A Fairy for All Seasons

As I am sure most of you are aware, Mo’s Dream Team are on the lookout for a new member and have asked anyone interested in joining them to use their favourite Mo Manning image on the card they are entering for the challenge. The choice! I could have been there for a week just contemplating which one to use! The fact that I have eventually chosen to use Finna would probably be of no surprise to anyone who has visited my blog before. No matter how many other wonderful images Mo has, Finna is special to me. I think it is her innocent expression as she toys with the water through her fingers…but whatever the reason I am drawn to her in particular, I am sure you will agree she is totally adorable. I know she is theoretically and in name, ‘Summer Fairy Finna’, but she can be so much more than that. I have had her playing with leaf boats in the autumn and now she is an Ice Fairy Princess sat at the frozen water’s edge talking to the fish trapped below the ice.

To create the scene I drew a couple of fish and coloured the whole image with Promarkers other than her swim suit which I paper-pieced with a gorgeous new paper from Jak Heath which happily was just the colour I was looking for. Once dressed in her paper outfit, I added shading to it with Promarkers and touched her hair with Icicle & Star Dust Stickles.

The background paper was also on Jak Heath's site only a short while ago, and I printed that off for the side panels as well as behind the main image. I added torn vellum to the panels for snowy drifts but secured into position with my Stickles as this also made the snowdrifts sparkle in the sunlight. Well, I hope they do! LOL. The icicles dripping down are also vellum - embossed from the underside which not only gives them the perfect white finish but helps to shape them. These were later popped onto the card using silicone glue. They also run along the top of the side panels, even behind the centre panel so that there is interest even from the side. The frozen water is also vellum touched with glistening Stickles but into the glitter glue and a dash of Glossy Accents I added some Polar White Flower Soft for some snow lying on the frozen surface.

Now, I think I have become totally addicted to these Marianne Creatable snowflakes. The ones today have been cut from vellum and acetate, each layer different from any other being highlighted with white gel pen and Stickles before layering together. I popped them not just onto the main part of the card but also one on a side panel and one to the back of the central panel for extra dimension.

Well, I hope you all like my card today, and I certainly hope that the Dream Team does!  If you ladies would like to see the cards I have made so far using Mo Manning's images, they are on a slide show on my page at PCP whereas just about all my cards, including my 'Mo's' are on my page at CDAC.

Tine :)
............(Fingers crossed!)

Challenges for my card:

Mo’s Dream Team – use your favourite Mo Manning image

Simon Says Challenge – let it snow

Creative Cottage – untraditional Christmas colours

ABC – I for ice & snow

Fussy and Fancy - Christmas (not red and green)
Quixotic - not a square or rectangle

Tip Top – paper-piece/layers.

#42 Anything goes!!! (Optional Glitter)

Right then, here goes….I think it is a first for the I ♥ Promarkers Challenge, you did indeed read it correctly – ANYTHING GOES… (providing you use your Promarkers of course!). We on the DT are all using images from Digi Doodle and mine is that of ‘Stocking Puppy’. Aw, who would put a cute little bundle like that into a stocking? I reckon he is in need of a cuddle....LOL.

He has been coloured with Promarkers of course, though I have paper-pieced his seasonal stocking with a digi paper from the Crafter’s Companion Vintage Christmas CD ROM, scaling it down so it is more in keeping with the size of the image. I then went over my holly covered stocking with Promarkers to add shading but I also added the stronger, ‘knitted’ heel & toe with my Promarkers too. A gel pen then added touches of highlights.

The background paper is also from Crafter’s Companion, cut into the design elements from the lovely sketch at Cute Card Thursday this week. This allows the extra-Christmassy red glitter card to peek through.

I would love it if you could play along with us this week – there is no excuse whatsoever considering you can have any image and any theme you want – providing you own Promarkers! LOL. Hope to be able to leave you a comment soon.

Tine :)

Other Challenges for this card:
Cute Card Thursday – design layout
Creative Inspirations – Christmas
Scrappy Frogs - Christmas
ABC Christmas - X for Xmas (optional flowers)
Lexi's - traditional Christmas colours
Crafty Creations - Christmas
Shabby Tearoom - card suitable for a charitable cause (RSPCA)
One Stitch at a Time - season or event
Crafty Pad - red and green
Ellephantastic - butterflies or Christmas
Passion for Promarkers - old/new (old papers/new image)
Creative Belli - embellishments beginning with R (ribbon!)
Hodge Podge - anything goes
Digi Doodle - anything goes.

