Lollipop Ladies and Boiled Sweets

Well, I am late again for Lollipop Ladies!

Heather swapped with me last week (thanks Heather) and I in my stupor thought it was Saturday for Saturday - and have just discovered it was for Thursday!!!!

My apologies to everyone. I have made my card and will tell you all about it below but first would like to thank all the lovely people in blog land who have sent their condolences on the death of my much loved step-MIL, Marjorie, who passed away on the 11th May in Melbourne. She was in her 100th year and as sharp as a tack but the body just couldn't do any more.  She was willing to go and died peacefully.

Now, my card:

The challenge at Lollipop Ladies is to make a card inspired by this image of BOILED LOLLIES:

The added challenge is to through in curves, if you wish.

Now, it astounds me that people do not enter these challenges, as they are easy to do, and have great prizes attached.  At the moment there is only one entry - closing on Wednesday morning - and there is a $10 gift voucher up for grabs at the lovely Annabelle Stamps, courtesy of Andrea. That prize unfortunately will only be able to be won if at least seven entries are put in.

Why not have a go! 

Here is my take on the photo of the boiled sweets  - memories of jawbreaking and teeth cracking and lots of sugary drool - and I have added a curve! I remembered I had a sentiment that mentions the word curves, and after searching for a few moments I found it - it's an Inkadinkadoo stamp. ! It related to baseball, and I had just got a Sparkle stamp of Oliver playing baseball (just 'cause my 7 yr old grandson has been playing this does not mean I purchased that stamp for him.......oh, OK I did......but don't tell him......he's now playing hockey!).

I also knew I had a stamp with circles on it and a new Kalidescope stamp pad with lots of lovely colours..........purchased at Paperific! I have had the circle stamp for years (by Judkins) and so I stamped a sheet of background.  Good thing too as I stuffed my first card up and had to remake the base and background! 

I coloured up Oliver with Copics and added some to the sentiment which has been die cut out with a new Spellbinders die (another Paperific purchase). The background paper inside the card has been in the stash for ages as was the card I mounted the images on, but the base card is SU Gumball Green.  

The sentiment has been smooched over with TH Salty Ocean, and the reason it is not sitting on a better spot is that I had to cover up a small mistake! The card front is shorter than the back and there is space to put a white block to write the personal greeting there - it won't show when the card is closed. 

I will enter this in the following challenges:

Charisma Cardz: Bring on Summer

Southern Girls: Lots of spotty stuff here, including the dots around the boy in Copic pen!

For Your Inspiration: blue skies, yellow and green - colours match!

Playdate Cafe: same colours!

Mothers Day and Dragonflies

Welcome to our second challenge with

 Crafting with Dragonflies 

around the theme of 

Mothers

In this challenge we want to see scrapbook layouts - no cards!

To make this more enticing our lovely sponsor Bugaboo is offering seven (7) of their digi images of your choice as the prize!

We had a great challenge last time and It was so pleasing to see people join in the fun.  Just one thing though,  if you enter please follow the rules- no backlinking, and you project must follow the theme.

 I have not scrapped for a long time, and when last was doing it I was trying to scrap travel albums. So, this was a bit of a challenge for me as well! I chose to scrap a photo of my husband and his step-mother on the occasion of her 99th birthday on Christmas Eve 2012. She is sitting on her favourite chair in her unit at The Lodge, where she was in assisted living. We only got to see her about twice a year but spoke at least every week if not more on the phone and I tended to occasionally write to her as well, as she loved getting a letter!

As I write this, Marj has passed away. She died peacefully on Saturday evening in her 99th year as her kidneys finally gave up and her heart. We miss her greatly already.

Sorry about the photography - I am not use to photographing layouts! 

This photo was printed off on my printer and is not a commercial print. I used a Twiddlybits chipboard frame, and the papers are from Stampin' Up. Some scraps of lace and red trim, some stickers and some mounting in SU card were used from my stash.

