Feeling Blue?

Nope, not me ... but I think this little cutie might be!

Good evening friends and as promised I'm back with another post as I've managed to have a crafty afternoon. I'd also like to welcome my newest follower, Jacee from Simply Paper Craft Design - hope you enjoy my crafty meanderings!  This is another Birthday card, but this time I'm actually ahead of the game as far as office birthdays go, so this can go in my drawer ready for the right recipient!

My card recipe is as follows:

• Card base - is a pre-made 5 inch square cream card blank
• Design Papers - are both by Donna at Bearly Mine Designs which has sadly closed its doors. The bottom paper is from a set called "Plain and Simple" and the border paper is from a set called "Mini Dots". I have dry embossed a wavy edge on the border paper using my Ultimate
  
  Pro.
• Image - this gorgeous girls is called Sugar 'n' Spice Doll Saffron and she comes from the pen of Barbara at Little Miss Muffet Stamps. I brought Saffron to life using my Spectrum Noir Pens in the listed colours before fussy cutting her:
• Skin - FS2, FS3
• Hair - GB8, GB9, GB10, EB3
• Hat, Scarf, Muffler and Dress - EB1, 1B2, EB3, TB4, TB5, TB6
• Coat - TB3, TB4, TB5
• Boots - EB3, EB4
• Sentiment is by Paulette at Create with TLC and I re-coloured the sentiment to blue in my word processing programme before fussy cutting it.

I'm not totally happy with my colouring this time - I don't find the blue pens the easiest to blend (the colours seem too tonally spread) and then to cap it all, one of the blue pens ran out whilst I was using it and I don't have a refill ink for it (guess what's going on order tomorrow!). Then I couldn't seem to get the texture right in her hair and the more ink I was laying down the worse it was looking .... Anyway, it's done now, and I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:

• Challenge #101 - Something Blue at Little Miss Muffet Challenges
• Challenge #98 - Something New at The Crafter's Cafe Challenge Blog - my papers are new as I bought them just before Donna closed her shop
• Challenge #95 - What Did Santa Bring? at Ruby's Rainbow - Santa didn't exactly bring my papers, but my M-i-L gave me some money and I spent some of that on these papers, and more ;o) Hope this counts!
• January Challenge - Winter Blues at Kraftyhands Blog
• Winter Birthday at The Stamping Boutique - Second Entry
• Challenge #121 - Baby it's Cold Outside at QKR Stampede Challenge - Second Entry

Whatever you're up to this week, I hope you have fun and get some crafting in!

Hugs, Helen x