I'm So Excited!!!!

I am soooo excited that I had to tell ya all. Recently I posted a card here (Got Carrots!) that I made for a card contest over at Kimmie's Kraftin' Korner. We this afternoon I was checking my google reader, which is how I keep up to date on most of the blogs I read and what is the first thing I see .... but my name and my card I created ..... Turns out I am one of the 2 people who won the sketch section of the card contest!!!!! I don't normally win anything and I only entered for the fun of making the card but of course now I am just soooo excited and there is no-one here to tell ;)

Flashback Friday - Farm Scene!

A couple of weeks ago I posted my back n front tic tac toe game I made a few years back using the back n front cow. So I thought this week I would share with you a fun farm scene I did around the same time using these same stamps and a few others.

Hopefully you can tell by the photo that these little guys have been made 3D! For the cow I stamped a piece of card with a cow spot pattern and then taped it to form a circle and then attached the back & front of the cow body to the ends of the circle. The sheep and pig were easier as I just needed to use the same colored card I was using to create that particular animal.

For the grass base I just stamped one of my fav grass stamps onto a cut out piece of card and colored it.

Recipe:
Stamps: Animals - Kiwi Impressionz; Grass - Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers
Paper: White; Pink
Other: Black Ink

Wedding Transparency Cards

A friend came down today to share some of the transparencies she had purchased recently as the ones I had purchased were slightly thinner so not as sturdy for a card as I would have liked. So this afternoon I set to to make a wedding card that my daughter needs for a wedding she is attending in October ..... yes I like to get things made early!

Basically this card is exactly the same as the Pink Transparency card I made in July, the only difference is the image and the colors. Apparently the colors for the wedding are a beige/brownish color so I decided to stick with white, gold and beige colors for this card. Hopefully my daughter will approve!

Recipe:
Stamps: Precious Moments Wedding Couple - Stampendous; Flourish - Autumn Leaves
Paper: White; Gold; Lustre Metal Antique Paper
Other: Black Ink; White Stazon Ink; Acetate; White Brads; Gold Ribbon

Bronco Buster Rides Again!

As you can see I am still playing with my Bronco Buster & Wanted stamp sets by Stampin' Up ...... I just love playing with these. When I saw what today's sketch challenge was I just had to make another card using this set. I think I might actually hide this one in a minute and give it to my DH for Father's Day which is on Sunday.

For all my friends not living in Australia .... yes we celebrate Father's Day on the first Sunday in September not in June as you all do ....... I have no idea why ....... maybe it was to spread out the spending a little .... esp as Halloween isn't big here and we don't celebrate Thanks Giving at all. Of course I could be way off too ..... who knows!

For this card I used more of my outlaw designer paper by SU, it definitely makes creating this type of card so much easier but of course not essential! I remembered this time to distress all the edges of my card .... I think this set suits the distressed look!

The scallop circle in the lower right side of the card was created using my cricut machine & mini monograms, it was cut at 1 3/4 inches real size on. The star brads were originally a silver color ........ I wanted these to match my brads I used a little better so I colored them with an alcohol ink marker!

I used my paper piercing mat & tool to create 3 rows of paper piercing down the right side of my card. I seem to be using this tool a lot this week!

Recipe:
Stamps: Bronc Buster; Wanted; Rough Texture Wheel - Stampin' Up
Paper: Creamy Caramel; Really Rust; Chocolate Chip; Outlaw Designer Paper - SU; White
Other: Creamy Caramel & Chocolate Chip SU Ink; Circle Punch; Mini Monograms Cricut Cartridge; Paper Piercing Mat & Tool; Brass Brads; Star Brads; Foam Tape; Distress Tool

Beautiful Blossoms

As I didn't have anything urgent to do today, I thought I would play with my new Beautiful Blossoms set from Papertrey Ink that arrived yesterday ...... these are so much fun! I also decided to use the colors for this weeks color challenge over at SCS. The colors this week are: Purely Pomegranate; Pretty In Pink & Old Olive.

For this card I first started by stamping the solid flower all over my square white card using my pink pastel fluid chalk ink pad (I don't have pretty in pink just yet). I then stamped the centres of the flowers with the tartan centre using pomegranate ink and then the leaves using olive pastel fluid chalk. This was layered to purely pomegranate & old olive card.

