I love Vintage

Good afternoon friends and I hope that this post finds you and yours well. How are you doing with any crafty resolutions you made? I'm not doing too well at the moment as I've been covering extra hours at work. However, my new job-share colleague started last week so I'm hoping that things will settle down in a few weeks, and I'll get some precious crafty time back!

It's new challenge time at All Dressed Up and, as usual, it's Anything Goes with an All Dressed Up Image. Wendy has plenty of gorgeous images available in the All Dressed Up Esty Store but if pennies are really tight, and let's face it, there are still 2 weeks to go until pay day (😉!) , Wendy has very generously provided some freebies here - please make sure you adhere to the terms of use if you're saving these though, to make sure they're available for other crafters too. Thank you!

So without further ado, here is my card for your inspiration:

My card recipe is as follows:

• Card base - is a premade A5 card in white cardstock 
• Paper - is from a pad called Floral Fantasy by Lousie Tiler which was a cover gift on the March 2013 edition of Cardmaking and Papercraft magazine. I've used this pretty rose and butterfly paper with a gorgeous vintage colour scheme which I absolutely LOVE and which goes very well with my new SN pens in the Vintage set!
  
• Image - is of course by Wendy at All Dressed Up Digital Stamps and this gorgeous girlie is is Little Autumn Girl-01 from the Three Little Autumn Girls set - I had fully intended making 3 cards, using each girl from the set, but time just beat me to it! I have brought this cutie to life using my Spectrum Noir Pens in the listed colours before cutting her out and mounting her onto my card with a sliver of black cardstock behind her.
• Skin - FS2, FS3, FS4, TN4, FS8 (Blush)
• Hair - RB1, RB2, RB3, RB4 (from the new Nature 24 pen set)
• Top - PV1, PV2, PV3, PV4 (from the new Vintage 24 pen set)
• Scarf & Shorts - VB1, VB2, VB3 (from the new Vintage 24 pen set)
• Bag - PV1, PV2, PV3, PV4, VB1, VB2, VB3, BG4
• Boots - BG2, BG4, BG6
• Outline & Shadows - BGR1
• Sentiment - is from my  "go to" set, Swirly String Sentiment Set by Lili of the Valley which I have inked in Memento Black directly onto my image panel. Sadly, these sentiments are no longer available as stamps, but they are available as digis.

I hope that I have inspired you to come along and join in with our challenge but if you are in need of any further inspiration, please do head over to the challenge blog and check out the other wonderful creations by my oh-so-talented teamies. Then come back and show us your projects With an All Dressed Up Image. This challenge ends on 14th February, and we'll be back with our next challenge on 15th February 2017.

Don't forget that the Facebook Dressy Girls have another challenge for you which runs until the end of January ... their theme this month is Magical World.

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:

• Challenge #270 at Freshly Made Sketches - great sketch ladies, thank you!
• Challenge #88 - Thank You! at Sparkles Monthly Challenge
• Challenge#171 - Anything Goes plus a Sentiment at Aud Sentiments
• Challenge #226 - Clean and Simple at QKR Stampede

Hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Hugs,

Helen x

A "Pizza" the Action

This is my second post of the day - please scroll down for my first post

Hello Crafty Friends and, as promised, here is my second post of the day.

Sooooo, did any of you make any New Year's resolutions? I don't, mainly because I normally break them within the first week! But I've got some crafty ones tucked up my sleeve: 

• use some of the many digis in my stash
• finish off my PHD's  ... projects half done 😉
• make cards that are not DT projects
• do my Kit and Clowder classes to improve my colouring
• don't buy more stash, because I've nearly got enough to open a craft store anyway!

Errrmmmmmm ... you'd better wish me luck with these! 😜Have you made any crafty resolutions?

Anyway, back to work!

Today sees the start of our new challenge at Incy Wincy Designs and our challenge this fortnight should be a nice and easy one to break you into the New Year gently .... Celebrate! What and how you celebrate is up to you, we just want to see your projects that celebrate anything; birthdays, weddings, graduations, new babies .........

We've got 2 fabby sponsors lined up for you.

The first is new to us and it's the team at Diddybag who are offering a $20 Gift Certificate to one of our lucky winners. Here's a little about them:

Diddybag offers over 10,000 sets of clipart.

