Pink and Red at Dilly Beans

Friday 22 February 2013
Hey there everyone and happy Friday:-)  I'm absolutely shattered tonight after a great day of retail therapy with my mother in law and Megan and looking forward to a rare weekend with hubby this weekend as he isn't working for once !

As it's Friday that means its challenge time again over at Dilly Beans and this week we want to see your Pink and Red creations.

I love this theme, you can never go wrong with a bit of pink lol !

There have just been some absolutely gorgeous new digis released in the shop and I knew as soon as I saw this one I had to use it.  It's is the 'Framed Flowers Set' and it's available here

I printed my stamp out onto Neenah cardstock and coloured with Copics.  I then cut each panel out and backed it onto hot pink cardstock.



It was then that I realised I had actually printed the stamp too big to fit onto my usual 6 x 6 card and had to move up to an 8 x 8 meaning I had a whole lot more space to fill lol !!

I embossed a 6 x 6 piece of white card with the Bouquet folder from Couture Creations and stuck my panels onto it using sticky pads to give it a bit of depth.

I then embossed a large piece of hot pink cardstock with the same folder and layered a piece of cardstock from my Echo Park Yours Truly 6 x 6 pad as a background for my main stamped panel.

A bit of ribbon and button later plus a sentiment from Paper Smooches and there you go !

I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with the finished result if I'm honest, I absolutely LOVE the image but I don't think I've done it justice with the layout.

If you would like to join us this week please do pop over to the blog where you can also see the creations from the other talented DT girls.

Have a fabulous weekend :-)

Shelly xx

Bright and Cheerful

Monday 18 February 2013
Hi everyone, isn't it lovely to see the sun shining !

Some of you who know me know that I suffer from bouts of depression and things have been a bit crap lately and I've tried my hardest to keep positive.  Megs has gone to stay at grandma's tonight so I've been here on my own and I knew when I got up it was going to be a 'black cloud' kinda day.  So I gave in and took to my bed :-(  Then I thought no I am not going to let this beat me, the sun is shining, I've got the day to myself I am not going to give in to you today so up I got!

I started this card yesterday so I got up and finished it off and it's lovely sunshiney colours can't fail to cheer you up can they.

I've had this digi coloured for a while, she is from The Greeting Farm and I think she is called Camille.  I cut her out and dug out one of my favourite paper pads from Doodlebug....Sugar and Spice and it is available here from The Glitter Pot.



I had absolutely no vision as to how I wanted this card to look apart from I wanted it to feature pink and yellow as that is how I had coloured her dress.  Basically there is no science to it, this time I started cutting out on the sheets in a circle then went from there adding bits on and taking bits off until I was happy.

She has really cheered me up and now I am off out for a walk in the sunshine then I'm going to work on my Dilly Beans DT card for this week which I'm really looking forward to.

Hope you all have a wonderful day

Shelly xx

Dilly Beans Black and Red Challenge

Friday 15 February 2013
Hi everyone, it's Friday again and time for a new challenge over at Dilly Beans and this week we want to see you creating in black and red.

I really enjoyed this challenge and decided that I was going to do some black and white colouring of my image to match in with this card.

The image is called Pinky's Skull Bow and she is available here



As always I went for the whole matted and layered look and although you can't really tell from the picture I distressed all the edges of the papers before matting and then added faux stitching with gel pens.

The papers are from Echo Park Your's Truly and the sentiment is from a Paper Smooches set.

Why not pop over to the blog and see what the other DT girls have been up to and it would be great if you could join in with the challenge, we love to see your beautiful creations.

Just a quick post from me tonight as it's time for tea !!

Have a great weekend

Shelly x

Crafty Boots DT Card

Thursday 14 February 2013
Hi everyone and happy Valentines Day!  I'm told the sun is going to shine today but I am at the moment looking out of my office window into a murky grey fogginess so I'm not sure whether to believe that or not.

It's time for my Crafty Boots Design Team card and this month I chose to use a Saturated Canary stamp for the first time ever.  I've got to be honest and say I've never really been a fan but now I have used one I am converted and have gone on to buy several more digi stamps from them which I haven't had chance to use yet.

This little beauty is called Nevaeh and she is available to buy here from Crafty Boots.


I've coloured her with Copics and steered away from pink this time as I just felt when I inked her up that I wanted her dress to be orange.....god knows why !!!  So I've used this SEI paper pad which was sat in the cupboard gathering dust as I knew it was going to work perfectly.

I did find her hair a bit of a challenge and had printed a few images off to practice before I was eventually happy with her, although she still isn't in the league of some of the die hard Saturated Canary fans I've seen around the internet and on Pinterest but I'm happy with my effort so far.