I created a square pretty in pink card and stamped the baroque flourish in the top left corner of the card . I then adhered my decorated floral piece to the left side of the card. I then created 4 rows of paper piercing down the right and bottom edge of the card. The edges were also sponges using pink pastel ink. I also added the photo corner to the bottom corner .... I just love those photo corners (have ya noticed!)

To finish the card I cut out 3 flowers using my cuttlebug flower die and stamped the same flower I used to decorate my back piece .... 1 in pink pastel and the other 2 in purely pomegranate and then the flower centres to co-ordinate with the flower. These were attached to the top left corner of the flower panel using foam tape. I then stamped "birthday" in black on purely pomegranate card and used my large SU punch to punch it out, trimmed the right edge and attached it to the lower right corner on the flower panel ........ Done!

Recipe:
Stamps: Beautiful Blossoms - Papertrey Ink
Paper: Purely Pomegranate, Pretty In Pink & Old Olive - Stampin' Up; White
Other: Purely Pomegranate SU Ink; Pink Pastel & Olive Pastel Fluid Chalk; Photo Corner Punch; Lge Oval Punch; Flower Cuttlebug Die; Paper Piercing Mat & Tool; 3 Burgundy Micro Brads; Foam Tape

IrRESISTable Wanted

Today's card is for this week's "Try a New Technique" challenge on SCS. The challenge this week is to combine emboss resist & versamark resist to create our cards.


For my card I first stamps the large circle motif all over the gloss card using versamark ink and emboss with clear embossing powder. I then stamped the stars in between the embossed images using versamark ink and then took my brayer and my cappuccino delight kaleidacolor ink pad to color my card. Once I had added the color I then over stamped the swirl to various parts of the brayered card using the darker part of my rainbow ink pad. Unfortunately it is hard to see the stars on this card they are there but most of them are partly hidden .. if you look closely or click on the photo to make it larger you may be able to see them.

I then layered this piece to chocolate chip card, I added the large brads to the right side of the card and then layered it to my creamy caramel card that I had first sponged all around the edges with both creamy caramel & then chocolate chip ink.

I added 3 rows of paper piercing along the bottom edge of the card. I also stamped another swirl at the top right side of the card and then added the photo corner to the top corner.

Recipe: Stamps: Wanted & Bronc Buster - Stampin' Up
Papers: Creamy Caramel & Chocolate Chip - SU; White Gloss; White
Other: Creamy Caramel & Chocolate Chip SU Ink; Versamark Ink; Cappaccino Delight Kaleidacolor Ink Pad; Clear EP; Creative Memories Circle Cutter; Scallop Circle Punch; Large Bronze Brads; micro bronze brads; Photo Corner Punch; Paper Piercing Mat & Tool

Dancing Snowflake!

This card is for the special challenges I do every week with a group of friends over at SCS. This week we had to make our cards using items that were sent to us. These items were:

• the polka dot background paper
• winter charm
• snowflake die cut with white brad (centre of dancing snowflake)
• sheer polka dot ribbon

Other than that we could use anything else we wanted. There was also a second part to this challenge ..... which was that everyone had to send their completed snow cards to ME!!!!!!!! ....... because I have never seen snow ...... now how cool is that!!!!!! I already have one of the cards sitting here and can't wait to see the other 6 in real life!

It also stated I had to send mine to someone who hadn't seen snow ...... well everyone I asked has seen snow so we have now changed this and I will be posting mine off to one of the other challengers ...... it seems fair ..... I have decided who I am sending it to but I am not telling ;)

When I first found out about this challenge I wasn't sure what I would do but after some thought I remembered about this "Winter Sprite" stamp by Stampendous ........ I can't remember buying this so I think someone must have given it to me sometime ..... it seemed a great opportunity to finally use it! When I first started making this card I almost had a disaster already cause I cut the background paper square and then discovered I needed it longer ....... fortunately the leftover piece was a fraction longer so it wasn't a major disaster ....... however I would have liked the card to be a fraction longer ago but oh well ..... I am happy with how it turned out.

I used my snowflake cuttlebug embossing folder to emboss the blue panel and then highlighted the embossed areas using white ink.

