Penny Black Saturday Challenge

Evening all, well it just goes to show you what I can get done when the OH is working night shift. 2 cards in 1 day, well that tells you everything.

Over at the Penny Black Friends Saturday challenge blog they have on offer some FANTASTIC candy, also a mysterious blog hop where you need to guess the name of the song. Now to enter the candy and the blog hop you must enter into their challenge which this week was Winter Wonderland.

Well this is my entry, the image was a lovely gift that I received from Jackie when I won some of her candy and as a "thank you" I sent her a card, but I don't know if she has received it yet.

I wanted to create a card with a different colour tone, so I picked purple and blue. On the background paper I used some stencils and used both perfect pearls and embossing powder to highlight the snowflakes.

Here is a close up of the image and isn't it just adorable. I coloured it in using my copics and inked the edges with some colour chalk.

Ingredients

Image: Penny Black

Papers: DCWV Winter Matstack

Nestabilities: Labels Two

Ribbon: Glitter Gloss

Bits & Bobs: Chalk eyes, perfect pearls & embossing powder

Well does it make you start to feel more in the Christmas spirit?? Why not pop over to Penny Black Saturday Challenge and enter the challenge yourself, if your not in you can't win.

Catch up with you soon, Karen xoxo

Just Magnolia challenge

Morning all, this is my entry for this weeks challenge over at the Just Magnolia challenge blog. For this week you had to use "masking" and I masked this little Tilda in front of the fence.

Apologies for this picture, its still dark outside.

Now I don't know if its the bad weather, the late nights or so close to Christmas, but I wanted to make a card that was bright and would make anyone smile. Let's be honest I just want a HUG!! So that was the sentiment that I put on my card.

I only have 2 magnolia's in my collection, but I have ordered their Christmas kit and I can't wait until they arrive, hopefully this week sometime, but until they do I'm sorry for the repetitive images that I will be using.

Doesn't the bright colours brighten your morning? I know they work for me.

Ingredients:

Images: Tilda holding a flower

& fence from Imagination crafts

Colours: Copic sketch & Sakura glaze pens

Papers & embellishments: these were from a TSV of QVC a few years ago,

sorry can't remember the name :-(

Well I hope your morning has been brightened up by my card and that you all get a big HUG from me xoxoxo

Karen

Whiff Of Joy Challenge

Morning all, yes I know it's late but I got started in this card and before I knew it the time was 02:03.

Well, since I made a complete mess with the sketch on my previous posting, I decided to print it out and do it all again.

This is following the sketch from the Whiff Of Joy team, and this is the card that I am going to enter into their challenge

Now I can remember when I was younger waking up in Christmas morning to check my stocking. And every year Santa had left my brothers and I, an orange, some money, a candy cane with our "smaller" presents. I was never dressed up as nicely as this young girl, I was still in my pj's and my older brother was the one that use to waken us all up. The average time was 4am and needless to say we were wrecked when we were going to church with all the family. I really loved going to church on Christmas morning singing all the carols and hearing what all our friends got from Santa. My haven't things changed!

Ingredients:

Image: Whiff of Joy Winter 09 kit

Colouring: copics & firebrick red distress ink

Papers: DCWV Christmas Multi Stack

Punch: Fiskars (sorry can't remember the name)

Other bits & bobs: flower from www.ribbonbox.co.uk, stickles star dust, peel offs and sentiment from stash.

Well I hope you are all tucked up in bed having sweet dreams, and hopefully if you pop over you might like to leave a comment.

Now I am for my bed to dream of Christmas' gone by, night all xoxo

Spoonfull Of Sugar Challenge

Hiya, just a quick post as I'm busy correcting something (see earlier post). Well here is my entry for this weeks challenge over at Spoonfull Of Sugar, which was Baby's First Christmas.

Now many of you will recognise this little character from the Daisy & Dandelion collection which was a TSV on a shopping channel recently.

I coloured my little bunny babe using Tim Holtz distress inks, peeled paint, broken china, tattered rose, tea dye & antique linen.

Sorry about the quality of the picture, might have to ask Santa for a better camera, or should I wait to the January sales??

