Hedgehog Love

I was sent a couple of free sheets of HOTP papers after getting a letter in a magazine, and as I hate wasting anything I decided to use them to make some cards. I already had the stamped images from Penny Black, so I watercoloured them and matted them. I cut a piece of the blue bubble or pink flower paper to cover a little more than half the card and stuck it down. I cut round the bubbles, and cut the pink paper straight but edged it with a border sticker. Not very exciting but hey, it's two more cards in stock!

Lion card

This was made for the competition on http://www.pinkpetticoat.blogspot.com/, which challenged readers to use Pink Petticoat stash. I don't expect it will win, as it's so emphatically NOT PINK, but I like bright colours and the orange and blue made a cheerful change from the Christmas shades that surround us now. The lion is from Pink Petticoat and the background stripe paper was a download from Crafts Beautiful. The orange strip of card was punched with Fiskars ribbon slot punch and I threaded a tiny remnant of orange gingham ribbon through. It was actually so short I had to cut it in half, so it doesn't stretch behind the picture, but it looks as if it does and that's the main thing!

Snow card

This was created in response to a challenge on Papertake weekly. It was for something made on the theme of snow and with all the cards I'm making for Christmas, that's what it had to be. I used bits and pieces from the pound shop for the snowman and snowballs, and doodled a line round the background to finish. It took just a few minutes - I need to find more designs this quick to make!

Card for Jasper

This first birthday card is based on the sketch at www.papertakeweekly.blogspot.com. I rotated it and replaced the image with the letters of the birthday boy's name. The paper is all from the Cold Snap collection by http://www.funkyhand.com/. I'm pleased with the way it's turned out!

Papertake Challenge

The challenge on Papertake was to create a card with something glittery or sparkly. They suggested fireworks but at this time of the year I'm always busy with Christmas cards so I made a sparlky tree topper for my card. The tree is cut from a Kleenex tissue box! - lovely glittery card - and the embellishments are sewn on, including the lovely red gem bow that came in a pack from a pound shop!

Limited Supplies card

This was the result of a challenge from the This Thursday site. Participants were asked to surf through five sites then take inspiration from where they ended up, and after some totally random clicks I ended up at http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=45 and the 'limited supplies' board. I had just bought a kit from the pound shop (for one pound sterling!) which had some card blanks, small squares of card, and various little embellishments, so I thought I'd use that to make a birthday card for a four year-old whose birthday is next week. I ended up cheating, as I added some glitter and doodling, but the card blank, papers and tiny candle flames (I don't know if they come out in the photo) are all from the kit. It was fun putting it together and challenging my imagination - although four simple candles are not exactly difficult to cut out!

'Throw a curve'

This uses downloads from http://www.pinkpetticoat.co.uk/ to create a card for the This Thursday challenge. Crafters were asked to 'throw a curve' and as I tend to use straight lines for quickness it was quite an adventure for me! I cut away the front edge of the card and doodled a black and white border on white card, which I cut out and stuck on. I added a Christmas tree made from my own template, with beaded trim and gem flowers. The inside of the card is lined in another Pink Petticoat paper.

1950s layout

This is a picture of my mother as a girl in a very posh frock. She told me the original was a turquoise shade so I altered it in Photoshop to tint the dress. The papers are from the EK Success 'Life' range, which I though toned very well.

New baby card

This is a Hampton Art Stamps image, no 1223, 'A Star is Born', which I was sent as a freebie a while back. I kept to a rainbow pastel palette as I wanted a card suitable for either sex, and used gold embossing powder for a touch of sparkle. The watercolouring was actually done with felt pens and a waterbrush, and I added little touches of gold and pale green glitter so as not to overwhelm the delicate image. A quick rummage through my button jar produced the pastel and star buttons, and a similar rummage through my ribbon jar got me the sheer purple and green gingham ribbons. I added some Christmas jingle bells I bought in Lakeland a few years ago just to make it a bit more fun.

Scrap Christmas cards

As I'm reluctant to throw anything out, I find Christmas is an excellent time to use up all my little bits of paper I thought might come in handy. Long thin strips, trimmed from larger sheets, make up the background to this card, and a tiny tree cut from silver Bazzill Bling is decorated with some little gems. None of the material is specifically for Christmas, but it comes together to make quite a funky card.

Rainbow Christmas

This is the time of year when I really step up production of my Christmas cards - I send out over 200 each year, so many of them are done quite quickly. This is a great design for mass production, as the stamping is done in just one colour at a time, and the pieces can be cut and arranged quite quickly. I love rainbows and I always like finding ways to incorporate them into my crafting even at Christmas. This stamp from Kirsten Lapping Designs (http://www.kirstenlappingdesigns.com/) has been stamped in seven colours of ink onto seven shades of card to make a rainbow, on a black card base. I singled out one of the little trees on the green line to be glittered, to give the design a focus - I love glitter too, and it's a necessity at Christmas!

Cute Little Penguin

This card features in the latest 'Simply Cards and Papercraft' Readers' Gallery. The papers were free with a previous issue, and the cute penguin stamp is, I think, Creative Imaginations. He's holding a glittery ice lolly and wearing Bermuda shorts, and I stuck on google eyes for a bit of fun - he'd make a sweet Christmas card too!

Baby card

This was made for a competition to create a stamped card. It's not a particularly complex design, but I think the fresh colours are pretty and I addede a few tiny sequins for a subtle glimmer, as well as Fiskars flower brads in the corners of the panel. And it was picked as one of the winners!

Bronze Christmas

This started off with a new Cuttlebug die, which I cut and embossed in orange card since it was what I had around at the time. I always like making Christmas cards with non-traditional colours, so I used the bauble as the basis for a bronze autumnal colour scheme. I brushed a (too dark!) brown inkpad over the bauble. The debossed areas of the bauble were filled with PVA glue and sprinkled with fine glitter, then matted on dark brown paper and ribbon tied through the hole at the top. Brown check paper covered the card and the bauble was matted on top of it.

Wise Men

This is another Kirsten Lapping Designs stamp, but quite different in style. I liked it because it gave me a chance to mix lots of colourful paints over the background, letting them bleed into each other before they dried. When the paint was half-dry I added a sketchy outline of a couple of pyramids into the corner to give some depth. I then stamped the wise men in black in the foreground, and made it into a simple card with a couple of strips of peach framing the image. It's a starker style than my usual but I did rather like it.

Christmas card

Another Christmas card - so far I've made 56, so I'm well on track! This one uses a tree stamp from Kirsten Lapping Designs, which I stamped onto several different scraps of green paper and layered up. The greeting is another one of Kirsten's but I cut and ink each word separately to make a feature of it. A bit of bling and that was another card finished!

Paddington

This was made with the latest free stamp from 'Quick Cards Made easy'. I didn't see to have any suitable embellishments so I fell back on a favourite technique of using my carefully-hoarded bits of paper to make a background. This looks interesting, without detracting from the image itself.

Santa's coming

Another Christmas card, this time using some new stamps which I've been sent by Kirsten Lapping Designs. I was asked to make up some samples, of which this is one. The stamps are just about to be launched and once I have more details I'll post them. I used various colours of marker on the big Santa image, and matted it onto card covered with patterned papers. There's some 'snow' (actually tint glitter stars) from the same company, stuck around the chimney pot with PVA. The greeting is part of yet another stamp from Kirsten Lapping Designs and I added some ribbon as a finishing touch. I liked this image as I thought it was such a fun, cheery one for Christmas, especially to send to children.

Christmas card

This was made using some free papers from one of the cardmaking magazines and a tiny tree cut using a template from Cranberry Cards - I'd won a set of them in a competition. I always like to add a bit of sparkle to my cards so there's a little heart bead stitched to the top of the tree. The background is made up using oddments of paper and the foam snowman and snowflake came from a poundshop kit. I need about 200 cards for Christmas each year so I'll be churning them out from now on!