Recipe:
Stamps: Winter Sprite - Stampendous
Paper: Bordering Blue & Brocade Blue - SU; White; White polka dot DP - unknown
Other: Weathered Wood Distress Ink; White Brilliance Ink; Winter Charm; Sheer Polka Dot Ribbon; Snowflake Die cut; Blue Brads; Snowflake Cuttlebug Embossing Folder

FS29 Cammie's Baroque

This week's featured stamper on SCS is Carolyn aka Cammie. I am soooooo thrilled that Cammie was chosen this week as she is one of the girls I do the special Monday challenges with every week. Cammie has a lot of fantastic cards in her gallery, I especially like her My Favorite Thing card samples she has been doing recently. However I decided to case one of Cammie's "Belly Band Middle Opening Cards" that I found in her gallery. The one I case you can find here and also the inside here.

I decided to keep with the same stamp set and layout for this card. I also noticed that Cammie had used the new SU designer papers on her card, as I received some of this the other day I was determined to use it on my card I made too. I had to make at least 2 changes so this is what I eventually came up with changing:

• changed the colors
• added the word "Cherish" to the outside of the card
• added an additional layer to the flower medallion
  
• added paper piercing corners to the diamond layer
• changed the brad to a green gem brad
  

And here is the inside of my card ........ nothing different to Cammie's here other than the colors I used.

Recipe:
Stamps: Baroque Motif - Stampin' Up
Paper: River Rock, Always Artichoke & River Rock DP - SU; White
Other: River Rock SU Ink; Dark Moss Fluid Chalk; White Brilliance Ink; White EP; Paper Piercing Mat & Tool; Green Gem Brad

Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge #16

Yes you guessed it, it's Saturday down here and time for another of Beate's Weekend Challenges. Ever since the US catty has been released I have been drooling over cards using the Bronco Buster & Wanted sets ..... well I finally gave in and had to order it myself and it arrived on Thursday ..... so of course I had to use it for this weeks challenge card.

I stamped the cowboy image onto vanilla card using chocolate chip ink and sponged the edges using creamy caramel. I added the paper piercing corners to the lower corners and the star brad to the top right corner .... I also sanded the brad a little to distress it.

The two circles I stamped the medallion onto the artichoke card using chocolate chip and then cut it out using my creative memories circle cutter and layered it to really rust and chocolate chip card. I should have done a little more distressing on some of the layers .... before I even thought about that the card was mostly put together so I didn't want to risk pulling it apart just to distress it ....... I will just have to remember to do this next time.

Recipe:
Stamps: Wanted & Bronc Buster - Stampin' Up
Papers: Outlaw Designer Series Paper - SU; Vanilla, Really Rust, Chocolate Chip & Always Artichoke - SU
Other: Chocolate Chip & Creamy Caramel SU Ink; Paper Piercing Mat & Tool; Creative Memories Circle Cutter; Copper Star Brad; Brown Brads; Distressing Tool; Foam Tape

Christmas in August!

It was time for another VSN pre challenge over at SCS today. Today challenge was Christmas in August ....... we had to create a Christmas card but rather than using traditional colors we could only use fall colors.

This is what I made today, I used the Christmas tree from My Favorite Things "Home for the Holidays" set. I stamped it on really rust and also on some green DP and pieced them together.
The base card I used my snowflake cuttlebug embossing folder to create a quick background and added the 2 layers across the card. The greeting is actually inside the card peeking out through I hole I punched in the front of the card. This was a nice quick one to make!
This photo does make it seem that the top part of the card is darker than the bottom ..... they are the exactly the same piece of card ..... just the way the light & camera picked it up.

Recipe:
Stamps: Home for the Holidays - My Favorite Things; Greeting - Papertrey Ink
Paper: More Mustard, Always Artichoke, Really Rust, Very Vanilla - Stampin' Up; Green DP
Other: Black Ink; Snowflake Cuttlebug Embossing Folder; Olive & Caramel Brads; Word Window Punch; Foam Tape

Oldies but Goodies!

This card is for today's Limited Supply Challenge, this week we had to follow a list of what we could use:

• Choose one or more stamps which haven't been used for a long time
• Choose an old sketch challenge
• Choose an old color challenge
• Choose 1 or 2 embellishments
  
• Use any tools

I decided to use one of my hot air balloons which I haven't used for some time along with the clouds and the verse. For the sketch I wanted one that included a long panel to accommodate my hot air balloon so I used SC111. I had already colored the basket brown so I wanted a color combination that included chocolate chip so I went with CC86 (Chocolate Chip; Pumpkin Pie & Old Olive). I chose eyelets as my embellishments, I do use them nearly enough these days. Tools used included word window punch and photo corner punch.