2 challenges in 1

Hi all, sorry I haven't been about to much this week. I got some very sad news on Monday and it has just taken the wind out of my sail, but I'm trying to pull myself together - life goes on as they say.

To try and get me back into the swing of things what better way than joining in on this weeks challenge over at Whiff Of Joy but as I'm posting this I have realised that I haven't followed their sketch for this weeks challenge, oh well I will show it to you anyway.

She is a lovely image that I received in their Winter 2009 collection and it was so relaxing just sitting up in my room colouring her in. I used my faithful copics and over at Copic Creations their challenge was to use Gold. The colours that I have used for her dress are Y11, Y15 & Y21.

For the background I used some free papers and ribbon and then on top of the layering I used some Tim Holtz/Ranger gold perfect pearls to give a shimmer snowflake design.

Well I better go up into my room and do the challenge again for WOJ, this time following their sketch. Dooh !!

See you all soon, Karen xox

Just Magnolia Sketch

Evening all, hope you are all keeping well and that the weather isn't to miserable wherever you are. Well as you know by now I bought some Magnolia's on Thursday while I was at the King's Hall and decided to enter this weeks challenge on the Just Magnolia blog, which was a fab sketch by Mina.

Now I must apologise for the quality of the photos, didn't get taking the pictures until really late and I don't want to install the software onto Kelsey's laptop to have to remove it again in a few days (I hope).

Now I'm sorry I don't know the proper name of this little Tilda, but I think she is really cute with her socks down around her ankles. I brought the image more to life by decoupaging the box and just the souls of her socks, I hope you can see this properly from the picture.

Well there we go a short but sweet posting tonight, I'm really tired and I won't be hard to rock tonight. Hope you all sleep well and we will catch up again really soon. Karen xoxo

Joe's birthday & other bits

Well as promised last night, here is a picture of Joe's birthday card. I used my copics to colour in the bear and sakura glaze pens for the presents. It's amazing how the presents standout and Joe was really happy with the card, especially because it's his favourite colour.
Now at my recent visit to the craft show at the King's Hall on Thursday, I met a lovely lady called Mina at the Crafters & Co stall, well as Mina was taking a little break from demonstrating she offered me the paint brush and inks to take the reins as such, well I jumped at the chance and I really enjoyed myself (all of 5 minutes) but hey it was good crack.

This was the image that I was colouring in and when I got home I jumped onto the Just Magnolia challenge blog and went for their challenge for last week - distressing, well after the weekend that I am having distressing is not a problem to me. Never done the paper distressing before but I got tore in (get the joke?!) and had a blast. Now this card is off to a very nice lady who picked my name recently for some candy and she know who she is so a big THANK YOU.

This was also my first ever time of colouring in an image using distress inks and to be honest, it was very relaxing and a lot more "go with the flow" than using the copics. The colours are more subtle than the copics but I think for this card that was ideal.

Ingredients

Image: Magnolia (one from the table, sorry don't know the name)

Colours: Distress inks, Walnut Stain, Tattered rose, Tea Dye, Antique Linen, Broken China and Mild lavender

Papers: Core dinations, white wash collection & Crafts House Tutti Frutti

Ribbon: Wired ribbon from stash

Charm & chain from stash also.

Tomorrow's the day that I take the computer into see if it can get fixed. I really really really hope it can as I don't know where to start if it can't :-(

Karen

2 challenged in 1

Oh boy, what a weekend, but I will tell you all later. Firstly I would like to show you a card that I made for this weeks challenge over at A Spoonfull Of Sugar which was to create a scene and Whiff of Joy where you had to use the colours orange, brown and cream.

Well this is what I came up with and I am really happy with the result. I just played around more this time and decided to break away from my normal and try not to use any papers other than the base card itself.

I stamped the imaged out on Gina K Luxury paper with Memento and coloured her in with copics. You can really see the difference with the blending when you use the proper materials.

Next I used my new embossing folder that I bought from Crafts Too called Leafy tree and used the ranger perfect pearls to highlight the tree.

