Leibster blog

Over the last couple of weeks I have received Leibster blog awards from 3 lovely ladies.
Lou from One Crafty MINKs, Allison from Stamping and Crafting with Ally and Kylie from Scrappinstamp



About the Leibster award : Some time (in the recent past), somewhere (rumor has it that it might be Germany), someone (I’m guessing he/she was named Liebster) decided to do something nice for a whole lot of bloggers and started the Liebster Blog Award.
It’s an award you receive, but it is also an award that you give. If you receive a Liebster Blog Award you are asked to choose 3-5 other bloggers and send them one as well.


It is an award meant to highlight smaller blogs - less than 200 followers. It just lets them know that we care and are reading.
The idea is that the blogger receiving the award links back to the blogger who awarded him/her, and then chooses 3-5 people to send the award to.

It’s a way of sending cyber hugs I guess to people whose blogs we enjoy reading.
I’m so glad you enjoy visiting my blog ladies and thanks for the award.  Please check out their blogs, they are all talented crafters :)

I do have a very small number of followers but I am almost at 100 now!  WOW!  I never thought I would get that many.  I only need 2 more and I hit that magic number :)  So I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who follows my blog through the good and not so good cards, I really appreciate it :)

Now I hope I’m not breaking any rules with this award giving but when I got the first award I didn’t do anything about it straight away because I wasn’t sure who to give the award to.  (I didn’t want to leave anyone out.  I visit a lot of blogs. I should spend as much time making cards as blog hopping and I could have a new card on my blog every day!) I do visit a lot that have more than 200 followers (imagine being that popular!) and the other blogs I get inspired by and visit often are the JAI team members blogs.  So I have decided to award this to each of them.
Now I think this is still legal because if I’m allowed to choose 5 and 3 people gave me that award then I should get 15 right? :)

THE JAI DESIGN TEAM

• Chantell Randall
• Christine Blain
• Delys Cram
• Jo Eades
• Jodene Tripp
• Kim Badelt
• Mae Collins
• Narelle Farrugia
• Nikki Spencer
• Patrice Easton
• Ruth Clarke
• Tina Gillespie
• Trish Radacs

My 10 year old daughter Kate has also recently started her own blog.  She has even entered a few card challenges and loves it.  I would like to pass this award on to her too. She got her first follower (who wasn't a family member) last week and you should have seen the excitement! :)  I love seeing what she creates and reading her blog entries.

Please take a look at these blogs if you can, they are all wonderful.

Kathy

Thinking of Paisley

 

My club hostess asked me if we could make a card with this Spiced Paisley set tomorrow.  So I looked at some of my favourite challenge blogs for inspiration.

Well ColourQ have an amazing combo this week and I decided to give it a try.

I thought they were pretty weird colours to put together actually.  I never would have chosen them, NEVER!  But Arielle has a great “eye” and isn’t scared of unusual colour combos obviously! LOL

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Spiced Paisley, Curly Cute

Card : vanilla, calypso coral, vellum card

Ink : bravo burgundy, pool party, pumpkin, stazon, versamark

Other : white embossing powder, square punch, big shot, polka dot ef, everyday enchantment brads

 

The “flower” is actually white embossed onto vellum cardstock and I cut a piece of calypso coral in the same shape to place behind it.

I actually love how this turned out.  The colours really do work well together and I think the hostess will love it too!  Thanks ColourQ!

 

Kathy

Sea Dad

 

This is my last week of being a guest designer with Freshly Made Sketches.  I have loved playing with all the lovely ladies on the team.  I can’t believe my term is up already and it’s a bit sad. 

Anyway this weeks sketch is another great one and I decided to think outside the box and change things a little.

Instead of 3 brads at the bottom of the circle, I decided to use 3 letters and I was happy with how it turned out.

 

 

It’s a bit hard to tell in the photo but I stamped the ship onto vellum and dry embossed the sails to make them white and “puff them out” (technical term there! LOL).  It looks really 3D but I couldn’t capture it properly in the photo unfortunately. I sponged clouds onto a circle of white with baja and sponged NQN at the bottom for the sea and attached the vellum layer over the top with glue dots.

Ingredients :

Stamps : the Open Sea

Card : crumb cake, white, black, cherry, vellum card, ret. dsp

Ink :  stazon, baja, NQN

Other : library clips, big shot, timeless type alpha, stylus

 

I hope you’ll take a look at what the rest of the design team have come up with using this sketch and play along with us.

