek at their {website} or follow them on their {facebook page}

So here is this week's dare!

*****

Birthday Rock!!

The products the DT are using are from the Fundamental range from Ruby Rock-it 

The dare is to make a birthday card which is ROCK themed, this could be music or lots of bling to represent precious rocks.  I would also like to see the colour RUBY somewhere too.

I made two cards:

This one uses some of the Bella! Kraftastic glittered paper which I stamped onto with a stamp from the Fundamentals Birthday stamp set. I then layered some of the Fundamental embossed stickers along with a Fundamentals pocket embellishment which had the top chopped off and another Fundamental stamped image tucked inside. The cake is a Fundamentals layered embellishment and the black and white stripe sticker I added on top was from the Fundamentals Alpha stickers pack. There's a little music note coloured in with Ruby Promarker pen for the theme.

This card I thought I'd make kind of a 'mountain' or 'rock pile' of numbers. They're the Fundamentals Wood Veneers numbers which are the perfect size for cards! Love these. I stacked them up and glued them down with Glossy Accents and then coloured them in with Ruby Promarker and the top number in black. The stars and arrows are from the Fundamentals Alpha Sticker pack, the Hip Hip Hooray stamp from the Fundamentals Birthday stamp set and the Happy Birthday sticker from the Fundamental Sentiments stickers pack. The sentiment stickers I used on the inside of the cards too for the greetings.

Thanks for coming to see and remember to leave us a link when you've made your card. Hop on back over to Daring Cardmakers, http://www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

xx Leo

Daring Cardmakers - No Black, No Neutrals

Hi!
This week Svenja has challenged us to create a card with:

No Black, No Neutrals

"I'd like to see colours galore on your cards and absolutely no black and no other neutral colours. (You are allowed to have some white.)"

At first I thought this would be quite an easy one but I kept having to stop myself reaching for the black inkpad and twice for kraft cardstock!

My original design had some balloons a cat and a bunny on it but I ended up liking the stamped background so much that I ditched most of that and just went with the greeting and a little silver ribbon to make the background the main design on the card. I made it using a small piece of Speedball Speedy carve with a triangle cut out of it just made myself with a craft knife. I then pulled out some colourful inkpads and stamped all over a white card blank. The greeting in the middle is printed from the computer in a nice indigo/navyish colour. That's the cool thing about computer printing with a challenge like this you can have any colour you want so it's a little bit easier to dip way from the neutrals!

Don't forget to check out this week's challenge, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

Ruby Rock It Daring Cardmakers

 This week over at Daring Cardmakers we're having a sponsored challenge with a prize! Check out the details:

Here is a little about Ruby Rock-it :

Ruby Rock-it Designs was created by Fynmark in Australia in 2008. Already successful with other mainstream papercraft brands in the local market Creative Director Joanna wanted to create a new brand that focused on all the things she loved – vintage style papers and richly textured embellishments – and so Ruby Rock-it was born. “It’s an acknowledgement to my grandmothers who were a huge influence in my life growing up – their tea-cup patterns, their love of all things olde-worlde.”

There are just oodles of wonderful products for all types of crafters so why not take a peek at their {website} or follow them on their {facebook page}

So here is this week's dare!

*****

Baby Rock-It!!

The products the DT are using are from the Fundamental range from Ruby Rock-it 

The dare is to make a Baby themed card which has a 'rocking' or 'moving' element to it!

*****

We have this wonderful little prize back from RRBF for one lucky person who completes the dare this week (Winner will be drawn randomly just after next week's dare is revealed):

Super fun huh?

Here's what I came up with for this weeks dare. I made a boy and a girl card because there was so much in the package I wanted to play with a bit of everything.

This first card is a penny slider card. The tag in the middle with the stork on is the bit that slides and spins from one side of the card to the other and I stamped the 'Special Delivery' message from the Fundamental stamp set behind the slot too.

The second card I made into a rocking card with the bottom edge curved to create a gentle rocking motion when the card is tipped. The flowers some packaged plain white which just begs them to be coloured so I got out my watercolour paints and a water brush and painted them in colours to match the die cut embellishments. I loved the little Fundamental sticker sets, those are where the stripy heart and star stickers came from and they reminded me of confetti so I added a sequins to make a kind of confetti effect with the stickers.

Don't forget to check out this week's dare to be in with a chance of winning the goodie pack! http://www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

x Leo

Daring Cardmakers - Elemental Inspiration for January

This week it's Kathy's turn to set the dare over on Daring Cardmakers and as it's a new year there's a brand new first of the month project. Last year we had colour board to inspire you and this year it's images you can use to take inspiration from. Here's what Kathy says...

