Mygrafico Challenge ~ It's Graduation Time

This week's challenge over at Mygrafico is all about Graduations.  The Design Team got to work with a delightful Clip-art set from Cupcake Cuties

 

I teamed it up with some of the lovely papers we used last week.(see here) and came up with this card

I printed the cap out twice and cut one out and added with dimensional dots to the other panel.  I printed out the background papers and distressed with some Distress ink and around the edge of the focal panel. 

Do pop over the blog and see what the others came up with, and enter our challenge.

Heard that Emma made it home safely despite flying into a huge storm in the South Western part of Australia.   A bit bumpy she said, and the worst landing ever.  Perth was hit by a huge storm, wind, rain, the works... but she was glad to be back home where it was warmer!

Thanks for stopping by... 

Dawn

More Penny Black goodness....

At the moment I seem to be on a bit of a Penny Black roll..... My very first stamp was a Penny Black... Due to winning some on Kathy's blog, my PB stamps have increased in the last few months....   Over the past few weeks I entered a couple of challenges over on the Penny Black blog ( here)

The first was to "lift" a card from one of the design team.  I chose to "lift" this card from Jenyfur

Jenyfur made an ATC but I went with a full card

I used a pink Copic to colour and then painted watered down Liquid Pearls for a shine. The sentiment is from Polka Doodles.   Used Black enamel accents for the flower centres.

My second card was for National Scrapbooking Day ~ a monochromatic card.  As usual, I went for minimalistic CAS.

I stamped this PB flower which I've had for over 3 years now then I used Nestibilities Long Rectangles to cut it out and the mirror matting.  Used Swiss Dots embossing folder to give some texture.

Hope you are all well... I'm home from work today due to waking with a horrible headache... I had a bit of a funny dizzy spell again yesterday at work, but it past quickly...a walk in the fresh air at lunch time helped.... so a morning in bed today was called for.  Plus a quiet afternoon...

Cheers

Dawn

Cook up a Card Recipe challenge

I had an email from the lovely Monika to tell me about Cook up a Card where she is on the design team. The monthly challenge is based on a recipe - May's is 3 leaves, 2 flowers and 1 bird.

This is what I came up with.... Using my new Stampin' Up! set Vintage Vogue. I stamped the brown card round the edge with the vines ( doesn't count for the leaves!!!) and then put the 3 leaves, 2 flowers on the white inner piece with the bird in the corner. That's from an Inkadinkado set. Sentiment by Hero Arts - Anytime Messages.  I had to take the photo on the kitchen window sill as the wintery rainy weather came back yesterday and today.  Not much fun - especially as I seem to have got a cough!!!!  Came home early and had a 2 hour sleep this afternoon - woken feeling only slightly better.... hopefully it won't develop into anything nasty.

Thanks for visiting and once again, a big thank you for all the wonderful comments... really makes my day.

Take care

Confessions of a HOARDER!!!!

Hello my name is Dawn and I'm addicted to:
- Hoarding papers, stamps, flowers, brads, eyelets... you name it I've got it!!!
- buying stamps
- computer blogs........( this one from Hubby who says I spend WAY TOO MUCH TIME on the computer).
and so it goes on....
Over the past few days I've found other bloggers like me who suffer this addiction... Anne, Deborah, Paula ....but to name a few.... and we are all uniting .... this year we ARE going to use our hoarded stuff!!!!
Anne has a wonderful challenge to use 3 hoarded items in a card.... see Paula's blog...she has started....

Well on Thursday I decided that as a start I needed to tidy up my craft room ... I could hardly find any space to work on.... so Dad bought me a three drawer basket unit to put on the desk... now I have lots of lovely space, my clear and cling stamps to hand, my pens, pencils and crayons close by...  I still have a pile of bits under the desk..two folders fill of papers and cardstock, plus a brown paper bag of A5 size cards ready to make bases and one of larger scrap bits.. Plus lots in the cupboard and on the desk behind me.....stuff I bought over the past 21 months and some even prior to that!!!

Today I got a chance to use some stuff!!!  The leader of our Family Group rang and asked me to make a Sympathy card for one of the woman in the group whose Dad had passed away on the 5th.  Yvonne wants to send it from all the group with our thoughts... so as it was short notice... she needed it this afternoon .... I had to fish in the stash to see what I could come up with.