Recipe:
Stamps: Hot Air Balloon - Darcies; Clouds - Art Impression; Script B/G - Acey Duecy; Verse - alota Rubber Stamps
Paper: Chocolate Chip; Pumpkin Pie & Old Olive - Stampin' Up; White
Other: Black Ink; Chocolate Chip SU Ink; Celeste Blue Impress Ink; Brown Eyelets; Word Window Punch; Photo Corner Punch

Roping in Some Halloween Cheer!

Yes I know it is a little early for a Halloween card, and to be honest with you all we don't celebrate it down here in Australia. Once in a blue moon we might get one or two kids knock on the door for trick or treat so I normally make sure there is something to hand over if this happens ..... but you could count on one hand how many trick or treaters we have had knock on our door in the past couple of years. The retail shops will keep trying to get it going, but I don't think it will ever happen!

For this card I combined two challenges on SCS. As some of you will know I am a hostess for the upcoming Virtual Stamp Night (VSN)which will be taking over at SCS on the 7th - 8th of September, the theme for the weekend is Jump into Fall! ...... it's gonna be a lot of fun! To get everyone in the mood for VSN the hostesses are running a number of pre VSN challenges .... there was one on Tuesday night which I missed due to other things happening ....... but I really did want to still make my card .... the challenge was "Jump Rope", we had to use rope, cord or twine on our card somewhere. The other challenge I used for this card is the Way's to Use it Challenge ...... the challenge this week was to make a halloween card ....... so of course seeing I have these owl stamps I just had to use them for this card. With any VSN card you make you do have a time limit of 45 mins to create your card ...... so of course I kept this one fairly simple!

Recipe:
Stamps: Ollie's Treats & Happy Halloween - Stampendous; Rough Texture Wheel - Stampin' Up
Paper: White; Black; Orange; Pale Violet
Other: Black Ink; Old Paper Distress Ink; Only Orange SU Ink; Orange Eyelets; Rope;

Got Carrots!

Kim over at Kraftin' Kimmie's Korner is holding a card contest, the prize is some of the new High Hopes stamps. As I have some High Hopes stamps I thought it would be fun to play along. There are a number of different challenges we can enter for this contest ...... the one I created this card for was the sketch challenge. Recently I found these cute little carrot buttons which of course I just had to use to embellish this card.

Recipe:
Stamps: High Hopes Stamps; Verse - Karen Foster Snap Stamps
Paper: White; Black; Ballet Blue - SU; Cricut DP - Provo Craft
Other: Black Ink; Black Grosgrain Ribbon; Carrot Button; Word Window Punch; Paper Piercing Mat & Tool

Raks Received

I received a couple of rak cards in the mail this week. The first card above is this fun black & white card from Jimmi of Stampin' & Shoppin' blog. It is always fun when you go to the mail box and discover a card from someone ...... much much nicer then receiving bills .... don't you think!
Here is another card I received in the mail today. This great faux post card is from Deb over at Stampalicious blog.

Thank you both for these great cards and for thinking of me!

Snake in the Grass!

alota Rubber Stamps has recently released some cute animal stamps ........ mine arrived in the mail today so of course it is no big surprise that when the sketch challenge was posted on SCS I decided to use one of these stamps to create my card. I decided upon the snake as I felt it would be about the right size to fit in the centre diamond shape of the card.

So many people these days are coloring their animals blue ..... up until now this has been pretty hard for me to do ...... but look I did it!!!!!!!!! I also found this blue background paper in my stash that also had circles on it which I thought would work ok with the circles on the snake!

Recipe:
Stamps: Snake - alota Rubber Stamps
Paper: Certainly Celery & Barely Banana - SU; Aqua; White; Black; Atomic Turquoise DP - Sandylion
Other: Black Ink; Blue Brads; Foam Tape

Parents to Be!

Today's technique challenge on SCS was to make a Cami Trifold Card. My daughter's best friend is expecting her 1st baby any time now and is having a baby shower soon, so I decided to make my card into a card that my daughter could give to her friend at the shower.

As they do not know whether the baby will be a boy or a girl ........ I went with a neutral color for the card ...... I like this background paper and it goes sooo well with Sage Shadow and the circles in the paper kind of relate to the bubbles in the bath.
After I had made the basic card I had to decide what to use as the greeting, I wanted something to fill the length of the panel if possible ...... I have one of those multi stamps (like the old style date stamps) with 12 different baby related greeting on it, so I decided to use that ........ 2 I put on the front of the card as I thought that was appropriate there and the rest I put on the inside as you can see by the photo above. I had to add the question mark to both the its a girl/its a boy greetings - seeing we don't know as yet! The ribbon was originally white, I colored it with my alcohol marker to get the color I wanted.

