Sara Kay Challenge

The Sarah Kay Challenge this week is blue. I found this difficult because I used blues last week, and couldn't resist using the K&Co. Blue Awning papers again. I coloured the image (Fanny's cuddle) with mixed media using a combination of Prismas and watercolours for the finer details. I fulfilled my promise to myself and decorated the inside of the card, but it still needs a sentiment.
Kay &Co - Blue Awning papers
Cuttlebug & QuicKutz - flourish die
Ribbon, flowers and pearls from stash.

Tilda & Co - Challenge 31

I really enjoyed this challenge - I've never done Tilda in pink before. I've never really

thought of Tilda as a 'Pink Girl', and I'm still not sure she is - but I really like the way

this card has turned out,

I hand drew the bed, duvet and pillowcase, the bed onto woodgrain paper and the duvet and pillowcase onto patterned and edged the pillowcase with the same lace I used for the ribbon at the bottom. I also put lace behind the bed. Tilda is coloured with watercolours.

I was a 'good girl' and did what I promised myself to do more often and decorated the

inside of the card with matching paper.

Papers: Digital Scrapbook Art - Verena Karolyi - Polkadot
- JD Altered Art Wood Paper
Cuttlebug: Spellbinders : Nestabilities and Corner Cutters

Penny Black (Spring) & Basic Grey Challenges (Two Scoops)

Two challenges with one card - again- I am doing well. I actually enjoy doing this as it sort of makes it a double challenge.

The Penny Black challenge is to choose a season, I decided to choose Spring.

The Basic Grey is a sketch challenge this week, for which I used gorgeous Two Scoops papers.

The image is coloured in watercolours and the sentiment is computer generated. I finished it off with ribbons and dewdrops from stash.

Papers: Basic Grey - Two Scoops
Stamp - Penny Black

Penny Black & Cute Card Thursday Challenges

The brief for Penny Black is to decorate the inside of the card.

I do this sometimes but really should do it more often.

The Cute Card Thursday challenge is 'Sparkly' - right - now everything and everywhere

is sparkly. I think I'm wearing more than the card. I'm not sure I should be

allowed to work with glitter. I cut individual snowflakes from a felt strip, glued them with a gluestick and sprinkled glitter over them. The image is coloured with watercolours.

Basic Cardstock: Dusky mauve bazzill

Papers: Hot off the Press - Icy Rainbow

Cuttlebug: Snowflakes embossing folder

Papermania: Diamonte brads

House Mouse and Artzy Girl Challenge

Another double challenge cards, the first is for the

House Mouse challenge and has to include stitching, and guess whose sewing machine decided not to play. I'm fed up doing faux stitching so I decided to do it by hand (what a silly girl I am) - it took ages, I could have made another half dozen cards.

The second challenge is Artzy Girl and the brief there is autumn, so these fitted together quite well.

Papers: Doreen Stolz - Rustic Fields from Digital Scrapbooking Art

Stamp: House Mouse coloured with watercolours.

Ooh-la-la Challenge

The brief for this was black and white with just one other colour. I wasn't sure this combination would work, the goldy bronze is not a colour I would normally put with black and white, but I quite like it. This card has not photographed well - the black looks too intense and the flower is sparkly organza and looks much better in real life. The layout is from a challenge I was working on for Docrafts.

Basic cardstock: Papermill shop

Flowers: Prima Floral Embellishments (Crafts U Love)

Bronze paper is from Germany and the sentiment a peel off.

Blog Candy

Hazel (http://craftyhazelnut.blogspot.com/ ) has Blog Candy up for grabs. Check it out.

Cute Card Thursday & Basic Grey Challenges. (Archaic paper)

Two challenges in one again (the Powers that be must be looking after me this week, knowing that I have a busy week ahead).

The Cute Card Thursday challenge was 'Food' so there is Edwin picking his mushrooms to take home for his breakfast!

The Basic Grey Challenge is distressing. I have quite a lot of Basic Grey papers - I absolutely love them. Bringing myself to use them is hard enough - but to distress them was doubly difficult. I particularly like these Archaic papers - they are so adaptable. Edwin, mushrooms and trees are from the new Autumn range and are coloured in watercolours.Papers: Basic Grey - Archaic

Stamps: Magnolia - Autumn collection

Sarah Kay Sunday Challenge

This week's challenge is to decorate a CD case. I would have like to decorate the inside but did not have a case that suited this. I removed the back of the case, I then fastened the ribbon to the side with glue tape and anchored it top and bottom by piercing the holes and refitting the case back. The flowers had to be fastened to the front of the case.