We sell vector art and jpg/png. Starting at 99¢ and up.

From Adorable whimsical animals and children to elegant Victorian art.

All CU. No license necessary. All vector sets can be made into cutting files,

although the 99¢ Economy sets are subject to the artist’s terms.

We also have lots of scrapping and outlines for coloring as well.

Join our newsletter and receive news of our new sets, sales and freebies!

Our second sponsor is Naz from Sasayaki Glitter Digital Stamps and Naz is offering our second lucky winner one uncoloured digital image from her store. Naz also has a Challenge Blog and you can find her Facebook Group here.

Both of our sponsors have generously provided us with some digis to showcase, so here goes with my first project, a Pizza Box Party Invitation:

This little box was so quick and simple to put together, once I had played around with the digis and got the topper and invitation designed and printed out, and I thought these would be quite neat to hand out on the playground!

My project recipe is as follows:

• Pizza Box - is a 6 inch x 11 inch piece of lightweight card (I used cream but you could use
  
  white and print a background design onto it, or even kraft card for a more authentic look!) which I scored, cut and folded using my Ultimate Pro and Boxer Board following this tutorial at SplitCoast Stampers
• Topper and Inside Sheet - have been designed in my word processing package to fit in a 10 x 10 cm square, using images from the Pizza Party Set from Diddybag. I used the free font Coffee House for the black text and everything else came from the set! There's room on the back of the inside sheet to add the party details.

I hope that I've inspired you to come over to Incy Wincy Designs and Celebrate! with us, but if you are in need of any further inspiration do head over to the blog and check out the other great creations from my talented teamies! We'll be back with our next challenge on 16th January 2017.

I'll be back a little later to link this project up to some blog challenges.

In the meantime, take care!

Hugs, Helen x

Elegant in Cream

This is my first post of the day - please scroll up to see my second post

Good morning crafty friends and a Happy New Year to you all!

I hope you had a fantastic festive season - here at Casa Mia we had a lovely, if slightly quiet, time as some of our engagements were cancelled due to others succumbing to the dreaded cold and flu! However, every cloud has a silver lining and ours was that the Bambinos wanted to play family games. So we've spent most evenings round the dining table with either Cludeo, Mousetrap or Scattegories out and had a fab time. Back to earth tomorrow with a bump though as school starts again 😃

We're running a day late over at Feeling Sketchy as Cathy has been away for New Year, but we're delighted to bring you our first sketch of 2017. We don't have a sponsor for this challenge, so Cathy will be arranging a Gift Certificate for our lucky winner. 

And here's the sketch we're playing with, as drawn by Michelle:

And here's my take on it:

Sadly, I had need for this card and it should already be with it's recipient 😢

My card recipe is as follows:

• Card base - black cardstock which I cut, scored and folded to make DL size with the fold at the top
• Layered card - is Ivory Centura Pearl which is ½cm smaller all round than my DL card base
• Papers - are from the March 2012 Crafter's Companion Club Inspire Download Rose with Love. I used the cream coloured Rose paper from the download and die cut  these using my smallest wonky square from my Die'sire Elegance Stamping Frame Die. I cut a small slit into the bottom right square so I could insert the tags.
  
• Sentiment - is part of the cover gift from the January 2017 issue of Cardmaking and Papercraft magazine which I stamped onto a tag which I had embossed using my Ulti Bags Ultimate Pro Embossing Board
• Flourish - is another old Die'sire Die, this one is called Leaf Swirls and I cut this from the same black cardstock as the base
• Small Tags and Dragonfly - are dies which came from my Crafter's Companion Advent Calendar 2016. I cut these both from Ivory Centura Pearl and curled the dragonfly's wings to give it a bit of dimension. I also added a small Silver Gem from my stash.

I hope I've inspired you to have a go and play along with this sketch, but if you're in need of further inspiration do head over to the Feeling Sketchy Blog where my talented teamies are showcasing some great creations. Then come back and show us your take on our sketch. We'll be back with our next challenge on 15th January 2017.

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:

• It's all New at Whoopsi Daisy - my Sentiment is brand new as are the 2 small dies from my crafty Advent Calendar!

I'll catch you a bit later, as I have another blog post going live today.

Hugs, Helen x