,

The chipboard LOVE comes from Typo as does the heart, and the sentiment is from Bugaboo, coloured up with Copics and Distress inks.  The stepmother sentiment is from WMS. 

Sad news

Just to let everyone know that my lovely mother-in-law passed away on Saturday evening. I will probably not blog for a few days as there is a bit to sort out and I will be a bit busy.

Update for Unstampabelles

Well, for those of you who have peeped in here over recent times, you would have noticed that things were a little haywire. Hubby and I went overseas for two weeks - we took John's car and drove to Devonport, caught the ferry across Bass Strait to Melbourne to visit family and then drove to Canberra to visit other family, and returned to Melbourne in a big zigzag across southern NSW and northern Victoria; there were good times and some not so good times - John's Mum has failing kidneys and is really not very well at all. We will lose her soon and it was hard to say goodbye last Tuesday knowing that this might be the last time we did see her.

Before we went I had frantically crafted to meet my obligations with my lovely teams, and scheduled my posts with Blogger. First one was fine but after that everything went west..........including my post for Unstampabelles which went a week early!!! Aaaagh! You can read it here!

However, here it is all over again.

This card is for my nephew in Melbourne, who turns 50 today. Happy Birthday Andrew. 

Our Sponsor this month is:-

Beth at 'Huggies Crafts'

Beth is one of our very own Design Team members and also an Independent Stampin Up Demonstrator.  Beth has kindly donated this months prize of  - 

DSP paper pack ‘Be of Good Cheer’; Jewels Basic Pearls; Jewels basic Rhinestones and a pack of Dimensionals.

I will now enter this in the following challenges:

Challenges 4 Everybody: #19 Anything Goes

The Ribbon Girl Blog: Use a button (my Grandmothers) and must have ribbon - black ribbon

Delicious Doodles: for the Boys

Lilac and Lace for Gingerloft

Today the Gingerloft DT are showcasing their cards made with the theme "Lilac and Lace" and a digi from the Gingerloft store! The results are amazing as we are all so different. Why not go take a look! I am sure you all have some lilac paper and/or card and some lace...........................so, why not have a go at this challenge!

Here is my effort: I used the digi called French Starlight.  I printed it off on X-Press card after enlarging it slightly  I then coloured it up using the trust Copics, and die-cut it from the card using a Spellbinders circle with stars die.

It looks so good!

 I layered it up onto some purple card I had in stash which I had embossed with a Spellbinders M-Bossabilities - Ornamental Iron, trimmed to fit. I then layered some more using one of the Firefly Collection papers from Prima.  

The lace is from Ireland and comes from Waltzing Mouse and the lilac lace trim is from the stash. The flowers are from Bizzy Bec's store - beautiful velvet! The bling is from Annabelles Stamps. The card base is folded Bazzil. 

Taken inside - it's dark and raining outside! Tried to set up a makeship light box - two different tones but the top one is closer to true colour. 

This is too blue. 

I will enter this in the following challenges:

Catch the Bug: Anything Goes

Our Creative Corner: Anything Goes

The Sweet Stop: My take on their Sketch 

Just Chillin' for the Lollipop Ladies

Hi everyone - today I have made a card for the Lollipop Ladies Challenge #68 . I was so pleased to see people had entered our last challenge and had a go - it would be good to see the same happening again as we have a great prize!

The photo is of the sour cola bottles lollies and the twist is to use Glitter!

Well, I've seen 'em, but never been tempted!

So my take on this challenge is a little more twisted than usual.  I thought and thought about what I could do for these cola lollies but the only thing that came into my mind was the old-fashioned coke bottle.................... segueing into the world of old fashion I add the colours of brown and fawn (male colours in  my mind).  Then LOTV sent me my  latest order of one of their little sketch pads of Vintage Boys and Voila! I had it!

