Purple and Gold

Lovely hAnglar or Sweet Magnolia is back from it's summer holiday with a brand new challenge.  This fortnight we're looking forward to seeing your favourite colour combination.

My favourite colour combo varies all the time, but I do like a bit of purple!  So I dug out my Maja "Shall We Have Coffee" papers, which have the best purples in any range of papers.

I coloured my hAnglar girlie with Copics and added a die cut mat of purple Bazzill.  I sprayed some flowers with Glimmer Mist to get the deep purple tone I was looking for and found some similarly deep purple velvet ribbon in my stash.  A few purple pearls added the finishing touch.

Hope you can join us at LhoSM - my teamies have made some very lovely projects to inspire you, so do go over and take a peek.  You'll get all the competition details there too.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Hugs,

Tracey xx

A bit of embossing

Hellooooo!   So much for my plans to get the garden sorted and have more crafty time this summer.  I just don't know where the holidays have gone and we've now been back at school for nearly 2 weeks!  It's true that I made a start on quite a few cards...

Thankfully, this was one I did manage to finish in the summer!  This week over at Sweet Stampin' our challenge theme is Embossing (any kind). Everyone seems to be doing the white embossing thing so I decided to give it a go myself. 

I wasn't brave enough to go for one layer, so I used a couple of different types of kraft card for my base, mat and image.  I find it much easier to colour kraft card that's got a bit of tooth to it, but I discovered that it's a wee bit more difficult to get all the little bits of stray embossing power off your card!  Still, I'm not too bothered by the little flecks of white as there are pollen-type circles on the image anyway.

The image is by Stampin' Bella and I love it!  I coloured it with my Prismas but it looked really nice without any colour at all.  I think you'll be seeing this from me again.

Do grab a cuppa and hop over to Sweet Stampin' to check out the challenge deets and the fabulous inspiration cards my lovely talented teamie pals have made.  Our sponsor is Hobbycutz who have a £7.50 voucher for the online store up for grabs.

Hope you can play along!

Hugs

Tracey xx

Christmas in August

The summer holidays are coming to an end here and I'm back at work on Monday.  That means it's only a matter of weeks till Christmas!  So to help you make some progress with your Christmas cards, our challenge at Sweet Stampin' is Christmas in August.

I'm trying to keep my Christmas cards relatively flat this year as the cost of postage is high.  I printed a Pink Petticoat sentiment onto linen card and layered this onto some green Bazzill.  I stamped the baubles using a Poppystamps stamp and used the co-ordinating die to cut it out.  This was simply coloured with Copics and a touch of Wink of Stella before attaching to the card with sticky pads. I think I'll make a few of these as they are fairly quick and easy to do.

We're being sponsored by both Di's Digis and Crafty Devils, so there are 2 prizes up for grabs this week!

Once again the Sweeties have surpassed themselves and created the most gorgeous inspiration projects to get you started.  Do pop over to Sweet Stampin' to take a look and join in the fun with us!

Have a fabulous day!

Hugs

Tracey xx

Christmas is just around the corner!

Well, nearly.  The weather here is most certainly autumnal, we go back to school next week and I'm here to show you a Christmas card!  Today sees the start of a new challenge at Christmas at Sweet Stampin' and our theme this month is Gifts Galore.

Our sponsor, All Dressed Up, gave the CaSSettes some images to play with.  Here's what I did with mine:

My printed image is quite large, which makes it lovely to colour.  To show it off I made a very plain centre-step card and simply added some Glamour Dust and some ribbon.

Come on over to Christmas at Sweet Stampin' and take a look at the inspiration cards my talented teamies have made.  With All Dressed Up digis as a prize, it's got to be worth having a go!

Have a great day.

Hugs

Tracey xx

Celebrate!

We're celebrating our 100th Challenge over at Lovely hAnglar or Sweet Magnolia!  Our challenge theme is a lovely easy one: Celebrate! This can refer to any kind of celebration but you'll need to use a Magnolia or hAnglar & StAnglar stamp to take part.

I coloured up Tilda with her big ribbon using my Copics and added a little bit of celebratory sparkle with a touch of Glamour Dust.

