Monochromatic purple and a rant!!

Before I get to my rant, I have a card to show (or I may never get to the card! lol)  that I made for this weeks Digital Tuesday Challenge where the challenge this week is to make an almost all monochromatic card.

I was going to go with pinks, but I found some purple papers that fitted the challenge nicely, so I went with purples :)

All the papers I used are Papermania and the fab image is from Make It Crafty. 

I coloured her with a mix of Copics and Promarkers.

Everything else if from my stash. I added a tiny piece of stringed pearls to the butterfly, glittered all the flowers and attached the key charm with a darker piece of purple tulle which I just tied around the lighter coloured tulle so that it would hand down.

 This image was actually a freebie which I got for signing up for the Make It Crafty newsletter :)

Ok, so I said I had a bit of a rant, so here goes! I don't normally have a rant like this on my blog, but I have kept quiet about this for a few weeks now and to be honest I have just had enough.

So a few weeks ago, I was asked to join a new design team, which I declined for two reasons.

One was that I didn't want to join another design team if I didn't think I could give 100% (as I had a lot going as well as my hand being numb and me not being able to craft as much as I want to) and the other reason is because I thought that this persons images looked very similar to others that are around at the moment.

I later discovered (after having a proper look at other artists images, as I didn't want to accuse this person of copying artwork if it was just my mind doing overtime!) that the images were actually waaayy too similar to other companies, the poses were the same as well as many other features, in fact the only thing I could see different were things like the patterns on the clothes and other little things like that.

Don't worry I have reported this!!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I had forgotten all about it until I started getting comments on my blog posts from an "anonymous" person.

At first it was comments saying stuff like " I made a mistake asking you to be on my team as your work is not good enough"- which I just ignored........if my work is not good enough for you, then why ask me in the first place to be on your team? I didn't apply for a dt position with you, you looked me up!

These "anonymous" comments have been getting more and more frequent (as in like 10 or so per day!).  I won't write everything that was said (because it would take me forever!), but here's an example....

"you should be grateful that you were asked to be on a team as you have obviously been turned down a lot since you are only on two teams, both of which are your own"

and this one, which I am having a bot of trouble figuring out since my cards are always packed with embellies! lol

"you should maybe give up crafting since you obviously can't afford it as you don't use much products on your cards"

These are just mild comments and some of them I wouldn't even repeat you really would be shocked at the language she used!

I don't mind if people want to give me constructive advice/criticism or even if they don't like my work ( I mean I know I'm not the best crafter in the world and even if I was, everyone has different tastes/styles), but when you start just being bitchy and bringing my personal life into it when you don't even know me, then I'm sorry but I will not stand for it!

I wouldn't let anybody in "real life" speak to me like that, and I'm certainly not going to let some "troll" who doesn't even know me, mouth off like that about me and think I will just ignore it!

Anyway, I really didn't want to put this on my blog, but I felt that I had to write something so that this person knows that I am not going to put up with her abuse anymore.

Just for your information Miss "Anonymous"

I am only on 2 design team just now because I stepped down from other design teams I was on as I didn't have the time and also because I wanted to concentrate on my own challenge blogs, not because I had applied to lots of design teams and been rejected.

In fact, I haven't applied to any design team at all for a very long time, and even if I had, guess what, I can deal with rejection, you on the other hand obviously can't!

Also, I may not have piles of cash to spend on crafty stuff, but I get by.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to be able to buy all the latest stamps, papers, embellies etc but I have 3 kids who I love more than anything in this world, and I would much rather spend my money on them that on a pile of flowers just to make you happy!

Maybe you are the one who needs money more than I do since you are the one who stole artists images and tried to sell them claiming they were your own.  Now that your Etsy store is closed down, you will maybe need to go find some other person to scam! 

Ok, I am getting up on my high horse now, so I will sign off and I apologise to my genuine blog readers for having to read this rant.

I just had to let it out somewhere before I exploded with anger ;)

Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Normal happy service will resume tomorrow ;) lol

Vintage/Shabby chic for Digital Tuesday

It's time for a new challenge over at Digital Tuesday and this week we have a fab inspiration picture from Maya to be inspired by.

Isn't it gorgeous! I really enjoyed this challenge :)

Our sponsor this week is Mayzy Art who also gave the design team images to play with.

