Lollipop Ladies and crocodiles

Good morning - its a beautiful spring day here - in August!

I am soooooo late for this but have finally got the card finished and up (forgot the washi tape twist first time). On Wednesday I got a case of urgent Spring Fever and just had to clean up my craft area. I am sitting here is a small area of CLEAN, TIDY peacefulness.  Bliss! By Friday, when I woke with a steaming cold, I was not sure what I was actually doing but making cards was not one of them. Finally got the vacuum cleaning done by about 4.30 and everything put back and started to think about this latest Lollipop Ladies challenge. My card has to be up on Saturday morning and I made it by about 1 hour 40 minutes I think!

This is the inspiration photo

The spin challenge is washi tape - here is my take 

Now, I am not actually a big fan of crocodiles, although I must admit these are pretty cute. Even so, to me there is still a slight menacing look about them. After seeing them in the Northern Territory (they actually smell/stink of fish up close at Kakadu and they are so prehistoric to look at; also too many stories out of the NT about them eating tourists and locals at regular intervals for me! Love everything about the NT except them and the bats!

Anyway, I was suffering and running short of time, and I knew I did not have any stamps of crocs. Also my brain was fried, and I found thinking a trial (quiet, all family members out there). I knew that one of the latest magazines had an article on creating a wire croc and other animals - foolishly I tried to do this.  HA! After 30 minutes it hit the bin, and I was searching the www space for a suitable digi!

Found one almost straight away - Paper Shelter had this little duo COLOURED ALREADY! You beauty! Die cut out, didn't wait for the ink to dry before sponging some light blue ink around. Grabbed scraps of the desk and mounted the image; added some Stickles, and some AtYa Spika pen; used some NitWit Pinky Swear papers to mount behind the image; added  a strip of washi tape; and use the SU Sassy Salutations set to create the sentiment, stamped in SU Melon Mambo; and added some bling!

You can see the sparkle here. 

In the middle of construction I had to stop, and we went out to dinner with friends, and off to a show. We have had a local group put on Phantom of the Opera - Wow, it was good; fabulous voices and the whole was at our very lovely Theatre Royal, renowned for its wonderful acoustics.

Anyway, card is completed and up and I am going to enter it into the following challenges:

Sister Act: Anything goes
Aud Sentiment: use any sentiment
CRAFT Challenge: Congratulations

It's a Small World: Gingerloft Challenge

As some of you already know I live on the edge of a river in southern Tasmania, the island state off the southern coast of the island country Australia. There's a lot of water around us! There are some big creatures who swim in this water too (no, I am not talking about me!) and one of them is dolphins.

We get Bottle Nose Dolphins  - you can read about it here!  I know I have taken photo's before of dolphins in the bay - however, I cannot locate them at the moment -  so here is a photo of the bay itself and the view from the front deck looking Eastwood

Looking west - how's that for a rainbow!

You now have seen two of the moods created by the weather.

The river runs at right-angles to us on the west side. 

Why am I telling you all this? Because Gingerloft's newest challenge is called It's a Small World and is a challenge all about create a card or whatever to represent where you come from. 

This is my card:

The background colours are green and gold for Australia  - the green spotted paper was just in my stash, and I don't know who it belongs too, but the yellow card is SU's new colour Summer Starfruit, and the die cut is a Spellbinder's one. The yellow is meant to be the sun! The other two die cuts - Memory Box's swirl (meant to show splash) and the frame from SU's Apothacary Accents.  This frame has been sponged with Momento Summer Sky ink, with a bit of SU Pacific Point on the bottom for the water. I have also used some Stickles on this to give the waves a sparkle. 

The sentiment is from an SU stamp set called Happy Day. The dolphins themselves are Gingerlofts digital image and it is called Two Dolphins. I have printed this out twice and then fussy cut one set out. I covered it with glue and sprinkled it with the new black glitter from SU that is out for Halloween - it gives a beautiful black shimmer! I attached this over the top of the other dolpins with dimensional tabs. The whole is on a  white commercial card blank

So, there you have it - my little bit of the world!

I will enter this in the following challenges:
Challenges4Everyone:  Anything Goes
All That Stickles: The Great Outdoors - stickles on the sea!
Kraftyhands: Anything Goes
MIM: Too cute - what's cuter than dolphins!
Southern Girls: the Warm Fuzzies: dolphins always give me these!

Happy Father's Day!

We celebrate Father's Day on the first of September this year. I know, different date to the rest of you huh! Guess we really must be quite different then..........but we still drink beer, and this fact will be important in a moment!

At Crafting with Dragonflies, we are issuing a challenge this fortnight to create a Dad's Day card or a Male card. Many of us struggle with these and we usually need just as many of these as the other type, so making one will be good for the private stash!

I didn't actually make a card, but I could make a gift card to go my project and use the cute image from Sassy Studio's to do it! They are sponsoring this challenge along with QKR - great prizes to be won!