Surf's Up

This card was made for the 'Simply Cards and Papercraft' competition in issue 46, which wanted a colourful card for teenagers. As soon as I saw the stamp I thought it would be perfect, and I've just heard it was picked as one of the winners! The sandals were embellished with Kuretake flower brads and gems - I just love adding some sparkle to my cards.

'Cardmaking and Papercraft'

These are some of the cards I made for the latest issues of 'Cardmaking and Papercraft' due out this week. I was asked to make 5 cards on the theme of good luck and congratulations, so I chose some digital images from http://www.pinkpetticoat.com/, with lavish use of glitter and ribbon. The flying pig is a bit tongue in cheek! I really enjoyed making them as I love bright colours, although I don't think they've photographed as well in the magazine.

Christmas card - and tag!

This is another Christmas card I made, mainly to use up what I already had (stamped image and text, textured card, printed paper). I covered the front of the card in glue, stuck the stamped card down across the centre, and cut the other bits to fit. It looked a bit bland orginally, but it has ended up being one of my recent favourites because I 'm so pleased with the way the thin lines of brown card tie it all together. Definitely a layout I'll use again.

I've just been tagged on another blog (http://artypartyni.blogspot.com/2008/06/ive-been-tagged.html - I haven't worked out how to do links yet!) and been asked some questions:

WHAT WAS HAPPENING 10 YEARS AGO? - I was probably doing a lot of sneezing! the hay fever season is in full swing and although I don't suffer so much nowadays I had a dreadful time when I was younger.

NAME 5 THINGS TO DO TODAY:Eat breakfast, morning snack, lunch, dinner and supper. That pretty much covers every day, actually...

SNACKS I ENJOY: Ooh, hard one - pretty much anything sweet or savoury. Maybe crisps - or chocolate - or something with nuts? ... do I have to make my mind up now?

THINGS I WOULD DO IF I WERE A MILLIONAIRE: I'd try not to let it spoil me (but I'd be open to the experience...)

PLACES I HAVE LIVED: Actually, some people have been known to opine that I live in a world of my own.

I'm supposed to pass this on to five other people but I've no idea how to do that! - I'm amazed I even managed to put a link to Kath's blog in. There should have been a question on WHAT IS THE NEXT THING YOU ARE GOING TO DO? as that would mean I could put 'learn to work more features of this wee blog of mine'! So I will try to work out how to tag even one other person, and I will feel a great sense of fulfilment!

Cuttlebug Birthday card

This was the first thing I made with the Cuttlebug die-cutting machine. The background uses card embossed with bubbles, in four bright colours. The cake 'stamp' uses one of the dies that came with the Cuttlebug. The 'stamp' shape is first cut them placed in an embossing folder and run through the machine. I layered them up with foam pads and added a stamped greeting on an un-embossed 'stamp'. A really simple card which would probably benefit from a bit of chalking and of course some glitter - must try that next time!

Baby Boy card

This uses the cutting and embossing shapes that come with the Cuttlebug. I embossed the pram in three shades of blue card, then sanded them to reveal the white core. I cut and layered them with foam pads and mounted the image on a square of blue check paper I've had for years - it was one of the first papers I bought when I started scrapping back in 1999! The pram wheels are buttons, to give it a bit of texture and dimension. The small card measures about 4 inches square and was made from an oddment of Bazzill. Quite a simple little card, but I liked it.

Baby Girl card

This uses some of the cute stamps from the small Fiskars stamp press. I’d been sent a roll of pink ‘broderie anglais’ style paper ribbon from Paper Cellar as a prize and realised I’d better use it when I discovered it bleaching in the sun! The tag used the ‘twanger’ eyelet setter from Fiskars too, which is such a handy tool - nothing to lose off the edge of the table! I love how wee bits of things that I’ve saved for ages can make such pretty cards.

Hot Off The Press

This is made with the HOTP Citrus paper pack and embellishments which I won as part of the 'Cardmaker of the Year'. I love bright colours so the citrus pack was my favourite. There are punch-out shapes to match so it's easy to combine elements to make quick and pretty cards.