My best-est friend ever!

The challenge over at Mo’s Digital this week is to use 3 punches so I have constructed this particular card with that in mind. The three punches in this instance are a circular Fiskars – for the circular element of the design layout, a shaped corner – on the image itself (and highlighted with the silver corners) and a small X-cut heart. This small heart punch has been used to create hearts in matching papers to the 2 DPs in the background. I drew silver swirls and hearts onto the paper before using the punch and then added the darker hearts to the lighter paper and vice versa. These then had gems added to them. The 3 lilac papers are all from Bearly Mine and I split the two designs used for the background into two, zig-zag stitching them together onto the lilac card base before stitching all the way round with a slightly smaller stitch to secure them in place. I had gone with a hazy kind of feel for my paper choices, hoping to convey the fact that Bella here is more or less oblivious to all around her other than her beloved Bronte. That is also the reason that Bronte is so different colourwise. To emphasise the dog from the rest of Bella's world.

The image of ‘Bella Hearts Bronte’ is by Mo Manning of course, and whilst it has been coloured with Promarkers, I have paper-pieced her skirt and cardigan and also decoupaged parts of both to give it dimension using silicone glue so that I could shape the paper. The shading was added to the cut out pieces of clothes before being decoupaged. I also used white gel pen to decorate the cardigan and a touch of silver again for Bronte's name tag. I think that is all the for this card. Hope you like it !
Tine :)

Challenges for this card:

Sunday Sketch and Stamp – design layout
Mo’s Digital – use 3 punches
Shabby Tearoom – card suitable for a charity (RSPCA)
Our Creative Corner – 3-d (skirt and cardigan)
Gingersnaps GC79 – stitching
Crafty Emma – lace
Wags ‘n Whiskers – lavender and lace
Mark’s Finest Paper – use a circle (subtle, LOL, but there in the background!)
Passion for Promarkers - old & new (old punches/new papers)
Tip Top - paper-piecing
A Spoonful of Sugar - anything goes.

Mistress Mary

Hi all. Now as you have probably gathered by now, I am not usually one for throwing a florist shop at a card unnecessarily but the theme of this card lent itself to such treatment really. I am using Nicecrane’s image of ‘Mistress Mary’, presumably the same Mary as in ‘Mary, Mary Quite Contrary (How does your garden grow?)’. Isn’t she a bit of an imp giving her brother a soaking with the watering can! That must be the ‘contrary’ element! LOL. It is a new image, available now from his site - a further link is on my side-bar. I have coloured her with Promarkers, inking around the image itself too. This has been matted onto several layers of cardstock including one which has been distressed and one of silver mirri. For the distressed layer I have also created some faux hand stitching to echo that on her hat and sleeve using a pricking tool and a fineliner pen (0.5 width).

(Close up courtesy of Nicecrane Designs)











The sentiment, similarly layered, is from Raindrop Echo Designs and the backing paper is from Crafter’s Companion and features fabulously blousy pink blossomed trees which goes perfectly with her puff-ball skirt. The circle element to the design sketch is also cut from a paper from Crafter’s Companion and is a lighter, softer variation of the same tree design, and being circular, almost looks like the sun shining on the garden scene to me, (providing the sun has trees on it that is! LOL). I made two large flowers out of pink card to pop at the relevant corners, adding extra colour to them with Promarkers randomly for interest, but concentrated it more towards the edge of the ‘petals’. I added a few smaller bought ones from my stash whilst trying not to lose the pattern on the background paper entirely which would have been a shame. The printed green ribbon is from my stash too and whilst Pixie Cottage also mentioned 'bows' for part of their criteria, as one of their DT only had the ribbon, not the bow, I had to assume that it was OK to leave the bow off, but I think it doesn't need a bow really.

Tine :)

Challenges for this card:

Sunday Sketch & Stamp - design layout
Passion for Promarkers – distressing and stitching
A Spoonfull of Sugar –distressing
Pixie Cottage – ribbon/bow and/or sketch (I used just the ribbon element)
Crafty Emma – think pink
My Partner in Crafting Crime – use markers
Prairie Fairy – make your own flowers (well, not all -but my 2 main ones are and didn't think my fingers up to making tiny ones! LOL:) )
Stamp with Fun - square
Digi Doodle – anything goes.

