Giants!!! Giants!!!

In explanation of the title of this post, the Giants are Huddersfield's rugby league team and, surprisingly, since moving up here I have become quite a fan.
This card is for my son's friend. In a couple of weeks I am taking them both to the Crusaders game. Love this Sugar Nellie image because I can draw on any strip I want. I'm entering this card into two challenges- Passion for Promarkers 'Your favourite things' because as I mentioned I'm rather a rugby fan now and Charisma Cardz 'One for the boys'. Must go now because I'm off to Wales to visit Mum and Dad for Dad's 80th birthday- I'll try to post his card next week.

A Father's Day card for my lovely Dad...

I took the chance to get this finished last night because teaching all day then writing reports since 4pm had given me a headache and I needed a break! I had done the paper piecing for the image and printed my papers ages ago. The papers are from a free download from Summertime Designs called 'Boy oh boy'. I love using digi papers for paper piecing because you can use photoshop to rescale them. As you can see, the backing paper and the chair are the same paper, just rescaled. I need to do another card for Dad this weekend because it is also his birthday on Tuesday and he will be 80!

This card fits lots of challenges. Cards for men, CRAFT, Paper Cutz, Totally Gorjuss, Cupcake Craft and Stamptacular Sunday all have challenges to make a card for a man or a Father's Day card. My Time to Craft have 'Xtra special'- make a card for someone extra special. JUGs have a digi challenge which allows you to use digi papers. I also made the sentiment on my computer. (I really would love to get to grips with digi images but I have an inkjet printer and always end up with the ink running.) OCC have 'Gotcha cornered'- decorate the corners, which gave me a chance to play with my new Sizzlet die. And finally, the sketch is from Pink Elephant.

A Thank You card for my colleague...

I made this card to thank the other Year 2 teacher in my school for all her help and support since I took on the Year 2 class at short notice to cover for illness back in September. Now that I am back to part-time I have some time to make her a card to show my appreciation!
I was just reading the rules for the Charisma Cardz challenge and you can enter up to 3 projects so I am also going to enter this for their 'spots and stripes' challenge- granted, it is more spotty than stripy, but if you look carefully there are stripes on the bar holding up the easel!

Spotty and stripy New Home card...

My neighbour saw me photographing another easel card in the garden the other day and after admiring it asked me to make a New Home card for her neice so this is what I came up with. I have used the free download 'Festival' papers by Shabby Princess again because I just love the colours. The little image has been emphasised with several mats and layers and coloured with promarkers to match the papers.
Charisma Cards have 'spots and stripes' as their theme this week so I am entering this card.

A Thank You for my fab classroom assistant...

When I got asked to take on a class full time in September I truly hit the ground running! The room was a shell as the previous teacher had vacated it and with the new teacher falling ill none of the usual preparations had been done. Diane, my classroom assistant, was an absolute star. She prepared all the books and folders, labelled drawers and helped me to get displays up. During the year she has done alsorts of things to make life run smoothly. This card is for her to thank her for all she did now that the other teacher has returned and I have left that class.
Creative Card Crew have 'thank you cards' as their theme so I am entering this card.

Another Fishing card...

I make quite a lot of male cards and I do seem to do quite a lot of fishing cards! In fact it rather surprised me how many fishing related stamps I have! This one is new and came in a mystery grab bag of Sugar Nellie stamps- there were actually 2 different fishing stamps in the 2 grab bags I ordered-How did they know? Spooky!!
This card is for my husband's friend's birthday. He has just been to stay with him in Kent where they went fishing on a couple of the days. I bought a tube of suncream specially for his fishing bag but he only thinks to use it if he can feel himself burning! Obviously, it is too late by then so he has returned with a very red face and is now peeling- apparently his friend is as bad- men, when will they learn?!
I followed the sketch at Papertake Weekly for this card. I had trouble deciding on the papers to use, but once I had decided to make the panel textured brown and mat onto dark brown it started to come together.

I love this word stamp from Elzybells- She must know a fisherman to have created this!

Crafts and Me have 'Friends and Family' as their challenge and ask us to make a card for a family member or good friend. Tanda Teaser have male cards as their challenge so I am also entering this here.

I found both these challenges on a new blog called Challenge Mania which aims to give a brief round up of lots of challenges. Thanks Ann for setting this up, I can strongly recommend a look to see if you can find any more challenges for your card or find a new challenge to try.

I love this paper!...

I made this card for a lady in my church housegroup. I was really drawn to this free download paper called 'Festival' from Shabby Princess so I based my colours on it and also chose my stamp because of the dots on the dress. The layout is from the Sugar Bowl sketch, but as it is now optional I did not follow the colours. This card also sort of fits Pink Elephant's challenge of 'Red, scallops and a bow'. Red is an accent colour on this card, the scallops are on the hem of her dress and the bar to support the easel and there are ribbon loops on the tag- I'm rubbish at bows so I rarely put them on my cards!

Tuesday Taggers have 'All that Blooms', Charisma Cards have 'flowers' and Spoon Full of Sugar have 'floral delights'. This image has 7 flowers on it so I am also entering my card for these challenges.

Edited to add- oops! Missed the close of Charisma Cardz- Drat!!