Bound in lilac love.

Yes I'm sorry.  Another binder.  If you have not been to my blog before, you may not have seen my other two binders.  I have been decorating them to store my acrylic stamps in.  This is my third.  I have gone for different looks with each of them.

I wanted to show a different side to my crafting with this one.  It is a lot more personal in a lot of ways.  I actually have a hand written message on this one, which is unusual for me as I hate my hand writing.  I have embossed the edges of the doily and along the pen design.  there are two different widths of ribbon on this tag.

I love the pen nib design along the edge of this paper, so it was important to me that it didn't get covered too much.  I couldn't resist adding the lace and ribbon though.  Lilac flat back pearls work well with so many different projects, don't you think?

There is a lot going on with this binder, feathers, gems, lace and ribbon, tags flowers and more.  This wasn't a planned project, it has been very much go with the flow.  My favorite colour is purple.  Think aubergine (eggplant) or a rich plum.  There are varying shades of it all over this project.

I will be entering this binder in the following challenges:-

Allsorts - 5 Flowers

Kaboodle Doodles - The Pretty doily

Simon Says - Anything goes

Totally Papercrafts - Autumn - I have used what I consider to be autumn wedding colours.

The ABC Challenge - Anything goes 

Exploding Birthday

You tube is one of my most favourite sites at the moment thanks to all of the card making tutorials that they have on their.  There are literally hundreds.  The inside of this card came from a tutorial that I found whilst looking for something else.

I realised today, just how much purple there is in my stash.  I really am going to have to buy a wider range of colours from now on wards.  Luckily my colour choice suited this weeks challenge over at Fab N Funky whose challenge this week is Purple haze.

The inside of the card is quite simple to make.  It's a lot like tea bag folding, just on a bigger scale. It folds flat so that it is easy to write in.  I have added some peel off corners for a little definition.  I'm quite pleased with my first attempt :o)

I will also be entering this card for the following challenges:

Charisma Cardz Challenges - All About Flowers

Papertake Weekly - Anything goes.

Birthday wishes

I as digging through my scraps drawer when I came across two bits of HOTP papers that go really well together.  I didn't actually plan this card I just started playing and waited to see what would emerge.

I'm loving the flowers that I bought recently, so they are turning up on most of my projects :O).  I've used rose leaves and a lily leaf on this one.  I went a bit mad with the pearls, but I like the effect that I got on an earlier project with them, so I ran with it.  The swirly sentiment is one from a sheet of Kanban.  I couldn't resist the butterfly.

I am entering this card for the following challenges:

The Crafty Pad - Pearls and swirls

Simon Says - Anything goes

MAWTT - Anything goes

Ruffled

Every now and again I go blog hopping to get some fresh ideas and learn new techniques.  One of the best ones that I have come across lately is this one Mariannes.  Her stuff is gorgeous.  I'm still trying to work out how she did half of it.  She has great tutorials on her blog and I have followed this one Magic Card.

This is the front.  I have kept it fairly simple because I used lace and was worried that there would be too much going on.

This is the card open.

 

Side View

Top View

Back View

I am entering this card for the following challenges:

Allsorts Challenge Blog - Anything but a square

Papertake Weekly - Any thing goes (I also used a new technique)

Penny Black - Say it with flowers

Plain and simple

Purple and silver is my favourite colour combination so being asked to make a card in that colour combination is no hardship.  I started off by embossing a pale lilac card blank with a Christmas tree design.  I then picked out the snowflake design in the centre with a silver pen and some gems.

The card didn't feel like it had enough on it so I used part of the recipe list on Moving Along With the Times to add glitter and a snowflake button.  I don't think that I am really cut out for minimalist cards as I keep thinking that I haven't done enough.  I reall like this one though.

This card will be entered for the following challenges:

Allsorts - Plain and Simple
Moving Along With the Times - To do list
SCSC - Purple and silver
One Stop Craft Challenge - Snowflakes

Sorry about the photo

All Tied Down

I really enjoy making Christmas cards in non traditional colours. I find it more of a challenge as the papers can be harder to come by (limited craft shop availability when I usually start in June/July) and I have to think a little bit harder about what I am going to use as a focal point.