For a chance to win the complete set of Nicecrane Design's Nursery Songs images, just leave me a comment here and at the end of November, one lucky person will be chosen at random.

If you cannot wait until then to try out one of Ignacio's images, why not visit his blog where he has a tells me he has a freebie from the range for all those leaving a comment here!

Have fun!
ENTRY FOR THIS  CHANCE TO WIN IS NOW CLOSED.
Congratulations to winner of the Nicecrane images, KathyK.
Happy crafting Kathy. :)

#41 Snowmen

Do you know what they get up to when you are not there to see?

This week’s theme at I ♥ Promarkers should help with getting more of those all too important Christmas cards out on time. Ah, the ‘thick fingers’ of a child, frozen to the bone through woollen mitts which are encrusted with caked on snow - all because they want to make a snowman. I remember the feeling well. Yep, I used to make them too! LOL.

My DT card today shows what snowmen may get up to when your back is turned, an image from Arthur’s Clipart which I thought was rather fun. I hope I have not made the resulting card a bit too sinister. LOL. I coloured it with the obligatory Promarkers having created a circle for it out of which the sledge is zooming out and out of control. For extra snowy sparkle I Stickled the highlighted snow on the ground and on the snowmen, as well as adding pearly ‘glitter glue’ to do the same.

The background design from Tiddly Inks was printed onto pearlescent cardstock to get a bit of a sheen peeping through and onto this I stuck sections of regular paper printed with the same pattern which I had carefully distressed just a little for a tiny ruffled edge before sticking down. The layout itself actually follows the one given at CLP this month, though being the occasionally perverse creature that I am, rather than adding the horizontal line across the centre of the square, I have removed it instead! LOL. Having stuck down the central image, I drew my own baubles, colouring them in again with Promarkers adding them to the top corner as if they too had been knocked off the air-borne tree. The sentiment is from Raindrop Echoes, Ann Es sentiments, courtesy of the Sentimental Sunday Blog, which I thought seemed perfect for the mischievous snowmen.

I then attached this now mega topper to the bright blue card fancy fold which I had cut into the necessary shape, adding more pearlescent printed card onto the side panels and adding further to the glitz by using the pearlescent glue again - on the large stars and dotting it about for the twinkle of those in the universe beyond.

Well, that’s the ‘how’s and why’s’ for this card and if you like it, please don’t’ forget to leave me a comment in the box as I do appreciate your kind words and I like to know who has visited. If you would like to make a snowman card and join in with our challenge this week, please do remember to colour your image, or even the background instead, with Promarkers (as that is why we are the I ♥ Promarkers blog, coz we do ♥ Promarkers!) Just get some Promarkers on your card somewhere folks and I look forward to visiting you and leaving a comment in return.

Bye for now,

Tine :)

Other Challenges I would like to enter this card for are:

CLP – sketch
Winter Wonderland – winter sports (tobogganing)
Secret Crafter – sparkle and shine
Simon Says - sparkle
Crazy 4 – Christmas card or item
Stampman - Christmas
ABC Christmas - X for Xmas
ABC - H for holidays
Christmas Card Challenges - shaped card
Gingerloft - outdoors
Creative Craft - stars
Creative Inspirations - trees, woodland or winter landscapes
My Partner in Crafting Crime - use markers.

Thank you Ulina

I would like to thank Ulina (aka Apricot Bubbles), for giving me a Blog Award. It is very kind of you.  :)

There are rules attached to accepting this award apparently, namely that those chosen for the honour should tell you all three things about themselves before nominating 5 more recipients to receive the same award. As the award refers to 'Attitude' then the 3 things you share about yourself should reflect this, namely what is it that makes you the individual that you are, the three things that make you different from anyone else.

Here goes:

1. My hair - that has more than enough attitude for anyone, and always has have. In fact it is relatively 'tame' now to what it used to be. It is coarse, thick to the point of being wirey and regularly 'does its own thing'. It used to drive me nuts but now embrace it's 'robust' nature. LOL. Rapunzel must not have been blonde. Rapunzel must have had my hair!!!! (yes, it used to be long, very long - as a teenager it was right down my back, and plaited).