I don't know what the papers are as I received in a swap. The image is coloured with watercolours.

Stamp: Rose's garden

Sentiment: Royal Langnickel

Flowers: Crafts U Love

The rest from stash

I've been Tagged

I have recently been tagged by two talented ladies Ikki and Sharon check out their out
blogs. If you are tagged, you must firstly post these rules:

1.Write 7 strange characteristics about yourself. They interest us all!
2.Tag 6 other people at the end of your Post.
3.Visit everyone that you have tagged and a leave a comment on their blog to let them know that they have been tagged.

So here goes:

1. I love driving but am always getting lost, even in my own town. The most hairy time was in Africa when I stopped at a guard post and they asked for passports, it turned out we had taken the wrong road (not that there are that many roads) and ended up in Ethiopia in bandit territory. We'd only travelled about 300miles out of our way -oooops!! But I'm still here to tell the tale.

2. I think I have an OCD personality - I am obsessed with 3. I like 3 jars of coffee, 3 bags of sugar, 3 boxes of chocolates etc. in my cupboard.

3. I gave up retail management at the age of 50 to retrain. I did holistic and beauty therapies and also my teacher training.

4. I am extremely dizzy. I went out one night with friends, arrived home about 1.30am to find I'd lost my key. The only way in was through the dog flap. Yes - you've guessed - I got stuck (should have taken my thick coat off). Fortunately some neighbours came by and managed to prise me out. The whole terrace knew about it the next day.

5. I got stuck on my roof once (I was cutting back my ivy) when the ladder blew down. I had to shout for help, a neighbour came out but refused to help until he'd got all the others out to have a laugh. You can imagine what my reputation with my neighbours is like !!!

6. I love DIY - especially the build it yourself furniture. Long live IKEA.

7. My daughter is forever telling me to 'grow up' - especially when my next door but one neighbour - Anthony aged 5 - calls to see if I am coming out to play.

I'm finding t0 difficult to find people who haven't already been tagged - so if you haven't consider your self now tagged.

Ann (http://craftworkblog.blogspot.com/)

Ooh-la-la Challenge & SBS 21 Challenge

This card covers two challenge (I like it when this happens :) ) The Ooh-la-la challenge is singing in the rain, the SBS21 challenge is Paper piecing.

I paper peiced Tilda's clothing and also the raincloud from the back. I stamped the rain cloud onto printable acetate and pieced it with some white handmade paper which I adhered it with some clear double sided photo. stickers I bought in Germany. The acetate is fastened to the inside of the card with a little silicone glue, I tried to photograph this but it didn't show.

Whey hey !! - an experiment gone right (for a change)

Unfortunately this card didn't photograph well due to the acetate reflecting the light.

A WYLDE WOMEN AWARD - WHOOHOO

Eileen very kindly sent me this award. It's call the Wylde Women award and the purpose of it is to send love and acknowledge to women who brighten your day, teach you new things and live their lives fully with generosity and joy". The rules are:

1 Your can give it to one or one hundred and any number inbetween - your choice.

2. Make sure you link to their site.

3 Link back to this blogsite http://www.tammyvitale.com/ so Tammy can visit all these wonderful women.

4. Remember the purpose of the award.

Many thanks Ikki, I'm 'Over the Moon', 'Chuffed to Bits' and more seriously high honoured that someone as talented as Ikki should give me this award. Check out her blog http://ikkiscorner.blogspot.com/ her cards are amazing - so beautiful, so elegant and for me she is the queen of the cuttlebug.

Here's my list
Sharon - a new blogger but whose tutorial is superb
Sam - not only does she make great cards, but also wonderful jewellry

De - who's comments brighten my day

Tiffany- who shouts at me and makes me giggle.

Ramsey - whose blog is so interesting I get lost in it

Sandra - her works inspires me

Jane - Some 'mean' layouts here

Erica she makes me laugh and inspires me at the same time.

Loretta's DC Challenge

This card is for a Dc sketch challenge which also stipulated that it was to be black and white only with maybe a hint of silver. I couldn't think what to use for the main element so I raided my Christmas decorations and use this tree bauble and I rather like the result. I shall have to watch myself - if I do this too often I will end up with a naked Christmas tree !!

I used plain black and white cardstock with silver mirri card for matting and layering. The sentiment is computer generated. Gems and ribbon are from stash and I added some peel off snowflakes to the ribbons.