This one started life as an ordinary rectangular card blank which I die cut to get the shape. I have continued on with the same set of dies through out the card.

I'm not sure where I am going wrong, but whenever I use glitter glue, my page warps. This time I decided to use this to my advantage and have curved the edges a bit before applying the glue. As a result none of the coloured pieces lay flat which emphasises the textures that I have used.

I've raised the topper with foam pads to help to give the cards some depth.

This card was inspired by:

Everybody Art - Different shaped cards

Moving Along With the Times - Christmas theme

Paper Play Challenges - Shaped card

Papertake Weekly - Photo Inspiration - I took the colours from this one.

Purr-fect Friend

I fell in love with a sketch today. Well that's a bit strong, but I'm sure you get the gist. As soon as I saw it over at Creative Inspirations I could see the completed card in my head. Finding the time to make it was more difficult.



I have backed everything onto textured black Co-ordinations cardstock. The papers all come from a HOTP cardmakers paper pack which I bought a good five years ago. I think it is called Jewel Tones. The stamp is one of my many Penny Black collections (this one is from the Hugs collection) and I have added black pearls to the corners.


I don't use faux stitching very often as it is not something that usually springs to mind, but this weeks challenge over at the Corrosive Challenge asked us to use something faux and I couldn't think of what else to do.

I love it when a card comes together!!!

Chain Reaction

Whilst wondering around on my lunch break I popped into Primani. For those of you that are not familiar with Primark, it is a shop that sells clothes and house hold items for discount prices. I was wondering around the jewellery department when I saw this necklace.

As soon as I saw it I knew what I was going to do with it. About 10 minutes after I took it out of the bag I had taken it down to it's component parts. The only question I have now is - How many cards can I make with this.

This card is called Butterfly Chain and is the first card that I have made from a necklace that cost £2. I started by attaching the drop crystal to the butterfly using a jump ring. Using my wire cutters, I cut two short lengths of chain and attached them to the butterfly with more jump rings. I then mounted the newly made butterfly chain to velvet paper.

It took a lot of rooting around in my scrap box to find the the right paper. I had the idea of a touch of elegance and needed the papers to reflect that. I have finished off with some black velvet ribbon.

Since I have had everything that I used on this card for quite a while with the exception of the chain, I am going to enter this card for the "Left over scraps" challenge over at Creative Inspirations.

Egyptian Queen

I bought some Egyptian style toppers in the January sale. They are not something I would usually play with, but I wanted to challenge myself a little. This card was made using a sketch from this weeks challenge over at Sketch and Stash. I love the richness of the colours.

I am also entering this card for this weeks challenge at Papertake weekly who had the theme of New beginnings

A few of my favourite things

Hi everyone. I've been itching to do some crafting for a whole week now and haven't had the time. I can't tell you how good it feels to finally have some play time.

I've made a number of cards over the last few months for the festive season, but I have only just started making for friends that I work with. This one is only the fourth, so I still have quite a few to make.







I used as many of my favourite things as I could on this card. My favourite colour is purple (you might of noticed from some of my earlier cards lol) I love working with gems, charms and ribbon (I actually have trouble completing a card without some ribbon on it somewhere). I also played with my favourite colour distress ink - Dusty Concord. The only things missing were vellum, nesties and acetate, but I couldn't figure out how to fit them into the design.



The design of this card came from this weeks challenge at Papertake Weekly and I will also be entering this card for the following challenges:


A Spoon full of sugar who asked for a Christmas card with no red or green
Allsorts who asked us to use purple (that was easy)
Paperplay who also asked for a Christmas card with no red or green
And Penny Black who asked us for a girly Christmas card. I have used a Christmas tree stamp from their Jolly Follies collection.

Here is to a day of more crafting. I'm off in search of coffee now.

Hugs

Naomi

Happy birthday to me!!