2. My favourite colour is light blue or any other water-like colourway really.

3. I L-O-V-E crime/detective programmes - and CSI is my absolute fave.

Right then, for fellow recipients - difficult to choose, I have to say:
http://anothermessycrafter.blogspot.com/  for her inspiration
http://kathleensmagnolia.blogspot.com/     new teamie, for her creativity
http://suzilous.blogspot.com/                     for her exuberance
http://stampingsuestyle.blogspot.com/       for her distressing perfection
http://cardscatscollections.blogspot.com/  last is certainly not least!....for always leaving comments each and every week, which we all know can be sooo time-consuming, but which mean so much to us all.

I do hope you all accept the award in the spirit that it is given. You deserve it! :)

Lastly, if you do choose to accept this award do visit http://digiswithattitudechallenges.blogspot.com/p/i-got-attitude-blog-award.html for the full set of rules/information.

Tine :)

Heavy Snow

Well, having used vellum on my card for last week’s Mo’s Digital Challenge entry and acetate the week before that, I did wonder if I was on a strange parallel but mis-aligned course with the creative ladies on the DT there. The question was, could I do it all again, and if so which should I go for? LOL. Having ended up with a few new ideas bubbling round my head using several different possible images, I took the bull by the horns and opted for ‘both’. Can you have too much of a good thing?

Well, I do hope not, as I have chosen an image I used not too long ago in September, that of ‘Jack Waiting’, by Mo Manning of course. I picked this image as it seemed to lend itself perfectly for the combination of media that was being called for this week. Acetate made the perfect glass in the window and the vellum took over the role of snow for a winter’s card - ripped, torn and Stickled to make it glisten in the cold winter’s light.

As for the colour choice of this card, I looked to the challenge over at Passion for Promarkers for inspiration. Opting for the sepia variation (as opposed to black and white), I went back to the fabby digi papers of Jak Heath, which I have developed a real soft spot for. They are so ethereal with their hazy white and sepia tones and furthermore, the snowflakes echo the embossing you can do with vellum.

I coloured little Jack with Promarkers and then I cut away the ‘glass’ from his window. I made piles of snow for the sills out of spare card and Stickled it, adding it behind the frame. Outside his window, Jack can see layers of Stickled, torn vellum for the undulating snowy landscape and even the sky is vellum, this time lightly embossed to show the grey snow clouds catching what little sunlight there is. The trees drawn onto the vellum with Promarkers have also been Stickled and touched with white pen where the snow is the heaviest on the branches. Over the whole scene white gel pen snow falls.

The sentiment on the front is from Paulette at TLC whilst the one on the inside of the card is from Raindrop Echo, Tameko’s Sentiments available as a freebie from Sentimental Sundays this week.  The 'Especially for You' was made on the PC and printed onto card as well as vellum which was then torn across before being tucked under the mat to be stuck into position. As for embellishments, all the vellum snowflakes are either Marianne Creatables or from Martha Stewart, each made unique by adding white gel pen. A narrow silver peel-off frames the image.

Hope you all like it!

Tine :)

Challenges for my card today:

Sweet Sketch Wednesday - sketch (vellum snowflakes follow the pattern rather than different papers)
Mo’s Digital Pencil – vellum and/or acetate
Wags and Whiskers – acetate, tissue or vellum
Crafty Catz – paper tearing (the vellum)
Secret Crafter – sparkle & shine
Crafts and Me - glitter
Paper Pretties – embossing
ABC – H is for Holidays
ABC Christmas – winter wonderland
Tip Top – use image/sentiment and/or tip
A Spoonful of Sugar – snow/snowflakes
Sweet Stamping – snowflakes
Sentimental Sunday - childhood & sentiment
Craft your days away – Christmas trees (tiny, but they are there out of the window! LOL)
Passion for Promarkers – black and white or sepia tones.

#40 Icy Colours

These two little cuties in their co-ordinating outfits are of course a digi from Mo Manning, ‘Siku & Shiya’. I have coloured them in icy colours to tie in with our theme at I ♥ Promarkers this week which is just that – Icy Colours. Icy colours, other than their little chapped faces, glowing with the cold. All done with Promarkers needless to say, other than touches of silver and white gel pen here and there for the embroidery detail on their costumes.

