By The Cute and Girly blog hop

This post in pinned to the top of my blog. Please scroll down for more recent posts.
You can see my second By The Cute and Girly post for October using another Whiff Of Joy image here 

It's By The Cute and Girly's 3rd Birthday today and we are celebrating with a birthday challenge and blog hop :)

My blog is the first on he list, so you are in the right place if you have just came to visit and didn't know about the hop :)

The design team have all been busy making something to celebrate our 3rd birthday and we would love for you to visit us all to see what we made.

The blog hop rules are very simple, all you have to do is visit each of the design team members blogs and leave a comment on each one, then finish up at our challenge blog and leave a comment there to let us know you have finished the hop. 

Your name will then be put in a draw to win one of the blog hop prizes.

If you also enter our challenge this month, you will also be put in the draw to win one of challenge prizes.

You have the whole month to enter and you can enter the challenge as much times as you like, as long as each entry is a different craft eg: 1 card, 1 scrap page, 1 altered item, 1 knitted item etc.

And as always, you can enter with any craft you like, from paper craft to baking and everything in between. If you made it yourself then you can enter is, it's as easy as that :)

The theme is "Birthdays" so it's a nice easy challenge and we have lots of prizes up for grabs from some great sponsors! Please check out the challenge blog to see all the prizes we have to give away!

Each design team member is featuring a different sponsor today, so you will see images or other products from a different sponsor being used on each of the dt blogs. We also have other sponsors on the challenge blog, so there really is lots of prizes to be won :)

The sponsor I am featuring is Whiff Of Joy

Katharina very kindly sent me a stamp to use for my card, and it is the same stamp which she is giving away as a prize :)

The stamp I used is called "Those Belong To Me". It is currently out of stock at the moment but you can enter the challenge this month for a chance to win it :)

I coloured it with Copics and cut it out with a Nellie Snellen die.

The papers are Prima, flowers are a mix of Wild Orchid Crafts and ones from Hobbycraft.

I used some cheesecloth (love this stuff!), ribbon, lace, a pearl ribbon slider and a metal corner all of which are either from my stash or gifts from my lovely dt members (thank you ladies, you know who you are xx)

I just hope that Katharina thinks I have done her lovely stamp justice as my hand is still numb so my colouring is not so good just now :(

And a close up of the cute image :)

The next stop is Celine's blog and I know she has a gorgeous card to show you.

Remember to leave a comment on this post and on all the other design team members blog hop post for a chance to win one of the prizes. Then leave a comment on the challenge blog post to let us know you are finished the hop and your name will go into the prize draw.

Here's a list of the blog hop order in case you loose your way.

Lora

Celine

Aideen

Tammy

Geraldine

Uta

Carol

Brigitte

Kate

 Thanks so much for stopping by

A bit of shabby chic birthday ;)

This will be a long post with lots of pics, so you might want to get yourself comfy first with a cuppa before reading ;)

It's the middle of the month (already! where did October go?!!), which means I have some stuff to show you that I made for the inspiration post over at By The Cute and Girly challenge.

It's our 3rd Birthday this month and we are celebrating with a special birthday challenge and blog hop! You can see my blog hop post at the top of my blog :)

We are all using a different sponsors images/products this month as we have a lot of sponsors with lots of prizes of course (15 prizes in fact!) to help celebrate our birthday, and my sponsor is  Whiff Of Joy.

The lovely Katharina sent me a stamp to use for the challenge, which I used for my card at the start of the month, but this time I decided to buy one of her digi stamps to use on my card (I was going to buy a rubber stamp to use, but I forgot about it until the other day and by then I was too late to order it in time for the inspiration post).

Anyway, I thought it would be nice to make something a bit special since it's my challenge blogs birthday:) So I decorated/altered a plain wooden jewelry box and made a card using the WOJ image.

First here's the card I made.

 I went a bit shabby chic with this one as I wanted it to kind of match my box (it doesn't really match but it's the same kind of style lol).

The image is called "Tea For Two" and I coloured it with Promarkers, then glittered and inked the edges with stardust stickles and antique linen distress ink.