Thanks for having me on your team ladies, it’s been an honour :)

 

Kathy

Copic Tidings

Lesley from Freshly Made Sketches has a wonderful challenge on her blog called Merry Monday.   It is a challenge to make a Christmas card each week so that by December you will have a nice little stash of cards to send out. This challenge started on the 2nd of January and I thought it was a fantastic idea because I was short a few cards last year and ran out of time and energy to make more. I just couldn’t make myself start though, I was really “over” christmas card making.
Well I decided to begin Lesley’s challenge this week. She is up to week 16!  It’s hard to believe we are that far into the year already. I am going to try to make 1 Christmas card a week along with her. (We’ll have to see how that goes).

I put my “snowflakes” (actually the star and button) on the opposite side to the sketch.


I didn’t have any copics last year when I made a few cards with this set, so I was keen to see how it would turn out.  Not too bad. I am sure I will make more cards with it using different colour combos and Lesley’s sketches during the year.

Ingredients :
Stamps : Tidings of Joy
Card : crumb cake, bashful blue, x-press it, ret. dsp
Ink : memento black, crumb cake
Other : copics, button (ret), square punch, dazzling diamonds

If I manage to keep up with this Christmas card challenge I will have over 30 cards by December.  A goal worth striving for I think :)
Kathy

Tiny Dancer

 

This week at Just Add Ink our challenge is to case the wonderful Jodene Tripp.

Jodene has created so many gorgeous cards it was very hard to choose just one. 

But this is the card I ended up casing.

It was actually from a Freshly Made Sketches challenge from a few weeks ago. This card had everything I think of when I think of Jodene’s style: Fantastic copic colouring, sewing, clean and stylish and a Tiddly Inks image.

I tried to incorporate these things into my card and this is what I came up with:

 

 

I’m not sure whether Jodene has this Tiddly Inks image but when I saw her I just had to have her.  The teacher I work with is also a dance teacher and I am going to make her a set of cards featuring this dancer for her birthday.  She has long black hair and her dance school wears NQN leotards so that’s why she’s a blue ballerina and not the usual pink sort.  I put some dazzling diamonds on the underside of the tutu and on her headband too (although it’s a bit hard to see in the photo) it’s nice and sparkly.  I hope she likes the set of cards (I think they will come in handy) and it will give me more practice “copicing” too!

I really wanted to do “proper” sewing on this card, as Jodene does on hers.  I actually got the sewing machine out and I haven’t used it for years (maybe 10?) !  I couldn’t find the instruction book and was struggling to remember how to thread it and then I realised that there was no bobbin in it. So after searching and searching and not finding either bobbin or book, I gave up and faux stitched it :( I was a bit sad about that but I decided it wasn’t worth wasting any more time and that “faux” would have to do.

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Tiny Dancer (Tiddly Inks), So happy for you

Card : NQN, x-press it, white, ret. dsp, in colour dsp stack

Ink : memento black

Other :  copics, matt pack, white pen

 

Please take a look at what the rest of the JAI design team have created this week, check out Jodene’s wonderful blog and play along with us.

 

Kathy

Blowing Bubbles

 

This week at Freshly Made Sketches we have a great sketch by Rita for our inspiration.

 

I decided to flip it and I used a new stamp set (that I love) and did some paper piecing with SU dsp and cardstock.

 

 

I used copics to colour her and the bubbles.  I added clear kindyglitz over the top of the bubbles so that they’re all sparkly and shiny and popped them up on glue dots to add more dimension.

Ingredients :

Stamps : Blowing Bubbles (MFT)

Card : black, pool party, x-press it, calypso coral, everyday enchantment dsp

Ink : memento black

Other : square punch, nesties, kindyglitz, copics, in colour brads

 

Please take a look at what the rest of the design team created with this sketch and play along with us too.

 

Kathy

Scotty Candy

 

This week at Freshly Made Sketches we have a fantastic sketch by Tui.

 

My girl’s and I saw this cute Friends Fur-ever set when the US Stampin Up catty first came out and it was the one set we all really badly wanted.  When we didn’t end up getting it in the Australian catalogue we were SO disappointed!

So when I saw a competition on Michelle Zindorf’s blog to win it a couple of months ago I just had to enter and amazingly I actually won!   Yay!