Now, as we can see, they are ‘Eskimo Kissing’, and as it is a seasonal card, I wanted to add a bit of mistletoe for them as it seemed quite appropriate. As I didn’t seem to have a suitable mistletoe stamp or digi I, as in time-honoured-fashion, ‘did it myself’. LOL. I will pop the image at the bottom of the posting, so if you think you might need a bit of mistletoe for your cards, feel free to click on the image and save to your computer. If you do use it at all, I would appreciate a mention and, and as with all digis, do respect the copyright. Just resize it to suit your project. Other than that have fun with it!

The backing paper is a design from Fred She Said, but I lightened the very back piece so I had a tonal variation. Fab paper though isn’t it, with that swirl blowing across? Just like the Arctic winds howling over the frozen lands. I then added a snowflake overlay to help get across the ‘really cold as ice’ idea and Stickled the edges for even more ‘ice’. You will notice the great restraint I showed as I did not Stickle the fur on the images. I let the ‘ice’ gleam & glisten, not the people. LOL.

Hope you like the result. Happy Crafting!

Tine  :)

Other Challenges for this card:
Paper Sundaes - let it snow
ABC Christmas - winter wonderland
One Stitch at a Time - winter wonderland
Charisma - Christmas
Wags and Whiskers - sisters or friendship
Stamping Sisters in Christ - weather
A Spoonfull of Sugar - snow/snowflakes
Winter Wonderland - Sing a Christmas carol (See Amid the Winter's Snow)
Pixie Cottage - sketch and/or 2 colours
ABC - holidays
Crafts & Me - glitter
Creative Belli - old, new, borrowed & blue (well, my Promarkers are not new, the digi I drew is very new, blue-goes without saying....LOL....but for the borrowed? I reckon I could do with borrowing more Stickles...I am nearly out of it now..too much 'ice' LOL)
Tip Top - use image/sentiment (or both) inc. a tip too (I always say how I have constructed my cards but this week there is a digi too!)

Here you go. As promised.  :)

Kindness.....

Following Dorcas’ lovely sketch over at Sentimental Sunday, I have chosen to use the sweet image called ‘Angel with Puppy’ from Mo Manning.  It was coloured with Promarkers with touches of Stickles in her hair, matted and layered up & with free DPs from the talented Jak Heath depicting white and sepia toned snowflakes.  The edges of the angel’s mat were gently distressed so that I got the tiniest of ruffled white edges from the card’s core. I wanted it to tie in with the torn vellum I used as the horizontal element to the sketch, which to me represented a snowdrift, (maybe you have just to be inside my head to make sense of it! LOL), with added  Stickled  snowflake.  To add this without showing any adhesive, it was wrapped behind the backing paper.

 

The sub-theme I have given myself to work to follows the sentiment (in full on the inside of the card) of Kindness. This came from TLC and I used just the first word of her sentiment for the centre of the snowflake on the card front. This large snowflake was made using a Marianne Creatables die in pearlescent card and vellum and was again touched with Stickles. The vellum parts to all the snowflakes were carefully hand-embossed to give white highlights to them - though the smaller snowflake on the front of the card also had the addition of white Gelly Roll pen.

The inside of the card uses the same DP and I used a second smaller portion of the same design, this time printed onto card to create a pocket. The sentiment in full was also printed onto this, but I also printed it out onto vellum which was then ripped and torn top and bottom and overlaid onto the card sentiment. Snowdrift again…LOL. The tag is basically a posh ‘To’ and ‘From’ popped into the pocket.   

Hope you like it!

Tine :)

Challenges for this card:

Sentimental Sunday – sketch (and use a sentiment)
Mo’s Digital – pockets
Crafty Calender – winter snowflakes
Quixotic - Christmas
Karber – digi animal
Crazy – things with wings
Flutterby Wednesday – wings
Our Creative Corner – gratitude
Stampman – Christmas
Cute Card Thursdays – vellum, parchment or tissue
Lexi’s – anything goes.

Mrs. C. Hits The Shops

Hi everyone. When I saw this week’s Mojo sketch I just had to make a card with it. (You will have to scroll down a bit to see the sketch itself). It was the little shape at the top of the rectangle that did it…silly, I know… but I could just see it as an awning. So as you must have noticed, that’s exactly what I did with it! LOL.

