Bonfire Brights

I'm a bit nervous about the challenge over at Sarah Hurley this month as it's my first time in charge! I picked the theme Bonfire Brights because I love all the bright colours of bonfire night.

I made an ATC using Sarah's Journaled365 kit. This is my go to kit as it is so versatile and I can always find new things to do with it! The sentiment is from Sarah's Stars Stamp kit which has lots of lovely sentiments.

Please pop along and have a look at the Design Team's inspiring makes and good luck- I can't wait to see all the bright makes!Oh and please make sure you all stay safe on Bonfire Night and follow the firework code.

Halloween!

It's getting close-yes Trick or Treat is nearly here and I can never resist joining in the Halloween fun!
I don't get to make many cards for Halloween but I really enjoy all the pumpkins,skulls and general spookiness of it all!

Imagine how thrilled I was to see the new Sarah Hurley digi-kit 31 Spook Street  There's so much for us Halloween addicts to try! 

I made this card using the backing papers and ready coloured digi images. Couldn't resist adding a few pumpkins to my ukulele too! 

Nip over to Sarah's Challenge Blog and have a look at the Halloween challenge. We can't wait to see all your spooky makes!!

Texture and dimension

The new challenge over at Sarah Hurley's blog is Texture and Dimension. What better excuse could there be for getting messy!

I recently treated myself to one of Sarah's Day Books and have to say it's one of the best things I've ever bought. It's A5 size with about 20 pages of silky paper in a variety of backgrounds so there is a page ready to use anytime, without worrying about the background paper. Love it!

I used my favourite stamp from Wish Upon a Star set with some journaling cards and a small chevron bag mixed and matched from some of  my A Few of My Favourite Things monthly kits. The sentiments are from Star stamp set. The plan is to use the chevron bag to put a small journaling card in when I've written something appropriate.

I stencilled some gesso chevrons using Sarah's chevron stencil and mixed in some liquid pearl. Of course I didn't know when to stop and ruined the girl's dress when the sparkly Mod Podge I put on made the promarker run but let's just say that's the effect I was going for!

Hello!

Oh my where's the time gone?

I'm late again. I spent most of last month running around like a zombie getting son ready to go away on holiday, dreaming of all the time I'd have while he's away.

Now he's away and I really don't know what to do with myself- it's quite an odd feeling just hanging there and waiting for him to return. Crafting mojo's gone and chocolate intake's on the up and up!

I made this card for Sarah Hurley's latest challenge Pink Sparkles using her Journaled365 range for the backing paper which I sprayed with mica mist. The embellishments are all from her latest monthly kit, A Few of my Favourite Things, which I recommend to anyone and everyone!There's so much choice over in Sarah's shop and the range is expanding so fast at the moment I just know there's something for everyone!
Zig-zag ribbon is a scrap I found hiding in a drawer and rescued!

There's still time to enter so please bob along and play!

Friends

A page from a journal on the circle journal I'm on over on UKScrappers. The background's coloured with Aquatone pencils and I decided to give my Stampotique girls a day out! The phrase is one of my favourites and reflects my weekly latte sessions with the girls from work!

I really enjoyed doing this and made a note to self - Journal more! 

Happy Birthday Sarah!

Happy Birthday Sarah! I hope you have a fabulous day and are thoroughly pampered and spoilt as a girl should be on her birthday! You deserve it after all your hard work and this little hop is to celebrate your birthday and to wish you loads more success in the future x 

You should have come here from Lisa and Candice and now it's on to Nicole. Enjoy the journey and thank you so much for having me on your DT! 

For anyone reading this and wondering what's going on, this is our Sarah Hurley Blog Hop for Sarah on her birthday and I'd love for you to join in and play along!

A bit of Gold and a Blog Hop!

I've been neglecting my blog lately-too much running around and not enough crafting time but I really hope this is me getting back on track again!

It's all gone golden over at Sarah Hurley's Challenge Blog. We want to see glitter,gold and sparkly twinkly things! I have started a few things but nothing's been turning out as I wanted so I've made an ATC (staying safe in my comfort zone). It's a decorative ATC for hanging on my wall and I used paper from Bookworm and I Love Paris with Wish Upon a Star Girl stamps (am loving these new stamps!)

Please come along and join us-can't wait to see the sparkle!

I'm linking this over at Handmade Monday-come along and join this fabulous community of crafters.

And now for the blog hop!

I love a blog hop. What better way to get around blogland and discover blogs and crafters you've never seen before.

Elaine, my fellow design team member at Sarah Hurley is relaunching her All Crafts Challenge at Sparkling Black Rose-Craft My Life and I'm pleased to be a part of her relaunch blog hop.