OCC sketch challenge

This sketch was designed by AmySheffer whose work truly inspires me, check out her blog her cards are amazing. I love this flower but am becoming somewhat tunnel visioned about it, I need to find something different to do with it. I coloured it with watercolours, added liquid pearls to the stamen and a pearl brad to the center. After cutting it out I matted onto a distressed piece of white card on which I had stamped some leaves. I matted this onto downloaded paper and finished it with dew drops and ribbons from stash. the sentiment is a rub-on.

Stampendous - Fresh Bloom stamp

Inque Boutique - Silhouette leaves stamps

Shabby Princess - paper - Signature C

Sarah Kay Challenge - Week 11

I love the Sarah Kay challenges, probably because I love the Sarah Kay stamps, the are so beautiful. This is a new stamp that I haven't used before and I'm not too happy about the way the dress turned out. This week's challenge was to use just three different patterned papers. I chose Kay & Co. Blue Awning papers which are simply divine. I coloured the image with watercolours, matted and layered it onto some sand cardstock and enhanced the whole card with flowers, some of which are also Kay & Co. The sentiment is Aud designs and the rest is from stash.

Kay & Co - papers and flowers Sarah Kay - stamp Aud Designs - sentiment

Ooh-la-la Creations challenge

I think I must have been drunk when I took this photograph, one of us was on the tilt.

The challenge this week is 'Weddings'. I have been complaining that pink is not my colour and all of a sudden half the cards I create are in pink. I must have overcome my dread of pink.

I stamped the image on white card and heat embossed it with silver powder. I edged the swirls on the dress with pink shimmer chalks and pink gems and used silver chalks for 'his' suit.

I matted and layered this on pink cuttlebugged (yeah! - I've got my cuttle bug back) with swiss dots and white bazzill which I edged with some lace and added a couple of flowers and a ribbon at the top. I finished off with a die cut sentiment and pink dew drops.

Papertake Weekly Challenge

I ended up with two cards for this challenge. I started with the idea for Tilda and then came across this beech tree without leaves and couldn't resist creating a card with it as I've had it for ages and hardly used it.

Tilda is coloured with water colours and highlighted with gold Twinkling H2o, although this doesn't show in the photograph. The papers are some scrapbooking papers from Paper Pizazz. The ribbon, flowers and brads are from stash. The ribbons and die cut leaves are from stash.

I used Basic Grey papers - Archaic. The tree (I've had it for ages and can't remember what make it is - sorry) is stamped in brown on yellow card the edge of which is distressed with Tim Holtz distressed ink - Tea dye'

Daring Cardmakers Challenge

This was another of those cards that didn't turn out remotely as I had planned - another one that designed itself. I kept trying to add something else, thinking it was a little bare - but it just wouldn't take anything, no matter how or what I tried. Funnily enough I rather like it.

I used pink and dark grey pearlized card stock. I stamped the image three times in three different shades of pink and cut them out slightly smaller each time. I used foam pads to give the image some depth and finished by enhancing the stamen with black pearls. I stamped various leaves on white bazzill and mounted the image on top. I finished the card with a rub-on sentiment layered on somepink ribbon.




Stamps: Stampendous - Fresh bloom
Ink Boutique - Silhouettes - leaves

Tilda & Co Challenge

Oh! have I had problems making this card. Everything was going really well until my cuttlebug 'exploded' - there was one horrendous crack and one of the side panels shot across the room. It does crack a little when I use dies but this was like a gunshot - phew! - I practically had a heart attack. I put it back together and thought - that's OK, but no it wouldn't do anything. Fortunately I'd done all I needed to, so I packed it away to take back to the shop.

So I returned to making the folder for the challenge - then ooops - I stabbed my finger with the craft knife and got blood all over it. Undaunted - I started again - this time success.

Right I thought, now to put the 'topper' on it, but this had completely disappeared!

I spent about an hour searching for it, the rubbih bin, my waste paper basket, my flower box and papers which I had put away in case it had stuck to something else.

It turned up the next morning - I'd been wearing it - it was stuck to my trounsers -derrrr!

I decided it needed something extra so I used stickles on Tilda's wings, then forgot it hadn't dried and smeared all over her face, fortunately I managed to scrape it off and eventually the folder was finished. Phew!!!!!!

Never has a card taken so much time and so much effort - I hope whoever receives it really, really likes it.