"Elemental Inspiration"

Here's how it works;

The DT will take turns to choose and post a picture - it could be a photo, a piece of artwork, or maybe a little montage of  bits and pieces we like.  

Each of these pictures will have a variety of "elements" that we hope will inspire you to get crafting - and we'd like you to use a minimum of THREE.of the elements you see to make a card  

 For instance  the colour combo could be one element, the LO another, and then there may be a landscape, items in the picture, a quote, stitching lines, the media used to create the picture - all sorts of things.  

We will add a little list of suggested elements each month, but you're bound to see more things you can use

So here is my Elemental Inspiration Picture for January, a beautiful piece of artwork from a fabulous blog: Victoria's Art Visions.

Victoria's Art Visions

For my card I immediately felt drawn to the quote with the 'keeping colours inside the lines' bit. I got a new set of stamps out that I'd been using on an arty online class and I had a go at over stamping, (stamping over stamped image to make double lines in different colours ,some are pastel pink and some are black) and using paints paint it on the card first and stamping over it and then painting it over the stamped image on the other card ignoring any lines! I also borrowed the layout of the image on the second card and stamped the image in lines like the stamping, (?) on the background of the image.

I used the colour combination of the red and green in the image for both cards but gave it a spin and swapped it for mint and pink. 

Pop on oevr to Daring Cardmakers and check out what the rest of the design team have been using as inspiration in the image, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

x Leo

Something New and lots of old!

Hi!

I'm doing another round up post of the last few Daring Cardmakers cards from the last few weeks.
The dare this week it's Lythan's 'Something Old, Something New', here's my card:

I used three new things and three old things. The new were a Kaisercraft stamp which I stamped in grey and then over stamped the flower bits with silver, the background I made with a Hero Arts ink dauber in pastel mint which I'm currently addicted to and the last something new is the paper at the bottom which is from Pink Paislee Merry and Bright collection and was an off cut from my Christmas mini book making. The old are the sequins, the dove is a sequin too they've been in my stash forever because there were like 400 in a packet and the little holly die cut I think came from a craft swap a long time ago.

This next card was Kathy's candle dare and I made my candles with washi tape and little bits of thread at the tops for the 'wick' bits. I went with the neutral colours as I figured it was a good keep in card because you can give that to anybody.

Last one is from my November colour dare which was to use a mix of metallic. I made the rose gold using a red metallic rub on wax over the top of a gold paper die cut, ( Docrafts Xcut feather dies). The circle is from the Silhouette store, it was one of the free shapes of the week ones. I cut it out in white and then gilded it with faux gold leaf. The holly bits are hand cut out and I added some Prima Say it in Crystals as the berries, the top ones I painted over with some Nails Inc nail polish which is a rose gold glitter and you can't really tell from this photo but the leaves are covered with silver leaf at the top and the bottom ones are gold glitter.

x Leo

Eye Boggling Adventure

Hi!

This week on Daring Cardmakers Nat has challenged us to create a card with googly eyes. Check out the dare and all the cards this week here, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/its-eye-boggling.html

Here's my card for this week:

I didn't have any googly stick on eyes to use and Nat said to do something with any kind of wacky eyes so I thought about what I could do and after a bit of thinking I got to Minions and how they're eyes are all buggy and goggled so my card has goggly eyes instead of googly!

I cut out the Minions from a .png image and used the Trace feature in Silhouette Studio. I had to select and cut out the pieces on the inside, like the eyes, goggles, hands feet and clothes and save them as individual images to add to Silhouette Studio to Trace and cut out. I decided to make them into Christmas Minions so they have Christmas outfits and they're busy putting up decorations and being a  bit mischeivous as Minons tend to be. :)

The stickers, (lights and baubles) are all old Echo Park ones and the papers are Kesi-Art, (background) and American Crafts, (clothes).

Don't forget to add your card to the Daring Cardmakers blog if you have a go this week. Big welcome too to Dawn who's joined us as a full time Daring Cardmaker design team member!

First Christmas cards!

Hi!

For the last couple of Daring Cardmakers weeks I've started to make Christmas cards. This week the dare is to create a card inspired by an 'autumnal forest'. When I jotted down the dare on my to do list last week I wrote down 'forest inspired' and I just got into my head the idea of creating some silver Silver Birch trees in a forest so the card's ended up a bit more wintry but hey ho.

I made all the cuts with my Silhouette using a mixture of clipart and hand drawn images and it's just regular old silver mirror card. I wanted to keep the look fairly minimal with the silver and white so I added the greeting on with acetate. The greeting was just printed on and then I've wrapped it around the card front panel so it's slightly popping up away from the card front too. If I was to do the card again I think I'd maybe emboss the white background too just to add something extra to it. 