I love these images and really have to get more!;)

The papers are Prima ones and I also used some old sheet music, and matted the image and base layer with blue coredinations cardstock.

I did the white paint thing and added some paint to almost everything lol, to give it a softer feel.

The flowers I made using Mariane Designs flower dies (a large and small flower die from the same set). I made some little rose style flowers for the top and just layered up some of the flowers for the bottom flower and added a flower from Wild Orchid Crafts in the center. Of course I glittered them :)

 The flourish/swirls are made using a Marianne Die and an MFT die.

Lace was bought in a little craft shop in Stonehaven, ticket sentiment was a digi freebie that I got ages ago buit can't remember where from, pearl string from my stash ad the cute little teapot charm is from Janlynn from the "Tea Time" charm pack. They have these fab steampunk sets of charms, and I love them! :)

There is so much to choose from and you can use them for so much different projetcs. I used a flat charm, but a lot of them in the range are 3d, and they are gorgeous! 

You can check out their steampunk range here.

Oh and we have some up for grabs along with loads of other goodies from Janlynn this month over at the challenge blog.

A close up of the cute image :)

Isn't that charm cute? :)

Ok, so that's the card and here's the box. Warning, there is quite a few pics!

I wanted to give this box an old shabby feel, so I painted it with sandstone acrylic paint, then a layer of crackle medium and finished off with a top coat of white acrylic paint so that the white cracked and little bits of the darker paint shows through.

You can't really see the cracked effect very well in these pics, but it looks better in real life.

I didn't use an image for a change! (I can tell you, that really was a challenge for me!! lol), but I wanted something in the center, so I used a Prima chipboard shape instead.

The lace on top is the same as I used in my card, and the flowers were made the same way too, except I added some white paint to them and added some tiny white rose buds.

The little heart was a plain wooden one and I painted it the same way as the rest of the box, and did the same with the die cut flourishes.

The pretty metal butterfly was gift from a friend, which I added some light blue pearls to, as was the metal corner.

Finally for the outside, I added some pretty beaded trim on the drawer, but the ribbon the beads are attached to is blue and it looked a bit out of place (because the blue was a bit too bright), so I added some pretty lace over the top.

And this is the inside :)

I kept the inside quite plain because if I added loads of embellies, it wouldn't close properly lol.

So I just added some Prima paper and a wooden heart.

This isn't a very good pic, but you can see that I lined the inside of the drawer with some more Prima paper.

And finally (I promise!! lol), some close up pics so you can see the detail a bit better.

I didn't want to add loads of pics, but there is so much little bits of detail on this project.

 You can see the glitter and paint on  the flowers a bit better in this pic. I used the same Prima papers to make the flowers ad some old sheet music.

So that's it for me for today (thank goodness! I hear you say lol)

Thanks so much for stopping by and any comments that you may leave.

I love reading my comments and appreciate you taking the time to leave me one :)

By The Cute and Girly, some Little Snippets and a Christmas Card.

There's still time to get your entries in over at By The Cute and Girly where the challenge theme this month is (All Things Bright and Beautiful). It's a nice easy one this month, so you have no excuse to enter :)
The challenge runs until the last day of the month and there's some great prizes to be won.

I have a card to show that I made for the challenge at the start of the month which I haven't showed yet on my blog.

I coloured the cute CC designs swiss pixie with Promarkers and used some Dazzling Diamonds glitter from SU! for her wings. The papers are some from a fab blogging friend (thanks hunnie), and the pretty embellies are all from Little Snippets Etsy Store.

I used the Sheer Applique Leaves (this is the first time I have used these ones and it won't be the last because they are sooo pretty) and a Scrappy Daisy Flower Embroidered Applique

And the gorgeous butterfly which I added a few gems to is one of the Swirly Sheer Delicate Lace Butterflies.

I know that Geraldine now has some Halloween embellies in her Little Snippets store including some bats and orange and black crotchet flowers which would be perfect for your Halloween projects :) So why not pop over and have a look? and if your not into Halloween, there's plenty of pretty embellies for every taste. I also noticed she has the cutest little Hello Kitty style felt embroidered embellishments that are just perfect for little girl cards and projects. I know my girls would love them!