Actually, my birthday was in October. I promised myself a camera for my present to myself this year and I only got round to buying it yesterday. Up until now, I have been using the camera that I bought for my son a few years ago. (I really must buy him a new one).






I call this one Birthday Bath :-). Just us Girls asked us to make a birthday card that included dry embossing. I'm never one to leave my embossing folders gathering dust, so I made this. Purple is my favourite colour, so I started with a purple card blank and the rest just happened.

I have started playing with jump rings and have used three to attach my teddy bear charm. The ribbon is white velvet and the papers are from my scrap box. I have used a silver rose charm for the centre of my flower.



Just us Girls is still a young blog challenge site. They are only on week seven. It's always good to get in on the ground floor (so to speak) of a blog and watch it grow.

Thinking of you

A friend of mine at work is going through a tough time at the moment. I wanted to make her something that I hope will make her smile. Bizzy Becs has a challenge running at the moment where you have to use scraps that you have left over from other projects.

The pyramage is one that I put together several months ago, so the colours for the card are inspired from that. I have embossed a piece of white card and coloured it using Dusty concord distress ink. The card blank is a soft mint colour.

I like the card so much that I decided that It would be perfect for Sue.

Purple Sugar

I bought my first Sugar Nellie stamp - Just a Girl - (this one) a couple of months ago and this is the first time that I have used it. Today I found out that there is a challenge for Sugar Nellie stamps (The Sugar Bowl) so I just had to get her out of the drawer.

My favourite colours to work with are purple and black and she just needed a goth look to go with. I love manga style stamps and art so the choice of colours was easy.

We were given a sketch to follow and we had to use buttons. I've used purple star shaped buttons and tied them on with 3mm black ribbon. The background paper is a rich distressed looking purple, but it doesn't show too well in this picture. (My birthdays is coming up, so I am treating myself to a new camera).

The Sugar Bowl are offering 8 Christmas Mange stamps as a prize to the lucky winner.

Purple shades

This is my third challenge card for today. This one is for SCSC. Our challenge was to use corners on our design.

My favourite colour is purple so it turns up on a lot of my creations. This time I decided to see how much purple I could get onto one card. I could have gotten more on there, but I was worried it would look over done.

The papers are from Daisy and Dandelions picnic patch pack. The stamp is penny black and I have used some white angel hair which I have had for ages. I find it hard to cut, but it's no problem with nesties.

Purple Flower Power

I don't know what type of flower these are, but I think they are lovely. I made this card in response to challenge 43 over at SCSC. We were given a sketch to work from and this is what I made.

The decoupage flower is one that I bought an put together a while ago. I also used purple and silver mirror board. I embossed the top layer of mirror board using a Cuttlebug embossing folder and used a length of purple organza ribbon and a length of silver lame ribbon to finish it off.

Soft, Sweet Pennies

Happy Saturday to you all. I for one am glad it's the weekend. This week has been fairly successful from a work point of view, but now it is time to relax and kick back.

This is my Entry for this weeks PBSC which is titled Soft and Sweet.

I used my newest set of nesties on this one. I'm loving the layering effects that you can get with them. I tried to keep the colours light and bright and had some fun trying to thread some ribbon through the button.

I keep forgetting that I can die cut flowers, so I am going to have to make a point of making them more often. I also need to get some more of this crispy ribbon as I am running out.

I'm getting the hang of the camera better now, so the quality of my photos has gone up a bit, but I am still looking at getting a new camera so that I can show off some of the details in my cards better.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Naomi x

Penny Black Challenge

This weeks challenge over at Penny Black Saturday Challenge is a "Penny Black" Black, White + 1 colour of your choice.


We could only use the colours Black and white plus one other colour so I chose my fav.... purple.








I'm quite pleased with how it turned out and any one who has seen the stuff that I have made two or three months ago will agree that my cards are improving (believe me there is a definate difference).

I would have liked to put a bigger flower on it, but I didn't have any in the right colour. Oh well.... will be forced to go craft shopping again....

There are prizes up for grabs for this challenge, so go take a look and join in.