She has some great images and I suggest you go check out her store if you haven't already, but don't blame me for you blowing all your pay on her digis!! lol

Unfortunately my image doesn't go so well with the style of card I made as I was the last to choose an image (we had to all choose a different one and I thought I would be nice and let everyone else choose first lol) and I chose one that didn't go so well with the shabby chic kind of style, but I still love the image and will defo use it again :)

So here's what I did.....please remember I made this with one hand more or less lol.

Be prepared for quite a few pics as there's a quite a lot of detail on this one that you can't really see properly in the main pic, so I took close ups :)

 

I used some Raspberry Road papers in the colours of the inspiration pic and glittered (with stickles) all the edges of the cream card I used to mat the layers with.

Also the flowers and die cuts are glittered to really make the card sparkle.

The larger flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts and the small ones are from my stash, as is the pink pearl hearts, lace and sequined/beaded ribbon.

I used a fiskars (I think) punch to do the decorative corners. It's one of those which punches on one side and punch/embosses with the other, so I punched the pattered paper and embossed the cream card, but you don't really see the embossing as I covered most of it up lol.

The image is called Jean and I have coloured her with Copics, and cut her out with a Nellie Snellen die, then inked and glittered the edges.

The flourish was cut with a Marianne die.

 

The pretty metal corner was a gift from my bloggy friend Ger.

This die cut (the one under the image) was also cut with a Marianne die.

And finally, I added a beautiful butterfly which was also a gift from my friend Ger. Thank you hun xx

I must admit I didn't really want to use this on my card as I only have 1 left now and I love them. I wanted to keep them just to look at lol, but I was brave and used one lol.

Thanks so much for stopping by today and I hope you will pop over and check out what the rest of the dt have done and maybe join in with this weeks challenge.

Lora x

A couple of DT cards

I have two dt cards to show today for By The Cute and Girly and Digital Tuesday, so there will be quite a few pics today.

My first card is for By The Cute and Girly where the theme this month is "A Day At........"

I already had a card made for this challenge a while ago, but I have no idea where I put it and haven't took a pic of it, so will show that one when it turn up lol. So I had to make another one and it just so happened that Krista was giving away a free Saturated Canary digi when I was about to make my card, so I just had to use it :)

I'm having problems crafting just now as my left hand and wrist is totally numb (been like that for the last few weeks!) I had this on and off for about a year (maybe more), but it has never been this bad. I can't even hold a piece of ribbon to cut it without my hand shaking like crazy :( It's sooo frustrating, but at least I am right handed and can still colour :) It's just hard to do everything with one hand, so I enlisted the help of my 7 year old daughter Chiara to help with the distressing and inking on this card!! lol

This image is called "Fancy" and I think it would be good for a wedding card, but I have gone with "A Day At The Prom"....well it would actually be a night at the prom but never mind lol.

I coloured her with Copics then distressed the edges and inked them up a bit (with the help of Chiara). A bit more ink than I would of liked but never mind.

The papers are all from My Minds Eye, Lost and Found collection. I still love these papers, but only have tiny scraps left now :(

Oh except the sheet music which is from an old sheet music book.

All the papers were distressed and inked.

I also added some cheesecloth which a lovely blogging friend sent me as I had been wanting some for ages and couldn't find it anywhere, so she sent me a small piece to play with :) Thanks again hun xx

 Some sparkly white and gold lace, which I threaded through a pearl ribbon slider, both of which I got from my fabby friend Geraldine (thanks again Ger xx).

Some Wild Orchid Crafts flowers and little pink pearl hearts, and a beautiful embroidered butterfly from Little Snippets.

 You can find this gorgeous swirly sheer lace butterfly here

And a little close up of the image. I haven't listed colours as the post is long enough lol, but if you want to know, email me or leave a message in my chart box and I will let you know which colours I used :)

Onto my other card which is for Digital Tuesday and the challenge this week is "All Tied Up".

Our sponsor this week is My Heart Pieces 

and the owner Priyanka gave me an image to play with :)

I wish I had used different colours on this card because I really don't like this green and yellow very much, but I will show it anyway.

 Sorry about the blurry pics, not sure what happened here lol.

I used some Raspperry Road papers which I love the print on, but wish it was in different colours....like pink lol.

I used some old flowers from my stash, along with some embroidered leaves from Little Snippets. 