Hopefully my daughter and her friend will like it!

Recipe:
Stamps: Baby First - Stampin' Up; Baby Greeting Multi Stamp - EK Success
Paper: Sage Shadow - SU; Phoebe - Basic Grey; White; Black
Other: Black Ink; Scallop Circle Punch; CM Circle Cutter; Word Window Punch - SU; White Gel Pen, Hole Punch; White Grosgrain Ribbon

Happy Californian Cow!

Well it's Monday once again so it time for me to post my special challenge I do with a group of friends on SCS. As our head cheerleader in our group lives in California and she is also a dairy farmer, our challenge was to create a card with Happy Cows (Californian Cows) ....... apparently there are some other cows in the States that are not so happy ......... now I am not saying this is true as what would I know about cows in the USA seeing that I live in Australia ..... I am just saying what I have heard ....... oh and there is something about a commercial too!

Anyway I am hoping this passes as a "Happy Cow" card ....... what more could any cow ask for but a yummy grass cake! To get a nice even looking cow spot, once I had stamped out the cow spots using black ink, I then went back with my black tria marker and colored over them ......... I do this often when I have a solid black image, it takes a little longer to complete the card ........ but in my opinion is well worth the time spent.

Having never seen the commercials in question I thought I would do a search and see if I could find any info on these "Happy Cow" commercials ..... for anyone interested you can see them here.

Recipe: Stamps: Cow - Penny Black; Cow Spot B/G - alota Rubber Stamps; Happy - Papertrey Ink
Papers: Certainly Celery - SU; White; Black
Other: Black Ink; Pink Grosgrain Ribbon; Photo Corner Punch; White Brads; Circle Punches

Hey there Sweetie!

It's featured stamper time again on SCS! This week the featured stamper is SweetieStampin's Melissa aka Mwohlers, I must admit this was a gallery I hadn't really taken much notice of before today, that is the great thing about the featured stamper challenge it makes you become aware of other stampers other than those you already know. While I was browsing Melissa's gallery I came across this card using the pick a petal stamp set. As I recently purchased this set and have only used them a few times I thought this would be a fun card to CASE!

Here are the changes I made:

• changed the colors.
• used a different flourish stamp for the red part of the card
• omitted the brad in the tulip
• changed the verse

Recipe:
Stamps: Pick a Petal, Bodacious, Simply Circles & Small Script - Stampin' Up; Pollen Dust - Fancy Pants
Paper: Real Red & Old Olive - SU; White
Other: Black Ink; Real Red SU Ink; Olive Vivid Ink; White Brads; Foam Tape

Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge #15

It's time for another of Beate's weekend sketch challenges, as you know I always look forward to be able to do Beate's sketch challenges every weekend.

Yesterday I received an order which included Fancy Pant's Pollen Dust Stamp Set, so I was hoping I would be able to incorporate it somehow in Beate's sketch. I knew for sure I wanted to use one of the flourish stamps in that set so went looking for the papers I would use ...... I ended up deciding to use Basic Grey's Infuse papers which includes the pink piece used for the background.

The flourish is stamped at the top of the pink paper using Chocolate Chip SU ink and then layered to the folded chocolate chip card. The other two DP are both layered also onto Choc chip card, the stripe piece attach to the bottom of the card so just a small piece of the pink can be seen below it. The "Birthday wishes" is stamped on the right hand side using black ink. I attached pieces of brown grosgrain ribbon to the floral DP using staples and then layered that to my card as above.

The flower is also from the Pollen Dust set, it was stamped onto white card using blush rose fluid chalk and then the edges of the flower were sponged with chocolate chip ink after the flowers had been cut out. The flower is attached to a piece of white card which I first sponged using blush rose ink and then chocolate chip on the edges. The flower is then attached to the centre of this card using a brown brad.

I added paper piercing to the top right and bottom left hand corners of the flower layer and also to the stripe piece to the left of "Birthday Wishes".

Recipe:
Stamps: Flourish & Flower - Pollen Dust by Fancy Pants; Verse - Papertrey Ink
Paper: Chocolate Chip - SU; White; Infuse DP - Basic Grey
Other: Black Ink; Chocolate Chip SU Ink; Blush Rose Fluid Chalk; Brown Brad; Brown Grosgrain Ribbon; Stapler; Paper Piercing Mat & Tool

Adventure on the High Seas in Fall!