If you have the internet, tune in to Create and Craft tonight at 7.00 pm where one of my fellow Crafty Boots design team friends, Tracie Gledhill, will be on demonstrating new pens and more Saturated Canary.

Anyway I had best be off, as usual I am supposed to be at work!

Have a great day

Hugs
Shelly xx

New By Lori Designs Challenge DT Member

Monday 11 February 2013
Hey everyone, have you got any snow?  I must admit I was quite disappointed to wake up this morning and not see a flake !

I can officially say that I am really excited to be re-joining the Challenge DT over at the fantastic By Lori Designs yay !!!!!  I've always been a huge fan of Lori's digi stamps and I used to be on the DT many moons ago so it's fantastic to be back and I can't wait to work with the girls again and showcase these fab designs.

Here is a quick card I made last year using one of the digistamps available in the store.  Its very clean and simple for me isn't it :-) 



The kraft background papers were from Craftwork Cards and as usual I coloured my image using Copics and added a bit of glitter for extra prettiness.

Anyway I had best be off, I'm at work and shouldn't be secretly blogging but I couldn't wait to share my news :-)

Have a great day

Shelly xx

Dilly Beans Friday Challenge - 'Hearts'

Friday 8 February 2013
Hey everyone, I can't believe it's Friday again and time for a new challenge over at Dilly Beans Stamps and this week we want to see your 'Hearts'. 

Very appropriate with Valentines just around the corner and lots of lurve in the air!  Rich and I have been married for nearly six years now and already we don't really bother with Valentine's Day much at all.  Not that we aren't romantic but even as a cardmaker I think the whole thing is just so expensive and commercialised.  I would rather he randomly turned up home from work one day with a bouquet unexpectedly.....mmmmm cos that happens a lot..not !

Anyway onto the card.  This week I have used the gorgeous 'Amalia's Hearts Framed' stamp and she is available here


I kind of wish I hadn't tried to do her hair as I admit I did struggle with getting it to look authentic and it took me ages of messing about with paper until I was happy with this card.  In the end I used a mixture of papers from different collections, matted onto brown card so it matched her hair.

Pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the talented DT girls have created and we would love it if you played along with us.

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend

Hugs
Shelly xx

Detailed versus Clean and Simple

Thursday 7 February 2013
Hi everyone, I've had a crap week illness wise, I got tonsilitis at the weekend and spent my birthday in bed on Sunday:-)  I am getting there now though and starting to feel like picking up my copics again and getting crafty.

As you can see my style of card is always kind of overloaded with lots of matting, layering and little extra details and I have two cards to show you today which show you how I struggle with the CAS style!  I would love to be able to create quick cards in ten minutes but the minute I get the papers in my hands I just want to add more and more, sometimes to the point of aaaargh too much !

The first card uses one of my very favourite images from Tickled Pink Stamps.  She is a digi called Cherry (I think she is designed by the same lady who does the CC designs stamps) and I have used quite masculine papers with her for a change instead of my usual pink, pink and more pink.  The papers are Basic Grey Marjolaine and although I'm not normally a lover of their papers I do like these.

As you can see, lots of little details.....



and the second card....well this is as CAS as I get really.....still with the layers but not so much detail and a lot more white.




Anyway that's all from me today, pop back tomorrow for this week's Dilly Beans Stamps Challenge card.

Have a great day

Shelly xx

Love Gives Me Wings

Friday 1 February 2013
Hi there everyone, sorry I've neglected my blog a bit this week, there just hasn't been enough hours in the day!

I had market night on my FB page on Sunday and that was kind of mental and I've been catching up with that until today then I'm finishing off some wedding invitations I've been working on for a looooong time.

Anyway I'm rambling.....it's time for another challenge this week over at Dilly Beans Digi Stamps and the theme for this week is 'Love Gives Me Wings'.   We had some great entries last week for the Metal Accents challenge so it will be great to see what you come up with this week.

For my card I've used an old Kaisercraft pad I found in my stash because I had already coloured the image and these papers kind of matched it perfectly.  I used to always colour my image to match the papers I had chosen but lately I seem to have been doing it the other way round.  I do like to make things hard for myself:-)



It's my birthday on Sunday and I want to be sensible with my birthday money and put it towards saving for a new bathroom but I know what will end up happening......more crafty goodies will be purchased to fill up my newly emptied craft cupboard lol !  It's the beginning of the month though and all the new releases are out.  I'm trying so hard to be a good girl but it's sooooo hard to resist!

Anyway it's time for me to be off, these wedding invites won't finish themselves unfortunately.

Have a great weekend everyone

Shelly xx