You can never have too many pairs...

A popular request from my friends... will you make me a shoe card? This one is for a fiftieth birthday - I dread to think how many pairs of shoes I'll have by the time I reach that age! I've always looked after my shoes and regularly wear pairs that I've had for over a decade!

Today's card is made with a well loved digi - wedding shoe from Justinklined. I printed a couple of the images to create a decoupage effect, coloured it with promarkers and added some gems for extra bling. I've finished off with some card candi coloured to match the shoe and a gorgeous piece of ribbon that came with some Christmas sweeties.

I've entered this into the challenges at:

Anything Goes Challenge Blog - Monochrome
Fab 'n' Funky Challenges - Shoes
Craft-room Challenge - Monochrome

How Many Candles?

It's not often I have entered a challenge twice but I so loved yesterday's simple sketch at Less Is More that I had to have a second go! I was also greatly inspired by the 'rainbow bright' challenge at Quirky Crafts Challenge Blog  - I adore anything rainbow related...

    

I found an image of a candle on the internet and copied and pasted it a number of times in Publisher then printed this onto a landscape A5 card blank. I printed the same image onto some heavy paper, coloured the candles with promarkers then carefully cut each one out and placed them over the original image, creating a 3D effect with foam pads - I'm very pleased with the result!

Simple Sketch

It's sketch week at Less Is More and Jen has set the lovely simple sketch below:

.

Also, at Addicted To Stamps And More the challenge is to create a CAS card - perfect for my current style of cardmaking.

I've been sorting out my digis over the last couple of nights into 'categories' and I found this delightful digi I've had for years from Create with TLC

I printed the digi straight onto the base card (get me - almost a one layer card and I didn't have to!!) and paper pieced the butterflies with a busy floral paper. The flowers were coloured with pencils and I've added a few gems for bling-iness.

More snow overnight - I wish it would just go away now!

Enjoy your weekend
Sharon
x

A Splash of Emerald Green

This week's challenge at The Play Date Cafe involves my favourite colour:

I adore green in all it's shades - and there are hundreds of them - but it's a really difficult colour to match. I always joke that one of my aims in life is to find the perfect pair of green shoes!

I also love dancing and was pleased to use one of my most loved digis from Create With TLC for the 'Let's dance' challenge at Totally Papercrafts. I've kept the card very simple, only using the 3 green gems, to make the image the star.

Because of the strange light here today the green in the photo looks more Kelly green than emerald green - we still have about 6 inches of snow in our street which is reflecting off photos!

Have a great weekend folks, thanks for looking.

Sharon
xx

It's A Boy!

There's loads of babies due in the next few weeks so I'm still on making various pink/blue baby cards...

I've had these Papermania Pastel Colossal papers for almost 10 years - I do wish I could get some more because they have been so useful! The yacht mast is a cocktail stick and I've coloured white card candi with a promarker to match the lemon paper.

I've entered this card into:

Celebrate The Occasion - baby card
Songbird Challenge - baby mine

Thanks for visiting

Sharon
x

When In Doubt... Wear Red

Today's card is a birthday card for my Sister-in-Law to be - she's a very girlie girl who likes dressing up and going out so the wonderful Alyssa digi from Digistamp Boutique was the perfect image to use.

The card was inspired by the super sketch at Sketch Saturday:

I've lengthened the sketch to make it suitable for an A5 card:

 

The sentiment is some word art I've had for a few years - a freebie from TLC and the paper came with a magazine. I have so much free paper I've gotten with magazines that I should really try to use it up before I buy anymore!

I've also entered this card into the follwoing challenges:

Dream Valley Challenge - girls girls girls

Divas By Design - make it girlie

Stampin' For The Weekend - something girlie

Thanks for visiting...

Sharon

x

Lucky Day

They say things come in threes... I logged onto my emails yesterday to discover I had won a blog challenge - 4 lovely digis from Ruth at A Passion For Stamps. I was very excited as I've never won anything like this before. 

Then this morning I heard the postman struggling to get something through the letterbox - when I opened up the parcel I had won some 12x12 Papermania papers and matching buttons in a magazine giveaway paper. At this point I scared the cat by dancing over to the computer to check my lottery numbers.... and I'm £5.90 richer! A lovely start to my weekend!

This morning's card also fits three challenges:

Less is More - friends  
CAS-ual Fridays - the long and short  
Just Us Girls - colour challenge below...

I used some lovely wordart on the subject of friendship by Jennifer at Paper Creations (she has loads of freebies) and various sized flower dies from Joy! Crafts. This was layered over some lime green spotty paper then matted on gray paper. A few card candi pieces finish off the flowers.

Loads of snow here now - I don't think I'll be leaving the house today!

Sharon
xx

Winter Blues...

There seems to be a lot of 'blue' challenges going on at the moment so I decided to build up my stock of baby boy/christening cards (hopefully there'll be some 'pink' challenges later on!!)

