And Pretty Flowers All In a Row!

Good morning friends and Happy St. David's Day to any of my friends who are Welsh! 

Wow! We're one sixth of the way through 2016 already - how's it been for you? 

It being the first of the month, it's new challenge time at Feeling Sketchy and I do hope you'll be able to find the time to join in the fun this fortnight as we've got a fab sketch and an even fabbier sponsor for you!

We're welcoming back everyone's favourite sponsor and that's Jodie and her team from Bugaboo Digital Stamps. Jodie is offering a prize to the lucky winner of this challenge :o)

Here's the sketch we'd like you to follow:

And here's my take on it:

I've gone for a one layer (yes, honestly!), clean and simple layout although you could "go to town" and really dress this sketch up!

My card recipe is as follows:

• Card base - is Neenah Solar White cardstock onto which I've directly printed my image layout across the width of the cardstock and have measured it carefully so that the card will fold to DL size once it has been coloured.
• Image - is 4 Square Floral by Jodie at Bugaboo Digital Stamps. This image comes in a 2 x 2 square layout, so I've done a bit of tweaking in my word processing programme to get the 3 flowers side by side in one row. There is also a sentiment square, but I've chosen not to use this on this card. To bring my Floral Squares to life, I have used my Spectrum Noir Pens in the listed colours:

• Left Flower - CR2, CR5, CR6, GB8, GB10, EB8
• Middle Flower -
• Right Flower - HB1, HB2, HB3
• Leaves - DG1, DG2, DG3
• Sentiment - came with the Sentiment Stamp Set which was one of the freebies with Crafter's Inspiration Magazine Issue 6, sadly no longer available. I have stamped this directly onto my card base using Silver Versacolour Ink
• Ivy Detailing - is another magazine freebie, this time from Cardmaking and Papercraft. After I had masked all the blocks with a square of "post it" pad, I used this ivy stamp with Bundled Sage Distress Ink to resemble the design in the sketch.
• Dashed Border - is another stamp which has been stamped with Bundled Sage Distress Ink. Sorry, I can't tell you much about this set other than I bought it at Hobbycraft many years ago and it contains about 6 different border stamps in it!

I hope I've inspired you to have a go at this sketch, but if you're in need of any more inspiration why don't you head over to Feeling Sketchy and see the other wonderful projects using this sketch by my very talented teamies! Then come back and show us your take on our sketch. We'll be back with our new challenge on 15th March 2016.

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

• Challenge #26 - Floral at Crafty Friends Challenge
• Challenge #316 - One Layer Only at My Time to Craft Challenge
• Challenge #14 - N is for New Blooms/Spring Flowers at The Pencil Case
• Aloha Friday Challenge #66 - In the Garden at Kitty Bee Designs
• Challenge #121 - Glitter / Bling at Addicted to Stamps Challenge
• Challenge #77 - One Layer Wonder at CAS on Sunday
• Challenge #46 - Flower Power at Dragonfly Journeys
• Colouring Showcase Feb 28th - Flowers at Lacy Sunshine Colouring Without Boundaries Challenge

Have a great day - take care!

Hugs, Helen x

Sunflower Border

Good Morning my crafty friends and a warm welcome  to Larissa who is my newest follower - hope you enjoy my madcap crafting journey!!!!


If you're in the UK, I do hope you're enjoying the Bank Holiday weekend. From having not alot planned for this weekend, PapaMia and I decided to re-jig one of the borders in the garden, so we had a garden centre trip and then a planting afternoon yesterday. Not sure what's on the agenda for today, but I might be able to fit in a little extra "me" time ... aka crafting!!!!!!!


Is anyone else struggling with Blogger at the mo? Whenever I pull up posts, I can't seem to see all the pictures in that post and it's taking me several goes to get my own photos into a post. Any of you lovely computer-literate peeps out there got any suggestions as to how I can rectify this?