My project was a gift tag for a bottle, and the image is fitted on the tag to pop up a bit higher and make itself know!

Here is the image from Sassy Studio called Lager PinUp, coloured with the Copics. 

I made my gift tag for a particular type of beer bottle, called a stubby in Australia - for all those who don't know it! This stubby is a James Boag's Draught beer, made in Tasmania. One from the hubby's stash - he's not that happy that I have it but is willing to temporarily loan it to me!

Here is the label turned sideways - the tag fits over the neck of the bottle (cut a circle out with a die cutter) and folded down on the other side, with a space to write a message attached. The tag is made from a strip of black bazzil card cut from a 12 x 12 sheet. The image is popped up from the card, over the top of the sentiment . 

The sentiment is stamped in SU Raspberry Ripple (matches her hair)  and the stamp is from MFT. I fussy cut around it after it was stamped onto some SU Whisper White; the stamp has a distressed look naturally - its not poor stamping! Stamped it four times before I realised that!

I will enter this in the following challenges:
The Cheerful Stamp Pad: Anything Goes
Make it Monday: Anything Goes
Challenges4Everyone: Anything Goes

Painting Class projects

Been to painting class today and then to lunch - very civilised: love being retired!

I "painted" this with watercolours, pen and ink and w/c pencils last week. Thought I would share....

I like my little robin hen!

This one is an exercise and then I accidentally splatted green ink on it, so it is now just an exercise!

This is an exercise in abstract...........

Decoupage and Unstampabelles Challenge

It is the halfway point of the Unstampabelles challenge to create a dress WITHOUT using stamps. I have used the Papermania Art Deco pack to decoupage a dress - a red dress. This pack is full of images I could have used and every now and then I feel guilty I have purchased the set and not made more than two or three items from it. However, it will not go way and I am sure when I need a quick item or my MOJO needs a restart, I will turn to it and make another item (so we crafters try and explain away our various purchases.......)

I hope this will inspire you to have a go at creating a dress in some format - decoupage, folding, origami, stickers, patty cake papers.........they are all there so far! We would love to see it and I am sure you an do much better than me!!

I added a hearts sticker to the card front

I am not very good at decoupage, and so could not work this one out that well - every time I layered I seemed to get the man's face cut off, no matter how I tugged and twisted the layers. I decided eventually that it was meant to be layered as is, so if you notice that his face is not quite right (you will now after reading this) that is why!

You can see that there are at least three layers, and that I had a smaller one layer die cut of the same couple which I used inside the card. The sentiments come from the pack as well as does the background papers. 

The whole is attached to a folded piece of SU black card and front sentiment is layered onto the same before being attached. With the Eiffel Tower in the background and the moon shining between the branches of the tree it is very romantic so it had to be an Anniversary card. 

I will enter this in the following challenges:

Challenges 4 Everybody #27: Always Anything Goes 

Allsorts: Use your new stash! This is about 6 weeks old, I think that counts!

Smooth Sailing with the Lollipop Ladies

Left it to the last day to make a card and had an idea in my head - it looked easy enough, so after lunch I started to make it.  Four frustrating hours later I had made it, the bin was full of bits thrown away and I had run out of time to improve the prototype (my first successful attempt).

The Lollipop Ladies had a challenge this fortnight using Push Pops and and added challenge of adding movement to your item.

There is a prize to be won if we get more than seven entries - so why not put the thinking cap on and have a go!

I went to the Splitcoaststampers. I found the tutorial for the card with the mechanical iris and followed the instructions......and looked at the video.......and read the comments after the video ..........and went back to the instructions ......... and fiddled and fiddled until I got something resembling the eye mechanism.

I used SU card, papers and stamps and very quickly tried to put together the outside of the card - mine is not very good and getting the circles to match the eye was fraught with danger!

Then I wasn't sure about the closure - if I closed it too much the lever didn't work. So I ended up half closing it.  Not sure why we had to cut the half circle out of the corner - wouldn't in the next one. 

Anyway - have a go - your's will be much better than mine!

Blog Hop Comment Winner for CWD

Hi all

Just a quick post to let you know who my choice of winner is for the Crafting with Dragonflies Wedding themed Blog Hop.

To find out other details about winner for this challenge and hop, please go to the CWD blog. My winner is

SARAH who said Sweet and SASSY little card! 

Sarah, please contact me asap for your prize, which is the Kenny K digi that was used on my card on the Wedding Blog Hop post, and was supplied free by Kenny K for both the hop and as a prize.

Thank you Kenny K

Firstly, I will brag a little:

Won a mention at Inkspirational,  and was totally stoked as a result; then go selected in the top 5 for the month! Doubly stoked!! So thank you to the folks at Inkspirational and here is my badge!

I won this for the card to be found here on my blog.

Secondly, it was for a card made for Lollipop Ladies and this challenge (seeing stars) is still running for the next few hours - it needs 7 entries for the prize to be awarded, and is based on the inspirational photo below: be quick and get an entry in!!

