Happy Card.... I hope... :)

It's past 3 am in here, but I had to finish this card for Ruby and Britt's blog candy challenge. I've started it 4 days ago and it's been waiting to be done ever since.
I hope it's happy enough for what the lovely girls had in mind :)

The little cat is done with Iris Folding (and some paper piecing), the pattern is one of Ingrid McCracken's - for those of you who are into IF, Ingrid is selling a fabulous booklet of fashion patterns, Couture Collection.

The rest of my card is bits and pieces as usual :-D [the flowers and the flowery butterfly are stamps from TAC]

Sorry for bad photo, I don't have a good lamp and at this hour it's very dark outside.
The words (sentiment) were made with pink holographic peels offs, not blue as they appear in photo.

Click on photo to see the bigger version :)

for stopping by.

Have a good day today or tomorrow, whichever the case where you are.

Blogging Friends 4 3v3r --- Award

*** Edit: I'll keep this post on top for a few days so the nominees can find it quicker***

You won't believe what just happened!

A dear friend, Jana (at 2 Worlds - fabulous creativity and great tutorials) kindly gave me the "VISA -- BFF Gold Card" :)

THANK YOU, friend!


The rules of this award are............

1. Only 5 people allowed. (to be nominated)

2. 4 have to be dedicated followers of your blog

3. One (1) has to be someone new or recently new to your blog and live in another part of the world.

4. You must link back to whoever gave you the award.

Now with my blog being so young I can't have many dedicated followers yet :) so I will have to use friends and favourite places to visit to complete the 5 nominations I need.

My picks are:

1 ~~ HEV [who's always keeping an eye on me ;)]

2 ~~ TRACEY [with her wonderful doodle flowers, backgrounds, tea bag tiles and...her son's monsters which I absolutely love]

3 ~~ DONNA [a great 'kid' ;) and an amazing artist]

4 ~~ MEL [her blog is "Treasure Island", believe me, and I love her sense of humour]

and the newbie is...

5 ~~ CAROL [a dear friend I've met at CoC an year ago and another very creative lady - she's a newbie to blogging too :)]

What a lovely start of the weekend for me, and it's all due to Jana's thoughtfulness and warm heart.

Lots of love to you all!

Tea Bag Folding and doodle tab from Mel

This month's TBF [Tea Bag Folding] challenge on Circle of Crafters asked us to make a card using a specific fold - Xing Fold Variation 9. The fold is one of the very many invented by Jeannie Pelletreau. Her nickname is "Queen of Folds" :)

To make a medallion using the Xing Fold V9 one needs 14 square tiles. The vast majority of the folds use 8 tiles for a medallion, so I usually print my tile sheets with 8, or sometimes 12 tiles. Never with 14.
As my printer is not functional for the moment, and it might be a long(er) moment ;) before I replace the colour cartridges, all I could do was combine two sets of tiles I already had.
One tile is made by my friend Carol (the darker, tartan-like one) and the other one is mine (pinkish with a tiny white flower).

Making tiles for tea bag folding is one of my favourite activities, I can play with Kaleidoscope Kreator or with the Kaleidoscope effect in Paint Shop Pro for an entire day and never get bored. :)

I've used a lot of stuff on this card and I am aware it is too much, but I really liked the outcome. :-D

I stamped and heat embossed the blue cardstock with a stamp from the TAC's "Swirly Gigs" set - I love those!
I then stamped the two flowers on printed paper and cut out and 'lacquered' them with clear nail polish. [What can a girl do when she doesn't find real crafting supplies in her big city? LOL]
The flower stamp is also from TAC (The Angel Company), this time the "Petal Pack" set.
Punched the tiny swirls and pinned them with rhinestones in the flowers' centers.

For the sentiment I used one of Mel's doodle tabs - they are so special and cute, thank you, Mel!
I coloured the little tab with blue nail polish and added a stamped "Thanks" (TAC again).

Well, without further ado ;), here's my "rich" card...

