Cute as a Button

I have a sick little girl at home today.  I think she may have tonsillitis :( Her throat is really sore, she's finding it hard to swallow and her body is aching. Poor baby, she's only 7 and I know how sore tonsillitis is because I used to always get it as a kid. On top of that, she has a sore tummy and feels sick, so no school for her today. She's just laying on the sofa just now having a nap, so I thought I would pop on here and get my dt post done for By The Cute and Girly.

The challenge theme this month is "Cute as a Button" and as always you can enter with any craft.

 Sorry about the pants pics again, I really need to get a day lamp for taking pics as it's so dull here lately.
I used a freebie image from Saturated Canary that Krista gave away on her facebook page a few weeks back. I love Krista's images and they are so much fun to colour.
I coloured the little cutie with Copics and went with bright fun colours for a change.
The papers I have used are Hot Off The Press and I think First Edition, but I could be totally wrong about that as I got the pink one from a friend.
The ribbon was in my stash and I have no idea where it came from, think it might of been in a pack of cheap embellies I bought ages ago. It was yellow and didn't really go with my image, so I coloured it with a Copic to match my image.
I have no idea who makes the flower I used today as I bought them from a blogging friend a while back. These flowers tend to sit a bit funny sometimes, so I stuck some of it in behind the image and stuck a button on top.
Flourish was cut with a MFT die, buttons from my stash and the bakers twine is by American Crafts.

 I love this cute image and had fun colouring her, but I am looking for new colouring card/paper again as I bought x-press blending card the last time and although I do like how it blends, after a few layers of ink, the ink starts to sit on top of the paper and goes all shiny and weird. It's such a shame because I would love this paper if it took more ink.

Oh well, time to do some more paper testing lol. I think my fave so far is Neenah, although it does sometimes bleed a bit.

I've heard that Gina K's paper is good, but I can't get that here and also Cryogen white from the Paper Temptress is supposed to be great, but I have never been able to get my hands on some of that either......why is shipping costs to the UK soooo expensive!!??

Any paper/card suggestions, please let me know. Finding a good paper for markers surely can't be this hard?? lol

Thanks for stopping by.

Hope you will go check out the challenge:)

A cute little stinker!!

I thought I had scheduled this post to post yesterday morning and I forgot to check it because I have been so busy with sponsor stuff for both my challenge blogs this week but I obviously didn't schedule it at all! I have scheduled my post for next weeks Digital Tuesday challenge and thought I done this one at the same time. Better late than never I suppose.

The challenge over at Digital Tuesday this week was chosen by me "Just For Laughs"- make a card/project that will make someone laugh or smile.

Now I'm not quite sure what came over me when I chose this challenge as it's so not my kind of thing, but our sponsor this week is Doodle Pantry and they have a lot of images/sentiments that make me smile, so the challenge was quite easy for me.

 I have used Doodle Pantry's Quirky Skunk image and sentiment and coloured with copics and promarkers. I really like this image, but I am really disappointed with how the colouring looks here. In this pic is looks like the colours are not blended at all, but it doesn't look like that in real life.....weird!

I used some scrap papers from my stash, so I have no idea what make they are except I know the blue one is Hot Off  The Press.

Some flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts, blue American Crafts ribbon and some green ribbon from my stash.

I thought the sentiment was quite funny, but not sure who I would actually give this card too lol.

 That's it from me for today, but I might be back tomorrow with a card, otherwise I will be here on Friday with my project for the June By The Cute and Girly challenge.
If you haven't already entered this months challenge at BTC&G, you still have until tomorrow to get your entries in!! The theme for May is Spring and you can enter with any craft. As always there are some fab prizes up for grabs, so why not pop over to both challenge blogs and join in the fun!

Thanks for stopping by

Ribbon and Buttons for Digital Tuesday

I'm a day late with my Digital Tuesday card because I was having a new bathroom put in yesterday and didn't get any time to blog, so here it is today instead.
The challenge this week at Digital Tuesday is ribbons and buttons, nice and easy huh?.....well you would think so, but I hardly ever use buttons and couldn't find my button bag! I don't have much buttons but what I do have is in a little zip lock bag (I know I am sooo classy!! lol) and I just couldn't find them anywhere!
I eventually came across a yellow button which must of fell out the bag at some point and was at the bottom of a box, but I wanted a pink or green button lol. It had to do, so a Copic came to the rescue and I finally got my card finished!

The papers I used are ones that I got from dt friends when I first moved house and had no stash at all (still don't have much but I can make a card out of what I have now. Thanks so much ladies! You were lifesavers!! xxx :)) so not sure who makes them but I wanted a nice fresh look for a change and these were perfect for that.
The sweet image is from Spesch Stamps who is our sponsor this week. This image is quite a new one by Jessica and is called Butterfly Girl. You can find her here.
I love all the sweet images at Spesch Stamps and use them a lot, but I have to admit that the ones by Jessica (and a few other artists) intimidate my slightly because you have to draw in the middle of the eyes yourself. I am rubbish at eyes, so I used to shy away from these kind of images, even though I loved the image itself, but I gave it a go and I don't think it has came out too bad. Just need lots more practice, which is a great excuse to buy more digis :)
As I said, the button was from my stash, as was the ribbon, the bakers twine is by American Crafts and all the flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts. The little tiny buds started out white, but I just coloured them with a marker the same colour as I used for the image shadow so that they would match.