I've cut a blue crucifix using a template and matted it on silver mirri paper. Then it was a case of 'decorating' it using various gems and spangly stars - I love the colour of the blue square gem in the middle. The greeting was computer printed using tempus sans font.

I've entered this into the following challenges:

CASology - Blue
Creative Moments - monochrome
City Crafter - winter blues

The snow has now arrived in Sunderland alternating between blizzards and winter sunshine so I'm retiring to my crafty area for the rest of the day!

Thanks for looking

Sharon
x

Bags of Love...

This week I have been trawling blogland for some new challenges. I found a fab sketch at Clean and Simple stamping ...

I love the proportions of this sketch and there's no silly bits on it!

There's also a lovely fresh colour scheme going on at Dynamic Duos...

As a third challenge, I opted for the embossing theme at Addicted to CAS.  I've never entered any of these challenges before but here goes:

I've used a mirror image of the sketch, moving the greeting from the left to the right. The papers came free with a magazine and the image is from my favourite digi store - Digistamp Boutique. I've embossed the side panels with my swiss dots folder.

I'm going to aim for more sketch and colour challenges this year - they certainly save time on my creative dithering!

Sharon
xx

Little Miss Perfect

Anybody out there who remembers this....

Will understand the inspiration behind this...

The challenge today at Less Is More is to make a one layer card on the theme of sport or exercise. Apart from card making, my other passion is gymnastics which I have loved from being a little girl so I knew straight away which sport would feature. The cute image - Molly the gymnast - is from the Digistamp Boutique and of course her leotard is in the traditional Romanian colours worn by Nadia Comaneci.

Thanks for looking...

Sharon
x

Florals

Today's card is made from a bunch of things I have had for a while and were in a pile to 'use before I can buy anything else'!! The flower is a pre die-cut decoupage which I've mounted on white card and painted with clear nail varnish to make it shine. The paper came from a bargain pack and I've added some co-ordinating pink gems and ribbon. I've kept the layout very simple  so that nothing detracts from the lovely image. I know nothing about flowers but are they dog roses?

I've entered this card into the following challenges:

Totally Papercrafts: use ribbon

Moving Along With The Times: flowers as the main image

Sitting here now just waiting for the snow....

Have a nice weekend

Sharon
x

Something New... And Blue

My first baby card of 2013 was requested today - the blue variety...

I've used an image from a sheet of cute baby images by Ruth Watkins for Craft Creations, mounted on a circle and scallopped nestie with blue checked patterned paper for the background. I didn't have much time to make it so luckily the only real work involved was cutting out the sheep. These really are gorgeously cute images - I have the girls sheet aswell.

I've entered this card into the following challenges...

Totally Papercrafts - something 'new'
Cupcake Craft Challenges - January blues (monochromatic)

Sending My Love

Yesterday's card got me in the mindset to make some more Valentine cards and looking through blogland for inspiration, I found this fab sketch at Freshly Made Sketches...

 Now for the colour scheme - I came across a challenge blog I haven't seen before at Pals Paper Arts that has a gorgeous colour challenge...

Finally, while looking through my choices of card blanks I decided to open a pack of 5x7 blanks that I have had for absolute years! The oblong shape makes this card ideal for today's challenge at Stamptacular Sunday Challenge - don't be square.

The cute image is from the Lovebirds set available at the Digistamp Boutique. The photo is rubbish due to the indoor night time conditions but in 'real life' the ribbon and the hearts are the same shade and a bit lighter. The patterned paper is actually gift wrap and the ribbon was part of the wrapping on my new Christmas onesie - I do love a bit of recycling!

First full week back at work tomorrow - I do love the holidays so I can craft through the day.

Thanks for looking..

Sharon
x

Shall I Compare Thee...

It's Saturday therefore it's Less Is More day! The challenge set this week is to make a card using:

BLACK and WHITE 

with a touch or a splash, a hint or suggestion, a dab or a  patch of 

a colour of your choice!

 

Well my mantra has always been, 'if in doubt wear red' so with Valentine's Day just around the corner I set about making my first card.

I printed the greeting directly onto the base card using Monotype Corsiva font. I then used Shakespeare's 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' sonnet as the background and cut this into a circle. For the touch of red the obvious shape was a big fat heart!

I'll probably have a bit more play about with this card using different spacings and sizes of circles/hearts but for the moment this is it!

 

Thanks for looking

 

Sharon

xx

Something New...

One of my friends is so excited about starting a new job on Monday I had to make her a little something to celebrate the occasion using my fave 'new job' image, Lola Rose from Pink Petticoat (I don't think she is available anymore in this image :-(  ). 

I've coloured her using pastel pro markers and used NitWit patterned papers and a pale pink paper. It still looked a bit plain so I added some card candi along the bottom.

I've entered this card into the following challenges:

Cute Card Thursday - Something New
Simon Says Stamp - A New Something
Creative Inspirations - Celebration