Now for a Christmas Card that I made about 2 weeks ago and haven't got around to posting yet.

I actually made this for one of the Whiff Of Joy challenges which was to use a tag but of course the challenge finished long ago so I thought I would post it anyway and see what other challenges it fits this week.

So for the tag part, I cut a tag shape freehand from the dp and used a Making Memories rub on which comes with the flock paper to put on top and I used card candy glued to a piece of string (which I pinched from Barry lol) instead of just tying the string through a hole....why did I do that??? because stupid here no longer has a little hole punch and kinda mucked up making the hole, so the card candy hides my muck up! lol

I think these papers are Dovecraft ones but I'm not 100% on that. What I do know though is the stamp I used is a Henry Mouse from Whiff Of Joy which I bought 2 christmas' ago and forgot about him and didn't use him until last christmas once and forgot about him again, so this is only his 2nd inking in 2 years! I know that is just terrible because he's really cute, so will have to use him on a few cards this year. He is coloured of course with the usual Promarkers, and I used a bit of flower soft on his hat.

The snowflakes are punched with a Dovecraft punch and covered in Twinklets to make them sparkly and a blue gem in the middle of each of them.

I am entering this card into the following challenges.

Papertake Weekly- Creature Comforts
Simon Says Stamp- Dies To Die For (I used scalloped circle nesties)
The Paper Shelter- Anything Goes
Anything Goes Challenge- Anything Goes

Thanks for stopping by

DigitalTuesday -"Button Up" and a few Whiif Of Joy cards

I've been at home all day today, so decided I would make the most of it and make some cards :)

First of all my Digital Tuesday card. The theme this week is "Button Up" and we are being sponsored by The Stamping Boutique, who also gave the design team some images to play with, one of which I have used on my card.

 I coloured the image with Promarkers and also coloured the ticket sentiment which is a freebie digi I have had for ages but can't remember where I got it from..... if I come across where I got it from, I will update this post with a link.
I'm not sure who makes the papers I used on this card........ I do know they are both by the same company but they were both in my scrap box with no names on them.
I made some flowers with the left over scraps and my SU! 5 petal flower punch, little flowers from my stash and the buttons I coloured green with a Promarker but unfortunately you can't realy see the green here.
The swirl/flourish was in my stash and I have no idea where it came from (I think someone sent me it) and the little green button is a 3d sticker which was part of a design but I just cut it out.

I was playing around with some of my older WOJ stamps today and noticed that Katharina is having a guest DT call, so thought I would give it a go. To enter you have to include some rolled flowers on your creation, which I had never tried making before, but they are fun to make and very easy :)

No matter how much times I tried to get a decent pic of this card, it just wasn't happening! So I apologise for the rubish pics. It's really dull here today but hopefully it will be brighter tomorrow and I can get some better pics of these cards!.

As I said, I used one of the older Whiff Of Joy stamps and coloured her with Promarkers. It's not often that I get my older stamps out but I am determined that I am going to give my older ones an airing and this one is so pretty that it would be such a shame not to use her.
The papers are all K&Co, I realy love these papers, but they are sooo hard to photograph!
I coloured the ribbon which was white with a Promarker to match the image and made some of the rolled flowers with the scraps of leftover paper,  cut out some leaves freehand and to finish I added some pearl sprays which I have had for ages but never used because of their colour- they never seemed to match any card I make, but they were just the perfect colour for this one :)

 I enjoyed making the rolled flowers so much that I just had to make more :) so I made another WOJ card, this time not so girly.

The papers I have used are by Nitwits, image of course is WOJ and coloured with Promarkers. Some raffia which I bought in Montrose last Summer, a Prima flower and some more of the rolled flowers, this time I made them just with plain brown card. The swirl was from a friend and the string was some that I got from my MIL and coloured with Promarkers (it was just plain white string to start with) and the sentiment is from a Stampology Autum Leaves set.

Right that's it from me today. I have to get going and pick the girls up from school soon, but think I will do some colouring before I have to leave :)

Thanks for stopping by