Anyway, whining over! It's new challenge time at Incy Wincy Designs and this week we'd like you to either go for All or Nothing! This means either lots of layers or no layers at all ... I bet regular readers can guess which I've gone for before they even look at my card! ;o)

We're being sponsored this week by the lovely Sandy at Scribbles Designs who is offering $10 of digital images to our lucky winner this week. Here's a little about Sandy and her work:

And welcome to Sandy's world of her funky imagination and quirky characters.Sandy's has had a pencil in her hand since she was "knee-high to a grasshopper" and started on her artistic journey with her first family ball & stick figures portrait at age 3. We'll have to find the piece of work in the family history trunk and post it...

Back to the regular scheduled program! Sandy has loved art, drawing, water coloring and doodling for many years... and with the digital image world she can now share it with all of you. Brrr (Penguin) was her first main character and her other quirky images followed not long after. We hope you enjoy the enduring images and look around and add Sandy's images to your digital stamp collections...

If you head over to Sandy's store, you'll also find that she sometimes has a Friday freebie up for grabs too ... :o)

Sandy has very kindly given the DT some images to use this week for inspiration, but I have gone back through my digi files as I was lucky enough to win a couple of Sandy's images last year and, shame on me (blushing wildly here!) they haven't seen the light of day, or the ink of my printer! So here goes, my one layer card (did you guess right?) featuring one of Sandy's pretty images:

This card has already gone to eldest bambino's Form Tutor as the students are now on reduced timetable/study leave due to their GCSE exams, so I'm very safe in posting it here today. Who knows, the Tutor might even take a peek ... let me know Miss R.!

My card recipe is as follows:

• Base card - is Neenah Solar White Card, onto which I printed my design, scored as an A4 tri-fold card and then cut the last third to leave a DL sized card when folded.
  
• Image - is #603 - Sunflowers 3 drawn by Sandy at Scribbles Designs. I printed this directly onto my base card and then brought it all to life using my Spectrum Noir Pencils in the listed shades following this technique tutorial by Nicky over at the Spectrum Noir Website - thanks for a great tute Nicky, I finally feel as though I've done an image some justice with my pencils!
• Sunflowers - 012, 018, 023, 093
• Leaves - 012, 056, 047, 023, 093
• Sky - 067, 023
• Tendrils and dots - Gold Gel Pen
• Sentiment - is a clear stamp from Hobbycraft although it no longer appears on their website. I stamped this in Versamark ink, sprinkled with some gold embossing powder and then heated it.

I hope I've inspired you to have a go with no layers, but don't forget to pop over to Incy Wincy Designs and see which of my extremely talented teamies have gone for All or Nothing! Then come back and show us your creations as we love visiting you - this challenge ends on Sunday 31st May 2015.

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

• May Challenge - Use Flowers at Spectrum Noir Facebook Page
• KSC May Challenge - May Flowers at Karleigh Sue Challenges
• Challenge #145 - Flowers at A Gem of a Challenge

We're on half term now for the rest of the week, so a chance to recharge my batteries for the next half term ... if you're on holiday this week too, I hope you enjoy it!

Until next time ....

Hugs, Helen x

Simply ... Easter

Good evening friends - this will be a very swift post from me as I would like to catch some challenges. This is a very quick Easter Card I made today:

My card recipe is:

• Card Base - a pre-made A5 card in marbled grey
  
• Image - this egg was a digi in the April 2012 Club from Paulette at Create with TLC. I took the egg into my word processing programme 3 times, and then designed the layout of the card by rotating the images and sizing them to suit before printing the whole card out
• Sentiment - is a cling stamp which was a Cardmaking and Papercraft freebie (from last year I think). I stamped this using a Versa Color Ink Cube in Silver and then immediately stamped again (without re-inking) to get the shadow.

Quite a simple card ... but it looks very effective!

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

• Easter Challenge at Milk Coffee
• Happy Easter Challenge at Jellypark Friends
• Easter Challenge at Hobbybook Designer Challenge
• Week 167 - One Layer Card with Shadow Stamping at Less is More

Have a great evening!

Hugs, Helen x