Used chalks to create an autumnal background with the blue sky and the red sunset and finally some fiber paper in shades of green for the grass.

I really do like the way this card turned out and I hope you appreciate it also.

Ingredients

image: Whiff Of Joy (Autumn Kit)

colours: Copics, perfect pearls, blending chalks

embossing folder: Crafts-Too, leafy tree

papers: cream card, fiber paper

Well onto my unbelievable weekend. It was my son's birthday on Friday (Friday the 13th) and oh boy did it turn out to be a horrible day for me. Started off great, Joe really enjoyed his cards (see tomorrow's post) and presents before going to school. Trevor and I then went up the town to get the final bits and pieces for his birthday party which was today, sorry no pics as other kids in them and I want to respect their privacy. I bought a new memory stick for the computer and the new touch ipod for myself for Christmas. Well as you can see from my previous post the ipod works, went to turn on the computer and blaaaah it pooped itself. Not a dickey bird, nathing. Phoned the IT man and he says that my hard drive has died, not much change out of £200 to get it fixed but he will see what he can do. Leaving it with him on Monday as I really need the hard drive, all my accounts, cards, photos everything is saved on it and I didn't get a backup done before it died. I bet you are asking yourself how am I doing this post, well thankfully Kelsey has a laptop but I really need my accounts as its been a few months since I printed out a hard copy. So please learn by what I say, not as I do. DO A BACKUP NOW!!!!

Karen

Hope this works

Well I'm trying to use my new iPod to see if this will work. Hopefully it does, all this technology and we don't use half of it I wonder why?

Sugarbowl Challenge

Evening everyone, well the challenge this time over at Sugarbowl is the theme of "Thankfulness" and I decided to say a special Thank You to my friends who are close to my heart but not my home.

I definitely think I'm getting better with my copics, its amazing how much different they work when you are using the correct paper so that they can blend properly.

This little girl is from the new magna Christmas collection the Sugar Nellie have and I am slowly but surely gathering them all up. Mum and I are going up to the craft show in the Kings Hall tomorrow so I might get a chance to invest in some more sweet candy when I'm there.

Ingredients:

Image: Magna Christmas Girl

Papers: DCWV Christmas Multi pack

Inks: Copics & Antique Rose Distress Ink

Bits & Bobs: Ribbon, Nestabilities Scalloped Circle, Rub on

Anyway got to go, I've actually started to make my Christmas cards and I forgot all about a class I'm taking for The Mothers Union on the 10th December. Going to try and get them to make some waterfall Christmas cards, I will keep you posted on my progress :-)

Hugs and kisses as always

Karen

Whiff Of Joy Challenge

Evening everyone, well here is my entry for this weeks challenge over at WOJ. You have to follow a sketch and this is my interpretation of that sketch.

I received my WOJ Winter Kit earlier this week, so obviously i had to use an image from it. I have used 2 from the kit, the sleigh and as my OH called her "The Snow Queen", which is a very appropriate name for this lady.

Once I had coloured in her overcoat, I wanted it to sparkle to I used some stickles on her coat and the feather in her hair.


Ingredients

Images: Whiff of Joy Winter Kit

Colours: Copics, stickles, sakura glaze pens & broken china distress ink

Papers: Heidi Grace Frost Boulevard collection

I hope you like my card, Karen xoxo

Today's the BIG day!!

Well, today is the big day for me. No I'm not getting married, I'm starting my diet and oh boy do I need a diet. Don't know if it's because of the operation a few years ago, the tablets or just my lack of fitness but I have put on over 4 stone in weight and as my recent operation appears to be a success - the diet starts today.
1st thing I normally do in the morning is have a smoke and a tin of red bull - not today, 1 vitamin shake down and a bowl of cereal already, I haven't had a breakfast in years and I'm talking double figures here.
So the plan is to go out into the OH's gym when I get home from work for 15 mins on his bike that goes no where, come back in, shower and then craft - well a girl does need a reward for cycling into a brick wall doesn't she :-)
Will keep you posted on my progress, just a quick question, should I weigh myself every week and keep a record or not????

Karen xoxo