As always....
Thank you for looking and hope your today was/is a great start of a new week.
<----- free animation from Cuddly Buddly Crafts

MYSTERY Blog Candy at Janette's :)

Janette had this awesome idea of offering a mystery blog candy to celebrate the birthday of her blog Cards and Chat.

She will draw the winner on Monday morning - yes, that is tomorrow, 28th of July - and then she will post a photo of the secret prize. Cool idea, don't you think? :)

So if you want to be on the list, check her blog candy right away. Good luck all!

Dutch Dare: Challenge #7

After I did the birthday card for Karin's blog candy, she kindly invited me to have a look at Dutch Dare - Card Challenges where she is a DT member.

Their current challenge, #7, is about making a round card. I never did a round card before [and honestly? I can't see myself doing another one soon :D] so it did sound like a fun challenge. I love learning new things.
And I like teaching too (my childhood dream was to become an English teacher) so here's a very small tutorial from me to you.

How to cut perfect non-circles

- take a pair of compasses and draw the perfect circles you need
- cut them out with scissors, the bigger the scissors the better :D
- now that you have your perfect non-circles you can start making your desired card.

I bet you'd never thought this new "technique" was so easy.

Living here in the 'middle ages', as far as crafting is concerned, I cannot find any supplies to buy in our shops. Oh, OK, apart from cardboard, double sided tape, masking tape, coloured pencils and markers (the 'regular' kind, no fancy variations) and wrapping papers (they're horrible for card making - too shiny and they don't have very nice prints). Some silly stickers too, when you're lucky you can find the Dufex type.

Most (all?) of my crafting supplies come from a very special friend in Jersey, Channel Islands, who 'dragged' me into card making and keeps sending me lots and lots of gifts so I can have stuff to work with.
A few times, I could afford to order online a few things and last year I've won a $120 gift voucher for Joanna Sheen in a monthly card challenge we are having over at Circle of Crafters
It was a draw, don't ever imagine my card won because it was the best. LOL

But among all the supplies I have, there's nothing to cut circles with, so first item on my shopping list is 4-5 punches and maybe an Xcut Shape Cutter. I am hoping to buy those in a month or two. Yiippee! :)

Until then ...

My round card for the Dutch Dare challenge #7 was done using the "tutorial" I offered above :-D

Click to enlarge

Thanks for looking!

Wishing you all a fantastic weekend,
Mada xoxo

The COOLEST Blog Candy ever! :)

You simply got to check this out - Blog Candy on Ruby and Britt's Blog

These two very young crafters decided to offer a blog candy of their own, after their mum, Karin, posted one on her blog.

What you have to do for having a chance to win the yummy candy offered by our young talented artists? Simply have fun :0)

Make a HAPPY CARD and leave a comment with a link to your card
on the girls' blog

They will announce the winner on August 2nd.

The candy consists of:

• papers from basic grey
• some embellishments
• flowers ribbon
  
• a lot of stamp prints

AND....ta-daaa....

• 2 great cards created by Ruby and Britt

Please excuse me for the evening, I'm off to play with a HAPPY CARD :-D

Good luck everybody!

Ruby's Birthday + a very cool Blog candy

I so love going from blog to blog and admiring people's talents and creativity. Yesterday I found Karin Hoeve's Blog - Scrap Everything.

The first thing I've read about in there was that her daughter will turn 6 in August - coincidence, my baby brother is in August too, he'll turn 44 this year - LOL

Karin is generously offering a marvelous blog candy consisting of a bag full of nice goodies: a lot of Berry Sweet papers, Ribbon, Flowers, an Alphabet clearstampset, Brads and a lot of stamp prints.

-- That's a big WOW, yes? :D --

To be one of the possible lucky (more like truly blessed, considering the candy) winners, here's the challenge you have to face:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1 - Make a card, or a treat bag or a birthday party invitation and post it on your blog.
(you get 1 entry)

[It also can be an old one posted earlier on your blog]

2 - Make a post about Karin's challenge/candy and tell everyone about it (you get 1 entry)

3 - Link Karin on your blogroll ( you get 1 entry)

If you complete all things you'll be getting 3 entries.