'Star of the Week'

This is a little beach scene card which saw me being picked as 'Star of the Week' on http://www.fiskarettes.co.uk/. I used one of the new 6-inch punches with orange paper to create the mat, then layered torn paper to make the sea. I added some eyelets from the 'Nature' set and two punched shapes from the Teeny Tiny punch set.

Shabby Princess

The shabby princess website has some lovely papers for digital scrapping, but that doesn't mean they can't be printed out and used for ordinary card-making. This is from the 'Urban Kiwi' set of free papers, using one of my favourite shades of green plus black and cream. I added some gems but otherwise kept it pretty simple.

Good Luck

This was made with some of the Paper Cellar products I won in the 'Cardmaker of the Year' competition. The paper is Provocraft's Rob and Bob collection - quite a funky colour combination, which I liked because it was so unusual. The cat sticker went on fine but when the lettering peeled off the backing some of the little silver hemispheres popped off. I managed to find them all and stuck them back on with a tiny dab of Pebeo Touch (it's great for gems because unlike PVA it remains plastic even when dry so things don't sheer off).

Sizzix butterfly

Although the Sizzix Sidekick is so handy for cutting shapes, it's difficult to make an image bigger than about two inches square - but now the four-part butterfly cutter is available I'm enjoying making these large and colourful creatures for my cards and layouts. This uses background paper from PaperCellar and various oranges and purple from my stash. The butterfly is stunning as it is but I must try adding glitter and gems to make it really eye-catching.

Box frame

I was going to make a card for a new baby girl but realised that all the foam pads I was using meant it would probably fall over if the recipient tried to stand it on a shelf! So I found a pretty box frame for £3 in Klick and made a boxed picture instead, with stamped and die-cut cakes - and, of course, lots of embellishments.

Father's Day card

Papercraft Essentials, Issue 28, had a competition to design a Father's Day card, which I entered - and won! This uses Hot Off The Press Papers from Crafts Beautiful along with my favourite gems and foam pads - and of course a picture of a beatiful baby to make a very special father's Day card.

Dots and Checks

This card uses some free papers from 'Cardmaking and Papercraft'. I doodled some flowers in black ink around the centre circles cut from the paper pack, and added clear buttons which I glittered with Jones Tones extra fine glitter before sewing on. A length of white ribbon with tiny black dots was the finishing touch.

Pink Petticoat 'lots of dots'

This is a card I made for a competition over on http://www.pinkpetticoat.co.uk/. The theme was 'lots of dots' so I used two shades ofpolka dot paper and added some pink crystals. The sheep is one of the downloads avaliable for sale on the site and I used watercolour to tint the image and clear glitter to cover the sheep. The black and white printable ribbon, and the printable black and white polka dot ribbon, came from http://www.shabbyprincess.com/. I added an orange brad to the centre of the flower and doodled a chequered border to the motif.

Waterbaby layout

This layout uses printable Hot Of the Press papers from http://www.crafts-beautiful.com/. The papers include the printed ribbon and journalling tag, so all I had to add was the title. I'd found some sparkly words/titles but none of them were terribly helpful - I found a 'babe' and realised if I bought 'sexy' I'd get a 'y' for baby but would then be left with some fairly useless letters. Then I realised I could buy the longest word, 'fairytale', get the 'ater' letters and cut up the rest for a large 'W'. I'm really pleased with the effect, like water droplets scattered across the bottom of the layout. I knew I'd never be able to line then up straight so I went for a staggered look!

'National Cardmaker of the Year 2007'

So excited - the latest issue of 'Cardmaking and Papercraft' is out with a feature on me and some of my designs after winning this contest. I like the ones they picked - the rainbow cake is one of my favourites and I was really pleased with the way the ice-cream sundae turned out. I used lots of different handmade papers and chalked the edges of the glass to make it look frosty. Now all I have to do is unpack the parcels which have arrived and decide what to play with first!