Yappy Birthday

Good morning peeps.
We've had nearly a week of glorious sunshine here, even if there has been a cool breeze, so at least I have been able to get my raised beds planted and sown. The onions have made a recovery after I thought they'd died off and there are some green seedlings showing. Hubster has almost finished the largest and deepest bed so there will soon be another to fill!

Anyhow, the real reason I am posting today is that it is time for a new challenge over at Cardz4Guyz.
This week the choice of theme is all mine and I chose -

MAN'S BEST FRIEND

So we would love to see your creations showing doggies, large or small.
As I type, ours is sulking in the kitchen because he would love to be with me but the windows are too high for him to see out of in my craft room and there is nowhere for him to get up high! He is an extremely nosy dog.
This cheeky pooch from Paper Smooches  reminds me of Max a little, but I've given this little cutie a few black patches!

The sentiment here is from a Stampendous set I bought on my way home from Port Sunlight, as are the paw prints!

I cut balloons from scraps of card using MFT dies and a Marianne one, the central panel, banner and number are also MFT. I'd seen a similar idea for a chubby chum holding the balloons out on the t'internet somewhere and thought it a great idea. Fussy cutting the little paw was rather tricky but worth it. To make the die cut balloons more realistic I added some white gel pen hi lights. The layout is more or less based on the one over at Can You Case it.
Pop over to the main Cardz4Guyz blog for more doggy inspiration and join in.

I'd like to join in over at -

             

Happy Birthday Sandie

Morning all. 

I'm here a little earlier than usual to wish Sandie, London Days, and ex ATSM teamie a happy birthday. As it's a real milestone birthday, I know you really shouldn't mention a lady's age, Kylie,  (Addicted to Stamps and More) and Sarah (Sazzle Dazzle) decided we should celebrate. So Kylie is hosting a Linky party!

So here is my card

Soft and feminine and not an A6 top fold!

I used a selection of tiny stamps from STAMPlorations to make this.

I got the idea from a class I took last week using stamps from Cardio and thought I would have a go using the stamps I had. 

As Sandie is a CAS girl, I kept this pretty clean, making a base card from a Marianne die. To make a small frame I coloured a circular mount with a Copic in the same colour as one of the flowers and a small green bow finished it off.

Anyway, Congrats Sandie, hope you have a fab day and a wonderful 50th year. x

Time Out are also holding a special challenge to say Happy Birthday too

I'd also like to join in over at -

Time Out - Happy Birthday Sandie with a twist of purple ( does lilac count?)

Noor UK - Spring flowers

A Gem Of A Challenge - Flowers

Creative Inspirations  - Shape it up

Cardz4Galz, My Choice

Good morning peeps.

Just popping by to announce the start of a new challenge over at Cardz4Galz.

This time it was my choice of theme and I chose -

TEA FOR TWO

Who doesn't like a good cuppa. I'm not a great coffee drinker, much prefer a cup of Yorkshire tea!

Here is my card for your inspiration based on the theme.

Always keen to link up to a couple of challenges, I took inspiration from a couple of challenges, the colours from The Paper Players and the sketch from Sketch Saturday. This image from LOV is actually called Coffee Time but hey it could just as well be Tea! After colouring with Copics and fussy cutting, I used some DP from NitWits. the stripe reflects the colours of the challenge and the word one is from the Time for Tea collection. I was going to use the sweet teapot design but the stripes looked better! 

Rather than just place the best friends on top of the design I decided to die cut a frame of debossed large dots in white and add a frame in green to match and popped it up on pads. The sentiment phrases are from a new set I purchased at Port Sunlight, yep an other new purchase!! I loved the script of these phrases and the two I chose go rather well I think.

OK, that's all from me, please check out the rest of the team and why not join in.

I'm joining in over at -

    

Anything Goes

Holiday @ATSM

Hi and welcome to a late night post to announce the start of the new challenge over at ATSM.

This week out theme is -

HOLIDAY

My daughter gets the eebie jeebies when I post a Christmas card so early in the year, so sorry Nich here is another!

