Today it's Sunday and time for this week's new challenge over at The Paper Players! It's the turn of the fabulous Jaydee to host this week and she has a my favourite, a sketch challenge for us to work with:

I saw those two panels and my mind immediately thought 'designer series paper' (I know, you're not surprised!) They actually gave me the opportunity to use a paper that I hadn't broken the seal on to make a couple of Christmas cards - take a look:

Here's the low-down on today's card:

Winter Dreams - The paper in question is called 'Winter Dreams' and is one of the September Online Exclusives products. I think this paper is highly under-rated - I say that, as I haven't seem anyone else use it anywhere in the blogosphere and it really is lovely! It's difficult to see, but the snowflakes are actually textured; they have the appearance of embroidery but are almost dry-embossed into the paper - so pretty in real life! The white is really sharp against the dark Secret Sea background and there are three patterns in the paper pack: this one featuring snowflakes, another featuring dots, i.e. falling snow and the third is a knitted pattern. For the panel that is peeking out behind, I used a piece of in-colour DSP to compliment the monochrome colour scheme. 

Texture All The Way - In addition to those snowflakes, I decided to use another snowflake as the focal point and I cut this out of white velvet paper. It's difficult to see in the photo, but this gives both the snowflake and the white bar behind a lovely, fuzzy feel:

The snowflake itself was diecut using the Stitched Snowflake Dies and the heat-embossed sentiment is from the 'Merry Snowflakes' stamp set; both retired, but they compliment the paper perfectly and give a fun mix of old and new. A couple of sparkly white sequins and an opal gem in the snowflake centre complete my card.

Inside Story - I used another sentiment from 'Merry Snowflakes' for the inside of my card:

That's another two Christmas cards for my stash!

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my Product and 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

Before you reach for your ink and papers, check out what our amazing team has created to inspire you this week:

Enjoy your day; my Sunday is shaping up to be a quiet one; I may well go on a bit of a hunt for winter flowers at the garden centre, as we've had lovely weather this week and now that the end-of-summer tidying up is complete, I feel like I'm ready to get in gear for the winter months. I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used: 

WINTER DREAMS 12" X 12" (30.5 X 30.5 CM) SPECIALTY DESIGNER SERIES PAPER (£13.00)	2025–2027 IN COLOR™ 6" X 6" (15.2 X 15.2 CM) DESIGNER SERIES PAPER (£11.75)	STYLISH SHAPES DIES (£28.00)	SECRET SEA A4 CARDSTOCK (£14.00)	VERSAMARK PAD (£9.00)	BASICS WOW! EMBOSSING POWDER (£20.00)
ADHESIVE-BACKED SPARKLE SEQUINS (£8.00)

Since it's the end of the cricket season and the James Junior is officially back at university, I have spent the whole day in my craft room - yippee! - so I'll have lots to share in the coming days. Today I'm sharing my third card of the week featuring Winnie The Pooh that I wanted to share a few days ago, but time to blog escaped me - this one uses the current layout over at Try A Sketch On Tuesday:

I was intrigued by those patterned borders and thought they would make a nice row of honey pots - take a look at what I came up with:

 Here's the low-down on today's card:

This card was actually quite simple to make, with the honey pots and the focal image all taken from the Silly Old Bear DSP. The card is larger than usual (A5) because I wanted to use this particular image and sentiment and didn't want my card to be overcrowded, but sometimes it's nice to have a bigger card if you are going to write a letter inside, which I sometimes do. I played around with this for a while as I couldn't get it to feel right; in the end it was the addition of a panel of Peaceful Pine embossed with the 100 Acre Woods embossing folder that gave the card that extra 'something' that it needed:

This is why I ultimately discounted it for last week's Paper Players challenge as not sufficiently clean and simple, but still love it and the card is definitely all the better for the embossed section for sure.

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

Enjoy the rest of your day. I might catch up on my sewing this evening as I continue to watch the live simulation drama called 'Wargame' on Sky TV; I started watching it yesterday and I'm hooked! I'll be back tomorrow with my project for this week's new challenge over at The Paper Players. Until then, happy stampin'!