So what's hoarded?  The CB folder was purchased after a class where we used it... but hasn't touched paper since!!!!... the corrugated green card was bought about 2 years ago ( can't even think why as I wasn't even doing cards then!)  and the paper for the strip was from a free gift at Stamp Group about 6 months ago... holding onto it for that something special....like Paula not sure what!.  The same goes for the flowers which I cut out of a piece of DCWV card matting that was also in a free pack from Stamp Group just before Christmas.... too nice to use so got put away..... but bit the bullet and cut it up...( its all glittery)

Not sure if that classes as 3 item of hoarder stuff for Anne's challenge but will enter it anyway....

As you can see from the photo taken around mid-day, we are having another fabulous summer day.  It started a bit cool.... well at least at 4.00am when we got up to take the parents to the airport.... but improved mid-morning.  By mid afternoon - well it was very warm.  Hubby went for a swim while I lay on the grassy bank by the beach and read in the sun.  Bliss... and nothing says Summer more than corn on the cob cooked on the barbeque in it's husks.... that was starters for dinner tonight followed by rib-eye steaks and a Greek salad.... I just LOVE summer!!!!  ( sorry to you American and European readers suffering the cold!!!)

Well thanks for stopping by.... I'm off to have an icecream for dessert!!!  Take care 

December Chain card Challenge...

I took part in Deborah Nolan's chain card challenge for December.... and was extremely lucky to get a card from Deborah herself...... and what a card it was....

The card has an opening in the front to see through to the ornament inside.  It is so richly coloured, the red looks like velvet.... I will keep it as a card then next year it can hang on the tree... Awesome card thanks Deborah. 

I have also been having a bit of a blitz on bookmarks again....they went down well at the Hospice fundraising and I keep getting asked to do more....so here we go.....I've made a mosaic  of them all...  I used a Hero Arts stamp on everyone.... did lots of different techniques.  The orange on is a background I did with distress ink ( spiced marmalade and aged mahogany) on a cream card and spritzed with water.  I then stamped the butterflies and added a second one overtop. The next one, I used some new Die Cuts with a View matstock.... La Creme....it is a pad of 72 4.5" x 6.5" heave paper that is mainly creams and blacks with flocking on it... Beautiful  papers.  I add a sentiment from HA and it was done.  I got two the same out of one piece of card... Next is one of the Japanese dolls.  I paper pieced the kimono in gold paper, used a nice background paper and layered it.  I did another Japanese doll in a similar technique for the next card.... and the same again for the following card.  The final card was using another DCWV paper mat...this time from the Blossoms and Butterflies stack.  Have a look at some of the other stacks in these pictures.  You can get the papers also in 12"x12" - but as I don't scrapbook, the smaller size is perfect for cards.  I can see I will be using them for a while to come... with 72 sheets in each pack... there is 3 of each pattern and they are quite heavy - really cardstock weight.

Well thanks for stopping by... I'm off to get the salad done and the house set up for the neighbourhood barbeque that is happening here in about 1/2 hr..... 8 families have been invited... so will see how many turn up.  Hope the lead up to Christmas isn't getting too stressful.  Take care

What an awesome weekend....

I had a fabulous time on our weekend away - down at my BIL and his wife's beach house at Cooks Beach. Unfortunately I forgot my camera.... how blond was that!!!! The weather smiled on us.... sunny and warm. We ( Hubby and his two brothers and one sister and their spouses)met up on Friday evening and started the weekend with a lovely meal produced by Denise. Next morning Peter (DH) and brothers Graham and John and BIL Grant went out on the boat to fish and dive for scallops. No Fish :-( but Graham got the quota of scallops. Meanwhile my SIL's ( Denise, Mary and Philippa) and I went for a BIG walk..... we were away for nearly 3 1/2 hrs. Mind you there was the rest while crossing the harbour in the ferry ( 5 mins) and the coffee stop we had in Whitianga!!!! but it was a 3 km walk back from Ferry Landing to Cooks. Later in the day we headed back to Whitianga with the boys for a few drinks before having another awesome meal. Today started with a walk up to the top of Shakespere Point ( for some),a big brunch and then off to coffee at Hot Water Beach before heading home. Trip down took just on 3 hrs with Friday night traffic but much better coming home - only 2 1/2 hrs.
Got home to find this lovely card in the mail from the amazing Deirdre in Ireland. So beautiful and cheery. It come with some lovely goodies as well so I was very spoilt. This card is part of the Card Chain Challenge that the incredible Deborah Nolan organised ( along with a number of other amazing things she is involved in!!!!) So a huge thanks to Deirdre for the wonderful creation and to Deborah for organising it.

As part of the CCC I made a card for the lovely Judy.  I did a wee sneak peek a few weeks ago so will show you the full card later in the week.
Wishing you all a great week and thanks for stopping by,.

Simple christmas

Simple christmas
Originally uploaded by turleyfamily(Dawn)

This weeks challenge at Hero Arts is to make a simple holiday card. My idea seemed simple enough... in theory that is.... it did take a bit longer than I anticipated. It is a longer card (10.5 cm x 21 cm) I cut a white panel a bit smaller and stamped the fir boughs along the top. They were from a Inkadinkadoo set. I then stamped HA Antique Brocade in red onto red patterned paper. I cut out the three hearts with my Nestibilites die. I then highlighted the stamping with a white gel pen and edged in red ink. I added a small silver strip as the topper and then popped them on the white panel. I drew the strings up to the top and embossed the sentiment in the corner. Layer all this onto the silver card then onto the base card. I think the whole will go quicker next time round.... all the deciding whether to add ribbons ( did not do so) or whether to draw the strings or to use real string.... that's what took the time. Anyway all finished and I am pleased with the result which is the main thing.
Thanks for stopping by. It's almost the end of the week for me so I am happy.

Two cards today

I have managed to get tow cards done tonight.  I had half done the colouring in on the Outline Flowers yesterday and finished it off tonight.  I had started this by just colouring in the blue flowers but saw that someone had already done one like that for the Hero Arts colorit challenge, so decided to make this one a bit more colourful... hence all the other colours.  I used watercolour pencils by Mondeluz.  They are lovely soft pencils that colour so well.  I used a white-out pen to add the white dots.  You know the ones you get to white out mistakes in writing.  I edged the card in blue metallic Marvey pen.

This next card is for Father's day which here and in Australia is 6th Sept.  I have to get this posted off to my Dad in Australia this week.  I have just got the Dots and Flowers design block stamp so decided to give it a go.  I stamped it in Aged Mahogany Distress ink on a dark cream card.  I used Shari's sketch from last week as my design inspiration.  The scalloped oval was cut out and inked with the distress ink as were the edges of the panels.  The small star from HA CL180 (Happy Messages) was used with the sentiment from that set.
Well thanks for stopping by and big thanks to all of you who leave me such lovely comments. I do appreciate them.

Outline flower

Outline flower
Originally uploaded by turleyfamily(Dawn)

Second card made today... I'm on a roll..... This one I used design block Outline flowers, stamped in versamark and embossed in white powder, I layered the darker craft card on the bottom and put a ribbon across the middle. I stamped the outline flower again this time onto pale purple card and cut out. I over stamped with old French writing, put on a button the added to card, Other two flowers and buttons added. It was inspired by this technique on Hero Arts website so have entered into the challenge for this week. I haven't put any sentiment on, but when I decided what I will emboss it in white.
TFL and have a great day

Photo card

Photo card
Originally uploaded by turleyfamily(Dawn)

This week the challenge at Hero Arts is to use a photo on your project. I have used this photo in the past and had a copy printed out on plain paper. I wanted a simple card where the photo was the main focus so I cut it down and matted onto kraft after distressing the edge with walnut stain ink. I stamped the sentiment from HA CL129 and mounted to the cream cardstock. Finished with a dotty bow. Simple but I think it looks effective.

Purple and Yellow

I am enjoying the challenge this week at Hero Arts. There are lots of different colour combos to work with. Tonight I chose purple and yellow. I used two shades of pale creamy yellow - whipped cream and cameo cream for my base cards. I layered then used faux stitching round top layer. I used two shades of purple to cut my nesties frame. I stamped the flourish in the corner ( from Inkadinkadoo) and sentiment from HA CL 129 Anytime messages. Finished with the yellow and white flower. I have a 21st to go to this weekend - so this will do even if it is for a boy.... it's not too girly.
On the home front, hubby's Mum is deteriorating quickly. I am pleased we got to see her last weekend. I pray she does not suffer.

Thanks for visiting.