The countdown is on for the next VSN (Virtual Stamp Night) on SCS which is to be held 7th & 8th September. To get everyone in the VSN spirit every week between now and the weekend of VSN the "Autumn Fairies" will be hosting a special pre VSN challenge.

This weeks pre-challenge was "Let's Jump!" and we were to create a wiper card (aka flip card). What does a wiper card have to do with jumping well if you look at the photo below you will see my little wiper piece which kind of "jumps" when you hold the sides of the card and pull it in and out! With any of the VSN challenges you only have 45 mins to create your card ..... which isn't long ......... many of my cards take a lot longer than that to create ..... anyway this one I kept fairly simple to get it made in the time frame.

I just love my new Ollie & Olivia Owl stamps by Stampendous which I got this week .... I have been having lots of fun with them (some you will see at a later date!) I think out of them all this one is my favorite! I added the photo corner to the top right hand side of the image, that I embellished with some black micro brads .... these are soooo tiny .... but sooo fun!

Recipe:
Stamps: Ollie's Pirates & Ahoy Matey - Stampendous; Rough edges wheel - Stampin' Up
Paper: Real Red & Not Quite Navy - SU; White; Black
Other: Black Ink; Prussian Blue Fluid Chalk; Photo Corner Punch; Black Micro Brads; Charm

Flashback Friday - Tic Tac Toe

As much as I love creating cards, it is nice to occasionally create something that isn't a card. This tic tac toe game I created as a gift for a couple of friends for Christmas 2003. The cow stamp I used here is available in both the front and back version of the animal which is just soooo fun cause it gives you a lot more options of what you can do with it. There are also a couple of other animals in this series of stamps which are made by a company in New Zealand called Kiwi-Impressionz.

I thought it would be fun to create a tic tac toe game using the front and the back of the cow as the actual playing pieces rather than using the standard O's & X's. For the game pieces I cut out circles and stamped the front & back of the cow on these. Once all the stamping & coloring were done I laminated the pieces to make them sturdier.
The actual playing board is just squares of card layered onto black card and then white. The hay bale was stamped onto the centre of each square and I also stamped the moo in each corner of the squares. This was also laminated to make it sturdier.

I also wanted a nice way to present this game so I placed it into a ziplock plastic bag and created a topper for the bag. I secured the topper with brads so it was easily removed to get at the game without ruining the topper.


Recipe:
Stamps: Front & Back Cow - Kiwi - Impressionz; Hay & Moo - alota Rubber Stamps; Alphabet Squares - Lucy's Stamps;
Paper: White; Black
Other: Black Ink; Laminate; Black Brads

Playing Card Box Tutorial

A few weeks ago I promised I would do a tutorial on the playing card boxes I have posted to my blog recently. As I had friends over yesterday and we decided to make one of the boxes it was a perfect time to be able to take photos to help explain the construction of these .... they really are very easy to do ..... thanks to my friend Gai for being the model for the majority of the photo's ;)

1. To start you need to select 21 playing cards, keep in mind when you are selecting these what you would like to see around the front of the box this is important. Also some playing cards are better than others ..... older ones may be better ... yesterday when we used new playing cards to make the one for these photos, the playing card did crack a little while bending the cards ..... none of of previous ones have done this. Also look around for different sized playing cards .......... there are soooo many different sizes to pick from .... the ones here are the standard sized card.


2. You now have to separate from the 21 playing cards, 12 that you want to use to make the main section of the box ..... these will be seen ............ 6 of these will be for the inside of the box and the other 6 for the outside (including the base & the lid)

Take 2 cards (one will be the outside image and the other the inside). And place them on top of each other so that they appear in the photo on the left . the back of the playing cards should be facing each other and they cards are in a cross shape.




3. Take the pieces which are on either side of the card and fold them over so they are onto of the card on the top.







4. Now turn the cards over and fold over the pieces that are on the edge over to that card too. As per photo.






5. Pull the pieces apart and then take each fold over piece and slide it into the card as you see on the photo.

Repeat this with the other 10 playing cards, you will then have 6 folded pieces which will make the main portion of your box.