 Just pretend you can't see the bits where the ink has bled at her hair lol. I ran out of my normal colouring paper, so had to use cheap stuff and the ink just went everywhere! I wanted to go to town on her hair and do a lot of shading, but was scared to add too much layers of ink because it would of bled everywhere, so I couldn't really do much with her.
Never mind, I will order some new paper tomorrow and can colour her up again when it arrives :)

I'm off to go clean a very dirty bath!! lol. It's absolutely filthy but I just couldn't be bothered doing it last night after the workers left because they had been here from 10.15am and didn't leave until after 8pm, so I just wanted a bit of peace without drilling and hammering after they left, so went and made a card instead of cleaning the bath lol.
Tell me, how can I brand new bath be so dirty anyway??!! It looks like a hippos mud bath right now!

Anyway, I will be back tomorrow hopefully with a card for my Dad's birthday. That's if I actually get it made today. How I am going to make a male card without any buttons?! It's my go to embellishment for male cards, only because I have no idea what else to use! lol
If anybody has any ideas what else I could use instead of buttons, please let me know! :) Oh, but not flowers as he's really not a flowery kind of person lol.

Thanks so much for stopping by and reading all the rubbish I write! I do appreciate it so much.

Oh and I am entering this card into the Fab 'n' Funky challenge which is buttons and bows.

Digital Tuesday Bugs and Blooms without the bugs! lol

Well I was going to do this post yesterday but the kids decided that Mum wasn't getting on the computer yesterday! lol. I got one post done here and my challenge blog posts done yesterday so I think I was chancing my luck when I wanted to do another post! lol

The challenge over at Digital Tuesday this week is Bugs and Blooms. It was Maria's turn to choose the challenge and she wants to see bugs and/or blooms.
The sponsor this week is Robyn's Fetish and I was planning on using one of her images for the challenge, but I bought 2 digi's from Wee Stamps a few weeks back that I had never used yet, so I kinda got sidetracked and coloured those up instead lol. I have used one for my card and after I added it to the DT blog on Monday, I noticed that I hadn't even used an image that had a bug on it! oops, just as well we could use bugs or blooms, or else I would of had to start all over again!

 I coloured the little cutie with Copics, and I never do blue and red together, but I only have a few copics just now and wanted to colour an image with just copics for a change, so this is just the colours I had lol.
I had a problem finding red and blue papers to match though, because it's colours I never use together, and never buy red papers, but I found the red one in an old paper pad that I think came free with a magazine months and months ago, and the blue patterned and plain papers are from a 12x12 pad that I got in The Works a while ago (same time as I bought the white paint I used yesterday:). They are by Kit 'N Kraft and I must admit that they are not very good quality (a bit on the thin side), but at £2.99 for 25 sheets of 12x12, they were a bargain, so I got 3 different pads lol. I would of got more but there was only 3 different ones.
The flowers are all Wild Orchid Crafts except the big red rose which was another bargain buy from Hobbycraft (I know it's not a likely place to find bargains!! lol, but they were reduced to 29p per bunch!:)
I covered the all in stickles, and they look ok in real life, but it looks a bit of a mess in these pics lol. I used icicle stickles because I couldn't find my star dust or diamond ones (think my girls have gone off with them again!!) and I really don't like them! The particles are too big and it all comes out in big blobs most of the time....or maybe that 's just the bottle I have lol.
I used a Stampin Up punch for the notebook style border, some American Crafts ribbon, the flourish was made with a MFT die and I got creative with the one a Marianne border die for the scalloped matting around the image.
I don't have a scalloped square die, or a scalloped punch for that matter (I had 2 before we moved house, but none now) and I wanted a pretty mat, so I cut out some borders with a Marianne die, then chopped them in half lengthways, cut them to the lengths I needed to go around the square and stuck them on :)
I was going to use the bigger scalloped edge, but it didn't join up very well, so I used the small side and it worked perfectly...well almost perfectly lol. Two of the edges didn't match up exactly, but I just covered those with embellies. You can hide a multitude of sins under flowers and flourishes you know lol.

Isn't she a cutie? I must get more of these stamps, they are just gorgeous.

Oh, before I go, I wanted to ask all you UK girls a question..........

I am seriously running out of coloured card to use for matting and layering and I used to get all my card from the Papeterie (for those of you who don't know, it's a shop that sells paper/card that is made in the papermill next door), but I can't get from there anymore as I live too far away.

They do deliver, but it's £6.50 delivery per box (or you can get up to 6 boxes delivered for the same price, but I have nowhere to store 6 boxes...or even 3 boxes because my house is so tiny!).

Also they don't have pics of their paper/card colours on their website, so you don't really know what colours you are going to get delivered to you or what weights they will be etc. Last time I just asked for assorted colours (I bought 2 boxes of white and 2 coloured to make up for the postage lol), but most of it was colours that I would never use and I ended up giving them to the kids to draw on.

I have been looking online, but can't seem to find anywhere that does card at a decent price!

So my question is, where do you all buy your coloured (or white because I need that too) cardstock?

I don't want it in huge quantities as my house is tiny so I have nowhere to store it.

Most websites I have looked at are really expensive for shipping (I know card is heavy but the prices I seen were way over the odds) and they don't do assorted colour packs/boxes. I don't want to have to buy a pack in pink, one in blue, one in brown etc, I just want an assortment of different colours.

Surely it can't be this hard to find an assorted box of card at a reasonable price and reasonable postage......or can it??

Answers on a postcard please! lol