Craft Juice Tuesday - Week 25

Welcome to another week of Craft Juice Tuesday! If you want to know more about each item, click on the picture and you will be taken to the Craft Juice site where you can find out more about each creation and where to buy!


Wondefully summery bag from melbangel



Greyhounds have never looked so interesting! Buy these wooden heat resistant coasters from dashcrafts

A beautiful woven sunset brooch from Lynwoodcrafts

See you next Tuesday for more Craft Juice!

Thank You

To the bloke on the 8:49 train to Manchester Victoria this morning.

Thank you for peppering your outburst at being asked to get off the train for fare dodging with the f-word. I am now able to converse with frequent insertions of the word, substituted for normal everyday un-offensive words. This has no doubt extended my vocabulary some what.

Thank you for setting my day up so well and for making me feel so threatened and scared whilst pressed against the window seat so that the guards and Transport Police could remove you from the train toilet.

Even my ipod shuffle with Prince's Let's Go Crazy guitar riff could not drown out your pathetic shouting and ranting that you had to run across the station as your 8:47 train from Preston to Manchester Airport was delayed due to a landslide at Lancaster which meant that you could not buy a ticket.

But still, you insisted that you were at platform 6 in plenty of time to catch the 8:47 and the inconvenience was that you had to run across to platform 2 for the 8:49 hence why you did not buy a ticket.

Get up earlier and get to the station on time and buy a ticket like everyone else.

Get a grip of yourself and do not rant and rave, swearing and striking the train conductor.

Just think about how you made me and all the other passengers feel this morning. It's a Monday for goodness sake - if a Monday is pants then the rest of the week follows suit. So thanks again.

PS The station staff were fab and so professional - thank you Virgin Trains!

Polkadoodle Challenge 31 - Sketch

Welcome to another Polkadoodle Friday! The sketch for this week was set by Kerry, who sadly has decided to hang her boots up from the Polkadoodle DT but in honour of her, we decided to still use her fab sketch!

So the challenge this week is to use the sketch below I've used papers from Candy Doodles along with the Gracie Fairy Flutterfly stamp and the sentiment. Gracie has been coloured with Promarkers.

I've made the flowers from circles cut from double sided printed card and simply snipped the edges and fluffed them up and in to create tactile flowers. Really easy and simple!

A little bit of inking and edge rounding and the card is complete!

Hope you can join in the challenge this week - pop over to the Challenge Blog for more details plus the fantastic Aquamarker challenge is still running, this one you do not want to miss!

You have until 12noon GMT on Sunday 15 August to enter the sketch challenge - good luck!

• Papers: Candy Doodles cd
• Image and sentiment - Gracie Fairy Flutterfly stamp

White on White

I was asked to make a sympathy card at short notice, so had a scoot around for inspiration and found the current Mojo Monday sketch:


And made this card. I've used white linen effect cardstock for most of the sketch elements along with a D'vine swirls embossed vellum background.

The ribbon and flower match perfectly which is good - the ribbon I bought over the weekend from a local craft shop - 5 bundles of ribbon for £2 and I think there is at least 3 metres of each so quite pleased with myself! Both the flowers are Papermania along with the pearl brad.

I've dotted around the edges here and there with a silver gel pen, but that's all - kept it clean and simple and now I wonder why I don't make more of these type of cards as it was really quick to put together!

I'm busy at the moment completing a Wedding Photo album - I'm about two thirds of the way through it and it needs to be finished for Monday. So that's top of my list of things to do at the moment!

• Dies: Cuttlebug D'vine swirls embossing folder
  
• Flowers and Brad: Papermania
• Ribbon: Local craft shop
  

Craft Juice Tuesday - Week 24

Welcome to another Craft Juice Tuesday! For more detail about each item, just click on the picture and it will take you directly to it's listing on Craft Juice where you can vote for your favourite items!

Craft Juice is a handmade showcasing website where you can add your creation and the community votes on it! 5 votes and you reach the front page!

This week, I am featuring sassyNpunk as the work is just stunning and really makes me giggle!

See you next week for more Craft Juice Tuesday!

Here Comes The Bride!

I've been asked to make another photo album, again from someone at nursery and its for her friend who got married earlier in July and she was a bridesmaid. I'm slowly working my way through the 31 photos that need to go in the album and I thought this picture in a layout would be perfect for the Creative Craft Challenge which is:

Here Comes The Bride

I've used 300gsm smooth white card for the album page - kept the depth of the A4 sheet with the width cut to 9 inches. The colour scheme is pinks and silver with a bit of bling, so I've added a sliver border around the edges and used two different types of organza pink ribbon from my stash to create the bow.

The heart is Club Green and I've used backing paper downloaded as a freebie from Tinker and Co called Shabby Quilt. I've used the three swirly patterned papers throughout the album as a perfect match to the Bridal colour scheme.

So far I've made 5 full pages (double sided) so just another 8 to go!

I'm also in need for more 300gsm white card stock - I have enough for this project, but I just can't seem to get any decent stuff from anywhere! I bought what I have from The Paper Mill Shop online in one of their bargain boxes just before Christmas but they have changed the card that goes into the boxes and the heaviest I can get is around 220gsm which is not heavy enough for what I need. So does anyone know of where I can get some?!

• Printed backing paper: Tinker & Co - freebie download Shabby Quilt
• Everything else: My stash
  

Get Funky Challenge 12 - Pockets

It's the start of another month and we are already upto August - where has the year gone?! And because it is the first of the month it is the start of a brand new Get Funky challenge! The winner of the July challenge that I set has already been announced, so pop over and see if you are a winner!