I was looking for inspiration when I came across the latest challenge at MUSE, Christmas Visions. Here is Kimberly's original.

I used the idea of a red border, silver glittery reindeer but instead of the scarf, I went with a diamonte on Rudolf's nose! The stamp is an old magazine freebie and the greeting from one of our sponsor's this week, STAMPlorations set Christmas Bell Medley. A very CAS card and quite a quick make!

We have two extra reasons to join us this week. Firstly our sponsor -

Prize: 2 digital images

SLSlines is the work of Sal Scheibe, a freelance illustrator and graphic designer who loves to draw and create fun illustrations. Sal works as the Art Director of ArtTrader Magazine. Prior to freelance illustrating, she worked as a Creative Designer for a music firm working with TV and advertising clients. 

Sal spends her nights drawing geeky things like RPG characters, zombies, fairies, awkward people, pretty girls and odd animals. She offers a broad range of fun digital stamps in many themes from geeky to cute and whimsical to realistic. Her digital stamps start life as sketchy little doodles which are then cleaned up digitally in Photoshop and made presentable and perfect for you.

Sal's favorite tools are Wacom pen and tablet as well as Copic markers, lots of fineliners and many types of erasers (which are used often). Her favorite artists include John Singer Sargent, Norman Rockwell, JC Leyendecker, Joe Sorren and Phil Hale. And Steve Epting too.

If you'd like a custom digital stamp made or have some suggestions, feel free to write to Sal with themes you'd like to see in the Etsy store.

and secondly our other sponsor

Founded in June 2013, California-based STAMPlorations™ is owned and managed by husband-and-wife team, David & Shery Russ. From just a handful of stamps, we now have 100+ stamp designs, 4 stamp designers, our exclusive line of stencils, and 20 amazing crafters spread across 3 teams who constantly produce gorgeous projects featuring our products. Our clear stamps are perfect for creating CAS, one layer, and mixed media cards, and they can be combined to create a variety of paper crafts. All of our stamps are proudly made in the USA. Our clear stamps are made from the finest, non-yellowing photopolymer resin. Through our stamp line, we hope to encourage crafters of all ages and

experience levels to "Stamp with all your ART!" 

Prize: 2 digital images

So there you have it, pop over to the blog and check out the rest of the DT, we'd love it if you did!

I'd like to join in over at -

New raised beds

Good morning all.

Well the good weather seems to have departed to be replaced by rain, still it will be welcome by the seeds I recently planted in my new raised beds.

When we bought our shell of a barn nearly 10 years ago, the old cowshed at the back was just three brick part walls and a few uprights. The uprights were removed by a farmer to be reused but the long lengths of brick wall looked too good to demolish as the original plans proposed. So, I decided that eventually I would turn it into a walled garden.  

To start with it looked like the Somme battle fields as underfloor heating pipes were laid then I tried growing in the soil but my onions dried out and spuds rotted in the poorly drained soil, too many hooves over the years I suppose. Anyway, we had a leak in our pipe work so had to have more pipes laid, so more destruction. Hubster had a tractor shed built over part of one side wall a few years ago and after the wettest winter for many years we finally got around to building some raised beds this year. Three are in and four more are planned, the oak sleepers are stacked in the yard!

Well this little card was just the thing after all that hard work, made for this week's Cardz4Guyz Challenge -

DIG IT!

I used this cute image from LOTV Vegetable Patch, probably retired as I've had it for awhile. 

I die cut an aperture in a piece of textured linen card and used a snippet of NitWits paper for the sky, glued to the kraft base card. The fussy cut Copic coloured image was placed across the bottom and a piece of twine was wound around the bottom and a couple of LOTV greeting tags completed. The whole panel was then popped up on pads. It will be quite some time before my carrots are ready but I can't wait.

For more inspiration please check out the rest of our DT and then why not join us with your DIG IT themed projects, what ever they are.

I'd like to join in over at -

Escape to the Country (We really have!)