To get that awning to make sense though I had to find a relevant image from my stash and this particular one was a Precious Moments digi from the Internet, downloaded some time ago which seemed perfect for a hassled Christmas shopper. I chose to colour it using Promarkers with traditional Christmas colours, paper-piecing her carefully wrapped parcels, headscarf and matching handbag. Giving her a bright red coat with white trim, I turned her into a very busy Mrs. Christmas scurrying around the shops and for the shop front itself, (which serves to frame the image), I made two pillars, again coloured with Promarkers from a long rectangle, an oval and a very short rectangle as a sturdy base. The awning I created myself too, as I couldn’t just find any red and white striped paper in my stash, but at least making it myself meant I got the proportions I wanted for the stripes. The awning is simply folded, as you can perhaps see from the photo below, but this means it will fold down flat in an ordinary envelope for postage - definitely a bonus I reckon.

Hope you like the resulting card!  (Sorry the photos are a bit poor today, but this weather is so dark and lousy, this is the best I can get).  :(

Thanks for visiting my blog, hope to see you here again soon!

Tine :)

Challenges:

Mojo – sketch

One Stitch at a Time – Christmas

Tip Top - Christmas inspired

Charisma – With love @ Christmas

ABC Christmas – Christmas (optional, mainly white)
Christmas Card Challenges – Christmas (optional candy canes)
Everybody Art – untraditional Christmas, (colours maybe traditional, but imagery isn’t)
Stampman - Christmas
Digital Tuesday – digi plus frame (I have used the shop and awning to frame the image)
Crafty Catz - spots and stripes
Pattie's Creations - Christmas.

#39 Snowflakes

Hi everyone. For our Challenge at I ♥ Promarkers this week we want to see snowflakes on your finished project. For my card I have created ‘shaker’ featuring ‘Kai in the Snow’ by Mo Manning. Isn’t he adorable? I coloured the image with Promarkers of course, though paper-pieced the red hooded outfit before shading that with my Promarkers too. I have hopefully given him a fleece scarf and hat with a satin edge to keep the cold out and they, along with the pom-poms and shoes, are coloured exclusively with Promarkers.

Having made a circular card base, I then cut an inner circle out of it for the image to be place behind and then created a series of snowflakes to decorate the created circle. The ones running around the circumference are actually made with the Martha Stewart Double-Edge snowflake punch, which whilst a straight punch, I put a few cuts at strategic points so I could manipulate it to go round in a circle. To further embellish the edge with ‘falling’ snowflakes I used the MS snowflake corner punch to layer onto the largest snowflakes on the card and those were die cut using a Marianne Creatable die. Other layers of these snowflakes, as well as the smaller individual ones, are just some snowflake shaped confetti I had in my stash combined with those shapes punched out with the MS punches. I then put some Stickles onto various points of the snowflakes so they would glisten. I have a love/hate relationship with my Stickles bottle. I love it, but it seems to hate me! That sticky stuff really doesn’t want to come out most of the time, however much I coax it with a pin! The circular sentiment is from TLC Creations and that is matted onto matching cardstock and edged with more Stickles.

Before securing the layers of the shaker card together with foam tape I added tiny MS snowflakes & some tiny stars (pretending to be even smaller snowflakes!) which were remnants from the larger MS punched borders. These are the snow in the ‘Kai Snowglobe’! LOL. I also made a second circular base to attach at the side of the first with tape behind the sentiment, as the card would not quite fit in its entirety (that is the front & back) onto one sheet of A4.

Hope you like it!

Tine :)

Challenges I would like to enter my card for:
Mo's Digital - pick a season (Winter)

Fussy 'n' Fancy - Winter Wonderland

Cute Card Thursdays - transparent

One Stitch At A Time - Christmas

Ooh -la- la - Remember, remember...(In this case the image so reminds me of my son when he was tiny, and I mean tiny. We had bought him a brick red all-in-one suit to wear during his first winter though it was still so large on him he was like baby Maggie on the Simpsons in her's......arms and legs stuck out as if a star! LOL.

Tip Top - Christmas inspired

ABC - glitter

Simon Says Challenge - all white

Lexi's - anything goes.