The very stylish Dolly has set the Funky Hand Design Team the challenge of:

Pockets

So here is my contribution! I've made a thank you card for the staff at nursery in preparation for Jacob leaving in early September. I've kept the design quite simple as I have another 9 of these to make as each member of staff who has looked after Jacob and or Samuel at some point or another during their nursery journey will receive one. The staff members who mean a lot to Jacob receive one of these.

I've used a purple card blank, cornered and inked the edges and added faux stitching around the edges and also on the pocket.

The spotty paper is from Colour Me Happy and the black card is from my stash. The pocket has been made from simply gluing the spotty paper down but making sure there is enough room to add the tag. I've added three colour co-ordinated Card Candies underneath the photo.

The tag cut from plain black card from my stash, using a Sizzix dog tag die, with a dotted white gel pen outline around the edge, a bit of ribbon from a Primark hair bobble thing, a matching lilac heart gem and the letters have been cut with a Sizzix Round-a-Bout alphabet die, to which I've added a black outline.

Hope you can join us this month for the Get Funky Challenge and as it's our First Birthday in August, Anice just might have something up her sleeve!

Please remember to follow our rules of one entry per person per challenge and that you must use a Funky Hand element within your project and then to link up your blog page in the comments section so we can all pay you a visit and to see what you've made!

Good luck!

• Backing papers: Colour Me Happy
• Dies: Sizzix Round-a-Bout alphabet and Sizzix Dog Tag
• Everything else: My stash
  

Simple Doodles Challenge 23 - Out Of The Box

It's time for another Simple Doodles challenge This fortnight the challenge is:

Out Of The Box

And I have taken it literally (to be honest I didn't consider anything else!) I've made these three cute exploding boxes. Not sure if they are proper exploding boxes but they are using my own template and sizing and worked fine for me!

I've used Funky Hand - Funky Daze papers and three different collections but the same patterns for each - Funky Hand papers have different collections of papers with different colours but the same patterns so if you like the pattern but wanted it in blues - no problem!

The top of the boxes show off 4 flowers on each corner made with my Cuttlebug flower die plus matching Card Candy from Craftwork Cards.

The boxes are quite dinky and they each have an inner layer which shows off yet more scary photos of Jacob! These three have been made for his three main people at nursery as a thank you for when he leaves at the start of September prior to starting school. I've got one more to make for Karen the cook but that one will be from both boys as she's been the cook from the nursery being built and her creations are always well received by the boys!



This one is for Rachel who was Jacob's key worker for the last 2 years and she's recently been promoted to full time Manager to cover maternity leave. Various photos of Jacob and some of him with Samuel from being less than 24 hours old (far right) to mid June (pic in middle with Rachel). The devil photo was taken at nursery when he was 2 and he had his face painted and it lasted all day - he didn't smudge it at all, and it was all glittery too! Mind you, it stayed for a few days after too! The very bottom photo is from a Farmer Ted's trip 2 years ago with nursery when all our kids wore wellies and no-one else did.....!!

Anyway, a bit of corner rounding and some doodling and they are complete - really quick to make once I got going!

Hope you can join us on the Simple Doodles challenge this fortnight - pop over to the challenge blog for more details on how to enter! Good luck!

• All papers: Funky Daze from Funky Hand
• Dies: Cuttlebug flowers
• Card Candy: Craftwork Cards
  

All Green

This is part two of Tales from Pollycraft and Flash Your Freebies! I entered the challenge last time and received this very sweet image in return so I could then continue with the progressive challenge.

The theme for the freebie is:

Green

So I've used my Promarkers and added papers from Funky Hand - Funky Daze, and yes, the bestest collection - Son Day!


A little bit of inking, faux stitching and dotting around the edges, plus a Papermania sentiment stamp, ribbon from my stash and three snaps from We R Memory Keepers.

I'm a bit tired today - took the boys to get their final bits of school uniform (except shoes - those will be nearer the start of term) in Blackburn today, and it was rude not to go in the very brand new Primark that has opened in the new shopping centre. It is HUGE and quite fantastic! I did have a good browse of the jewellery mainly for cutting down and using on projects but there was nothing that took my eye this time!

And this afternoon was the nursery party for the kids who are leaving to start school. Jacob is not normally there on a Friday so I had to stay with him (and Samuel) so that was a couple of hours of fun - it really take it out of you though!!

• Backing papers: Funky Daze from Funky Hand
• Image: Pollycraft progressive freebie coloured with Promarkers
• Snaps: W R Memory Keepers
• Everything else: My stash
  

Polkadoodle Challenge 30 - Generic

It's Friday again so time for another Polkadoodle challenge! This week, the designer and brains behind Polkadoodle, Nikky has set the challenge and she wants to see cards that are:

Male and Female Generic

So basically a card that you could send to either a male or female! I made this cute monkey card using the layered template and papers from Paper Boutique Vol 1 along with the sentiment backer from Candy Doodles (which I coloured with Promakers to match the colour scheme)

I've added a die cut shape using my Nesties plus some doodling, ribbon and die cuts from my stash and the card is complete! And it was for a cheeky monkey who recently celebrated his first Birthday!

Good luck in entering the challenge - you have until Sunday 8 August at 12noon GMT to enter.

• Layered template and backing paper: Paper Boutique Vol 1
• Sentiment backer: Candy Doodles (coloured with Promarkers)
• Everything else: My stash