Orange and blue

This weeks challenge at Hero Arts is about colours - complementry colours on the colour wheel. During the week there are different colour schemes. One of them is orange and blue. Now these are NOT colours I work with together so it was quite the challenge for me. Luckily yesterday I had bought a new distress ink called Spiced Marmalade. I'm going to try out some of Jennifer's inking over at 2peasinabucket. Anyway it worked well tonight with some blue and orange card I found in my stash.
For the first one, I stamped and clear embossed in the spiced marmalade onto pale blue card, and layered it onto a dark orange scallop circle. I used my new Spellbinder flower in dark blue with a tiny circle punch in orange for the centre. Some dark blue ribbon and then layered the circle onto a paler orange base card and all done. Nice and quick.

For the 2nd card, I used the dark orange as the base card and layered two colours of blue PP onto it, after distressing the edges with the orange ink. I used my long rectangle nestie to cut and emboss the lighter orange paper onto which I stamped Delicate leaves and the thinking of you sentiment. A few gems and it was finished. Although as I said, these are not colours I'd choose, I am pleased with the results.

Well I'm off to bed now as it back to work for me tomorrow.... been off for 7 working days with leave and then being sick... so it will be a struggle in the morning to get myself motivated to get up ( and not think about staying home crafting and blog hopping all day)
take care and thanks for visiting.

White Balance - Lisa's tutorial

I thought I'd see what I could do with my camera taking photos of the card I did tonight. It was cream and white colours - a total lift from a card I saw on Flickr done by rosigirl123 -see here
I had been reading Lisa Spangler's tutorial on white balance adjustments. My camera is Fujifilm Finepix E500 and I couldn't follow her instructions so got out my owners manual and had a read - not that that made much sense to me either. But decided to have a bit of a play.

First off I took a photo with my camera fully on Auto - just point and shoot mode. As I was using a window at night it didn't turn out too good.


Next I went into the manual controls and found WB - I used the auto choice which gave me a better photo -

Once I upload to Flickr I edited the photo with Picnik which made the photo sharper and clearer. I still don't really understand quite what I am doing here - so it will be going back to Lisa's tutorial and re- reading to see if I can follow it a bit better. Still I feel that using the manual adjustments to the WB (even though I used the auto ) did make a difference.

Now if I could only get the photos to sit where I want them in this blog......
Anyway thanks for looking - any hints you can give me would be appreciated....

Sketch and Stash Challenge /HA Manly Challenge

Tonight I am home alone and with nothing decent on the TV, I decided to have a go at HA Manly challenge this week. Obviously the challenge is to make a male card - so I had a go. I decided that I would incorporate the sketch from Sketch and Stash Challenge as well. I really liked the sketch but as it had two flowers on it, wasn't too sure. But decided to have a go with some black/brown and white flowers.
The card stock is called Nutmeg and is probably a bit browner than the photo shows. The black background has been embossed with Devine Swirls Cuttlebug folder, a piece that I had done quite some time ago and had forgotten I had ( that's my old neglected item). My new things is the branch stamp from a new Hero Arts set - Sparkle clear From our House. I haven't used this stamp before. The three eyelets are also a forgotten item as I found them while looking for the flowers to put on this card. I really like how this turned out. I do find male cards a bit harder to do. I also like this sketch - but think for my next male card will use buttons instead of flowers. I have a male birthday card to do as a commission from someone at work, so have started to get some ideas.

Well it's time for me to head off to bed - busy day tomorrow at work. Thanks for calling by, take care.

Sketch and Stash Challenge plus Daisy May challenge

Today felt much better so off to work... even managed to go to the gym on the way home!!!
Got home to find Kieran ( my darling son) had organised the dinner. He has his uni-tech day on a Tuesday and gets home first. This gave time to put together a card - using one of the images I stamped and coloured yesterday. I had used my watercolour pen with some Tombow pens. I scribbled the ink onto my acrylic block and picked up the colours from there.
I liked this sketch at Sketch and Stash Challenge site so this is my entry. The new item is the stamp - first time I have used it ( Penny Black 1448F Garden Gossip purchased from Stampzone) , from my stash is the ribbon and I used a scrap of black card to cut a scallop edging. The flower was cut out from a piece of gift wrap- put a brad through it. I haven't decided on a sentiment yet... make a horizontal greeting so some sort.....
PS have also entered this card into the Daisy May Monday Challenge. This is a really cute site with some lovely designers. This weeks challenge is Summer flowers and colours

Well I think I have time to try another card as I coloured in three images of the little hedgehog last night as well as two of a set of three presents.

Thanks for stopping by....