Our challenge will run for 4 weeks so that we can have a wee summer break so you've got plenty of time to enter! We're being sponsored by

Lifelong crafters Mother and Daughter, Mary and Andrea were tired of having to buy full rolls of ribbon and lace when they only needed one metre.  Because they love ribbons and all things pretty, they decided to open their own online shop in 2010 and make small quantities of beautiful products easily available to all crafters. Mary owns the shop and runs it on a day to day basis as well as keeping the website updated while Andrea looks after the social side,  The Ribbon Girl Blog and the Design Team. They specialise in supplying small (or large) quantities of ribbon, twine, gorgeous vintage style lace and seam binding ribbon, tiny pom-pom and ric-rac trim, all sorts of buttons, fancy pins, a multitude of charms, pearl and crystal flourishes, wool felt squares, seasonal and unusual embellishments, mulberry flowers, sticky tape and accessories to card makers, crafters, scrapbookers and cake decorators. They stock only the best quality products and only offer for sale goods that they would personally buy and use themselves

with this great prize

 

Hope you can join in the fun!

I haven't entered a challenge in ages, so I thought I'd have a go over at My Mum's Craft Shop where the challenge is Clean and Simple.

 

Hugs,

 

Tracey xx

Creative Bloggers Blog Hop

I was hugely flattered to be asked by the lovely Fi, who runs Sweet Stampin' with Abi, to take part in the Creative Bloggers Blog Hop.  As part of the hop I need to answer some questions, so here we go!

1. What am I working on?

I'm usually working on DT cards! I work full time as a teacher, so the holidays are usually spent trying to get ahead with my DT projects.  I do, however, have a number of projects on a to-do-when-I-get-time list, some of which have been started, none of which are anywhere near finished!  I've got a couple of journal covers on the go and way too many stamped images waiting to be coloured!


2. How does my work differ from others in my genre?

I'm not sure that my work is different, although I'm aware that my style is changing.  For the past few years my cards have been fairly "full" with embellies (mainly flowers) but lately I have been increasingly inspired by the Clean and Simple look.  I love trying different things so although I feel I do my best colouring with Copics, I also love working with Distress Inks and pencils.  I treated myself to some Inktense pencils recently and am still playing with these - I'm struggling to get skin tones I like, so I need to keep practising.

3. Why do I write/create what I do?

This is easy: it's sooooo relaxing and helps me to switch off from work.  Before I discovered crafting my evenings were mostly spent preparing stuff for work or thinking about work.  I still bring a lot of work home but now I make sure that I have a  more even work:life balance; whether I'm making something or just blog hopping, I can forget about work for a while.  I know that there are millions of people who are much more creative/talented/clever than me but I don't care - I enjoy doing what I do!

4. How does your writing/creative process work?

Hmmm... depends on time really.  Sometimes the creative process is driven purely by panic - I need to get something done in record time - but mostly I'll spend some time thinking about my DT cards. If inspiration strikes, I'll try to make the card while it's fresh in my head, so often I've got DT cards for future months made well in advance. The panic sets in when I realise that I've forgotten to make something that is due for Thursday!

I also love checking out what other people have made and I do like a good tutorial.  I'm a recent convert to Pinterest and get so much inspiration from admiring people's cards.   I don't work in any particular order; sometimes I match my colouring to papers, sometimes it's the other way round and sometimes the thing just evolves somehow!

I'm very fortunate to be on a small number of Design Teams - Sweet Stampin', Christmas at Sweet Stampin' and Lovely hAnglar or Sweet Magnolia.  This has enabled me to "meet" the most amazing and talented people and I'd like to introduce you to one of my favourites.  The very lovely Lisa is a former DT teamie and one the most talented card makers I know.  Lisa's blog is a brilliant source of inspiration, so if she's not on your reading list already, do hop over here - you'll be glad you did!

Hugs,

Tracey xx

Bingo!

Good morning! We're having a Bingo Board challenge  at Sweet Stampin' starting today.  Here's my card

 

 

and here's the Bingo Board

 

 

I went for Ribbon, Buttons and Spots and my Doodlebug papers seemed to fit the bill nicely.  I coloured the wee hAnglar boy and the button with Copics, adding some Doodlebug Sprinkles to complete the design.

I hope you can join in with us at Sweet Stampin' this week. We're being sponsored by Craft Mojo and the team Abi Sweeties have made some amazing inspiration projects which you can see here.

Have a great day!

Tracey xx