This challenge/candy stays open until August 5th (Karin ships worldwide)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I just loved the sound of it all and thought I'd give it a try. So I made this birthday card for Miss Ruby :)

Click on it to enlarge

It is a very simple card but I did it with all my heart and had a great time working on it.

I printed out almost everything on it:

• the backing papers are from Scrap Girls (free download)
• the adorable cutie pie is another freebie, this time from Kim Elizabeth MacFarlane's website, Cuddly Buddly. It's in the "Funny Faces" collection.
• the sentiment's funky colourful letters come from Lettering Delights [yes, of course, another freebie ;)]

The rest is stuff I had around the house: a piece of ribbon, a foam number, a fabric flower, some glitter and 3 tiny flower embelishments.

I don't know if Karin and Ruby will like it, but I hope they won't hate it too much. :)

Happy crafting!

A paper dress for a special occasion

Over the weekend I tried to catch up with the monthly challenges on Circle of Crafters.
Each month we have challenges for Iris Folding, Tea Bag Folding, General Cards and Scrapbook pages - each with its specific requierements. I never submitted anything for Scrapbook pages but I will have to start one day :)

For now, here's the card I made for the Iris Folding challenge which this month was entitled "Fashion - no accessories".

I used a lovely pattern from Sarah at Snarffsplat Designs and it was the first time I tried a more complicated IF technique that was needed for this pattern - the Corner folds, created by Valita Reynolds in 2006.

Thank you both!

The pink-mauve backing paper on the card is the same I used for the dress. I also used a few small flower stamps in the Petal Pack set from TAC, some peel offs and an embossed sticker (the white flower in the upper right corner).

I shamelessly admit to being very proud of myself for mastering those folded corners :D
The card will soon travel to a good friend whose daughter will be 18 at the end of August.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you will all have a great week!

In love with monsters :)

Of course I couldn't resist using Nolan's new design - "Goopy". It's a digi-freebie on Tracey's blog - Fred, She Said

I couldn't think of any inspiring 'verse' so I used a famous saying as my sentiment towards this "non-regular" guy :-D

Click on image to enlarge

Thanks for looking and apologies for not writing more. I am at work - PLEASE don't tell this to anyone ;).

EDITED to add: I didn't MAKE the card at work, I only posted it from there. :)

Not for the faint of heart! :)

I've been dared to show a more recent photo of my PC/crafting corner so I had to prove I'm courageous enough to *face the truth* and let others see it too :-D

Please do not look if you're having heart problems - the shock might be too much for you...

SO.... here they are, the photos taken this afternoon at 18:30 my time

and a courageous close-up :)

I was working on an ATC. Haven't done too many of those, just a small set (5) for a close friend and another set for me (the first one I did when exercising).
Today I saw this cool ATC Buddly Challenge and thought I'd enter it.

But I will make a new entry about that :)

** I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to each and every one of you who checked out my blog.
I've had the greatest surprise yesterday noticing I have a few over 500 hits in 1 (ONE!) month. THANK YOU!

• I've had to edit this post and add a print screen of my desktop, for Hausfrau to see it. She's an old and dear friend and I couldn't let her high and dry :)

Click to enlarge

The pinkie...

I am always thrilled when I have a completely free weekend - no need to go to work for extra assignments (without extra pay, mind you) and not a lot of housework to deal with.
First thing I do on such weekends is oversleep :D and the second one is make a card or two.

** Speaking of making cards, here are two questions I have for you, if you'd care to answer:
=================================================================
- How much time does it take for you to craft a card?
[A "medium" one, or whatever YOU call it --> neither the simplest nor the most complicated, just a card with, let's say, some paper/cardstock layering, a few embelishments, a bit of stamping]
- Do you always have the card planned in your mind or it 'creates' itself, so to speak, while you're working on it?
============================================================

I think it takes me a very long time to do a card from start to finish and always think I'm doing something wrong and most probably everybody else is doing it in half of the time I need, or less.