6. Fold all the remaining playing cards in half so they look like this.











7. Now take one of the playing cards you folded in half and slide it down into one of the other playing cards you created using the 2 playing cards. This is how you will join the pieces to make the box.









8. Continue joining the sides of the box first.












9. Slide in 4 of the folded cards to the card that is to be the base of the box. Here you see the base of the box ready to attach to the box sides.










10. Slide all the pieces into the bottom slots around the box .











11. To create the lid, slide one of the folded playing cards to the back of the lid and then slide it into the box as show in the photos below.





















12. Embellish your boxes how you wish. In the box shown here I have used a white gel pen to create dots on the black shapes and a black marker on the red shapes of the card.

If you which to add brads, you might want to work out where you which this to go and then pull that part of the box apart temporarily while you create your hole so the back of the brad is not seen on the inside.




Here are the links to my other box I have created:

Dirty Dare - Playing Card Box


I hope this all makes sense to you all, if not I suggest you read it all through first as the photos on other steps may make it easier to understand the step you are having problems with ...... if you still can't get it .... please let me know and will try and edit the instructions to make it clearer. Enjoy creating your playing card boxes.

Olivia's Blue Flower!

I am a little late doing my sketch challenge card today as I had a couple of friends over. We had a fun day and of course I showed off my new owl stamps, they even help me narrow down my chose of which owl stamps to use for the sketch challenge while they were here .... I think we narrowed it down to 3 different ones ;)

Anyway I also wanted to do the color challenge this week which was to use the colors: Blue Bayou; Sahara Sand and Chocolate Chip ...... this helped me finalise the decision as I wanted to use one that I could use a blue to match the blue bayou .... at first I had thought of coloring the owl blue .......... oh sooooo hard for me .......... but I am actually going to do it some day .... I am, I am! but not this time ;) Anyway as you can see I settled for Olivia's sunflower but of course in my card it isn't a sunflower but a blue flower, hehehehe!

This is a fairly simple card and pretty self explainatory so I won't bore you toooo much with details. The flowers I used on the side of the card were originally white ..... I colored them using the same alcohol marker I used to color the flower on the image, I think I will get more white flowers as then I can just color them whatever color I need at the time ....... I expect will also still buy colored when I find ones I like!

Recipe:
Stamps: Olivia's Sunflower - Stampendous; Flannel Plaid - Stampin' Up; Rice Paper Background - Cornish Heritage Farms
Paper: Blue Bayou, Sahara Sand & Chocolate Chip - SU; White
Other: Black Ink; Prussian Blue Fluid Chalk; Chocolate Chip SU Ink; Paper Piercing Mat & Tool; White Flowers - Imaginisce; Brown Brads

Ollie & Olivia

I am so happy today as my Ollie & Olivia stamps I ordered arrived after a long flight from the US! I just had to have these stamps ....... now didn't I!!!!!!!!!! If you haven't seen these already these stamps are a new release by Stampendous. I first became aware of these stamps on Stamping Caz's blog. Caz had some pre-release stamps as she was making some cards for a magazine, anyway I loved them so had to email her to find out where the stamps came from. Caz then replied and also sent me a copy of all the stamps that were available in the range. My next job was to order them .... at that stage they were not on Stampendous' web site .... so after some thought I contacted Anna from Sassy & Sweet Crafts, who ordered them straight away for me. I can't wait to play with them!

Thanks to all those people who have since emailed, left comments or pm's informing me of these and other owls stamps they have discovered on their travels .......... it is soooo good of you all to be thinking of me and helping me collect some more owl stamps . In the past I haven't used many of my owls stamps all that often as besides myself I only know one other person who is an owl lover (well before I blogged anyway). But it seems owls are becoming "in" at the moment as many companies are bringing out images .... which also means I can use my owls more often!

Say Charge!

Today's card is for this week's "learn a new technique" challenge on SCS ..... the technique used here is a viewmaster card .... you turn the wheel poking out of the left side of the card and the items in the thought bubble change. This was fun to make but you do need to concentrate when you are stamping your images on your wheel .... mine isn't perfect but it will do. I didn't want my card to be stark white so I have distressed it a little using tea dye distress ink.

You need to attach your wheel to your card using a brad so that the wheel can move around freely, I found these cut micro brads the other day while I was shopping so I decided to use one of those for this card as I thought that would be a little harder to see then a normal sized brad. I needed something in the top right corner of the card so had to use my photo corner punch didn't I ;) ...... I love that punch!

