#happybirthday #selfie

I don't tweet (or do "witter" as it's called in our house) but this cutie simply required a "hash tag" or two, so I'm hoping I've written them correctly!

Good afternoon friends and hope you're all well. 

It's new challenge time at Incy Wincy Designs and this week our challenge is entitled Doodle What? Now, before you head off into a blind panic ('cos I've already done that, tee hee!!!!!) all we want to see on your entries is that you've hand drawn something.

Our sponsor this week is the lovely Emma Canning who is the creator of Flat Friends, where everything has been been hand made by Emma with love. Emma is very kindly offering this week's Random Winner's prize, and she also generously gave each DT member their own choice of image to showcase. 

So without further ado, here is my card for you this week featuring one of Emma's cute images:

I've kept this card very clean and simple as it was for eldest Bambino, who just doesn't "do" frills and frippery but does "do" selfies and online social networking .... so this image was perfect!

My card recipe is as follows:

• Card base - is a premade 14.8cm square base in white
• Design Paper - comes from the Sugar and Spice Papercraft CD-Rom
• Image - of course comes from the hand of Emma at Flat Friends, and this image is called Girl Selfie. I brought her to life using my Spectrum Noir Pens in the listed colours before die cutting her using one of my Sizzix Framelits Ovals dies using the "out of the box" technique. I finished the image off by hand drawing a border around the die cut edge using a silver gel pen.
• Skin - FS2, FS3, FS6, CR7
• Hair - TN1, TN2, TN3, TN7 (for once I'm actually pretty happy with this!)
• Phone - HB1, HB2
• Jumper - IB1, IB2, IB3
• Sentiments - are 2 smaller Sizzix Framelits Ovals die cuts onto which I've handwritten my "hash tag" sentiments and drawn a border around the edges using my silver gel pen
• Twine - from my stash which I wrapped around the paper panel twice, and then used another length to fix my sentiment tags

I hope you'll come over to Incy Wincy Designs and marvel at the doodling talents of my wonderful team-mates. Then share and show us your creations which feature Doodle What? - this challenge will finish on Sunday 19th July 2015.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the day!

Hugs, Helen x

Green Welly Brigade

Good morning friends!


Hope this post finds you well. Mother in Law is getting more confident on her crutches each day and therefore more mobile and more independent ;o) , so the volume of checking up on her is reducing slightly. As well as getting to my studio class and pounding the treadmill this week, I've found time to do a bit of crafting.


In my B.C. crafting days (B.C. = Before Cardmaking!) I was an avid lacemaker, and could regularly be found with my late mother at local fetes and country shows with our pillows and "makes". Some of the time we sported wellies (country shows can be messy affairs!) and yes, mine were green!!! A mutual friend of ours also demonstrated and sported green wellies, and we quickly became known amongst lacemaking friends as the "Lace Trimmed Green Welly Society"! Another friend (who also made lace bobbins) made us all membership bobbins, with a pair of green wellies trimmed with lace on them and my membership number was 4. Sadly, I don't think the "LTGWS" is still going, but I reminded of those happy days when I was going through some of my digis, and this card was born.

My card recipe is as follows:

• Card base - is a pre-made 14.7 cm square card in white cardstock
• Design Papers - are from my favourite CD-Rom at the moment ... Sugar and Spice Papercraft
  
  CD-Rom Collection. I have matted and layered these onto Kraft Cardstock
• Image - is called Pattern Wellies and it comes from the pen of Claire at Jellypark. This is a new store for Claire (she had to close her old store down at the end of December thanks to the new EU VAT rules on digital sales) so she is in the process of transferring her many images across - the wellies aren't there yet! I coloured these wellies using my Spectrum Noir Pens in the shades listed, before die cutting them using a Sizzix Framelits Oval Die.
• Outside of wellies - DG2, DG3, DG4, PL1, PL2
• Inside of wellies - EB1, EB2
• Ground - EB1, EB2, EB5
• Outline - CG1
• Sentiment - is a magazine freebie, from Quick Cards Made Easy, and I stamped this directly onto my DP using Memento Ink in Tuxedo Black.
• Some buttons from my stash, and a die cut flower using Die'sire Classiques Delicate Flower edged with a Papermania Hot Pink ink completed this card.

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

• Challenge #289 at Tuesday Morning Sketches
• Challenge #126 - Bingo plus a sentiment at Aud Sentiments Challenge I'm claiming the diagonal from bottom left to top right of two pattern papers, flowers (die cut, on a DP and on the image!) and die cut.
• Challenge #74 - Anything Goes with a Twist - use some buttons at Fan-Tastic Tuesday
• Challenge #98 - Anything Green at Ruby's Rainbow

Hope you have a good Sunday!

Hugs, Helen x

Framed it!

Afternoon all! Hope everyone is OK out there in "Blog Land".

Well the half term holidays are over, and Casa Mia has returned to normality with school for the Bambinos and me! I did manage to get a fair bit of crafting done last week, and I'll share these bits with you over the coming days. When I wrote my last post, I forgot that my Mother in Law was going into hospital last Wednesday for a total knee replacement ... all went well and she's now home, but I'd forgotten how demanding multiple hospital visits are, plus checking that everything was OK for her at home before she came home. And now we're checking up on her morning, noon and night to make sure that she's still OK!!!! 

Anyway, I thought I'd share the card I made for whilst she was in hospital.

I used the uber-fabulous Sugar and Spice Papercrafting CD-Rom from Crafter's Companion and chose this beautiful Frame Card. This CD-Rom really is my favourite and there are so many gorgeously feminine images and projects to suit all the ladies in my life! It's the first time I've made this style of card and, I have to say, I'm pretty pleased with the result. A quick butterfly from the Die'sire Essentials Beautiful Butterflies set completed my project.