Today I'm sharing my design team card for our new challenge over at As you See It where it's time for a fun 'fill in the blank' challenge chosen by me:

We are at the end of September and with three months to go, thoughts naturally turn towards Christmas and the festive season. As crafters, we often tell ourselves at the start of the year we will build our stash of Christmas cards throughout the year, but how many do we actually make? I thought today's challenge would be a great time to find out, so whether this is your first Christmas card of the year or your fiftieth, do play along this week and let me know! I had a card made for today's challenge, but when I saw Donna's layout over at Freshly Made Sketches this week I had not one but three ideas with it, so I saved my original card for another day and had to get one of those ideas out of my head and into paper! Take a look at what I came up with and read on to see how I filled in our blank:

 Here's the low-down on today's card:

So this is the 23rd Christmas card I've made this year so far! It's the 18th one I've shared here on my blog (the other five are for upcoming design team challenges that I will share in due course). I was actually surprised that I hadn't made more - so expect me to be doing more Christmas creating in the coming months. Donna's layout includes a Christmas tree-shaped triangle, although she points out that the shape can be anything - it doesn't have to be a tree. For today's card I went for something of a halfway house: I chose to use a tag from the Happiest Season Mix & Match Tag Pack for the main shape, but one that featured a diecut Christmas tree that I popped out to use the negative. I added a snippet of paper from the co-ordinating Creative Celebrations DSP Pack that I've been creating with lots lately that featured the same soft blue with a delicate snowflake pattern and added some silver twine and a trio of rhinestones, along with one of the new white felted stars, before finishing with a simple silver heat-embossed sentiment (from the retired 'Merriest Wishes'):

The tag and paper is a very pale shade of Hydrangea Hue, but the cardstock is much darker than this and was too bold for my mat. A rummage in the retired cardstock box resulted in a mat of Seaside Spray, which proved a better fit. This is such a simple card, yet it has an elegance to it I think. It's one of those cards where I feel like I've managed to channel my 'inner Celine', an homage to the fabulous designer over at Freshly Made Sketches, Cecile Ribon, who makes such fabulous clean and elegant cards - check out her fabulous feline this week here. I'm also linking today's card up over at Inspire.Create Challenge where their current challenge is 'clean and simple'. I really like this card and you could use the layout with any of the tag shapes in the Creative Celebrations pack.

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

Here's a summary of our challenge rules:

• Create any card, scrapbooking page, 3D or packaging project that fits the challenge.
• For a Fill In The Blank challenge, please tell us in your post how you completed the sentence.
• Please include the challenge graphic and link back to the challenge in your post.
• Make sure you link the specific post and not the whole blog to the Linky. Use AYSI#(insert challenge number) when uploading to a public gallery
• Please turn off word verification so that we can send you lots of feedback.
• You can combine our challenge with up to 3 other compatible challenges. 
• We do reserve the right to delete, or not consider for Top Pick and Featured Artist, entries that do not comply with these guidelines.

Enjoy your day; I'm hoping to escape to my craft room this afternoon and try out another of my ideas using Donna's fabulous layout. If I get there I'll be back tomorrow with another project - fingers crossed. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

HAPPIEST SEASON TAGS MIX & MATCH EPHEMERA PACK (£6.75)

CREATIVE CELEBRATIONS MIX & MATCH 6" X 6" (15.2 X 15.2 CM) SPECIALTY DESIGNER SERIES PAPER (£13.00)

STYLISH SHAPES DIES (£28.00)

BASIC WHITE A4 THICK CARDSTOCK (£16.00)

VERSAMARK PAD (£9.00)

METALLICS WOW! EMBOSSING POWDER (£20.00)

Today I'm sharing another of the cards I made at the weekend featuring Winnie The Pooh. This one uses the layout over at Hand Stamped Sentiments and is my 'furry friends' entry over at Inkspirational. The acorn inspiration over at Inspired By was also what gave me the solution for those accent circles in the sketch:

Here's my card:

Here's the low-down on today's card:

Today's card features one of the scenes from the Silly Old Bear designer series paper where Pooh Bear has got himself into a spot of bother, having consumed just a little too much honey - and requires a whole bunch of furry friends to free him from his dilemma! These vintage-style images are just lovely; I paired this one with a neutral check from the retired Timeless Plaid DSP pack which compliments the overall woodsy feel and added a couple of acorns as accents - I love the diecut detailing on these:

A simple sentiment completes my card.