If you're on the blog hop trail you'll have arrived here via the fabulous Jaine's blog and her gorgeous notebook.. Next on the trail is Natalie so please pop along and see her fab layout.

I hope you have fun along the way and good luck!

Shades of Blue

It's exciting times over at Sarah Hurley. Not only is it time for a new challenge but Look Book Volume 3 is out and is exploding with lots of crafting inspiration-more of that later!

The challenge theme is Shades of Blue which straight away made me think of Sarah's I Love Paris kit (I'm so predictable!). My DT make is a fold out ATC book using paper,digi-stamp and embellishments from the kit. It's going to be part of a birthday present for a friend who loves Paris as much as I do.

Front of book

Folded out

Casually open!

I think this will make a nice alternative to a birthday card!

Now...the Look Book!

You can find the Look Book here on Sarah's blog. It's crammed pack of some fantastic crafting using a variety of Sarah's products and is a fabulous source of inspiration. Unfortunately I was ill (don't ask!) and didn't get my things finished in time but if I make a start now, I'll be more than ready for the next!

April Showers

Well the brief 'sunny' spell didn't last long and now we have rain again-which is good for us as the latest challenge theme over at ATCs with Attitude is April Showers!

Here's my ATC for the design team.

Come along and join us in our celebration of the good old English tradition  of rain. I'm just hoping that one the weather bucks up my mojo comes back from whichever sunny corner of the globe it's hiding in!

Sparkle!

Here I am late again and desperately searching for my mojo at the moment! I think it all ties in with this miserable winter weather. It's been anything but sparkly recently but we're asking for sparkly creations over at ATCs with Attitude.

I'm lucky to have the fabulous My Fair lady image by Sassy Studio Designs to work with. I had the best time colouring her and deciding on the right kind of sparkle for her! The lucky winner of this fortnight's challenge gets to chose four digi-images from Sassy.

I'm hoping that it's just my mojo that's gone walkies and we get to see some fabulous sparkly entries. I'm linking over at Handmade Monday because I know the wonderful crafters over there will inspire me to get a move on and get crafting!

The new challenge is up at Sarah Hurley - it's sponsored by Letraset and is all about character! We're looking forward to seeing all sorts of different characters, human, animal...vegetable?!

I made a thank you card using an image and papers from The Secret Rose Garden.

I really need to work on my colouring skills but I enjoy it and isn't that what counts?! Come along and join in-look forward to seeing some amazing characters.

Away with the Bunnies!

Oh my! I'm a week late with this post. Sometimes 'real' life has a habit of getting in the way doesn't it?

The latest challenge at ATCs with Attitude is all about Easter. I used an image from Delicious Doodles coloured and stuck to an embossed background. Strange to be making Spring images with all this cold and snow around!

Please come along and join us but remember if you do-ATCs are as addictive as Easter eggs!

The Secret Rose Garden

I'm a bit late with this post due to disappearing laptop chargers-blame the teens!
Last week was the launch of Sarah Hurley and Phill Martin's Secret Rose Garden.

It's a fabulous collection of summer garden papers, digi-stamps, embellishments and is such fun to work with. I had time for a little play for the launch. And - for us stampers, there are co-ordinating clear stamps. Fabulous!

Note book

Card

Card

Easel ATC-front

Inside 

Easel ATC

You can find details of the whole Secret Rose Garden collection here. See you there!

Mothers' Day-All Sewn Up

Mothers' Day! Happens every year but still manages to catch me off guard. This year I had the ideal kit to make my mum's card with. As my mum's very into sewing I decided to use Sarah Hurley's new digi/hybrid kit, All Sewn Up. It's perfect for any sewing themes and has papers, embellishments and ...this is so exciting...now has matching sets of clear stamps for the stampers amongst us!

I'm not a big user of sketches for cards but came across this in a random internet visit the other day and liked it so gave it a go. I found it at Random Acts of Creativity.
I'm linking this over at Handmade Monday.Please pop over and take a look at the fabulous crafters over there.

ATC-Flower Power!

It's all about flowers over at ATCs with Attitudes to get us in the mood for Spring! (Let's ignore the forecast for snow). 
I've made my ATC with an image from Bugaboo called Daisy Girl. Isn't she sweet?! The background's a bit of a mish mash with Glimmer Mist and text added along with a few flourishes. I did add quite a lot of gloss to add a bit of shine and texture but you can't see it in the photo as usual.

I made an extra ATC from an image I had from Beccy's Place called Waterlily Fairy. The background's Glimmer Mist again (I think I'm addicted!) with gold embossed flourishes.