How shall I alter this?

Hilde at Crafting with Dragonflies has issued a new challenge - Number #8 can you believe it - and it is to 

ALTER SOMETHING

There are many things that crafters have altered over the years but it is often a box or a bag. It is the joy of taking something that would have been thrown out and making it into something useful that makes us do it. 

I have decided to alter a box I have been saving for a while - a Lancom perfume box - and make a more masculine version of it to hold a (male) friend's birthday present.

Not only pretty but quite strong too

It is a sleeve and a box drawer, lined in a soft gold

Quite big too

I decided to use some silver insulating tape purchased at the hardware store last month. 

I covered the sleeve - with some difficulty - and thought about doing the same to the drawer and reneged on the idea. Instead, I added some silver card to the two ends with the Lancom name, and left the rest red.

I had access to a Kenny K digi called Super Genius, so I printed it off on XPress blending card,  and coloured it up with my Copics! I fussy cut it out and mounted it onto some silver foil which had been embossed with stars, and this is in turn mounted onto some red holograph card, and stuck on the front of the box.

I called my Genius Dr Joe, and used the computer to generate a sentiment to attach. 

I found a lovely silver ball button in my Mum's button box, and glued this to the front of the drawer.

The card it used to put on to the front and the back of the drawer has this pattern along one edge - and under the flash of the camera it shows up quite lovely; the back is just a plain silver card. 

Taken outside in fading light with the flash

Taken outside in fading light without the flash!

I will enter this in the following challenges:

Paperminutes: Presents - mine is a box to hold presents; hope this is OK?

Cards for Men: while this is a card on a box, it is for a male!And it is Metallic!

Crazy Challenge: Anything Goes

Unstampabelles has a new challenge!

The Belles this month have a new and different challenge for you - to create a paper dress!

Now, this is not as easy as it sounds because UNSTAMP-a-Belles is exactly that - NO STAMPS - so you have to create a paper dress somehow without stamping anything.  It is being sponsored by the Sticker Store this month, so I decided to do mine using a sticker.

You know those peel-off outline stickers that come in many colours but I prefer black for these? I have some in a drawer and they have been sitting there for a while - I use some occasionally and pick up a few here and a few there when shopping because they might come in handy........and this one did! The only identification on this one is the number 138.

I carefully and with some difficulty peeled it off and laid it across a piece of champagne sparkly card. I then had to equally carefully cut around the edge without cutting the black sticker or leaving card on the outside - for me, a difficulty!  I coloured the little flower on the dress carefully with my copic pens. Once I had the dress I decided to add a hat!

With these two items in hand, I then had to design a card to suit! I had some red sparkly card out to do the dress with but had decided that the sticker might not stick to it too well, but when I lay the dress onto the red it worked very well - so die cut a heart using my SU die.

Now a sentiment - I went through my box of sticker/rub-on sentiments and found this one!

Thought it would work. Lay the whole onto a piece of co'ordinations grey card which had been embossed with a hearts embossing folder and lightly sanded. Mounted the whole on black card and then onto a grey bazzil card base. Decided it was sparkly enough and left it at that point.

You can see the sparkle better here!

Hope you like it!

I will enter this in the following challenges:
613 Avenue Create: Anything Goes
One Stop Craft Challenge: Keep it Simple
Glitter n Sparkle:  Add some red, yep done that!



I also need to mention this
                                                              

for this card - you can find details here.

                                                              

Bright Sunshine Yellow for Gingerloft!

Yes, that's right - the latest Gingerloft Challenge wants to see some bright sunshine yellow from you all! After all, it's summer somewhere!

My card is using the digi from Tami called Bamboo Frame, and can be found at her digi shop. I coloured it with a mixture of Copics and Prisma Pencils, and really like the intensity of it as a result.

I am not sure if it is meant to be this way or turned around so the stalk goes downward, but this is the way it is! I cut out the image and affixed it to a SU label cut from SU Daffodil Delight card and then embossed with a TH folder. I swiped some TH Distress Ink - Antique Photo - around the edges of this.

Some seam binding (yellowish) and a metal charm with the sentiment - from the stash - was added.

I mounted some yellow dotted paper (SU) with some SU Taken with Teal card and put this behind the label, after also swiping some ink around the edges of the paper.

All this was mounted onto some patterned paper (sorry, no idea where from) and them onto a piece of SU Very Vanilla folded to make the card blank.

This is a card that can be used for either of the genders, and for many multiple reasons. It all depends on what is written inside. A pretty digi and I am please with the mixing of two elements - alcohol ink and Prisma pencils with some Gamasol.

I will enter this in the following challenges:

A Little Bit Crafty:  Summer Sun

Ladybug Crafts: anything Floral

Cards Galore Challenge: A Bingo card - my card fits several times but I will go with flowers, die-cuts, ribbons!