My girls have had lots of fun playing with it but I hadn’t used it yet.  When I saw this great sketch I decided to “channel” my inner-Zindorf and create a brayered card with the cute scotty dog.

 

 

I brayered celery then olive for the grass and pool party, turquoise and NQN for the sky. I then used choc chip and olive markers for the tree. I actually used copics for the dog and balloon and also added a little shadow to the tree too.  The dog and balloon are on dimensionals and I made the balloon shiny with crystal effects.

Now that I may have you looking at the balloon you might notice a mistake (like I did after I had taken the photo)!  I had tied the linen thread to the balloon but it had fallen off while I was taking the photo I guess.  Anyway I didn’t realise till it was too late, it is fixed now (but you’ll just have to imagine it’s tied on properly) :)

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Friends fur-ever, thoughts and prayers, perfectly penned

Card : white, basic gray, black, going grey textured, red

Ink : stazon, memento black, celery, olive, pool party, turquoise, NQN,  choc chip and olive markers

Other : brayer, neutral brad, ret. ribbon, linen thread, copics, white pen, nesties

 

Please take a look at what the rest of the design team have created with this sketch as inspiration.  They are all gorgeous!  Then give this sketch a try yourself.

And I just want to finish by thanking Michelle Zindorf for her generosity.    She is the absolute QUEEN of brayering and freely shares her talents with everyone on her blog.  She has inspired me greatly.  Thanks for the gift Michelle :)

 

Kathy

Thinking of Retirement

 

At Just Add Ink this week we have a beautiful colour challenge.

I’m not sure it would even be possible to make a bad card with these colours actually.  Take a look at the rest of the design team’s work for some inspiration and then give them a try yourself.

Here is my card :

 

This card was kind of inspired by a thread I was reading on Splitcoaststampers this week.  It was all about the new stampin up catalogue (which isn’t out for ages yet but it’s always fun to speculate). It asked which 3 stampin up sets we thought would retire, which 3 we hoped would stay around in the next catalogue, which 3 sets from mini catalogues we hoped would make it in and which 3 sets we hoped would retire (never to be seen again).

Well I was really shocked and amazed that this Awash With Flowers set was mentioned by quite a number of people as one they hoped would retire.  While I admit I haven’t used it heaps (but I could say that about a lot of sets I own actually :o) I have liked each card I’ve made with it.  I really like this flower in the set especially.  Anyway the thread “made me” use it again to prove it’s a good set and not one we need to get rid of. And in the top 3 sets you would want to retire?  Unbelievable!

I guess everyone has different taste.  But I like it!

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Awash with Flowers, Thoughts and Prayers

Card : vanilla, crumb cake, choc chip, subtles dsp stack

Ink : choc chip, crumb cake

Other : big shot, designer frames, polka dot ef, crumb cake seam binding, pearls, corner rounder punch

 

Well if you’re interested, here is what I wrote in the Splitcoast thread:

3 I think will retire
Under the big top
Season of joy
Friends never fade
Wish they would retire
Flower Fancy
Paisley Petals
Punch Pals
3 I hope stay
Field flowers
Winter post
En Francais
From minis I hope this stays
Open Sea

 

I’d be interested to know your picks for these categories. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you’re hoping retires and stays :)

Wishing you a very Happy Easter and I hope you find some time over the holiday to create something beautiful.

 

Kathy

Just French Butterflies

 

I got some very exciting news!

I was asked to be a guest designer for April at Freshly Made Sketches.  I felt so honoured to be invited and I can’t wait to play along with their fabulous designers this month!  :)

Here’s this week’s sketch:

 

I found it to be a tough initiation to the team and ended up flipping it.

 

 

I stamped En Francais with baja onto vanilla card and then over stamped it with the butterflies from Kindness Matters.  One of these has been coloured with markers, cut out and Popped up.  I added some dazzling diamonds to it as well.  I liked the writing in baja (although I think I pretty much like anything in that colour)!

 

Ingredients :

Stamps : Kindness Matters, Just Believe, en Francais

Card : vanilla, suede, mocha morning dsp, ret. dsp

Ink : baja, crumb cake, suede, stazon, daffodil and calypso coral markers

Other : vanilla satin ribbon, dazzling diamonds, window punch, modern label punch, pearls

 

Please take a look at what the Freshly Made Sketches design team have created this week, there is lots to inspire you. 

 

Kathy