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!

My first easel card...

...I know I'm miles behind everyone else to try this one but now I have I can see me making more!I have recently joined a housegroup at church and we were sharing out roles- one was to remember birthdays and get a card and cake so I volunteered! This is for Rachel as she mentioned getting some new plants for her garden at our last meeting.

It fits in with lots of challenges:

I have followed the great sketch at One Stop Craft. The colour combo of 'green + one' comes from My Time To Craft, my plus one is pink. The theme at Spoon Full of Sugar was 'springtime' and the papers I have used are called 'Sweet Springtime', also I think the little flower hints at the start of spring. The papers also fit with 'something old that's new' at OCC because I downloaded them from Summertime Designs months ago and have only just used them. The card is easel style which makes it multifold- the challenge at Secret Crafter. Finally, the ribbon is Pink Elephant's challenge and the brads fit with Cute Card Thursday's 'metal mania'.

Cricketing Birthday card...

I needed a card for my cousin's son's birthday which is next week so decided to follow the Sketch Saturday sketch. I used the little cricketing teddy from Personal Impressions Clear sets as he is cricket mad. I coloured him with watercolour pencils, keeping the colours quite plain and matching the brown to the line in the argyle paper.

The design papers are all from a free download set called 'Fathers and fedoras' by Summertime Designs. Even the 'ribbons' are from there! I finished each one with a brad for boyish embellishment! I used a peal off for the greeting because I wanted it to stand out on the navy, unfortunately the 13 gets a bit lost on the patterned paper.

I decorated the inside simply with another piece of printed ribbon, a couple of die cut stars and a pocket to hold some money

A card for my Husband.

I am such a last minute merchant sometimes. The only reason I am able to post this card is because I photographed it after I gave it to him this morning! I have been making other cards since I last put one on here too, but they were all for immediate posting or they would have been late! I will try to make similar ones to put up over the next couple of weeks as I was quite pleased with them.

The light blue leather effect cardstock has been stamped with a fish and the sentiment from a CDs set using Versamark to give the tone on tone effect. Love that sentiment- it was why I bought the set! I also sponged darker blue ink around this layer and the oval mat.
The image is Personal Impressions clear and is coloured with Prismas and Sansodor. I had a bit of trouble with the Stazon smudging into the colours when I used the Sansodor which, I think, was caused by the card I stamped on- Any ideas?
The stamp already had some stitching detail on the pockets so I carried this on with faux stitching so I am entering this into Cute Card Thursday as their theme is 'A stitch in time'.
I followed Papertake Weekly's sketch so am making a very late entry into this challenge also!

Told you I was a last minute merchant!!!

Cricketing Teddy Birthday Card.

I think this little guy from Personal Impressions clear stamps is so cute! I coloured him with Prismacolor pencils and Sansodor and used glossy accents on the ball and his nose. I followed the sketch at Dutch Dare this week, which is really great to work with. The cricket ball paper is from a Dovecraft Masculine pack, the green is Core'dinations and the blue and navy are from my stash. I'm entering this for Spoon Full of Sugar because they have blue and green as their colour scheme this week. It wasn't looking right when I first assembled the card so I drew on the stitched borders which really helped and added the 3 cricket balls which I cut out of the paper. Cute Card Thursday have 'Something Shiny' as their challenge so I'm entering this because of the gold star brad and the glossy accents. Finally I used a few of the offcuts to decorate the inside.

OCC Sketch Challenge Easter Card

I liked this sketch challenge at Our Creative Corner but was getting a bit lost with my papers again! Then I scrolled down and found Robin Willis' card and it got me on track! I decided to use the colour of my card instead of another pattern to back the sketch and used two papers from a free download at Papercraft Inspirations. When I layed it out it still looked a bit bare so I stamped and clear embossed the little flowers on the base card and was really pleased with the effect. Stamps and colouring as in my last post and ribbon from my stash.

My first Easter Card of 2009!

I followed the sketch at Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge #60 for this card. It is a lovely simple sketch and I kept it really clean by not doing some of the extra mats- I know where trying to over complicate cards gets me!

I inked up this Personal Expressions clear stamp for the first time for this card. When I used some of the others they were a bit tricky to start with because they were quite 'sticky', even after the usual trick of giving it a wash with a bit of washing up liquid. This time I used a little Stazon Cleaner on it and rubbed it on my stamp scrubber and it stamped perfectly! I have done a couple of extra images to send to my friend.

The paper is from an old pack from Partners and I took my colours from this. I coloured the image with my favourite watercolour pencils and I used the Swiss Dots embossing folder and some scallop scissors to do the mat. I used a tiny piece of the paper for the band with the sentiment on to keep the design simple. The sentiment is from my Elzybells clear set.

Cupcake Birthday.

This card all started from the patterned paper-I don't know who makes it but I think the design is a Strawberry Shortcake one. The paper has some green flowers on it so I made my base card from some pearlised lime green card. The stamp is another of my Personal Impressions clear set and I painted the image with a mix of watercolour pencils and pink and lime Twinkling H2O's. This was my first go at embossing and sanding Coredinations cardstock and I'm really rather pleased with the effect! I made the felt flower with a Sizzix originals die and some felt from the market then found the perfect lime green brad in my stash.

I found this High Hopes Challenge while blog surfing and Challenge #20 was to 'get that fuzzy feeling' on your card! I'm entering this card because of the felt flower.

Blue and Brown.

Colour Create challenge #5 is to make a brown and blue card. This is a very simple card that I made a couple of weeks back that I think fits the bill. The paper panel is from a Dovecraft Masculine pack and the image is mounted onto some mirror board which is embossed with stars to pick up on the paper. The base card is not as plain as it appears here because it has a fine 'cord' texture which the photo does not really pick up. The image is from a Personal Impressions clear set and I have coloured it with watercolour pencils which I love because they are so controllable for shading. I gave him some grubby patches like a real mechanic!

A winter birthday card.

I made this winter themed birthday card with a set of personal impressions clear stamps that I got for Christmas. They were a little bit 'sticky' to start with and it took me a few goes to get a clear print but I got there in the end and hopefully it will be better next time because I love the image. I teamed her up with some paper I got from Partners ages ago- still keeping that New Year's resolution! The strip is pearly purple and the mirror board has a leather like embossing which I thought added to the frostyness. The nesty is quite square and she looked a bit 'lost' in the middle so I made it snow by stamping snowflakes in pale blue and embossing them with holographic powder. The final touch was some ostrich wool that has some clear strands in it which pick up the light. It has just occured to me how like Dawny's sketch on PTW this is but I actually made it a few weeks back!