2012 A Year in Review!

With 2012 rapidly coming to a close I thought I would post some of the creations/cards I have made this year.  For this first post I have some to share from January through to April.

January 2012 - MOJO 224

I loved this MOJO sketch (but then again I love them all!!!) and working with the Martha Stewart papers.

 

February 2012 - MOJO 227

 

Feb was a hugely exciting month for me as I was made a MOJO Sketch Champion for the first time!!!

 

Here is the announcement post here

 

And this is the card I created

 

I framed this card and have it on the shelf in my craft studio.  I was so honoured and proud to have been given this award.

 

March 2012 - Cards at Scrappy Hollow

I absolutely LOVE teaching cards classes at Scrappy Hollow.  Sharing my passion and papercrafting discoveries is what it's all about for me.  Seeing the ladies in class finish a card of which they are both happy with and proud of makes my heart sing!

In March the demand for my classes was overwhelming, waiting lists, bookings for the whole year etc etc.  I am so honoured and very grateful to the ladies who supported me by coming to class.  I have made some lovely friends through the classes which I treasure as well.

Here is my March Class cards:

 

April 2012 - CR84FN Colour Challenges

 

Sketch challenges are so much fun and this month I also discovered how much fun colour challenges can be as well.  The talented Mona Pendleton - whom I admire GREATLY- runs this challenge and I played along.  Here is the card I made and you can see the original post here

 

 

 

So there you have it - the first 4 months of 2012 in review.  Stay tuned as I will post more reviews in the next few days and also give you an insight into my plans for 2013.

 

Thanks so much for stopping by!

 



 





CR84FN59 and Mojo 252 - 4 u Happy Birthday

I am taking the opportunity to have a day at home and get some challenges completed.  Absolutely love playing along with the challenges!!!!

For this card I combined a colour challenge (CR84FN59) and sketch challenge (Mojo Monday 252).

Firstly to the colour challenge - I love the challenges they set over at CR84FN - this time round it's using coral, brown and tan.  The design team have come up with some amazing creations.  I took inspiration from the the challenge photo from the flowers to recreate mine out of patterned paper and fabric and add seam binding.  I also took inspiration from the cake and made my card a birthday card. Then I picked up on the chairs in the garden in the background and added some butterflies, leaves and flourishes.

And now the sketch - it's my favourite week of the month at Mojo - round or square so as usual out came my round card bases for this challenge.

So here is the card I created and some detail shots:

Materials used:

Patterned Paper - Basic Grey, What's Up - up and away, The Girls Paperie, MME Nostalgia,

Cardstock - Bazzil and Kaisercraft

MFT Dies - Royal leaves, bread tie tag set, mini doily circles, fancy flourish, mini royal rose, by the number, by the letter

Other - kaisercraft pearls, tea dye distress ink, cream seam biding, button, vintage twine, cotton fabric

Thanks for stopping by to take a look!

CR84FN and ISSC19

A day off work here in Australia for the Queen's Birthday and I thought what better way to spend my day off? You guessed it - creating another card.

This time round I drew my inspiration from the CR84FN challenge and teamed it up with the latest iSpy sketch.  I am really enjoying the colour challenges set by Mona on the CR84FN blog.  I love that I am constantly pushed outside my comfort zone and I try to use more than one paper manufacturers papers as well.

So here are the inspiration pics:







And here is my card:

















I wanted to use this cute little cotton spool that I found at a $2 shop this week.  So in keeping with the sewing/haberdashery theme I set out to create a card that used stitching, my sew nifty MFT die, buttons and of course a sewing related greeting.

The papers were from Cosmo Cricket and My Minds Eye.  I loved the doily print on the MME paper for the background.  For the panels I decided to wet and scrunch the paper and then iron it dry to change the texture to resemble fabric.  I machine stitched all of these elements.

The lettering was from Collections and I thought it worked well with the colour challenge as each tile was bordered with a thin grey line.  Bling was from Prima.  Pin from Birch and safety pin was from Making Memories.

Thank you to the CR84FN & iSpy sketch designers for their inspiration!

Mojo 243 and CR84FN55

I have been having loads of fun playing along with Mojo Monday Challenge Blog and the CR84FN Challenge Blog this week.  I knew I would love the sketch at Mojo Monday this week as it's the end of the month round or square challenge and I love making round cards for a change.  The colour challenge at CR84FN was also a beautiful combination this week so I decided to combine the two on my card.  So here is what the sketch and colour inspiration was:

And here is the card I created:

The papers I used came from a few different ranges in my stash:
Graphic 45 - Little Darlings
My Minds Eye - Nostalgia and Miss Caroline
Pink Paislee - Indigo Blue
I teamed these up with coloured cardstock, Kaisercraft pearls, DMC embroidery floss, Versa Magic Spanish Olive ink and vintage lace.

The dies used were from:
 MFT - Mix and Match Banner, Fancy Flourish, Royal Rose and Fishtail Stax
Quikcutz - Scallop Circles (used to create the cards border)

The stamp used was from Verve Stamps.

Here is a close up of the embellishment:

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my blog!

ISSC17 and CR84FN54 - 4 U

Wow are the weeks flying by!  I seem to be saying that every time I post.  This week I was determined to get at least one challenge card completed after I finished my design team and cards class commitments. So here it is!

This weeks card combines two challenges.  The first is the card sketch from the iSpy sketch challenges blog. The sketch was inspired by Amy Rohl.