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

I've spent today generally tidying and trying to get on top of my to-do list for the week, having taken the James Junior back to university yesterday - the house has been quiet! Enjoy the rest of your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Today it's Sunday and time for this week's new challenge over at The Paper Players! It's the turn of the fabulous Christy to host this week and she has a clean and simple challenge for us with a fun theme:

Bears! I knew immediately that I was going to feature Winnie The Pooh on my card today; take a look at what I came up with::

Here's the low-down on today's card:

My challenge today was in keeping my card truly clean and simple: minimal layers and embellishments, lots of clean 'white' space. In the end I decided that this image of Pooh writing a letter would pair nicely with that favourite of sentiment bundles, Words of Beauty, for a sweet 'because' card. I diecut the word 'because', layering Golden Glow and Early Espresso cardstocks to echo the colouring of the bear, and separated out the 'you've been on my mind' into one long stamped sentiment to run beneath the diecut. I added my Pooh bear, fussy cut from the Silly Old Bear designer series paper, above this using dimensionals:

A couple of Golden Glow In Color enamel dots complete my card.

This was actually the third card I made for this week's challenge, but I ended up discounting the other too as not CAS enough. That does mean though that I have 2 more cards to share with you this week, both featuring this silly old bear :-) 

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my Product and 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

Before you reach for your ink and papers, check out what our amazing team has created to inspire you this week:

Enjoy your day; I am out on a social walk with some friends from the gym this morning, then this afternoon I will be attempting to coral the James Junior into some sort of shape to take him back to university tomorrow for the start of the new academic year. He is in a rather fragile state, following his final cricket match yesterday. Not only did they win the game, but they came top of their league and will now promote for the fourth year in a row. This led to much celebrating late into the night!  I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used: 

WORDS OF BEAUTY BUNDLE (ENGLISH) (£43.00)	VERY VANILLA A4 CARDSTOCK (£14.00)	EARLY ESPRESSO A4 CARDSTOCK (£14.00)	EARLY ESPRESSO CLASSIC STAMPIN' PAD (£10.25)	2026–2028 IN COLOR™ DOTS (£8.50)
2026–2028 IN COLOR™ A4 CARDSTOCK (£14.00)

I've been out at cricket all afternoon so this is a quick post to share an even quicker card for a couple of challenges:

Judy's layout is all about creating on the bottom half at Freshly Made Sketches this week and when I saw the colours at Color Dare I knew this was the perfect opportunity to showcase some super pretty paper that I've been hoarding - take a look:

 Here's the low-down on today's card:

This pretty paper with tiny blue flowers and green leaves in the Bloom Boutique designer paper pack is just lovely and I'd been resisting cutting into it. No more! The sketch was perfect to showcase it and my favourite of this year's in-colours, Hydrangea Hue, too. I added a heat embossed sentiment and gold twine bow and single gold pearl to pick up the tiny gold dot detail in the paper:

 I'll be honest, I spent longer deliberating whether to add the twine bow or not than I did putting together the rest of the card together. I'll leave it to you to decide - too much or just right? 

The sentiment, from 'Words of Beauty', makes me smile; whilst I continued it on the inside of my card with 'you're amazing' as it's for one my Stampin' Up! team, I can hear my childhood English teacher saying "Joanne, you cannot begin a sentence with 'because'!" She would so not have approved of this card! I think of her every time I make a card using the Words of Beauty bundle and '...because' - she was a wonderful educator and I have nothing but fond memories of her and card making aside, I share her often pedantic attitude towards correct use of English grammar!

