WHITEOUT - Polka Doodles Challenge Wk 37

OK I went hunting for challenges yesterday and found out that Polka Doodles (who I love and have to have everything they make) have their very own weekly challenge (its amazing what you find when you look!). And then I saw there was a prize as well - its only their latest CD Pretty Sweet - which I really need to have but due to my promise to my Hubby (see first ever post for more info) I just cannot justify buying at the moment - ohhhhh!

So my mind was made up I was going to enter and win - obviously (only joking, but I can hope can't I?). But then came the stumbling block - the theme was "Whiteout - we want to see white cards (great Christmas theme!) and only a little tiny bit of colour will be allowed. You can use as much texture, bling and glitter as you like, just remember to keep it white" and I was stumped. I always use colour and normally lots of it - pretty patterned papers, bright coloured images or stamped images coloured with my beautiful promarkers - what was I going to do?

I hunted through the mountain of Polka Doodles CD's I have (If I'm honest I have everyone except the latest Pretty Sweet) and printed out loads of different images of snowmen etc. However snowmen images had been used on lots of the examples by the design team so I decided I wanted something different. Then I found it - a beautiful swirly butterfly on  the Back to Nature CD Rom available here.

Heres my creation - I hope you like it:-

I glittered up a digi stamped butterfly from the CD and then added this to a circle of gloss white card which I had embossed using a cuttlebug folder. To the edge I added some beautiful white lace to add even more texture. I stuck a wide white organza ribbon to the centre of a large scalloped cardblank and then mounted the lace circle onto this. Finally I added a craftwork cards greeting and white pearlecent candi and finished off with a few gloss card punched flowers.

Hope you like it and fingers crossed that I win. Happy designing and crafting x

Happiness Blooms Card and Notepad Set - A Challenge

Well I'm back again after a couple of days (what a great start this blog is off too!!) with a card and notepad set I created for a challenge over at Designed 2 Delight.

The challenge was to use the beautiful Happiness Blooms images available from their store and found here.

Here's a pic of my creations:-

I loved working with this digi stamp. Its such a lovely, versatile image and so easy to colour.

I chose to create a card using a colour scheme I don't use very often (I'm much more pinks, lilacs and blue tones usually!) and then also created a little notepad by cutting out the image and mounting it to a piece of strong card the same size as the Wilkinsons Notepad I used as the base. The pad was only 15p so a bit of a bargain. Even though I do say so myself, I quite like them.

Hope you all do too. Happy designing.

Emma x

Dreamin Of Designing is Born!

Hello everyone, well actually hello me as I'm sure I'll be the only person ever reading this blog! Let me introduce myself - I'm Emma, 36 years old (if I'm honest I'm 37 on Sunday!), stay at home mum to two beautiful & wonderful children and a craftaholic. There I've said it - step one is always facing up to your problems - right!

However I don't class craft as a problem at all - ok so my house may be full of crafting goodies in every spare bit of space and add to that my craft room that is full to bursting of bits which I could'nt even tell you what is in there but crafting is what keeps me happy, sane, normal etc. I'm sure crafters will get where I'm coming from - hopefully - If not I'm obviously just a screwball.

But nothing keeps me happier than stroking and sniffing paper, cutting into and sewing fabric and felt or scrapbooking my children's pictures. Well technically I'm lying again I'm not that good with a needle but I love buying fabric with dreams of making lots of different things!

Anyway my youngest has just started full time school this week (sniff, sniff) and I have decided that as I am not going to go back to work until my kids are a bit older, I am going to focus my time on crafting.

So my plan is to do some craft fairs, sell bits I make at local toddler groups (where I already know lots of people), try dabbling in Ebay, Etsy & Folksy and then and the big step for me - try designing some printable sheets to sell on places like CraftsUPrint, Card-making-downloads and Craft Rabbit.

Ultimately I dream of being on design teams and designing for magazine articles etc. Being given free stuff to craft with sounds like a dream to me.

See I forgot to tell you something else - at the  moment hubby and I are madly saving for a dream trip to Disneyworld in 2013 and for a deposit for a BTL mortgage (well we figure it will become our pension several years down the line) and so I have promised that I shall be keeping my crafting spending down to a minimum - HELP it seemed like such a good idea at the time!!

OK positive thinking - I can acheieve everything I want to achieve!!!

Well I'll be back in a little while with a creation I've knocked up. I'm hoping to start entering some challenges now I have a bit of spare time on my hands xx

Sorry for waffling, but if your going read my blog you better get used to it - its what I do best!!!

Lots of love and crafting happiness , Emma x