 You can find them here and some card candy.

I cut a large scalloped square with my Cricut, added some ribbon and I used some little star charms that Ger sent me to make a little dangly charm thing with some funky fibers.

The image was coloured with Copics, and I have to say that her dress/top does not look like that irl!! Not sure what happened with the pic ,but it looks like the greens aren't blended together at all...weird!!

Oh and I cut the image out with a Nellie Snellen die.

 

Finally a close up of the dangling charm thing lol.

Thanks so much for stopping by and hope you will join in with one or both of the challenges.

Rock A Bye Baby

The new challenge is up over at Digital Tuesday and this week, the challenge is to decorate the inside of your cards. That was an easy one for me because I always decorate the inside, although I sometimes decorate the insides after I have taken a pic for my blog (normally because I am running late!) and I even when I have them decorated in time, I never really show pics of the inside. I always forget to take a pic.

Anyway, our sponsor this week is Bugaboo Stamps and I used one of their images for my card.

I chose a sweet baby image called Boo Peeker- Rocking Horse, hence my title for this post :)

I have quite a few pics so you may want to grab a cuppa and get comfortable before reading the rest of this post!

No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get good pics of this card and the colours don't look the same in real life.... they are softer than they show up here.

I coloured the cute image with Copics and a tiny touch of pink Promarker (list of colours are at the bottom of the post because I actually remembered to keep a list!!), then cut it out and matted with scalloped circle nesties.

I followed the sketch over at Charisma cardz, I used some more of the First Edition papers, they are just sooo pretty:)

The flowers are ones I found in my stash and a pretty crotchet one from Little Snippets which I added a button too.

Some ribbon from my stash and some lilac tulle which you can't really see but I cut some little bits and added them under the flowers.

 

 I decorated both sides inside with the same papers, kinda following through from the sketch on the front. On the right, I used a little flower and some tulle strips and left a plain white panel to write on.

On the left, I just tied some more tulle around one of the panels :)

I just had to show a close up of the image because it's so sweet :)

 

Last photo (promise!! lol), a close up of the pretty flowers. I don't normally use flowers like these (the paper ones), and I was going to use some roses, but the only ones I have left in pink or lilac are large ones and I thought they looked a bit odd on this card, so I had a look in my stash and found a pack of these that had never been opened (think I got them from Barry's Mum's friend when she gave me a pile of stuff because she was moving to a smaller house and couldn't take all  her crafty stash with her) and the colour was right, so I just used them. I do love WOC roses, but these are a nice change and my flower stash is rather low, so it means that I can what few roses I have left for a little bit longer lol.

Oh and before I forget, here the list of markers I used.

skin- E11, E00, E000 and R20 for cheeks

Horse- E25, E35, E31

Clothes and other bits of horse- V04, V01, V000, RV2, R000 and a tiny bit of Pink Carnation Promarker.

Thanks so much for stopping by and leaving such lovely comments. It really does mean a lot to me and I do read every comment, even though it may take me a while to publish them.

Hope to see some of you join in with this weeks challenge :)

A paper review (ish)

I don't have a card today, but I promised that I would share what my thought are on the papers I have tried so far for use with Copics and Promarkers after I got a few questions asking what I recommend.
I would of liked to be able to show pics of each of the papers with a coloured image to show the difference, but I don't have all the papers that I have used so I couldn't do that, so instead here's a  list of which papers I have used (not them all as I have tried loads, but just the better known brands).

What I look for in a paper is no bleeding, easy blending and no running ink lines when I print digis!
This is just my personal opinion and you may not agree with what I am saying, but I have tried to be as honest as possible and tell you what my experience with each paper was.
I have gave a final "verdict" lol and also the price of the paper and where you can buy it (in the UK), obviously there are many places that sell them and you may find a better price than I have if you shop around, but I have just added prices to give you a rough idea.
If you click on the shop names, it will take you directly to the paper.

