Create a Smile Cards: January 2017

Sunday, 15 January 2017

You're Lovely

So how's you're weekend gone? Have you been busy and not had a minute to sit down or have you spent it relaxing and crafting? I live a ground hog day most days with my days spent either crafting, walking the dogs or just hanging out and cuddling my dogs. I have 3 labrador's who are our children and we couldn't bear to live without a single one of them although they all have their own moments!

Leah is a yellow lab, aged 8 and full pedigree. Next is Ember who is a labrador cross bloodhound. She's black and aged 3. Finally we have the mad baby. He's called Rollo and is a labrador cross springer spaniel. He's only 18 months old and is a beautiful liver colour. But he's a complete nutter and he's really got springy legs as he jumps at the front door and nearly reaches the top!

I'll try and get a photo of them tomorrow but I'm guessing it'll be single shots unless they're all asleep.

So onto the card. Not my usual card but it was my first attempt at using my zig clean color real brush markers that I got for Christmas off my family. I used Arches cold pressed watercolour paper after watching loads of video's to see what is the best paper to use with the zigs. I think this paper works great with the zigs and found it easy to blend the colours. I heat embossed the flowers by Paper smooches in white embossing powder. The sentiment is from the same stamp set and is heat embossed also.

These are the challenges I wish to enter:

Case This Sketch - using the sketch below

Penny Black Challenge Blog -- Anything Goes

Saturday, 14 January 2017

A poorly teddy for The Seven Hills Challenge Blog

I'm trying to build up my stash of cards for friends and family to pick from and include as wide a variety of occasions as poss. And so with that said here is a very poorly teddy from Stamping Bella's stuffies line. I love this range of stuffed animals and have quite a few but obviously not enough. Because we can never have enough can we?

The super cute bear has been coloured with either my polychromos pencils or my prismacolor pencils, I can't remember which. I'm sorry.

The heart border, cut in mirri card, is by Mama Elephant and the Get Well die is by Paper Smooches.

I'm afraid I don't know the make of die used to frame the bear as it came from a friend.

The inside of the hearts of the frame have been coloured with spectrum noir sparkle pen for some added shimmer. The get well is coated with glossy accents and sprinkled with Tonic ultra fine glitter.

I've followed along with the sketch that has been provided by Seven Hills Crafts Blog. I love a good sketch, especially one that leans towards the clean and simple style as I'm not one for adding lots and lots of embellishments and die cuts. Here's the sketch.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be back again with another card but I suppose I shouldn't temp fate should I!??!??!

Craft hugs

H xx

Friday, 13 January 2017

Anything Goes at Through The Craftroom Door

I added this card to my previous post but as I cannot add the same link twice to the challenge so here it is. If you want to read my rambling from my previous post you can find it here.

There's some lovely cards so worth a nosey lol.

Through the craft room door challenge

Anything goes

A couple of challenge cards

So since leaving the Crafters Companion Die'sire design team in august last year I've really struggled with my craft mojo. I went from racing along at warp speed producing sample after sample with no breaks to having all the time in the world. No deadlines, no extra work sneaked in etc. Now don't get me wrong I loved my time there but the workload became unreal near the end and I was on the verge of handing my notice. I decided to wait to see how I felt after my spinal surgery. I'd still work during my recovery as like I said I loved my time with them but that decision was taken out of my hands and the email I received to tell me my time was over could have really been written better but such is life.

So here I am no design team work to do, fully recovered from the spinal surgery and slowly getting back into the swing of things. I thought it'd help me if I joined in on some challenges and here are my cards. If you would like any details please just ask me and I'll happily reply.