Keeping it Simple at Artfull Crafts

My first post today on the ARTFULL CRAFTS BLOG and as August is Boys & Men month this image and card seemed approriate.
The papers and embellishments are Cosmo Cricket and the image is from Pollycraft. I  coloured the image using prisma pencils and gamsol. I am still experimenting  with my pencils to see what paper works best, how much pressure, blending etc.  I am happy with how this image came out but still some extra tweaking required I think.
I got some fantastic hints on skin colour combos over at SCS from the prisma thread which was great and helped alot.

I am also entering this card in the following challenges.....
Do You Stack Up - Boy or Man
2 Sisters - Boys & their Toys
Art Impressions - Summertime
Jellypark - Gettin' Punchy
Crazy 4 Challenges - Boys/Mens Cards
PaperPlaytime - Vacation


Thanks for visiting.

Just for fun with Pollycraft

I made this card just for fun because I wanted to have another play with my new prismacolor pencils and I thought I would use this cute image from Pollycraft. I used  odorless mineral spirits to blend the colours on this image and the sky is done with BG10 & N0 copics.  The papers are some Pebbles ones I had in my collection and the sentiment is from a Hero Arts set.  The buttons and twine are both from my stash and I don't know the brands.

I am entering this card in the following challenges.....

2 Sisters Challenge - Boys & Their Toys

Creations By Gill M - Things that Fly

Elephantastic - Add Some Layers

Paper Cutz Challenge - Wish Upon A Star

Stampin for the Weekend - Holidays

Wags n Whiskers - Outdoor Fun

Thanks for dropping by.......

Monochromatic for CSAYL

I loved making this card for our challenge at Christmas Stamping All Year Round isMonochrome.  I wasn't too sure about this to start with but once I got started, LOADS of fun!  I went with blue, mixed with white as a neutral. I sprayed the snowflakes (which I had precut with nesties), roses, ribbon and sentiment with "frost" glimmermist which matches the DCWV paper I used. I then coloured my Lily Of The Valley image "Deck the Halls" to match the embellies and patterned paper with copics.  I touched up on the roses and the image with Stickles "Stardust".  I finished my snowflakes with liquid applique and stardust stickles allowing a days drying time before "puffing" with my heatgun and layering together.

This is my last challenge as a DT member for CSAYL. I have loved being on the team and MacKenzie has come up with awesome challenges each week and I am so far ahead with my Christmas cards.  Thanks to the whole team for being such a talented group of ladies and I will certainly be checking the blog out each week to see what they have been up to. 

I am entering my card into the following challenges........

Samuel Taylors - Christmas with a rubber stamp (4 6x6 Prima pads up for grabs!!!!!)

Craft Us Crazy - Anything Goes

Hanna & Friends - LOTV

New Toy!!!!! My Prisma Pencils Arrived

Yay, exciting day!!! I have been waiting a couple of weeks for these to arrive from the US.  I had to break them out and have a play straight away.  I stamped Tilda on plain old copier paper as it was what was on my desk.  I am happy with the blue on the dress but need to do some practice on skin colours.  If anyone has some tips on what pencils work best for skin tones I would really appreciate any help you can provide. I have to admit though I am totally happy with the results of my first play with prisma pencils and I am impressed with how easy it is to get great results with little effort.

The Paper Shelter - Punches & Dies

This week at The Paper Shelter Challenge we want to see those Punches and Dies used on your projects, nice and simple.  I have used a fiskars border punch and a spellbinders die on my card which features DEW DROPS digi image and VICTORIAN BEAUTY digi papers.  I coloured the image with copics and finished it by embellishing with assorted flowers, ribbon and liquid pearls.

I am also entering this card in the following challenges........
Bearly Mine Designs - Bring On The Bling
Digital Tuesday Challenge - Cute & Girly
Papertake Weekly Challenge - Dies to Die For
Shopping Our Stash - Red, Ribbon or Roses (I used Roses)
Hooked on Craft Challenges - Things with Wings
Karen's Doodles - Punch It Out
Paper Playtime - Anything Goes

Feeling a little famous..........

Check out my profile over at the Artfull Crafts Blog....

http://artfullcrafts.blogspot.com/2011/08/introducing-louise-forsyth-contest.html

CSAYL - Non Traditional Colours

This week our challenge at Christmas Stamping All Year Long is to use non traditional colours on your card or project.  We are being sponsored by.....