The first paper is neenah- smooth solar white.
I have bought this from a few different places over the last few months and of course the paper is all the same, but I recently bought a pack from Sir Stampalot and although it says on the pack that is is A4 size, it's not! It's a little bit wider and quite a bit shorter so I had to adjust my printer from A4 size so that the paper would fit in (I don't like having to mess around, just like to pop the paper in and print!) and because I didn't actually notice to start with that it was shorter, I printed a page of digi images like I normally would and the feet off the bottom images got chopped off :( I have since learned to move my images further up the page so that I get the full image!
I have bought the same paper from Crafters Companion and a few other places and they all sell "proper" A4 sheets so I think I will stick with them from now on.
Sorry, got a bit sidetracked there! lol
 The paper itself is nice to blend on and doesn't bleed, unless you use lots and lots of layers, then it may bleed a tiny bit, but that's easily sorted with a colourless blender.
Price- £3.99 for 20 sheets of A4, but Crafter's Companion do 3 for £10 :)
Verdict- I like this as a general use colouring paper and it's good for both Copics and Promarkers.

X-Press It Blending Card
This paper/card is more expensive that Neenah, and to be honest, I didn't find a huge difference between the two.
It blends nicely and no bleeding, but what I did find is that when using darker colours of Copics, the ink started to go shiny very quickly. I know this can happen if you use a lot of layers, especially with darker colours, but I found that even with two layers of a dark colour like E79 it starts to go shiny and it ruins your image, unless you have coloured pencils on hand, then you can use them to salvage your image, but I don't have my polychromos/Prisma pencils anymore.
I sometimes find that I need to heat set my digi image before colouring as the printer ink will run, but that's maybe just my printer.
Price- £4.99 for 10 A4 sheets from Sir Stampalot
Verdict- a good quality paper for use with both Copics and Promarkers, but be careful when using a lot of layers with darker colours.

Copic Bleedproof marker pad
This paper is very thin, it's only 70 gsm. The back of each sheet is coated so that it doesn't bleed through to the sheets below (like if you are just using the pad to draw with since it's a sketch pad), and I must admit, I was quite impressed that it didn't bleed right through the paper.
Of course, you can see the ink on the other side of the paper a lot more than the others because it's so thin,but  this is not a problem.
Since it's so thin, you would have to mat it with white paper before using it on your card as the patterned/coloured paper shows right through.
I also found it easier to work with a piece of white card underneath this paper while I was colouring as if you use anything coloured underneath you can't see the proper colour you have used as the colours of whatever is underneath show through.
This paper doesn't bleed at all, but you have to work in really small sections if you want to blend as it dries so quick.
Price- £4.51 for 50 sheet pad from Artifolk
Verdict- A great paper for sketching with Copics, but for crafters I don't think it's one of the best, because it's a pain to have to mat it with white paper/card before you can use it on your card.

Winsor & Newton Bristol Board Extra Smooth Surface Drawing Pad
This is a good weigh paper- 250 gsm and is very smooth which makes it great for blending.
I haven't used this paper in a while, but I felt that I had to include it as it used to be the paper I used all the time for Copics.
I must admit that I have never tried it with Promarkers, because at the time I used it regularly, I only owned Copcis.
It doesn't bleed and you can layer up quite a lot of colour on it without the colour sitting on top of the paper.
It is quite expensive, but it is one of my fave papers. I only don't use it anymore as Neenah is much cheaper lol.
Price- £8.33 for 20 sheets of A4 from Artifolk
 Verdict- I love this paper, but it is a bit on the expensive side to just be using for colouring images (well for me anyway lol)


I hope this answered all the questions that people have asked me, but if there's anything else you need to know, just ask and I will get back to you asap :)

Digital Tuesday- Kids and no coloured image from me!

The challenge this week at Digital Tuesday was chosen by me and I chose "Kids"- make a card for a child or use a child image.

Our sponsor this week is the Cutting Cafe who are offering 3 sets from their store for one lucky winner. The winner can choose from anything in the store, so that means cutting files or digi image/sentiment sets.

Regina also gave the design  team two of her sets to play with this week, so I had a choice of using either the pinwheel set or the assorted crown set........of course I chose the crown set lol, and made it really girly :)

I thought these would be great for invitations and since my oldest Daughter (who will be 9 in September) loves all things girly, the princess theme would be great for  her party, but there would also probably be some boys invited too, which is fine because the set also comes with a little price crown collection too :)

I have just used the girly version this time, but I think I may experiment with the other one too. Oh and it also comes with lots of sentiments and as well as the card cutting templates, there is also envelopes and just the crown shapes which have holes on either side so you can make an actual crown. How fun would that be for a kids party? I really wish I had more time and could of used all the elements to show what can be done with this set, but for now, here's what I came up with.