I made both of these in the supportive Twitter environment of #CreativesUnite, a group of crafty people who dedicate a couple of hours on a Thursday evening to crafting. It was my fist time crafting and tweeting and I intend to keep going-it's great to have an excuse to do nothing but craft for two hours! Come along and join in-I recommend it as stress therapy! If you click the link in my sidebar it'll take you to Miss Beatrix's blog and all the details of how to join the group.

Altered Magnet

There's a new challenge up at Sarah Hurley's Challenge Blog. The theme is to recycle, repurpose or alter something in some way. How can anyone resist that!

I found an old magnet hanging around in a drawer and decided to do something with it.Sarah's new kit My Favourite Things had just arrived and I couldn't resist using the fabulous papers.

I took the glass out of the camera and replaced it with this gorgeous heart paper, made some matching flowers and added a bit of glitter. The heart's held in place by the pink thread and the wooden crosses/kisses were glued down onto the wood paper frame.Note to self-next time keep fingers away from the hot glue gun!

Please come along and join us-I can't wait to see all the fabulous makes.

I'm linking this over at Handmade Monday.Come along and join this fabulous crafting community.

ATC-Night on the Town

We've had a blip over at ATCs with Attitude which left the blog down for a few days. I'm happy to say it's now up and running with a new challenge Favourite Colours.
My favourite 'favourites' are orange and purple which I seldom get to use together. Most of the time I find myself using purples and blues with a bit of silver thrown in. For this ATC I chose a digi image from Smeared Ink. The background's Cosmic Shimmer paint with an embossed Eiffel Tower.

We've changed the challenge and it's back to ATCs only. So come along and join in. Be warned- ATCs are very addictive- but you could win some fab images to use when you make them!

I'm entering this in the Creative Craft World Mini Challenge which is something small-perfect!

Just a Note

It's been a long time since I went over to the Less Is More blog but I ended up there by chance today and felt compelled to join in again! 

The challenge this week is a one layer card with some reference to music. I chose one of my Art Journey stamps that has music as part of the background and stamped part of the image directly on the card before colouring. Yes,good old Promarkers again! Then I added the sentiment and a bit of ribbon.

While I was taking the photo, I got a lecture off son about taking my crafting too seriously! 'Seriously Mum chill out! This is how the picture should be.' Out came the tongue as I tried not to panic about it getting too near the card! 

Then when I rescued the card from the tongue attack, I dropped it and smudged the edges so ended up trimming it and sticking it on another card.

So the end result is not what I started out with but I blame the tongue! I'm linking this over at Handmade Monday as I've been absent from there for too long and need to get back in the swing. 

I'm also entering it over at Less Is More (the pre-tongue version of course!)

Love!

First of all I'd just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who joined in our blog hop last week and made it such a success. It was brilliant to see your comments and visit your blogs. Sarah has posted the winners on her blog so hop over and check it out-fingers crossed!

Love! It's that soppy time of year when hearts are all around us and we just can't get away from it! Yes, I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's Day but I had such a cute image to work with for my design team ATC over at ATCs with Attitude I couldn't resist!  

The image is from When the Scrap hits the Fun and is called Mary Loves. I made a background out of corregated card and vellum and added some hearts before adding the coloured image. The challenge is up for the next fortnight so please pop along and have a play. The theme? Well, Be My Valentine of course!

I'm entering this over at Cute Card Thursday and  The Crafter's Cafe challenge blogs.
I'm also entering this week's challenge at Wicked Wednesday ATC Blog and Bunny Zoe's Challenge.

Blog Hop Time!

Hello and welcome to our Sarah Hurley Design Team Blog Hop.

You should have arrived here via Jess's fabulous blog Jessicards

Sarah's just launched her new web site Sarah Hurley Designs where you can see all of her products in one place and a new monthly kit! There are so many it's hard to choose a favourite and I've got to say my favourite changes week to week! 

We'd like to know what your favourite is.Leave a comment here or on Sarah's Facebook telling us what is it and you could win it-and a £10 voucher to use in the shop! There are three chances to win so the more comments you leave, the more chances you've got.Fabulous!

At the moment I'm loving her Curio Digi/Hybrid kit-fabulous papers,embellishments and images and I love printing them off and decorating things with this kit.

For Sarah's latest Look Book I made a tag using the Curio kit. I printed off some text paper and embellishments and decorated the tag then edged in distress ink.

 The little bottle and star are from Sarah's ephemera kits-

and isn't that moustache paper clip fabulous!

I hope you've enjoyed hopping around our blogs and have discovered some new favourites along the way.If you landed here and need directions to the other blogs in the hop please head over to Sarah's blog.

Good luck in the prize draws! I hope you've found something to inspire you - please drop by and join in this month's challenge Anything but a Card. 

Anything but a Card!

There's a lot going on over at Sarah Hurley this week. Not only is it time for a new challenge but the Design Team is having a blog hop.How exciting!