The basic cs is bazill. The paper is from Dream Crafts but I can't remember who it's by. Tilda is coloured with watercolours . The ribbon is from Poppicrafts and the flowers are Prima from Cuddly Buddley

Sarah Kay Challenge - week 10

This started off as last weeks challenge that unfortunately I didn't have time to finish, hence the green and purple. On the brighter side it did give me a head start on this weeks challenge - it just took a little shuffling around.

I used bazzill basic cardstock and K & Co Poppy plaid and Paper Adventures Dazzle diamonds papers.

The image is cloured with watercolours and the sentiment computer generated.

The paper is cuttlebugged with swiss dots and the circles cut from the centres from the Cuttlebug Build-a-Flower.

Flowers, pearls and ribbons from stash.

Cute Card THursday & SBS21 Challenge

I managed to 'kill three birds with one stone' with this card. The Cute Card Thursday this week was 'Pink' and the SBS21 challenge was to work with a colour that you don't find easy. This just happens to be pink with me. I'm not a pink girl, it's not that I don't like it, but I don't find it easy to work with for some reason. The third 'bird' is a card for a baby girl's Christening I am to attend tomorrow.

The papers are a download - Verena Karolyi's Moments to Remember

The image is Pink Petticoats 'Little Creatures' coloured with watercolours

The flowers are from Crafts U Love and the sentiment is a peel off.

Diamonte brad is from Papermania and the ribbon from stash.

This is my first attempt at the Ooh La La Creations challenge and this week's brief was 'Quotations'. I used a rub-on sentiment and unfortunately it didn't photograph very well,

the light caught it every time.

The sentiment reads:

'Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men'

by JohannWolfgang von Goethe

The basic cardstock is bazill and the patterned paper is from Germany. I used HOTP 'Fold It Swirls' template for the flowers and the ribbons and brads are from stash.

Penny Black Saturday Challenge

This is my first Penny Black challenge for some weeks, time having been at a premium.

Stars and stripes were the brief for this weeks challenge and I really enjoyed this one.

The papers are 'Baby Bear' - a download from Je Mi designs

'Hedge' is coloured with watercolours.

The button are Papermania and the stars, ribbons and thread from stash.

Cards for the Toops

Hugs Emma

Christmas is for families - it must be awful to be away, or have a family member away at such a special time. (Especially in a dangerous situation)

This 'cause' Emma is running is wonderfully worthwhile.

Copied from Emma's blog ....

After the wonderful response to our Christmas cards for the troops plea and after much discussion with Tina, Sarah and everyone else we have decided to offer some blog candy for this very worthy cause...As some of you have already started making your Christmas cards...do you fancy making a spare one for the Troops in Iraq or Afghanistan? All you need to do is make an extra one...leave it blank inside so a member of our fantastic Forces can send it home to a loved one. Everyone that sends a card to me to forward on to SOS will have their name put into a draw for a huge bag of ribbons from craftyribbons.co.uk. Send two cards and you get your name in twice! If you would like your name putting in the draw then drop me an e-mail and I'll tell you where to send them. All cards need to be received by the beginning of October. So girls...start spreading the word and lets give our boys and girls some Christmas cheer.

Hugs Emma

Contact: http://elf-creations.blogspot.com/ for further details and email address on profile

Cute Card Thursday Challenge

This Cute Care Thursday challenge should relatively easy for us British - let's face it we seen and felt plenty of water here - especially this summer - even the little ladybug is blue with cold.

I've used a Penny Black stamp and coloured it with whispers matted and layered it onto HOTP papers. The sentiment stamp By Hero Arts has been heat embossed using Pearl Blue powder. The 'water' vellum i've had for ever, the brad and flowers are from Papermania and the ribbon from stash.

Our Creative Corner Challenge

I knew exactly what I was going to do when I started this card. But this is not, nor anything like the card I intended. Perhaps because I am Pisces (two fishes swimming in the opposite direction) - the creative fish takes over from the thought one.

Although I was distracted when I started - I have two cream sofas - and had just washed the covers when my darling litte cat (Chester) came in with muddy paws and walked all over one of them. Still cream sofas with animals is a little 'foolish' I suppose.

I was puzzled as to where to put the Happy Birthday - and would be grateful for any suggestions on alternatives as I'm not sure about it.

Basic cardstock: Maroon leather look and green pearlised

Papers: Paper Adventure - Baby Blue swirls and Baby Polkadots

The rest from stash.