Easter or Spring Sentiment

Hello! My goodness it's been a while since I blogged. Let me explain...I had an internet disaster and my browser went a little haywire. I'm not the most clued up on troubleshooting and I lost all access to Blogger, which kept kicking me out for having "suspicious requests" from my browser!

However I have now installed three different browsers and an antivirus, and found one combination that works! Phew!

So I'm back with another design team creation for Aud Sentiments, where this fortnight our theme is an "Easter or Spring Sentiment".

A Day for Daisies has graciously agreed to sponsor this challenge and provided me with a stunning image to use!

It was beautiful, as you can see below.

As soon as I saw it I thought of a card I had seen on Pinterest which paper pieced an old book for the girl's hair. I decided to recreate it.

Here's my creation:

I made this in Serif Craft Artist 2 Professional, and made use of my newest purchases. I used a kraft paper background, then paper pieced old book pages into the image. There is a slight shadow on the book page sections to add some depth.

Then I used the Digiboss Border Dies to add some embossed detail, and used the embroidery stitches to add some decorative edges to my layers!

I hope that you like my creation. I'm slowly getting used to crafting with a baby in one hand and my laptop in the other.

I'm also entering this into A Day for Daisies - Pastels challenge, Bearly Mine Spring Challenge, Kaboodle Doodles Spring is Coming Challenge, Scrap Creations Spring Challenge, City Crafter Challenge Spring and A Song in Your He{art} Everything Grows Challenge.

Marie-Clare

BINGO!

This fortnight over at Aud Sentiments we have a fantastic challenge! It's BINGO time! The idea is that you pick a row or column (but not a diagonal) and make a card which meets the criteria in that row. I chose the first column (monochrome colours, one word sentiment, no patter paper):

Monochrome Colors	“ Two Word Sentiment”	Use texture of some type
“One Word Sentiment”	3D Items	Die Cuts
No Pattern Paper	Use something Shiny	“Three Word Sentiment”

Here's what I came up with!

 Our sponsor is www.addalittledazzle.com who specialise in gorgeous metal craft sheets to incorporate into your cards. I think a golden or copper colour would work on my card this week!

Here's how I did my card for this challenge.

I started with a Kraft card, and printed my image from Mo's Digital Pencil in brown and used a free font called Jane Austen to write "wish" in brown underneath. I tried to position the sentiment to fit into her shoes.
Then I broke out the Promarkers and mini pearls!

I tried to find all of my browns, beiges and dusty colours to meet the monochrome theme. I coloured my image which ended up looking very vintage and faded, which I actually quite like!

I added mini pearls to the dandelion seed for a little glitz.

I was a bit stuck about how to vintage the corners and give the card a little more depth, and I don't have many Distress Inks, so I took a chance and layered some Promarker colours in the corners. I ended up being so happy with how it blended that I attacked the whole left side with the chunky ends of the pens. Thank goodness for the Satin pen to blend it all! This is actually more pleasing than I thought!

Finally I added some pearls and a string bow to embellish.

I hope you like this card, I'm really pleased with how it turned out especially considering that I was lacking inspiration!

I'm entering this into a few other challenges too:

Open Minded Crafting Fun #4 - Monochrome
Lexi's Creations #110 - Monochrome
Sweet Stamps Blog #157 - Anything Goes
Crafty Sentiments - Anything Goes
Bearly Mine Challenges - Vintage Romance

Valentine theme!

This fortnight it's Challenge 100 0ver at Aud Sentiments and we have a valentine theme!

I love all things lovely, but my husband is more of a bright colours person, so I decided to mash the two.

Our fab sponsor is QKR Stampede and I used this fabulous raggedy style doll holding a heart. She is so cute!

The little one took a cold earlier and I couldn't put him down to craft, so I did this card pretty much one-handed and entirely in Serif CraftArtist Professional 2. So it's an entirely digital project for me this fortnight - I like this kind of thing because if the wee one needs held or cuddled or decides to cry or get hungry, I can just close over the laptop, and design a little more later, then print the finished project. I just try to use lots of shadows and faux layering to make it look as dimensional as a real card would.

Here's the list of ingredients:

Serif CAP2
Digikit: Floral Lane
Colouring done using freeform brush tool and various layer effects for shoes, buttons etc.
Sentiment: my own using two fonts, Stamping Nico and Primer Apples

Come on over and join us at Aud Sentiments!

It's all Downhill from Here!

Well, this is exciting! It's my first ever post as a Design Team member. The challenge over at Aud Sentiments is to use any sentiment you like! We are sponsored this fortnight by Inky Impressions Rubber Stamps and we were provided with a very cute downhill skier to showcase the store.

So, here is my creation!

I used my ProMarkers to colour the skier, and my Sakura Jellyroll Stargazer pen to add little glints of glitter to the metal clips etc. The sentiment was made up in Inkscape - check below for a cheeky wee steal, if you like!

The border of blue paper is just a Martha Stewart Doily Edge punch done on two sides of a strip of paper with some gems added.

I added a couple of wee flower punches, some faux stitching and extra glitz.

I really hope you like my first Design Team creation - I've been so nervous that I won't live up!

Love, MC xx

My most amazing home decor project ever...

I've never been much of a home decorator. I always fancied having my own place and doing it up exactly how I wanted, but life gets in the way. To start with, I only actually got my own house about a month before I got married, and it was in walk-in condition. We had no real reason to decorate, tear out carpets and fittings, and put ourselves through that hassle. And there was no need. We were too busy saving up to buy bits of furniture that we needed let alone making the place look the way we wanted.

And then our little bundle of joy was conceived.

And for some completely MENTAL reason we decided to decorate just about the entire house.

Yeah, I know.

But there was reason behind the madness. We had a two bedroomed house, one being ours, and the other being lovingly named the LibraMusiCraft Room. It was party central - sofa bed, coffee table, huuuuge craft desk, bookcases, window seat, the works. It was always a riot, mind you, but a brilliant room. It had to become a nursery, but it would be FAR too big for a baby, by miles.

Plus, we would have a ton of furniture to move out of it and find new homes for. We worked out that we could get the desk and sofa bed stored, but we could put bookcases and coffee tables into the living room. Which meant reshuffling the living room...and decorating. And we could put some of the furniture into our bedroom...which meant reshuffling that too...and decorating.

Oh dear.

And so began our lovely redecoration (in about three months) of the three major rooms of our home.

My pride and joy is what we did with the LibraMusiCraft Room. We built a large walk in cupboard for storage but when I saw how handy it was it was adopted as "The Nook", or my craft room, where I create all of my things now. The little guy's nursery isn't even babyish - it's very much a room that will grow with him. Finished off after he was born, and we knew what we had, it's the ultimate in stars and guitars and zig zags.

So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to post a wee craft room tour and then a wee series of handcrafted items in the little man's nursery. Hope that's ok!

Christmas Presents - Doll Bags

Oh dear. I might have splurged on some fabric paints and jute bags. Look what happened:

Christmas Presents - Personalised Shadow Box Frame

This one was commissioned by a friend of mine, and I know she hasn't passed it on to the person it is for yet, so I won't put all the pictures of hers up! I stole the idea for my sister in law, as a present from our wee fella, and she had a tear in her eye when she opened it. The nicest thing about personalised handmade presents is that they are so specific to the person and the situation. Here is my "Everything is nicer with..." frame: