Digital Tuesday Steampunk

The theme at Digital Tuesday this week was chosen by Maya (who always likes to give us a challenge!) and she chose Steampunk.

I must admit, I could of died when she told me the theme because I have never made a steampunk card and didn't have anything steampunky....or so I thought.

I do love the style though and after all the worrying, I had so much fun making this card :)

 Our sponsor this week is Spesch Stamps who is giving away 3 digital images of the winners choice, and as always Tracey let the design team choose an image to play with, so of course I had to use one because I love her images!

Sorry about the pants pic! My camera battery went dead on me after only taking three pics and this was the best of a bad bunch! lol I was just lucky to get a pic of the full card and a close up of the image as I normally take loads of the whole card first then choose the best one.

Anyway as I said, I used a Spesch Stamps image and it's called "Steampunk". Very apt for the challenge :)

I coloured her with promarkers and cut her out using a craft knife for the tiny bits.....not really a good idea with a numb hand but I managed lol.

I used some sheet music (which I inked around the edges with copper ink) for the mat as I didn't have the colour of card I wanted to use- must remember to get some!

The patterned paper is by Bo Bunny and I decided to be daring and heat emboss the edges lol. Not sure if I like it, but it was fun to do ;)

The clock is a free svg file that I found a while back and the "cogs" I found on the accent essentials cricut cartridge. I thought they looked a bit steampunky?

I heat embossed them all with bronze embossing powder.

Finally to finish off, I cut some flowers from the same papers using a Marianne Designs die (which actually embosses circles on them as well), scrunched them into a ball, inked them with antique photo distress ink and layered them together with a button and some string which was also coloured with distress ink because I only have white. Then added some die cut flourishes. The leafy one is a MFT die and the other is a Marianne Designs.

I had actually coloured my image with blues and browns, but my son Liam said that it didn't go very well and it would look better in green, so I printed out another image and coloured it up and he was absolutely right :)

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Hope you ca join in with this weeks challenge and if you haven't already popped over to the By The Cute and Girly challenge blog, you might want to take a peek ;) Lots of prizes up for grabs for our 3rd birthday celebration! We have a blog hop running alongside the challenge for the whole month (my blog hop post is pinned to the top of my blog if you haven't already seen it) and we have prizes from some great sponsors including Simon Says Stamp, Lili Of The Valley, Whiff Of Joy, Joana Sheen, Kenny K, Pink Gem and much much more! In fact we have 15 prizes up for grabs this month!! and you can have lots of chances at winning them.

You will get an entry to the blog hop prize draw if you visit each dt's blog and leave a comment and you can enter the challenge as much times as you like throughout the month (as long as each entry is with a different craft) for multiple chances to win 1 (or more) of our challenge prizes!

I'm looking forward to visiting you all to see your entries! ;) xx

Digital Tuesday- Tag It

The new challenge is up at Digital Tuesday and this week the theme is "Tag It!"- make a tag card or use a tag on your card/creation and of course use a digital image or other digital element.

Our sponsor this week is the fab Spesch Stamps and Tracey as always offered the dt an image to play with, so of course I had to use one because I love the images at Spesch Stamps.

I was going to make a tag, but because I was using an image, I would of had to make the tag quite big and I don't really have any use for large tags (I've got it into my head that I should make things that I will actually use lol), so I went with a card.

This is actually the second card I made with the same image as I finished my other one last week sometime and forgot to take a pic and now I can't find the card! So last night I had to rustle up another card for the challenge. When I find the other one, I will show it as it's totally different to this one even though I used the same image.

 Can you believe I actually picked a boy image??!! lol, there is sooo much pretty girlies, but I wanted to do something a bit grungy and this image fitted perfectly.

The papers I have used are old Basic Grey ones that I have had for ages and I lightly sanded the edges and then inked them with antique linen distress ink and done the same with the red card I used to mat all the layers on. It doesn't really show up in this pic but it shows a bit more in real life.

The  music paper is from an old (and I mean old!! lol) sheet music book which I picked up the last time I was in Stonehaven a few weeks back. 

Barry is really good at spotting stuff I can use for cards and he spotted this pile of old music books in a charity shop (we went looking specifically for things like this.....well you can't find old stuff like this anywhere else can you? lol). There was loads of books but I only got 4 and was only £1 for the lot! If  had known they were so cheap, I would of bought the lot lol. Although I would never use that many, but I could of shared with crafty friends :)

Anyway, I sanded the music paper very lightly but wasn't getting the effect I wanted, so I just scrunched it up, inked it with the distress ink and hoped for the best lol.