That's it from me for now - I'm off to check up on M-i-L. Hope you all have a great rest of the day!

Hugs, Helen x

So Cute!

Hello there blogging buddies - hope you're all having a wonderful St. Valentine's Day! 

Thank you to all of you who sent good wishes after my last post. After 2 meetings with school and a whole bundle of stuff for the year head to follow up, he had very strong words with the boy who was causing such distress to eldest bambino. I'm pleased to be able to say that matters have died down enough for us to have our happy and cheeky bambino back. I won't say they've stopped, as he still thought it was OK to have "a pop" at her yesterday ... grrrrrrrr!  I'm sure you'll understand that I've put a lot of time into preparing our case for these meetings, so crafting took a back seat for a week or so.

But my fingers have been itching to craft, and I'd like to share a little card that I whipped up today for youngest bambino to give to one of her best friends, who is having her 13th Birthday Party (dinner out) this evening. The only stipulation that I had to work to was that the card was purple ... think I managed that one then!!! :o)

I'm resisting the temptation to call this one stinkin' cute, but she is pretty gorgeous don't you think?

My card recipe is as follows:

• Card Base - is a 27cm x 9cm piece of Centura Pearl - Snow White, scored and folded to make (when fully closed) a 9x9cm diamond fold card.
  
• Design Papers - are from the Sugar and Spice Papercraft CD-Rom Collection by Crafter's Companion. 
• Image - this gorgeous girl is called #552 - Penny Framed, although I've fussy cut her rather than leaving her in the frame, hence why one of her hair buns is a strange shape ;o) She has been created by Megan Suarez at Dilly Beans Stamps. I brought Penny to life courtesy of my Spectrum Noir Pens in the following colours:
• Face - FS2, FS3, FS6, LV1, BT4, BT5
• Hair - TN2, TN3, TN4, TN5, TN7, TN8, OR1
• Top - LV1, LV2, LV3
• Heart - LV2, LV3
• Outline - BT2
• Sentiment - is by Paulette at Create with TLC. Because I had re-sized and cropped the papers in my word processing programme, I was able to superimpose the sentiment onto the right piece of DP and also to recolour it to purple, so it tied in with the main colour of the card.
• 3D Paper Bow - is also from the Sugar and Spice Papercraft CD-Rom Collection and again, I took this into my word processing package to resize it to suit my card. 

I was struggling to know what colours to put together, and I remembered that this was covered by Leann in the Crafter's Inspiration Issue 4 magazine. Using the colour wheel, I worked out that I could have purple, blue/green and orange together, so I chose purple and turquoise papers, and then the card an orange highlight with the bow. I'm also pretty pleased with how her hair turned out too. Youngest bambino was exceedingly chuffed with my efforts.

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

• Challenge #248 - Always Anything Goes at Craft Your Passion Challenges
• Challenge #131 - Anything Goes! at Addicted to Stamps and More
• Challenge 25 - Anything Goes at artbymiran challenge
• Hearts at The Stamping Boutique Challenge - there's one heart hanging from her hair and also my DP has candy hearts on it ... hope this counts!
• Hearts and/or Arrows at Seize the Birthday
• Challenge 67 - Anything Goes with a Twist ... add a bow at Suzy Bee's Bloomin' Challenge

We're just starting our half term (hooray!), and as we've got quite a few birthdays coming up I will be trying to craft every day. Whatever you're up to for the rest of this weekend, I hope you have a nice time.

Hugs, Helen x

Sugar and Spice

Good afternoon my crafty friends and hope you've had a good week and weekend. Just a swift post from me this afternoon, but firstly I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to Shirley-Anne Barber who is my newest follower - glad to have you aboard and hope you enjoy my creations.

As my regular readers may remember, January has been full of birthdays ... in the Admin Team at the school where I work there have been 8 this month alone!!!!! I've been making hand coloured cards for the special people, but for the others I've been making what I'm calling "Mini Cards" like this one:

My card recipe is as follows:

• Card base - is Centura Pearl Snow White Silver which I have cut, scored and folded to make a 9.9cm square card. The beauty of this card size is that you can make 3 cards out of one A4 sheet of card, and these cards will go flat in a regular DL sized envelope should you need to post them!
• Papers, Image, Sentiment and Buttons - are all from a Card Companion set on the gorgeously girlie Sugar and Spice Papercraft CD Rom Collection. I resized the sheet in my word processing programme, before printing it out, and I then cut out the elements. All the papers are ready matted and layered with the band of ribbon across them, so they just needed fixing to the card base. The image and buttons come in 2 different sizes so I had to choose which ones to use, cut them out and fix them to the papers layer. I used 2 sentiment tags, which I've tied together with a bow, offset them and then raised up the top right hand corner with a sticky pad to give a bit of dimension to the card.
• Twine - is from my "odds 'n' ends" box, so I can't even tell you where it came from! I just about had enough to thread through the holes I punched in the buttons and sentiment tags so that I was able to tie the bows :o)

There is my quick and easy card, but it looks a whole lot more than just a few sheets of card!!!!!!! Here is a pic of another couple of cards I made using the same CD-Rom - these are from the Frame Card section and I superimposed some sentiments from Paulette at Create with TLC onto sentiment tags from the CD-Rom before cutting them out and mounting them. The only additions to these cards were bling/pearls from my stash:

Some beautiful cards for my office buddies!

I would like to enter my Butterfly Card into the following challenges:

• GDT Call at Crafty Sentiments Designs
• B is for Buttons & Bows at The ABC Challenge
• Challenge #243 - Anything Goes at Sentimental Sundays

Hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend and have a lovely crafty week!

Hugs, Helen x