Perfect Presentation this week so I have used the ABLE GABLE template.  I used Melon Mambo card stock and stamped the snowflakes from SU's "Snow Swirled" with versamark then embossed them using some AC "Zing" embossing powder.  The sentiment is from an SU set of Christmas sentiments and that was stamped on Gina K white card stock with Melon Mambo dye ink.  I then finished it with some cream organza ribbon and pink bakers twine and added 2 bells.

Bah Humbug - Something New (Pink Bakers Twine)
CAS-ual Fridays - Embossing
Joyfull Stamper - Inspire Me Fridays - Linky Party
Poodles Parlour - Anything Goes


Hope you will join us for our challenge over at the CSAYL blog.......

Once in blue moon snow day!!!!

Just thought i would share some photos that I took down the paddock playing in the snow.  It was loads heavier this morning and when I took these about an hour ago the sun had come out and the snow was thawing.  Nice that the boys both had a day off and that Andrew couldn't get to work as the roads are closed. :)  The photo of Jodie was taken last night when we gave her some snow to play with, she should have been in bed asleep but sometimes it's nice to be a bit spoilt.

A Total Shock...... in a good way.

Ever since I started scrapbooking and cardmaking way back in 2005 I have dreamed of being on a Scrapbooking Store's Design Team.  I had never applied because I thought I just wasn't good enough.  Then about a month ago I decided what the heck have I got to lose and applied to be on the Design Team of one of my favourite NZ Scrapbook stores, ARTFULL CRAFTS .  It wasn't until afterwards and I told my husband what I had done full realisation of what I had done hit me.  If I made the team how was I going to juggle everything because incase it had escaped my notice I am a Mum to 3 children under 5 with another one arriving very shortly.  Oh right, so I knew I would have to priortise and decide what I really want out of my scrapbooking and cardmaking if I did by some miricle make the team. Well to my total shock I have made the team.  Make sure and go and check out the Artfull Crafts blog so you can see the other ladies that made the team.
So I had already made some really tough decisions and resigned from a few other DTs,  but this opportunity is really just too massive to turn away from so of course I accepted the position.  I am totally honored to have been on the other DTs and worked with the talented ladies that I did, but  I am sure that everyone will agree that sometimes we just have to make really tough desicions and put ourselves, our dreams and our goals first.

CSAYL - Photo Inspiration

 This week is a photo inspiration at Christmas Stamping All Year Long.  And what a picture it is, totally sweet, pun intended.lol

And here is my take on it.........

I decided to take inspiration from pretty much everything in the photo.  The cakes, the colours and the overall total sweetness of the picture.

I used a new digi paper set from The Paper Shelter called "Let's Make A Picnic", which had the perfect colour combo and the image is cupcake fairy from Mo's Digi Pencil.

Hope youwill come and join us at CASYL for our challenge.

I am also entering this card in the following challenge.........

Craft Us Crazy - Anything Goes 

Shopping OurStash - Digi Image

Flutterby Wednesday - Fairies, Butterflies etc

Crafty Sentiments Blog - Punches or diecuts

Moving Along With The Times - Fantasy

Southern Girls Challenge - Black & White with a POP

At Southern Girls this fortnight we want to see your black and white cards with a pop of one colour. We have a couple of awesome sponsors, Pink Cat Studios and Sassy Studio Designs. The image I have used is from Sassy Studio Designs and I think is called Hippy Chick. I really enjoyed getting my yellow copics out for this card, I really don't use them enough and yellow really is a happy colour on cards and never fails to make you feel happy.

The sentiment was made in MS Office Word (yes I replaced the missing edition from my harddrive, and yes it cost ALOT! Especially when I had to replace PSE as well) using Caviar Dreams font and punched out using oval punches from SU.

I sure hope we see you over at SGC playing along and thanks for visiting my blog.

The Paper Shelter - Stitching (faux or real)

YAY!!!!! My first card as part of the Design Team for The Paper Shelter, I am so stoked! Anyone that has been a regular visitor to my blog over the past year or so will know that I am a huge fan of TPS images and Digi papers and use them ALOT! So to get the nod for the DT is a total dream come true.

This weeks challenge is STITCHING and it matters not if you would like to use the real thing or your reamer, as long as we can see stitching of some description we will be happy as. I have used the fake type, very easy with my stitching guide, although I need to practice corners by the looks of this card. The image I have used is "Love Cats" and is available along with the cute papers (Enchanting Dancing) in the SHOP.