 These files can be easily cut by hand, but I used the SVG file and cut it with my cutter to save a bit of time.

I cut it out on white Bazzill bling cardstock (which I then covered up and you can only see it at the back which I didn't take a pic of lol), but I would suggest using thicker card as it is a bit flimsy since the two sides are only attached together with the tiny point at the top.

The set comes with a front panel since where it folds means that you don't get a full top point (if that makes sense), so I cut that out and then covered it with some pretty Raspberry Road paper and added stardust stickles around the edges.

I then added some lilac tulle with a pearl ribbon slider, glittery lace and a string of pearls. This worked out great because the ends of the lace and tulle are tucked behind the front panel and then stuck on to the card so that there is no mess inside the card to hide:)

I used a sentiment from the set, cut it out with a nestie scalloped circle, then added stardust stickles all over and a heart gem in the centre. The stickles was still wet on the sentiment when I took the pic and look a bit messy, but it has dried up now and looks fine.

I thought it needed something else, so I used a K&Co butterfly sticker which was all glittery already.

I wanted the wings to be off the page, so I stuck the sticker onto some cardstock, then cut it out and just stuck down the body onto the card.

 I also quickly decorated the inside by covering it in pink card and using a strip of the same paper I used on the front.

Covering both sides after cutting them out worked out well because it made the whole card sturdier.

I actually found this card quite difficult to make because it's a lot smaller than the normal size of cards I make, although you could enlarge the template, but with the svg file, both the card template and the extra front panel is on the same page, so you have to cut it out at the same time.

There must be a way to separate the images from each other so you can cut them on their own so you could make them bigger and cut them out in different coloured card (then I wouldn't of needed to cover the whole front panel in paper since I didn't want it white), but I have no idea how to do that lol, so I just made a smaller card. They are a perfect size for invitations though and would  be quite quick to make if you kept the design simple.

Anyway, what do you think of my princess crown? Do you think little girls would like these as birthday cards or for their birthday invitations? My 2 girls love it, so I guess I will be making a lot more of these! lol

Thanks so much for stopping by today and I hope you will check out this weeks challenge.

A very girly ballet dancer :)

It's time for a new challenge over at By The Cute and Girly. I can't believe it's July already!!

It was Brigitte's turn to choose the challenge theme this month and she chose "A Day At....."

I think this is a really fun challenge because it could be a day anywhere.

For my first card this month, I decided I would do a day at the ballet:)

Mayzy Art is our digi sponsor this month and she offered the design team an image each to play with for the challenge so I picked a really girly one (nothing new there then lol).

We are also sponsored by our two regular sponsors, Simon Says Stamp and Joanna Sheen who are giving away a $20 and £10 gift certificate as well as Mayzy Art giving away 5 digital images of the winners choice from her store!! So why not pop over and join in with the challenge? 

As I said I made a girly card with a Mayzy Art image. The image is called Digi Dancers Ballet.

Sorry about the rubbish pic! I took it in a hurry when there was hardly any light!

I've coloured the pretty image with Copics and added some Stardust Stickles to make her sparkly.

The papers are from the Dreamcatcher pad by First Edition, love the sparkly papers in this pad:)

I've covered up most of the purple paper which is lovely and sparkly but it is there lol.

I also used some pink fiber stuff (can't remember what's it called) which I found in my stash.

Flowers are Wild Orchid crafts, which added some stickles too, ribbon, pin and doily from my stash, the cute charm was a gift from Geraldine and the gorgeous butterfly which I also added some stickles to, is from Little Snippets Etsy store, which is open again and selling all the lovely embroidered embellies again:) as well as crotchet bits, pins and ribbons.

 I popped over to have a look so I could add a direct link to the butterfly, but this one isn't posted in the store just now, although I'm sure Ger will add it soon.

I have a habit of posting cards made with bits that aren't even in the store! lol, but Ger is great, just let her know what you are looking for and I'm sure she will sort you out with whatever you are after (embellishment wise of course!! lol)

 I forgot to take a note of the Copic colours I used for this one as I coloured it a few weeks ago, but I have been keeping lists when I remember lol.

Thanks for stopping by today and I promise I will be back soon with my paper review that I said I would do!!