Taken with flash on to show the sparkle

I took a sketch and coloured it up in Copic colours of fawns, browns and greys - as little like the sweeties.  I then covered the image in Zig Glue using a pen, and carefully dusted it with fine glitter, patting it down and softly polishing it off with a tissue to get a lovely raised 3D effect! That's for the twist of sparkle!

I then die cut the image using the SU dies and then tried to cut down the net size up as it was a bit too big around the edge I thought. So, that die is cut by hand.

I decided to use the sketch from A die for a Sketch's Challenge #11, and so I used the papers from Glitz - Happy Travels and turned one piece of the stripes so they were not both going in the same direction. I die cut a piece of SU card using a die from Bittsy Banners and stamped it with Momento brown ink with a sentiment from S2G's.

I added the three buttons from SU - I had played around with brads and buttons but the green flowers seemed right so they stayed!

Now, it's time for you peeps out there to have a go - last challenge had nine entries! Wow! Let's see how many of you can come up with a card for this challenge and the chance to win a prize as well! So far there are no entries - if you enter and get your friends to enter - you have a great chance to win!

Guest DT spots are able to be won each fortnight

and our sponsor this fortnight is: Mad for Markers*

(thanks to Sammi).

A choice of 3 of her M4M digi stamps.

* Prize will only be offered if 7 or more entries partake in the challenge.

I will enter this in the following:

A Die for a Sketch: following the sketch (missed linking!)

Lia Stampz: Friendship

Moving with the Times: One for the boys

CHALLENGE #1 FOR DRAGONFLIES

Today is the first challenge for the new Challenge blog at 

Crafting with Dragonflies 

The challenge is to create a card with a dragonfly as the main or focal image.

Challenge #1

Card with a Dragonfly Image (stamped or digi, but must have an image as the focus)

Now if you don't have a dragonfly image you are most welcome to use the freebie on the challenge website (here), but you don't have to.
(right click you mouse, click save as choose where on you computer you want to save it, done)

Our very generous sponsors for our very first challenge are:

Eureka Stamps First Prize :
Magnolia Tilda stamp 
5 Digis : Winners choice



 Then there will be 3 runners up
Sassy Studio Designs 4 Digis : Winners choice
 

Crafts and Me : 3 Digi Stamps

Emerald Fairy: 2 Digi Stamps

That should get your creative juices flowing!

I took the digi image Hilde offered us and printed it off onto X-Press blending card. I then carefully outlined all the bits with a Versamark ink pen - yes, they exist and mine is a Zig. I also have an SU one but it's tip is fatter so the lines were thicker and I didn't want them too thick so used the Zig. I did use the SU one when it came to the tail. 

I embossed the image with Malachite embossing powder (Fat Cats has it) and it gives a beautiful green/gold sparkle. I began to colour up the dragonfly by painting the image with my SU Craft White ink.  I did thin this a little with water but you can just paint it on as is. Then WAIT FOR IT TO DRY! A heat gun helps a bit but not too much as you might overcook the embossing. 

I selected my colours to begin colouring the image, and using both the water pen and the blender pen (I think I preferred the water brush), I added colour to the image. I just picked the ink up from the pad directly.

These are the colours I used

Then I just put a card together.  I used the SU sentiment from a new set called Pursuit of Happiness - I love this saying. I stamped the sentiment with Momento Tuxedo Black ink onto a piece of SU Whisper White that had been treated to TH Distress inks - it has a lovely soft shimmer.  I added a small charm to the top after I had die cut the sentiment using Spellbinders Medallion 2 to die cut it out. 

I chose the papers from Prima's Firefly collection 6 x 6 stack (so pretty and soft) and added some ribbon bits, a die cut vine, some flowers (from Bizzy Becs) and the dragonfly.  My card base is SU Wisteria Wonder and the bling is from Annabelle Stamps. 

I will enter this in the following challenges:

Celebrate the Occasion:  Anything Goes

Die Cutting Diva's:  Anything Goes

Paper Nest Dolls: Embossing - the dragonfly is embossed

Southern Girls Challenge:  use a quote (say that again)