In my defense ;) I will confess to having a very small area I can use for crafting and not having very many crafting tools that might make cutting and gluing easier. I cut everything with a scissor or crafting knife, measuring card and paper with a ruler and using my cutting mat as a guide. I use regular double sided tape, on a roll, and I don't know how but it seems to take me "ages" to apply it on every bit of paper I need.

My crafting *strip* :) is in front of my computer, on the table I keep my keyboard and mouse on. And to have most of my supplies at hand I keep boxes and boxes perched on a narrow shelf on my right.
Here's an old photo of my computer corner. I wasn't crafting at that time (spring-summer last year) so everything could be kept tidy.
I wouldn't DARE to show you how that space looks today but I just wanted you to see how big my table is. And on the right, where the CDs/DVDs used to be now there are all those boxes I told you about, crammed one on top of the other. And there is much more stuff on the table too.

I am sure many of you don't have special crafting rooms, but maybe you have a bigger table and more storing place near where you craft. I'd love to hear a few words about your crafting space if you're willing to share it :)

Now let's get to the main subject of this post - my PINKIE.
Here it is...
I made it today, trying out more of my new TAC stamps. It took me a bit more than 2 hours to finish it [yes, it's a shame, I know it :)] and it isn't what I had in mind when I started it.

While I was taking out the supplies I needed, to have them all handy, different ideas started to haunt me and the original design I thought about has nothing in common with the outcome, except maybe for the pink base card and the twig stamp I wanted to use.

The twigs are heat embossed - stamped in pink ink and embossed with holographic powder. My scanner doesn't show it, maybe I should start using a camera for getting my cards into the computer.

So this is where my above questions came from :)

Thanks for looking and reading!
May you all have a fabulous weekend.

Frances' Blog Candy - Wow!!

My browsing trips took me today to Franmade - Cards & Things, an adorable blog held by Frances [she's got a great smile :D], who is a Design Team member for Tilda & Friends ATC Challenges and 'Cute Card Thursday'.

Please do yourself a big favour and check out Frances' Blog Candy - it's an extraordinary generous offer and it is still open till July 17th.

In order to be on her list [the one she'll be drawing out the lucky(iest) winner from] the requiered effort is minimal - mention the Blog Candy in your blog, with a link to it, and then go let Frances know you did it :-) by leaving a comment on her blog.

Now I'll go snoop around Franmade, there are many lovely things to be seen.

(And I've noticed that Frances has the same preferences in books and movies as I do - cool!)

Testing my new TAC stamps...

Due to Jana's extreme kindness and help I am now the happy owner of a few TAC (The Angel Company) stamps that arrived at my door two days ago. I was so excited with the event and couldn't wait to use them.

It was late at night and I was tired, so the card is very very simple and silly. But - YAY! - I tested some of my newest stuff and it's fantastic.

The stamps I used for the making the cardtop are "Speckle" for the background and "Swirly Gigs" for... the swirly stuff. :).

I took a piece of pastel blue textured cardstock, stamped the swirlies in blue ink then covered them with scraps of post-it notes and stamped the 'dotty' background, also in blue.

I printed the hearts backing paper - a free background I downloaded from this site - and glued it to a dark green square card (140x140 mm) then added the orange strip [it is orange orange, lighter than in shows in my scan] and the dark blue peel off (taken from a free gift that comes with Docrafts "Creativity" Magazine).

I colored the stamped designs with watercolour pencils, rounded the corners with scissors (a very 'approximately' business, but I have no punches... yet) and inked the margins. I oops!-inked one spot too much so I did a few more oopses to make it more 'original' - LOL.

One last touch - a small "THANKS" stamped with black on green and layered on a shiny dark blue strip attached with a small round pastel blue brad.

And now I was free to go to sleep knowing my duties for the evening were accomplished. :-D

Thank you for looking and have a fantastic Wednesday!

Claudia's blog and a wonderful candy

In the short time since I've joined the blogger's world, there is not one day without a lovely discovery. Today's surprise, and newest entry in my "Must see" list, is Claudia's blog - Pretty Pressings

Claudia is a DT member for Magnolia stamps - how cool is that? :) If you take the time to visit her blog you'll surely fall in love with her "one of a kind" cards (which, by the way, are for sale).