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

Enjoy your evening and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

BLOOM BOUTIQUE 12" X 12" (30.5 X 30.5 CM) SPECIALTY DESIGNER SERIES PAPER (£16.00)

WORDS OF BEAUTY BUNDLE (ENGLISH) (£43.00)

2026–2028 IN COLOR™ A4 CARDSTOCK (£14.00)

BASIC WHITE A4 THICK CARDSTOCK (£16.00)

VERSAMARK PAD (£9.00)

BASICS WOW! EMBOSSING POWDER (£20.00)

I managed to squeak in a little crafty time yesterday (anything to avoid the post-vacation ironing mountain!) and today I'm sharing the cards I made inspired by the 'BOLD' word challenge over at Just Us Girls this week:

I don't always manage to make time to play along with these lovely ladies, but when I saw that 'bold' was the word of the week it gave me the perfect opportunity to use another of my recent craft purchases, one of the Let's Celebrate Dies by Hero Arts and use up some of my stash of retired patterned papers - take a look:

Here's the low-down on today's card:

In keeping with the word 'bold' I decided I had to go with a big diecut sentiment and some suitably bright and colourful designers series paper behind. I chose this Lemon Lime Twist paper, with splashes of Lovely Lipstick, Smoky Slate, black and white from the retired Broadway Bounds specialty designer series paper, mounted on a Lemon Lime Twist cardbase with a black mat for definition. It just so happened that I had some retired Lovely Lipstick coloured foil in my stash, so I decided to cut my sentiment from this for added impact:

A trio of co-ordinating pink glossy enamel dots complete each of my cards - they really didn't need anything else. I made two identical ones, as this is the kind of card that is great to have on standby and it took only a little extra time and effort. All of that pink and lemon-lime, along with the shiny foil and the recipient of this card might well need sunglasses, it's so bright - this is the kind of card that makes me happy!

Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

It's Tuesday and time for a new challenge over at CAS Colours & Sketches. Rachel is hosting the next 2 challenges and our second challenge this month is a colour challenge: 

These colours are quite spring-like, which is perfectly fitting for Rachel's part of the world. For my card today I grabbed a set that I recently picked up in a stamp sale, along with the layout over at Sunday Stamps, and set to work. Take a look at what I came up with:

Here's the low-down on today's card:

This sweet little gnome comes from a My Favourite Things stamp set called 'Sunflower Gnomes'. There are two other stamps in the set featuring sunflowers, but in this one the gnome is holding a chrysanthemum I think. I coloured my gnome with my Highland Heather Blends and used the Bubble Bath and Peaceful Pine for my flower. I think there are dies to cut out these gnomes but I don't have them so I got fussy cutting! For the circle element of the sketch, I used a stencil and my blending brushes to add both Highland Heather and Bubble Bath ink in a blended circle as a background of sorts to ground my gnome and I flicked it with water before adding my gnome and sentiment to add a speckled effect for interest behind:

A simple banner sentiment finished my card. I sometimes struggle to create cards that are truly 'clean and simple' that are something more that just an image and sentiment, so I really like the blended circle on this one as a way to add interest. Great sketch inspiration from the team at Sunday Stamps as always!

As a reminder, for our colour challenges, you must use all of the stated challenge colours. You may also use neutral colours; however, the challenge colours should be the most noticeable ones featured on your card. We use Stampin' Up! colour names for reference, but you are welcome to use any other companies' products as long as you match the challenge colours as closely as possible.

Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

BLENDING BRUSHES (£16.00)	BASIC WHITE A4 THICK CARDSTOCK (£16.00)	BUBBLE BATH CLASSIC STAMPIN' PAD (£10.25)	BUBBLE BATH STAMPIN’ BLENDS COMBO PACK (£11.25)	HIGHLAND HEATHER CLASSIC STAMPIN' PAD (£10.25)	HIGHLAND HEATHER STAMPIN' BLENDS COMBO PACK (£11.25)
PEACEFUL PINE STAMPIN’ BLENDS COMBO PACK (£11.25)	STYLISH SHAPES DIES (£28.00)

Today it's Sunday and time for this week's new challenge over at The Paper Players! It's the turn of the fabulous LeAnne to host this week and she has a warm, seasonal colour challenge for us to work with:

Lots of my teamies chose to go with leafy fall creations this week and I'll be honest, I considered it ... but I had some new goodies that I had yet to play with that were not leafy in the slightest that I thought would be perfect for these colours, so I grabbed the sketch over at Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge and set to work! Take a look at what I came up with:

Here's the low-down on today's card:

Yes, today it's all about the pasta! I totally blame my fellow teamie Jaydee for today's card; she has made some fabulous cards with a whole bunch of pasta-themed sets from both Spellbinders and Concord & 9th in recent months and I finally decided that I just had to have them too - so into my shopping basket they went! Today I used everything from Spellbinders: the little animated pasta shapes in the Pasta Friends Dies are so cute but the star of the show is most definitely the Al Dente embossing folder that I used for my background - the dimension is amazing! I blended all three challenge colours onto my panel before embossing it - just look at all those pasta shapes:

The 'Stay Saucy' stamp set is full of hilarious punny, pasta-based sentiments - perfect for the 'J is for Just Kidding' challenge over at The Alphabet Challenge Blog where I'm also linking up - and to align with the sketch, I added a (retired) thanks die (Amazing Thanks Dies) from Stampin' Up! to my sentiment for added impact. I'm not sure I've got the face on my pasta bow quite right (I think in hindsight the dots were cheeks and mouth instead of eyes and mouth) but this card just makes me smile - and those colours are perfect for a touch of saucy, cheesy pasta goodness!

Before you reach for your ink and papers, check out what our amazing team has created to inspire you this week:

Enjoy your day; I am having a quiet weekend, trying to get over my jetlag, as I spent my birthday week in New York doing all things touristy and having a fab time. So much has changed since I was last there some 26 years ago so it was great to experience it all. This time I took James Junior with me as my travelling companion and we had a ball! Unfortunately the hubby was in China on business, so not able to join us. Today will be the first time we've all been together in over a week so it will be fun to swap stories on what we've all been up to! I'll be back in the next couple of days with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Today I'm sharing my design team card for our new challenge over at As you See It where it's time for a colour challenge chosen by Jan:

I think this may be a tricky colour combo for some, although I did have a couple of ideas. I decided to go with another collection of kitties from 'Cutest Crew' - take a look:

Here's the low-down on today's card:

I used a piece of retired watercolour-effect DSP for my background, then layered the two shades of grey to create a diecut pawprint border and added a sentiment before stamping my kittens onto Basic White cardstock and colouring with my Stampin' Up' Blends in the challenge colours, using my light Basic Black Blend for some dark grey detailing. I added my row of kitties, along with a white twine bow, to my card, then added a sprinkling of diecut white butterflies around them, accenting each with a rhinestone that I coloured with m Azure Afternoon Blends marker:

Super cute! I seem to have made lots of cards featuring these kitties, which is ironic given that I am much more a dog person. I need to put this right and feature a few more of those puppies on future cards for sure.

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

Here's a summary of our challenge rules:

• Create any card, scrapbooking page, 3D or packaging project that fits the challenge.
• For a Colour Challenge use all of the given colours and only those colours with these exceptions:
• White and Very Vanilla are free colours.
• In addition, you may use of ONE of these neutrals: Basic Black, Basic Gray, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige.
• Please include the challenge graphic and link back to the challenge in your post.
• Make sure you link the specific post and not the whole blog to the Linky. Use AYSI#(insert challenge number) when uploading to a public gallery
• Please turn off word verification so that we can send you lots of feedback.
• You can combine our challenge with up to 3 other compatible challenges. 
• We do reserve the right to delete, or not consider for Top Pick and Featured Artist, entries that do not comply with these guidelines.

Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

CUTEST CREW BUNDLE (ENGLISH) (£42.25)	BASIC WHITE A4 THICK CARDSTOCK (£16.00)	RHINESTONE BASIC JEWELS (£6.75)	BAKER'S TWINE ESSENTIALS PACK (£11.25)	SMOKY SLATE A4 CARDSTOCK (£14.00)	BASIC GRAY A4 CARDSTOCK (£11.90)
SMOKY SLATE STAMPIN' BLENDS COMBO PACK (£11.25)	AZURE AFTERNOON STAMPIN’ BLENDS COMBO PACK (£11.25)	BASIC BLACK STAMPIN' BLENDS COMBO PACK (£11.25)