Football Fanatic Card + Another Recycle Challenge Card

Happy Thursday to you all,

Materials used:

• Cardstock - white & green
• Papers - Super Smooth Matt paper 100gsm & White Multipurpose printer paper 80gsm
• My Craft Studio Professional The Finishing Line
• Martha Stewart border punch
• Stamp Away's useful words set
• Kelly Green ink pad

My grandson #1 is football mad (sigh, so is #2 & #3) so I just had to make him a themed card for his 22nd birthday recently. Now, I know nothing about football, not even enough to write on the proverbial postage stamp, but I did know that he is a Celtic supporter so I tried to find something in green and white in my crafting stuff. Not easy, I have very little football related stash anyway and no stamps either but I did find some football themed artwork in My Craft Studio's The Finishing Line CD. Problem was the colours were all wrong and I'd never be forgiven for giving him a card showing the wrong team colours - that would be the crime of the century! However, I was able to alter the colour even though the players' legs were now a fetching shade of green too :)

I thought I'd pulled it off when grandson #1 described the card as 'crackin' - and I breathed again. Too soon, it would appear the stripes are going the wrong way. Well, how's a grandmother supposed to know that, I ask you?

Thankfully, the challenge card was a tad easier to design. I just had to recycle something from the many commercial cards received and this time I decided that, for a complete change, it would be a very feminine birthday card.

Materials used:

• Kraft Notecard from Hero Arts for base
• Dotty design paper from Papermania's Summer Bloom 6x6 pack
• Green trim leftover from a previous project
• Recycled glittered rose trim & hat box topper
• Freebie greeting stamp
• Versafine Olympia Green ink pad

Several items on this card are recycled, leftover from another project or a freebie - very frugal of me :) Having spent the better part of a year succumbing to the temptation of acquiring tons of crafting items - card, paper, stamps, more paper, ribbons, inks, embellishments, more ribbon, equipment, even more ribbon etc., etc., I've called a halt before I bankrupt myself completely. That said, I'm really relishing the challenge to use up all this lovely stuff before I purchase any more and, at the same time, recycle stuff too. It's a very satisfying exercise.

Just for a change, and also because I loved it, I lined the inside of the card with the dotty design paper - as the dots are pastels on a white background it should be okay to write a greeting on it.

That's my cards for today. I've just realised that the only stamping on these cards is in the greetings - did I say they were easy to make? Still not found the time to create a scrapbook layout - too many other projects to do and I still have to make my Christmas card for this week - I've made a start so I'd better finish it off this evening.

Bye for now,
Elizabeth

Naked Tree Card

Good Evening to you all,

Another visit to my g-granddaughter, Rhian, today for a cuddle, followed by a trip to Waterstones to buy the latest book for the reading group I attend - 'A Fine Balance' by Rohinton Mistry. A chunky read of 614 pages and fairly small print - gulp :( Goodness knows when I'm going to find time to read it all.) I also found a lovely book of nursery rhymes for Jenny to sing to Rhian as she mentioned that she had forgotten the words to many of them. That got us all thinking and trying to remember the nursery rhymes we were taught  - for my DH and me that's going a very long way back!

Back home again and I've completed this birthday card for our friend whose birthday is tomorrow.

This effect is the one that uses post-its as a mask and then a make-up sponge and a Big & Juicy to create the inked background on white card. I chose the bare tree from the Lavinia Autumn Scene stamp set and the Birds stamp to stamp over the background using a black dye ink pad.

The sentiment is from the Sheena Douglass stamp set, again stamped in black on white card. Both are edged using a Krylon 18kt Gold Leafing Pen (saw Barbara Grey demo this) and then matted onto plain brown cardstock. I added some gold brads to the sentiment topper.

The base card is Crumb Cake (formerly Kraft card) from Stampin Up and the backing card is one I made some time ago using Cosmic Shimmer in Rich Gold and cling film on thin white card.

For the insert I used My Craft Studio digital punch to create the edge using a Nitwit digital paper, Ticking Mocha, from the Cottage Charm Too Fat Quarter Collection - gorgeous papers! The stamped greeting is from Stamps Away's collection of useful words.

As this is intended for a male friend -  a businessman with a no nonsense approach to life - I've made it as non-fussy as possible, well, for me that is, so I hope it passes muster.

I'm now away to take a peek at as many WOYWWers desks as possible.

Bye for now,
Elizabeth

What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday - Week 84 + My First Challenge Win

Good Morning to you all,

Gosh, another week's fair flown by, suddenly it's Wednesday, and once again it's time to report to our noble leader, Julia at Stampin Ground, keeper of the WOYWWer's blog hop. If you are as curious as I am about how and where others create then go take a look because this is the day we, metaphorically speaking that is, have open house and you are invited to view.

My desk looked a bit of a muddle this morning - by the time I decided to call it a day last night it was too late and I was too tired to do any tidying up.  So here's what's on it:

• the insert to a birthday card for a friend - I left it for the stamped greeting to dry overnight
• a pile of papers, stamped card (I've been experimenting), all for projects I've got in mind, including a lovely sheet of Prima paper, Pixie Garden, from the Fairy Flora Collection, the basis of the layout of my Mum's photograph (that's as far as I've got in the planning stage as yet) and a sheet of Basic Grey's Indian Summer paper which I might use on a card
• a pink topper I'm planning to recycle on another birthday card
• under the glass work surface is some card I practiced stamping the Lavinia tree & leaf stamps on
• a yellow mechanical pencil - the only kind of pencil I like to use
• a rock-a-block with the greeting stamps, cleaned, but still waiting to be put away in the pack underneath
• my lamp and my trusty pink heat gun
• three cards received recently which I want to display somewhere in my room - not sure where as running out of wall space : (
• a pile of CD cases with Lavinia stamps inside - as I'm experimenting with them they are handy there
• the post-it pad is there because I used some of it to mark of an area of card for a colouring technique using an ink pad and hadn't got around to putting it away  
• a yellow legal pad - the best discovery I ever made. I'm dyslexic (explains the occasional bloomer!!!) and find writing on coloured paper much easier than white so these legal pads are brilliant for purpose. And the pad is there because I realised that although I had organised my stash my to-do list was a bit of a mess and I was having difficulty keeping track of challenges, projects, and techniques, etc., that I wanted to have a bash at. So I thought I would write it all down, organise my thoughts and perhaps help myself feel more in control.
• over to the right of my workspace is a basket of 8 x 8 & 6 x 6 paper packs and similar size cardstock packs. The blue box is has photographs in it and the white one above is where I keep the wee bits of white card that come in handy for stamping a greeting on, etc.
• there's all sorts of other bits and pieces in the background; glue strips, hot glue gun, hole punches, ribbon holder, scissor pail, notebooks, my chicken box, border punches, etc., etc. - I don't think these are usually in view on WOYWW but they are always there.

So that's what's was on my desk this morning. I've tidied up and it's now looking ready for action but it will have to wait as I'm off to town to do a bit of necessary shopping - not crafty stuff today, I promised myself I would be frugal this month.

One of the cards in the background: I received this lovely card, made I think from two beer mats, from my friend Sarah at The Handmade Card Blog. Sarah makes brilliant cards, mini albums, etc., and her blog is well worth a visit. She also makes really watchable YouTube videos, many of them mini tutorials on the projects she makes.


My First Challenge Win

I've saved the best till last. Yesterday I heard that I have won Clare's Inspiration Challenge over at Docrafts - for the Cherry Tree card I featured in my last post. I'm over the moon. I've no idea what the prize is but it really doesn't matter because I'm just so delighted to have won.

That's all for today. Signing off,
Elizabeth