The challenge this month is Anything but a Card. I chose to make a mini book using Sarah's Expedition Digi/Hybrid Kit. I'm an avid armchair traveller and there's nothing I like more than planning trips I'll never get to make!

The mini book started out as a piece of 12 by 12 paper and I decorated it using papers and images from the kit with some embellishments from Sarah's craft ephemera kits (well worth a checking out!). The travel quotes were printed out and edged with promarker. The globe on the front of the book's from Back to School.

I've put a few tags in to add little photos or write a few words if I want to later.

A fold out page for a little extra space (or if I want to hide something!)  

Extra ticket,picture card and the fab moustache from the ephemera kit.

Please come along and join in the challenge and while you're there why not join in the blog hop-there are some great prizes up for grabs. The hop starts tomorrow at 10am-can't wait to see you all there!

ATC-Passion

It's all flourishes over at Fun with ATCs for this latest challenge. I decided to use one of my new stamps from the fabulous Viva Las Vegas stamps(link in sidebar) which arrived the day before! The background is an old scrap of paper I found lying around that I think might have been made by swishing the paper in Distress Ink reinker (but my memory's not what it was!). I stamped the image and added the flourishes in sparkling silver embossing powder-perfect bling.  

I'm entering this over at Fun with ATCs.

Tomorrow is a big day-it's the Sarah Hurley Design Team Blog Hop. Please pop by and join in.Sarah has some fabulous stuff to give away!

ATC-Teacher's Pet

There's a new challenge over at ATCs with Attitude. It's all about ATCs and we're so lucky to have the fabulous Hels Sheridan as our guest designer. A year ago I was lucky enough to win a tag in Hels' blog giveaway and her work is even more stunning in the flesh!

The theme is Ribbons and Lace and I had a lovely image to work with. It's Academic Adel from CDee Designs and I really enjoyed colouring her.(Promarkers again-I just find myself coming back to them time and time again!) As soon as I saw her, I knew exactly what background I was going to use. Sarah Hurley has a fabulous digi kit called Back to School. Perfect!

I'm entering this ATC in the Anything Goes challenge over at I Love Promarkers.

ATC-Party

Fun With ATCs is celebrating its 3rd anniversary this week. It seems a bit odd to be making an ATC for this seeing as I only just found them last week but I couldn't resist!

I coloured the card with some distress ink and stamped the background from a set of Inkadinkado stamps I've had for ages. Then I embossed the guitar with glittery black powder which as usual doesn't show that well on the photo. The sentiment is held in place by a star stud.
I'm entering this in the Celebration challenge at Fun With ATCs. Come and have a look-there's a blog hop to join too!

ATC- Believe

A new challenge is up over at ATCs with Attitude. It's an Add a Tag/Sentiment theme but it's also Anything Goes so plenty of scope! There are some lovely digi-images up for grabs for the winners so well worth a try.

For my ATC I've used a gorgeous digi frame from Meljen's Designs. I printed it out on acetate (on a whim-never tried it before but will definitely be doing it again!) and then stamped an image and coloured it with promarkers. It's backed by a piece of lilac vellum with a bit of glitter too but it doesn't show up very well. To tie in with the challenge I added a sentiment and a little star embellishment.

I really enjoyed making this out of acetate and as I have lots of different coloured vellum I can see me making a set!

I'm entering this in Meljen's Challenge and Fun with ATCs Challenge Blog. 

I've just had a lovely comment from Sue at Creative Craft World telling me about the Mini Challenge so I'm going to enter this over there too.

New Year Older Me!

Happy New Year!

I can't believe 2012 came and went so quickly. It's been difficult at times,challenging and stressful but a great year nonetheless! A lot of things happened but mainly I'll remember it as the year I turned 50-and with it developed a more confident me!As a woman of a certain age I think I'm entitled to wear what I want,say what I think and do things I want to without owing an explanation to anyone!

Resolutions-well they went by the by of course but one thing I did achieve was my dream of joining a design team. What started as a three month guest spot with Sarah Hurley turned into a permanent place and I'm so glad I got to  stay. I love the kits, there's something for everyone and it's really opened my eyes to a world of  digi/hybrid crafting.

This month's challenge over on Sarah's Challenge Blog is all about celebration. A new year, a birthday or anything else you want to celebrate! I made a birthday card for my friend who's mad about Paris using the fabulous I Love Paris kit. There's some gorgeous papers and embellishments-I love it!

Come along and join in the celebrations!

I'm entering this in the Cute Card Thursday challenge. I just came across this and as it's Thursday,the challenge title is New and the I Love Paris kit's new,well why not play along?!
I'm also playing along at The Crafter's Cafe and the Cards Galore challenges.