The second challenge blog that I used was from the inspirational Mona over at CR84FN Color Challenge. 

To incorporate the colour challenge I had to rummage through my paper collection and ended up selecting papers from Kaisercraft, Basic Grey and Authentique.  Here it is -

I also set myself the challenge of not inking on this card.  For those of you who know me well this is a HUGE challenge.  I did however, need to edge distress - can't help myself!

The striped elements of the card were made with ribbon and my MFT die namics Scallop Ribbon die. I decided to finish my stripes at the embellishment piece.

The main embellishment was made using my MFT die namics Well Worn Greetings die, oval cutters and an image downloaded and printed from the fabulously talented Beatriz Jennings AKA Iralamija.  I finished the embellishment off with some Kaisercraft pearls and spika and gelly roll pens.  Its a little hard to capture in the photo but each layer of the embellishment had a fine edge of glitter applied to it.

For the tag off to the left I actually decided to split it in two.  For this I used the MFT die namics First Place Award Ribbon die.  I also decided to add some MFT die namics Mini Rolled Roses, Punch Bunch leaves and a ribbon and vintage twine bow taking inspiration from the CR84FN pictures.

The whole card was edged with the MFT Scallop Ribbon die and mounted on a co-ordinating neutral card base.  I cut this small enough to be hidden behind the front panel so that the border was highlighted a little more.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

CR84FN52 Colour Challenge

This weekend has been another busy one but I have managed to squeeze in some creative time.  Inspired by the talented ladies over at CR84FN and their latest colour challenge I have made another card for my collection of 80th's that I making for a friend's mum. 

So here is the colour inspiration:

In keeping with the request I have created another card that has a different fold to the straight up folds I often use on my cards.  This one is an altered gate fold.

 I have left the ribbon on the front long so that it can be tied again easily after it has been written on and then the ends can be trimmed to the desired length.

The papers used were from Cosmo Cricket - Tea for Two and I also used Bazzil cardstock, MFT die-namics, Cuttlebug embossing folder, Punch Bunch leaf punches, Doodlebug "Happy Birthday" sticker and Green Tara flower buds.

Here are some close up's of the different embellished sections of the card.  I loved making the mini rolled roses from matching cardstock and combining them with the punched leaves and pre made buds to finish off the front of the card.

Thanks for stopping by, please leave a comment as I would love to hear from you!

ISSC06 and CR84FN50 Colour Challenge - Happy Birthday

Hi and welcome back to my blog.  This week a new colour challenge was launched over at CR84FN and boy did I have to rack my brain for this one!  Initially I thought it was going to be easy, but once I started looking through my paper stash I realised that one of the colours was not featured very heavily at all.  So here is the colour challenge:



I had a cute patterned pink (MME Stella & Rose), and could find a lovely yellow spot to compliment it (MME On the Bright Side) but where oh where were some oranges to finish off the trio? Not many to choose from at all - guess I'm not a fan of orange.  Eventually I settled on a muted orange patterned paper from MME Vanity Fair.

Once I had the colour challenge sorted I decided to use it for my iSpy sketch challenge.  Here is the sketch:



And finally, here is my finished card:

I love the fishtail banner from my MFT Die-namics collection.  I teamed this up with a Carl punch to get the cute heart to finish it off.

The greeting was a rub-on.

The central embellishment was created with a 2" scallop circle and a 1 3/4" circle punch.  The butterfly was another MFT die namics die.  Just love this one!  I finished the butterfly off with a Green Tara mini rosebud.  I also spun the background paper around to add a little additional detail.

And here is the card standing up.

Paper -  MME Vanity Fair, On the Bright Side, Stella and Rose.

Dies -    MFT Die-namics fishtail banner and butterfly trio.
Other - Green Tara flower, organza ribbon, crochet cotton, and rub ob.
  

 Thanks for stopping by!!!!



Mojo Monday 231 & CR84FN Colour Challenge - Happy Birthday

Well it's Friday again and I have been busy putting together my take on the Mojo Monday 231 Sketch.  I was excited to get underway with my card this week.   Not only was I planning to incorporate the new Verve Birthday Bash stamps that arrived after winning Mojo 227 Challenge,  but I also decided to stretch my creative skills and incorporated a colour challenge into the card as well.

I have admired Mona Pendleton's card making for a long time now and visit her blog often.  She also heads up the creative team at CR84FN Color Challenges so I thought I would use this on my card too.

So here is the sketch and colour challenge I used.




When I saw the colour challenge colours of yellow, grey and kraft I immediately thought of the MME Miss Caroline paper pad I had stashed away. 
So here it is -

The shabby chic fence had the kraft and grey colourings and the yellow spots were so cute to add in as a complimentary touch.  I also snuck in a little extra colour with the flower border along the fences.  I mounted the card onto a kraft card base and cut out my tag and doily from this cardstock as well.  I just love the colour combination the team at CR84FN came up with.  I don't normally use grey and yellow together and it works so well with kraft.

A few pearls and some hand stitching were added just to finish things off.

Paper - MME (Miss Caroline) and Kaisercraft
Dies by MFT - Sweet Stack, Decorative Doily Duo and mini rolled roses
Stamp - Verve (Birthday Bash)
Other - Pearls by Portacraft, grosgrain ribbon by Birch and punch bunch leaf punches.
Thanks  for dropping by!