Birthday for a Lady :)

Good morning! Wow the beginning of September. I can't believe it!! September always reminds me of school, and would have been the most depressing month, only for my birthday at the end of it!! Since having children, between both sides of our families we have 8 birthdays within 6 weeks. Needless to say it is the busiest 'season' in our house!

I chose the theme over at Eclectic Ellapu this week for the purple team. I am not an organised person, but I do try, so thought if I chose the theme I would be one card up!!

I made this card for a lady - I will have a choice of three birthdays to use it for. Only 7 more cards to go!! I used a combo of dies on silver card and on vellum. The black and white colour combo is complemented with the splash of red.

I heat embossed with some kaleidoscope embossing powder, I love the stuff! It is so unpredictable to use. I also used my old reliable washi tape. If you haven't guessed by now from my previous creations, I have a slight weakness for washi tape. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the stuff!! ;) Enough of my ramblings, have to get my eldest ready for her first Monday in primary school! 

Hope you have a great Monday and pop over and check out the new monthly challenge.
Have a great day,
Happy Crafting,
Eithne :)

Make your own Background with TTPHC

Hello! And happy Monday :) In Ireland today, it is our June bank holiday. It also happens to be my Wedding Anniversary, 7 years have gone so fast! This week over at Through the Purple Haze Challenges the theme is make your own background. This is my final week on the DT, as I have chosen to step down to change directions in my crafting! Exciting times ahead ;)

We are sponsored by Milk Coffee and I got the beautiful image - 'Michelle Walking'

This is my card -

I used a cloud stamp, and stamped it on some blue paper with two shades of blue ink. I then heat embossed it with some kaleidoscope powder and cut it to size. With some dark blue paper, I punched and tore it as a background layer.

Using my nested hearts set, I cut out the digi and another blue heart. I then embossed some vellum, stamped the sentiment. With some silver thread I threaded a dragon fly charm. Reaching for my favourite craft stash - WASHI tape ;) I placed some on and finished with some gems.

Thank you for stopping by today, hope you can take part in the challenge also. A lovely prize up for grabs! ;) I hope to enter this card in some challenges.

Have a wonderful week and I hope you get some crafting time in!

Eithne :)

#36 Team A - New Folding Technique

Good morning! Hope you had a wonderful weekend and your Monday is going well. This week over at Through the Purple Haze Challenges the new challenge this week is to try a new Folding Technique. This week I am on Team A, but normally I'm Team B :)

We are sponsored by:

Link: http://stitchybearstamps.com/shop/

Hougie Crafts

I made a double gate fold (if that is even the correct name!! I am not sure of the fold name as I never did it before)

When the card is closed it looks like Rapunzel is peeping out!! 

This is the inside of the card, with the beautiful Stitchy Bear image -

I paper pierced the dress and stamped onto the dress, and then heat embossed it with kaleidoscope embossing powder. No matter how hard I tried I could not get the embossed dress to show. :(

I used some water colour crayons to colour in the rest of the image.

Thanks for stopping by, why not pop over and enter in the challenge?

Have a wonderful Monday :)

Eithne 

Gerlinde - up close and personal ;o)

Hello and happy Friday! I am back this week with the step by step, as I mentioned in my previous post. I had aimed for Wednesday to have this out, only that morning I reversed into my gate :( Thankfully nobody was harmed, my car got dented and lights broken, but it took the wind out of me for a few days! I still can't believe how stupid I was!! Anyway... :)

A while back I noticed on Ebay someone was selling a few Martha Stewart punches and We R Memories punches. I have often longingly looked at these, but could never afford them. So my luck was in, when I won the lot. I longed to use them on my projects so I tried my best to use as many as possible this time ;-)

This is the 6 inch scallop punch. 

When all 8 punches are complete, this is the result.

I have a bigz Die that I've looked at for a long time, trying to think what I could use it for. With a bit of foam board I cut out the frame, and thought it would work well for a layout/wall hanging piece. So thus my idea was planted in my head what I was going to do!

This is the foam frame covered in some magenta paper from a pack that I have since I started paper crafting. It fitted in perfectly with the challenge at

Through the Purple Haze Challenges - Use up your stash.

