LOVEly recycling

Just after Christmas I got a mail from Karen - the owner of the I love promarkers blog asking me to be a guestdesigner for january. As I really love my promarkers I had to accept.

The first challenge was a little tricky for me, but I hope you will join us anyway. The theme for this week is to recycle something. The thing I have recycled is the big olive green flower. It came in a pack of 6 with a clip on the backside. It was meant to be used as a hairpin or to decorate your house. I only used 2 or 3 of them and the rest has been laying around. Not anything I use in my crafting, but too pretty to throw away. So when I got this challenge i started with the rose and patterned papers and worked my way from there. At the beginning I thought the rose was overwhelming the card, but I'm starting to warm up to it. i really need to get better at making my cards cluttered :) This is a good start I think.

Challenges for this card:

I love promarkers - recycle something
Just magnolia - anything goes
Magnolia-licious highlightes - 4 flowers, 3 patterned papers, 2 magnolia images and 1 ribbon
Sketch and stash - sketch

Inspirational wishes

It's my final week to be the guest designer for the papertake weekly blog. The time has gone so fast that I think I've forgotten to tell you I got chosen for the GDT spot, lol. The theme for this week is as simple as it gets: anything goes with optional extra lace. I hope you will come play with us this week. Did you know papertake weekly is the best ranked challenge blog? I'm not surprised at all.

With the new year staring I decided on some cleaning in my hobbycorner. I have so many "good-to-have-stuff" that they are litterally falling on the floor and I keep tripping on them. So I really need to get rid of anything I'm not using or haven't used in a while. It was hard though as I like keeping all sorts of stuff - you never know when you're going to need them. I started with the thing I knew I needed and wanted to get rid of: a 3 compartment drawer in heavypaper that I haven't (and I kid you not) opened in TWO YEARS at least! It's taking up space in my bookshelf and contained a bunch of magazing clippings and lower quality cardstock, stuff that I'm not using and probably never will. So out it went and I filled 2 of the drawers with small pieces of one coloured cardstock and the other with patterned paper. So those 2 boxes I had earlier for papers suddenly disappeared and it looks less cluttered already. I will have to do the same thing with my ribbons...























Ok, you probably want to know why I keep rambling on about this. I do have a point, lol. The thing is that among all those papers I haven't seen in 2 years were a few experiments I've done with stamps - my own backgrounds to be exact. I haven't made my own backgrounds since I started blogging and it was fun to see something from my earlier days. One of those backgrounds were so pretty I had to use it straight away: it's the inspirational background you can see in this card. I'm getting really lazy with buying patterned paper that I've forgotten how much fun you can have with stamps. Hopefully this year will let me experiment with that a little bit more.

The card you see here is made using a lili of the valley stamp and as usual she's coloured with promarkers. The patterned papers are all from that forgotten stash and the border is one of my new Martha Stewart punches.

Challenges for this card:


Creative inspirations - something new (I used my new punch and pink copic)
Friday sketchers - sketch
Paper sundaes - something new (the border punch and pink copic is new)
Papertake weekly - anything goes with optional extra lace

Very berry mystical wishes

How wonderful isn't it that the new year has started? I hope you are as excited as I am. Can't wait to see all the new sweetpea releases and what I make with them during 2011. I hope you'll continue stopping by to see what I'm up to. I'm closing in on 200 folloowers and will have a candy when I do, so hopefully it's not long left...

The card I want to show you today is my first sweetpea for 2011. I made it primarly using a 3-part challenge:  colour/sketch/item, and let me tell you, it was a CHALLENGE. The colours were plum, blueberry and beige. Say what?! I've never played with that colourcombo so I started looking through my stash - there are always papers with any combo you're looking for, but not this one. I almost gave up, but stubborn as I am I got intrigued. So I realized I needed to whip up my own set of matching papers. I imidiately thought of this purple glittery one I had been saving. The blue and beige were harder as I don't use those colours much. I came across the dotty one which is the backside of a vintage charleston dancers paper. I also found the light blue with beige swirls and was quite proud at how I managed to match them up together.

The image I used is Ching chou kuik's dark sirene from plate 24 and the sentiment is from plate 46. I've never used her before, but knew she was right for this as soon as I saw her. I think it was the fact that her hair was dark that gives the card that extra "darkness" and leaves it more muted than it would be if I had coloured it blue. She is stamped with black ink and then I went over her hair with midnight blue promarker to make her hair agree more with the patterned papers. The rest of her is also coloured with promarkers. I added some glittereffects with a sakura gelly roll to the image, text and butterfly border. That pen is addictive! To make the white parts more yellow on both the image and sentiments I inked them with a distress ink. The different butterflies are made using Martha Stewart punches and the leaves are made using a quickutz die.

One part of the challenge was to use a recycled item so I made a little decoration from a bottlecap that I hammered on to flatten a bit. then glued on a circle from one of the patterned papers, filled with clear dimensional glue and filled with tiny see-through beads.

Challenges used:

Craftycreations - colour, sketch, recycled item
Creative inspirations - something new (all butterfly punches are new and image never used before)
Moving along with the times - birthday and circles
Simon says stamp - time to celebrate (with optional extra glitter)
Stamp challenges - glitter
Totally paper crafts - time to party

Have a cool yule

Here is my last Christmas card I made in 2010. I didn't have the time to show you so I'll start of the new year with it. I wanted to use a Kraftin' Kimmie stamp for a sassy card for my single fashionista friend. I made her a pair of pink angel earrings (that I totally forgot to photograph, duh) I didn't have any Christmas Kraftin' Kimmies so I improvised using Christmaspapers. I've had the papers a while, but the stamp is brand new. I'm very happy with the colouring and the way I cut the circle around her. Makes it look like she's sitting on the edge.

Challenges for this card:

7 kids college fund - anything goes
CES challenges - anything goes
Crafty catz - your fav challenge ( I chose #57 spots and stripes)
Creative craft  - anything goes
I love promarkers - anything goes
Promarker challenge - anything goes
Sketch and stash - sketch #27 turned upside down

Supplies:
Stamp: Kraftin Kimmie, can be bought at: stamp and create
Colour: promarkers
Papers: dovecraft
Other: distress ink, silver pen for the edges, nestabilities for the circles and cornerrounder punch.