Here is a photo of what I put on my wheel ....... I have a feeling this girl will be doing a lot of spending ;) !

Recipe:
Stamps: Girl - Rubber Romance; Thought Bubble - Alias Smith & Rowe; Born to Shop - Stamp It (Aust); Credit Card - CC Rubber Stamps; Shoes & Say Charge - My Favorite Things; If shoe fits - Hampton Arts
Paper: Real Red - SU; Black; White
Other: Black Ink; Tea Dye Distress Ink; Photo Corner Punch; CM Circle Templates; Black Brads; White Micro Brad.

When it's Hot!

I love doing beach scenes so it wasn't a big surprise for me when I decided to do a beach scene for this week's challenge I do with a group of friends on SCS. This week's challenge was to make a *Hot* card ...... how we interpreted this was up to us ...... it could be hot like a sunny summer day, hot like red hot chillie pepper, hot like on fire etc .... I think you get the idea. Of course I decided to go with the hot like a sunny summer day. As it is winter here summer seems such a nice thought ..... I am sure once summer is here I will be wanting cooler weather .... you know how we can be at times ;)

Most of the stamps used in this scene are from High Hopes stamps .... they have some fun stamps. For this scene I started by stamping the little boy first and masking him and then I stamped the beach scene. I then stamped the girl, the little boy and the crab onto a scrap of white card. I cut the girl out and removed her legs (ouch!) and cut the boy out except for his spade. After coloring everything I placed the girl in the water and attach the boy image over the original one using foam tape. The crab I attached to the lower right side of the card and the sun was stamped onto the top right hand corner.

For the verse I used I stamped it onto so saffron card and used my word window punch to punch out just the last two words and attached it to the card just under the boy. I also used my photo corner punch to create a photo corner for the left side of the card.

Recipe:
Stamps: Boy, Girl, Crab & Beach Scene - High Hopes Stamps; Sun - Posh; Verse - Krafty Lady; Texture Cube - Lucy's Stamps
Paper: So Saffron, Ballet Blue & Pumpkin - Stampin' Up; White; Black
Other: Black Ink; Celeste Blue Impress Ink; Marvy Marker #43; Word Window Punch & Photo Corner Punch - SU; Blue Brads; Foam Tape

Orange Butterfly

This card is for this weeks featured stamper who is Jen70 on SCS. I am so pleased Jen is the featured stamper this week as she does a lot for SCS including hosting the limited supply challenge every week and she was the one who started the featured stamper challenge. I have such fun every week participating in this challenge ...... it can be hard deciding what card to case .... but it is fun all the same.

When I was looking through Jen's gallery this afternoon ..... I noticed she had a few cards with a similar layout so I decided that would be the one I would case. You can see Jen's card I used for inspiration here.

Here are the changes I made:

• changed the colors
  
• changed the images
• change the eyelets to brads (I wanted to play with new brads ;) )
• changed the ribbon
  

Recipe:
Stamps: Garden Whimsey - Stampin' Up
Paper: Real Red & Old Olive - SU; White; Orange
Other: Only Orange SU ink; Dark Moss Fluid Chalk; Red Brads; Red Grosgrain Ribbon; Creative Memories Cutting System; Foam Tape

Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge #14

Well it's the weekend again, so it is time for another of Beate's weekend sketch challenges. For this one I decided to use one of my Rubber Romance stamps ...... I don't think I have used this one before, so I thought it was about time I did.

I stamped the image onto my white card and also on to a piece of my DP and cut out the dress & bag and paper pieced it to the image. The edges of all my card layers have all been distressed using my distressing tool .... so easy! I need a piece of ribbon to match the cranberry crisp card so I colored my white grosgrain ribbon with one of my alcohol markers ...... I am sooo happy with how well it matches! I added some chocolate colored brads to to top section of the card .... boy is this color hard to get ..... I have been looking all over the place lately as I have found I have been wanting to use this color more & more and can I find any in a small size .... no ..... fortunately I have a few that I got somewhere mixed with a few other colors but they are almost gone ....... I shall keep searching!

Recipe:
Stamps: Girl - Rubber Romance; Verse - Papertrey Ink
Paper: Cranberry Crisp & Chocolate Chip - SU; White; Floral Crochet Pink - Sandylion
Other: Black Ink; Sepia Whispers Ink; Circle Punches; Paper Piercing tool & Mat; Distressing Tool; White Grosgrain Ribbon; Brown Brads