For the tag part (which I almost forgot about so it was kinda an afterthought), I cut a luggage tag out on my Cricut (Fabulous Finds), inked the edges and used some tag string that came with Christmas tags (which I inked as it was really white) then stamped a sentiment (sorry can't remember which set I used) and stuck it on. I was going to stamp straight onto the tag but I used textured card and thought it might not stamp well, so went for the safe option.

Oh and the cute buttons were from my bloggy friend Ger (thanks again hun xxx)

 The image is coloured with Copics. I have ran out of my normal skin colours in both Copics and Promarkers, so I had to improvise and he looks he's had a bit too much sun!! lol

I used E11 and E50 which doesn't blend so well together lol, but it's the only skin like colours I have just now so it will have to do. I also added a bit of R20 for his cheeks.

I was thinking that I should start keeping a list like I used to of which Copics/Promarkers I have used for each image as I have had a few emails asking me for a list of colours, so if anyone would like me to start listing which markers I used, let me know and I will try to remember to keep a list..........although you should all know by now that my memory is not the best lol.

Thanks so much for stopping by today and for all the lovely comments you leave :)

Sunflower Smiles

I can't believe I have actually blogged 3 days in a row now after not blogging at all for a month! I missed of missed you all too much! :) lol

I actually got a card made yesterday that wasn't for any dt's, decided I would make one just for fun for a change. I didn't even follow any challenges. It's been so long since I have made a card just because I want to!

I'm not very keen on it mind you, but thought I would show it anyway, and I also found a card pic on my computer that has been there for about 6 weeks and never been blogged, so thought I would show that one today too.

Ok, so my first card is a happy sunflower one :) I found a printed image by Pink Cat Studio, that I must of printed out months ago but never coloured, so I coloured her up and made a simple card with it.

I thought this was a nice bright, fun image to use since we have been having such horrible wet weather in Scotland lately :) 

The paper I used is one from a pad that came with a magazine and I can't remember for the life of me who it's by. We have been getting some great paper pads free with the mags lately though, haven't we? I never buy magazines unless they have a nice free gift with them! lol It's normally cheaper to buy the mag than it is to buy the paper pad itself, so I figure that I'm getting a bargain and also have a mag to read if I'm bored lol.

The lace was a gift from my lovely blogging friend Ger and I threaded some green organza ribbon from my stash through it.

The flowers are ones I have had from when I designed for Janlynn.com/Stamps Happen, and they no longer sell them. I'm not a big sunflower fan, but thought these went well with the image.

The image is coloured with a mix of Copics and Promarkers and I actually used my Cricut to cut out the scalloped squares and also the leaves. Told you I would only use it for normal shapes lol.

I am having problems getting the correct pressure/speed etc though, so it's kind of put me off using it :( It's just a waste of good paper/card (which I have hardly any of as it is!) when it won't cut properly and tears the paper to bits! The girl I bought it from said that it was a new blade that was fitted in it, so I'm sure it's just me not being able to use it properly! lol. As I bought it second hand, it didn't come with any instructions, so I have had to do a bit of searching online to find out what pressure etc I need to set it at, but even after following all the recommendations on the Provocraft site, I still can't get it right! lol

My second card is Springy too :) I think I should of maybe used one of these cards for the By The Cute and Girly challenge instead of using one that isn't very springy lol.

I love this cute image from LOTV, but I'm not happy with the way I coloured it. I don't have this stamp, but I got some LOTV stamped images months back in a magazine (told you these mags come in handy! lol) and they are on really thin paper, so you can't really add much ink without it bleeding.

The papers I used on this one are K&Co, roses from my stash, the big flower I have no idea who make it because I bought them off a blogging friend (thanks again hunnie), and the embroidered leaves and butterfly were from Little Snippets, but unfortunately Ger has stopped selling her embroidered bits :( Such a shame because they are beautiful. Oh and the ribbon is also from Little Snippets.

That's it from me for today on the card front, but I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who left my comments these last few days. They really cheered me up and gave me the incentive I needed to keep blogging :) You are all fantastic and I appreciate every one of you coming to visit and taking the time to leave me comments :)