Here's the card for last weeks stencil challenge. I used some Silhouette cuts again from my own drawings and used the negative bit as the stencil. I used some of those metallic wax rub ons both to do the stenciling and to colour the cut outs.

Don't forget to check out the Daring Cardmakers challenges every Friday, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

x Leo

A whole bunch of Daring Cardmakers cards!

I've not updated here in a while so I've got quite a few cards to add! 

I'll start with newest first and work down. This one is for this week's Daring Cardmakers,  http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.co.uk/ which is Jo's challenge to create a card with elastic bands. Jo's suggested using loom bands but I didn't have any of those to use so went around to see if I could scrounge together some regular elastic bands. I ended up with a couple of different widths, mainly the chunky red ones you get on the post. On Pinterest there are a few ideas for stamping with elastic bands and so I decided to use them that way rather than using it directly on a card. I fixed the bands around a clear block in various different patterns and tried it out first on scrap paper. One of the patterns looked like candles so that triggered the idea to just make them into candles. I inked each band on the block in different colour inks, (chalk inks worked the best) and then stamped on the card twice to make the line of 'candles'. The top flame part I used a home made eraser stamp, just carving a bit of an eraser into a flame shape and then stamping it. The greeting stamp is a Lawn Fawn called 'Grand Greetings'. 

This one is from the week before and Kathy's Beach hut dare. I've got a brand new Quirky Kit bundle to use and these are all beachy papers so I went right to those to create a simple beach hut design all made with my paper trimmer. This could easily be translated to a new home or Christmas card, (gingerbread houses?) too.

This one was the colour combo dare for August which you can see here was all blues and purples.

Going through all my scraps purple is not a colour that I could find a lot of. I did find a little bit of cardstock so decided to make kind of double layer greeting. It's just a word die cut, (Memory Box) then that was cut with a circle die, (Xcut) and then another circle of the same size in the turquoise cardstock was cut out. These were then layered together with foam pads. The background is all stamped with two different stamps I found out in mys clear stamp stash. They're from different sets but I mixed the lead and the flower/swirly bit together. I don't know what they are because they're not in the original packets.

This last one was from Lythan's dare which was to create a 'Kathy style' card, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/creating-kathy-style.html

I went with a 'classic Kathy' flower. It's a die which is my first purchased Sizzix Bigz die, (Camellia). I did see a YouTube of someone using one in a Cuttlebug who made it look easy but it's not you need a bit of muscle power! I used the middle bit of the die to make a kind of pom pom flower and different combination of the sizes to create the other two. I love how Kathy write to 'just scrunch up the paper' to make the 'Kathy' flowers and when I did that mine just looked screwed up!

The background was stamped, clear embossed then watercoloured over the top with an extra swirly bit, (like Kathy's die cut swirls!) handpainted and cut out.

x Leo

Two cards & two ideas

Hi!

Last week on Daring Cardmakers the challenge set by Gez was all about doodling. Now to do half way decent doodling you need to start off with half way decent pens and right now I don't have any! For sure I need to invest in some new ones. I've got to that stage where the few I've got are dried out and scratchy on the paper. So looking around at what else I could doodle with I spotted some nail varnish on my desk. It's a kind of chartreuse green colour and I thought, what a good colour that would be for painting flowers and then, ta da. I though why not 'doodle' with the nail polish?

I started off with the flower glued down to the card and then just built up the doodling around it just dotting on the nail colour like you do with nail art. It ended up kind of like a doily design and a little bit folk arty:

This week the challenge was set by Miri to create a card with no scissors. What a challenge it was too! It's second nature just to reach for the scissors so I kept having to stop and think what I was doing. I ended up using stamps and created a mask with a torn off bit of washi tape to make a 'faux panel' for the greeting.

The diecuts are ready made acetate ones by Maya Road, (from the current Quirky Embellishments kit) that I've added some gold leaf to the backs of and then a MME badge embellishment with gold thread glued behind it. (both from a Quirky Kit too).

Don't forget to check out Daring Cardmakers every week there's a new challenge and they're perfect to keep your crafty head busy!

x Leo

More Daring Cardmakers Origami & Feathers

It was my turn to come up with the challenge over on Daring Cardmakers this week. I keep noticing Origami inspired designs in some of the newer paper craft lines and so I thought I'd pick out Origami as the inspiration/starting point for this weeks challenge. There are so many cool Origami projects online that translate well for embellishment making. 