 This is the beautiful Gerlinde from Encino Stamps, our sponsor this week. I am not a colouring artist by any stretch, and usually struggle with digi's only this beautiful image had no skin tones!! So I could work a little loosely with colours. I usually colour any digi's with watercolour paints, and this one was no exception. I added some glitter to the eye, just for a little sparkle.

Here are all three elements so far, on my 8 x 8" layout. I loved the vibrant colours of the pack, and I am delighted I could copy the colours on Gerlinde.

Some more colours from the paper pack, trying to bring in as much colour as possible :)

 With one of the blue strips I got the Martha Stewart border punch and gave the strip a lace effect.

 This acted beautifully as a border and layer for the green flower strip.

 Me playing around with the layout.

 On the frame I stamped in magenta ink, one of my favourite stamps "LOVE LOVE LOVE" (I am a huge Beatles fan, so I especially love using this one!) Although the ink looked beautiful, it is a pigment ink and never dries. So I decided to heat emboss it. I used a Kaleidoscope Transparent embossing powder. It must have been the foam board, because when it heated up, it began to curl a bit but also the colour was awful.

 The pink went a bit luminous :(

So I cut out some white card, stamped it, embossed it and this time it turned out better!

.I put a glitter border around the heart to hide the join.

As the frame is thick and Gerlinde was going to be 'resting' on it, I decided to attach her with foam pads. I created an outline with a grey marker to create a shadow.

 I found some buttons to tone in with the other colours, and loosely arranged them to create a corner.

I stuck a piece of washi tape down (I can never resist!!) With some hearts placed, I decided to jazz them up a little and used some glitter. (it was perfect for hiding a slight blemish on the biggest one!)

And finally the finished layout. Excuse my crazy desk behind!!! ;-)

Thanks for stopping by and hope you enjoyed the step by step.

Why not head over and check out all the other beautiful projects at Through the Purple Haze Challenges?
Eithne :)

Anything Goes with Delicious Doodles

Hello, happy Monday! Hope you had a wonderful weekend :) Well November is certainly pushing us nicely into winter, can't believe how cold it suddenly has become!

This week over at Through the Purple Haze Challenges, the theme is "Winter Scenes with animals or people". Our sponsor this week is Delicious Doodles, kindly giving 4 digi's to the challenge winner.

Here is the card I made for this challenge:

I got the beautiful Angelique to play with :)
I used a mixture of watercolour paints, pro markers and embossing powder to colour in this lady.

I decided to go with a blue and silver look, to portray the ice and snowflakes. I cut out a blue 'doily' with my bigz die, put an outline sticker on it and placed it slightly off the card to the top.

 I used some stripy blue paper as the background, and then layered up the centre with ribbon and a silver paper. I used another outline sticker to 'even off' the card.

I printed out Angelique onto a heavier card in my local print shop, but as usual did the wrong size! I had the card in my head and didn't work in the size dies I had. The only die that would fit her, was the largest banners die. I had no way to layer the image, as the smaller banner die cut off too much of the image. So I cut both the silver backing board and image at the same size, and then got my fabric scissors at the image to make it slightly smaller.

As it was a snowflake/icy image, I wanted to try and portray that on the card. I used some Kaleidoscope Transparent embossing powder on her wings, and used a silver embossing powder around the trim of her top. I love how the finish comes up on the wings!

To give the snowflake a bit of depth, I cut out a second one, heat embossed it, placed a gem in the middle and layered it with foam pads.

Thanks for stopping by, why not give the challenge a go?

I hope to enter this card in some challenges.

Artistic Inspirations Challenges - Use a Sentiment/Anything Goes (closed)

The Cheerful Stamp Pad - Angel Wings

Creative Creations Challenges - Sparkle and Shine

Lady Anne's 8th Challenge - More than one layer

Smudgy Antics - Fire and Ice

Sparkle n Sprinkle Creative Challenges - Anything goes with Glitter, Embossing Powder and/or Flocking

The Paper Girls Challenge - Cut it Out

Paper Playful - Sparkle

Have a great Monday :)

Eithne