I found Pretty Pressings through Ila's blog who was advertising the awesome blog candy Claudia is offering.

The candy is about a Magnolia stamp sponsored by Magnolia-licous (their online shop will open soon), a little handmade book filled with 200 stamped images plus 1 brand new spool of Stampin' up ribbon.

Wouldn't you just love to have them?

READ HERE about the Blog Candy and you'll find out what you have to do to put your name on the list of possible winners. This will close July 19th.

Thank You, Claudia and Good Luck all!

Duh! I forgot to tell you about Hev's blog candy

The lovely Miss Hev is offering a blog candy for reaching 1,000 hits on her blog - Congratulations!

I've been meaning to mention it in here from the first day (which was looong time ago) but forgot - old age is showing in all its splendour.

So here it is, your chance to visit "Heaven" ;) - Vanilla Hev'n - and to enter for winning the candy.

Just leave a comment (make sure it's a nice one, OK? - lol) in HERE, before the time is up. Which will happen on July 11. Yes, this year :D.

Thank you Heather for the kind and generous gesture.

<-------- flowers for you

Check this out! Some great stamps that could be yours!

Every day I'm finding more and more beautiful places in Blog-land. Today I bumped into Ila's artful blog (I was visiting Hev's blog and found the link in there).

Ila is generously offering a wonderful blog candy provided by High Hopes Rubber Stamps.

*** Have a look at this awesome candy in HERE ***

If you want to win these GORGEOUS stamps all you have to do is ... Spread the word about Ila's Blog Candy and High Hopes New Release on YOUR BLOG... and then go back to her blog and leave a comment on the post about the Blog Candy. Hurry up :), the offer ends on Friday morning.

The cutest little monster ever

An amazingly talented young man, NOLAN son of Tracey [Fred, She Said] designed this adorable little monster and offered him for free use. Thank you Nolan!

But to express better (more 'palpable') my thanks, here's the monster card I made with Nolan's creation.

Click on it to enlarge

Firstly I added the green dotted background to Nolan's sketch, using Paint Shop Pro 7 (that's my favourite and the only one I know how to handle to actually get something done). Printed it on light blue card as I ran out of white card and forgot to buy some :(. I then coloured the sweetie with watercolour pencils which don't show too bright due to the blue card I worked with.

I added a cut out flower (layered it with foam pads) - the flower is another digi-freebie from Fred, She Said, called "Dancing Daisy".

** By the way, you really should have a look at Tracey's blog, she's very generous and has offered lots of wonderful freebies and some great tutorials too. **

Ok, now to finish with my card :) - I used peel offs on green pearlized card for the sentiment and I just had to add more dots - the ladybug embossed sticker (from PaperMania - I love their stuff).
I matted everything on yellow card and lined it with white wavy peel offs then glued it on the pink A6 card.
I know I'm not great at colouring, but I am trying harder every time :)

I am hoping Nolan gets at least 10 cents, my card doesn't really look like it's worth 20. :-D

Nolan's mother, Tracey, told her son - and I quote from her blog:

"how about if the Peeps out in blog land email me or link up cards they have made using this monster, "I" will give you 20 cents for each card made?"

The deal was on, so if you're willing to help Nolan get an extra 20 cents by using his monster for a card and post it on your blog, then give the link to it on Tracey 's blog, you'll find the monster template in there.
Have a great end of the week all of you!

Scanned Lace

A dear friend of mine, had the awesome idea of scanning a piece of lace using coloured card behind it. I loved it when she told me about it and asked her for some pics so she sent me 5 of them in various colours. I immediately printed the blue one and made a quick card.

I used the lace print as a background, added two scalloped strips of blue card (cut with decorative scissors) and a 3D butterfly clipart. The butterfly is not a 3D sheet, I just printed it 4 times and decoupaged the bits I needed for layering.
Finished it off with some holographic peel-offs and there you have it! :) -ready in aprox. half an hour.
A nice card (at least I think so) that will come handy one day.

Have a fine day everybody and happy crafting!