When I was having a go at following some of the online instructions I did find that the weight of paper you use makes a big difference, you need something in between a light to medium weight. I ended up finding regular printer paper the easiest to use so for my card I printed some text onto the paper first to make a background and then used the Origami heart instructions to make the heart shape embellishment. I wanted to make use of some of my Pinterest ideas again too and so I had a go at pencil eraser stamping and made a kind of faux confetti background. It's so simple to do, just a case of using a couple of erasers on the ends of pencils, daubed in the ink pad then stamped straight onto the card base. Dye based inks worked best after I had a little play so I used Memento and Impress ones.

The card I made for last weeks challenge was another Pinterest idea I had saved, making feathers from washi tape. All you do is stick a piece of twine or thread onto the sticky part of the tape then stick another piece of tape over the top so you sandwich the thread inside like the 'spine' of the feather then just cut it to shape and snip down the sides for the feathery effect. I guess if you didn't want them to dangle like I used them to make a mini dreamcatcher embellishment you could use some thin wire. If you have some off cuts of wired ribbon, the wire in something like that if you extract it out would be perfect.

 Don't forget to have a go at the Origami challenge this week! http://www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com
x Leo

It's Elementary

This week on Daring Cardmakers it's Nat's turn to come up with a dare and she's set us the challenge of creating a card using at least three elements from this image:

I started out by going through my supplies and pulling out lots of bits and pieces and then ended up driving myself potty trying to jam it all onto one card. In the end I pulled most of it off the card and here's what I ended up with:

The stripy paper I really love, it's one from the Fancy Pants As You Wish collection and I've used 2 sheets of it already, it's one of those goes with everything papers, (and I know it's a bit darker than the turquoise on the image but I'm still counting it as turquoise!) Obviousy there's also pink from the image, a hot pink and a lighter one. Rose images, cut out from a MME patterned paper and the wooden paper is a piece from a Studio Calico one called Napa Valley. Both those papers are on my desk already as they're in the new Quirky Kit Lite I've been playing with. There's some Prima leaf embellishment and more little paper flowers that I glued some pearls on to too. The little bow clip and the butterfly die cut are both Crate Paper from the Maggie Holmes line. The final bit was the greeting which I cut out of Cosmos Cricket paper and I've added the little button on top of the o. Hope that's enough of the elements! 

Have a dig around your supplies to see what you can find inspired by the image and share what you've made over on the Daring Cardmakers blog, http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

x Leo

Flags & Miniatures

This week on Daring Cardmakers Lythan has tasked us to make a card inspired by a national flag.
I had a think about it and Google image searched for national flags to get some inspiration and decided to go with the Canadian Flag as it stood out to me as being one of the most decorative with it's Maple Leaf design. I picked out the Maple leaf and cut some leaf shapes out from papers sticking with the red and white theme like the flag. One of the leaf shapes I covered with gold leaf and I picked out some red and gold accents to mix in. The little bag at the back has a envelope in it for money as I thought it would make a more unusual wedding card.

Here's the card I made for Daring Cardmakers last week. The theme was a colour board of red, green and grey. I had some new papers and goodies out on my desk from the new March/April Quirky Kits which were already red and grey tones so I picked out some of those and then ended up in my Christmas paper scraps box for the green. I went with poppies as the red/green colours made me think poppies but I ended up making them miniature because of the paper scraps sizes I think and so that led to the whole of the paper cut outs being miniature. I used another one of the large format card, (it's a 7x7 inch one) so it made a fun contrast in the end. It's made me want to try something like this on a scrapbook project too.

Don't forget to check out this week's Daring Cardmakers challenge to get some awesome inspiration as always, http://www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com

x Leo

Daring Cardmakers Docrafts Challenge - Dies

Hi!
This week the Daring Cardmakers challenge has been sponsored by Docrafts. Docrafts generously provided all the Daring Cardmakers with a set of dies from their comprehensive selection. I was sent a 'Carnival Numbers' die set. You can view the details on the Docrafts site here.
Here's the card I made with the dies:

I read on the packaging that the dies can cut 2mm foam and that triggered me to dig out my bits of craft foam from my supplies as a starting point. I dug out this really cool Darice glitter foam and cut out the numbers from it. I used my Cuttlebug with plates B and C and it cut out really well with a couple of rolls through. These large kraft card blanks you can get from Docrafts too, they're the Papermania ones. I had those already so used one as a base and then built a banner up from scraps of patterned paper and pieces of ribbon. I added some lilac bits of ribbon to finish the banner and make it nice and girly and then finished off with some little enamel dots and stick on gems.
Dig out your dies and have a go at the Daring Cardmakers challenge this week! http://daringcardmakers.blogspot.com
x Leo