Hope you will come along and join us and remember if you use a The Paper Shelter image on your card you could win a $15.00 gift Voucher from TPS..... AWESOME!

I am also entering this card in the following Challenges.......

Cupcake Crafts - Stitching

Paper Creations Ink -- Stitching

Sparkles Forum Challenge _ One For The Girls

ASFOS - Birthday Card - and it was quick and easy :)

This Birthday card for our "Birthday Challenge" at A Spoonfull of Sugar was a nice easy one to make using precoloured "Cool Waitress" from The Paper Shelter and honeyscript from www.dafont.com . I had lots of fun making this in PSE9 but you could really make it in any good photo program. It is nice to have some flat birthday cards to send overseas that aren't going to cost me a fortune in postage to send. All I added as embellishments are some dewdrops in the cornersjust to break it up a little and the cardstock is Melon Mambo from Stampin Up.

Thanks loads for visiting and hope to see you linked up at ASFOS.......

Here She Is

I realised today how long it has been since I have put some up to date pics of Jodie on here, so for those of you that are interested, here she is!

Jodes is now 1year, 7 months and 12 days.... still refusing to talk, although managing quite nicely to boss everyone into doing exactly what she wants.

She loves nothing better than rumaging through her Mums crafty pretties, as you can see from the utter joy on her face at getting her little hands on some dew drops in the top picture. She is also fascinated by copic markers, but that is more likely to be due to the fact that I just about have a coronary when she goes near them.

She dislikes the zippy bump (baby bump) and pokes it at every opportunity.

She loves My Little Pony, fairies and baby dolls (definitely not the real thing) and likes to be pampered eg Moisterized after her bath, have her hair blow dryed and brushed and to be dressed in pretty dresses. She also enjoys playing in the mud with her brothers, the sandpit and the wind blowing in her face. So there you have it, that's my baby girl in a nutshell.

CSAYL - Give Me The Bird!

Awesome challenge this week at Christmas Stamping All Year Long, Birds, we want o see birds on your Christmas card or project. Our sponsor is Pink Cat Studio for this challenge which is where this awesome image came from, aint it sweet! And super quick and easy to colour in too :)I have added some interest with smooch paint, stickles and liquid pearls. The papers are from Papermania and were a release for Christmas last year. The lace is from my stash and the sentiment is "Basic Phrases" from SU.

Hope you will came and join in the challenge and check out what the other super talented DT members have been up to.

I am also entering this card in the following challenges........

Clearly I Stamp - Things with Wings

Fussy & Fancy - Christmas in July

Glitter Geeks - Furry & Feathery Friends

The Poodles Parlor - Round & Round the Garden

Raise the Bar - Anything Goes

Stamp Something - Use a Digi

Emerald Faerie Garden - Lace Challenge

Time for another challenge at Emerald Faerie Garden and this fortnight we challenge you to use lace on your card. The image I used is the digi version of "Kenz & Tilly" and cropped so I just got the top then resized, turned out pretty cute I think. That is the joy of digi images I guess, being able to manipulate them to what you need. The papers are again Digi ones and again from The Paper Shelter, this time "Pepe L'Souris in Love" I love the pinks in this set. The sentiment is an Emerald Faeries one, from the Flourish Sentiments set

The flowers are a mix from Wild Orchid and Debs and the organza ribbon is old SU stuff. The gorgeous lace is from Spotlight. I am quite excited as now I am over the bout of Pneumonia I had and the boys are back to School and Kindy Mum and I are off to Palmerston North next week shopping, first stop Spotlight!!!! YAY!!! I see they also have cardstock on special for .80c a sheet so I will be stocking up on that too, plus lace, ribbon, papers, glitter, pearls, thickers etc..... I can't wait! I am also going to go to Noel Leeming and get Photoshop Elements 7 for my laptop since the dork that fixed the harddrive deleted EVERYTHING and then told me it was up to me to replace the programmes, gah they came on the fricken computer. DICKHEAD!!!!! So yeah PSE7 plus Office 2010 should put quite the hole in my (read Andrew's) bank balance. Then off to get a few things for baby no#4 after all we all deserve new stuff and it can't live in handme downs ALL the time.

I am thinking of dyeing some of Jodie's merino baby stuff that we got her as the colour has faded and I would like to spruce it up a little, if anyone has any suggestions on the best way to do this I would appreciate any help.

Well I guess that is a wrap, what a hugely longwinded post this was. Have a great day and don't forget to go see what the rest of the A Team on EFG have up with.........