Blog Candy

Not mine to give away unfortunately, but if you hop over to JayJay's blog she is giving away some extra special Winter blog candy for Christmas.
JayJaysblogCandyGiveaway/

Whilst you are there take a peak at her wonderful cards, so inspiring!

Almost the big day ...

...and I'm still making cards! Typically, I've yet to make my parent's card which means I'll have to hand it over to them on the day itself. I think I'm going to carry on making Christmas cards until January, just whilst all the inspiration is still around. And anything that gives me a head start on next year is an added bonus!

Here are a couple of cards that I did manage to mail out in time! I love using sketches at this time of year, it makes the creative process a lot quicker for me, which is useful as I'm one of life's procrastinators! The first card uses one of this years So Jolly Magnolia stamps. I love this little girl waiting for a kiss under the mistletoe. I showed DH this card hoping for some kind of 'that's nice' and was rewarded with an umpphh! To which, I asked 'Don't you like it?' and he replied with 'It's just another one of your cards using that weird mouthless troll girl'!!! Is he mad? How can possibly compare Tilda to a troll?

I didn't have the right colour flowers so I've used three pearl gems in the left-hand corner instead. You can just about make them out in the photo!

Paper: Basic Grey Wassail

Colours: Copics and Promarkers

Punches: I used my Fiskers punch for the borders, cut a circle with my Martha Stewart circle cutter and used nestabilities for the scalloped circle.

Sketch: Sketch Saturday #82

The card below is using another sketch but I completed this one a while ago and I'm not sure whose sketch it was, sorry. Apologies also for not cropping the photo. I hadn't realised it was so bad until I uploaded it. The stamp is a cute Sugar Nellie one.

A Whiff of Joy Challenge #55

I've only just come across this great challenge website and here is my first entry. For challenge #55 we had to use the colours orange, brown and ivory - and of course a Whiff of Joy stamp! I just love this little girl and I really enjoyed the colour combo, although there is less brown than I originally intended! I've coloured her in with my promarkers, using Primrose to lightly outline the wings and give her a shadow. I've then added glitter to her wings with Hero Arts Prisma Glitter. I've used the sketch from the previous challenge for my card, as it was such a lovely design. Thanks guys for providing such a fun challenge, I really enjoyed this one.


Papers: October Afternoon Weathervane range
Tools: pinching shears, Cuttlebug label die & Martha Stewart Autumn branch punch
Colour: Promarkers
Glitter: Hero Arts Prisma Glitter
Sketch: AWoJ sketch challenge #54
Flowers: Paperware hot oranges

So little time

November seems to be a month of meetings for me! I'm obviously on far too many committees. I finally managed to get to my first allotment committee last night. They're trying to get a pressure group going so we can persuade the parish council to find some land for us to have allotments. I tried growing vegs this year with limited success, but it would be nice to actually grow some out of the ground rather than a pot!

In between meetings, I've finally managed to complete a card for a good friend who lives in Canada. Apologies for not cropping it neatly but I was in a rush to get it up, and couldn't be bothered to go into Elements first. I do love these Basic Grey eerie papers. They have such great autumnal colours. I didn't really make the most of them in time for Halloween, but there is always next year!

Paper: Basic Grey Eerie

Colours: A mixture of Copics and Promarkers

Stamp: one of the Wild Sprouts from The Greeting Farm (I love this stamp)

Jewels:

Design: I've used a sketch from an old blog challenge.

NEC - treats galore

Well, I've just about recovered from all the flying elbows and tripping over wheelie trolleys at the NEC on Saturday. I've not been before but caught a lift with a friend who was visiting the cake fair that was on at the same time. I'm glad we got there early as come lunchtime it was every woman and man for themselves. I had to give up on the idea of visiting some of the stands I wanted to to go back to as there was just no chance of getting anywhere near the stalls.

I picked up some lovely treats, not least a gorgeous Magnolia Christmas 2009 stamp - wish I'd come back with more of them! Hopefully, I'll get down to the serious business of crafting tonight and will have something to show you. In the meantime though, I've been doing a bit of blog-hopping and catching up with all of my favourite blogs. There are some truely inspiring ladies out there! And over on Jacque's website, not only does she have a stunning Christmas card (and with a new stamp design, no less) but also she is giving away some gorgeous blog candy, so make sure you take a peak. I'm still not sure on how to add in links and pictures so I'll just crudely past the link for you below.

JacquesMagnoliablogspot

Copics V Promarkers

It's funny how fast trends move on. Not that long ago it seemed that everyone was going mad for Prismacolor pencils, then it was promarkers and now it's copic ciaos. I bought some promarkers a while back but wasn't really getting on with them due to the lack of colours that I owned. I've since extended my collection (amazing how easy it is to let things fall into online shopping baskets!) and I've also bought a few copics. Here are the main differences between copics and promarkers that I've noticed.

Copics:
Style: definately beat the promarkers hands down on looks!
Colours: 143 colours. Orginally, they had more colours than promarkers and the added benefit of being able to top up with the more expensive copic markers if you were missing a colour. The pens are grouped according to colour family which makes it easier to locate the next colour up or down for shading.
Design: the fact that the lids of the copics show the colour rather than the barrel of the pen make it a lot easier to pick out the pen you want if you use tubs or pots for storage, rather than buying the penholders.
Ease of use: this is very much down to personal preference. Copics have a brush nib and a broad nib.
Extras: you can buy new nibs and refill the copics apparently, although they are not advertised as such.
Price: normally the most expensive of the two.
Challenge website: http://copicscolourchallenge.blogspot.com/

Promarkers:
Style: rather dated and not particularly attractive!
Colours: promarkers have extended their range and now have 148 colours.
Design: the fact that the barrel is coloured rather than the lid can make locating the right pen difficult depending on your storage method. Also the colour on the barrel is often not true and they can look similar to one another e.g. pastel yellow and ivory look the same in poor light.
Ease of use: promarkers have a bullet nib and a broad nib.
Extras: promarkers can be used with their airbrush system, which is not possible with the copics. The official Letraset website has 10% off selected colours each month.
Price: normally the cheaper of the two, retailing at around £1.99.
Challenge website: http://promarkerchallenge.blogspot.com/

Verdict: although the ciao certainly seems to have the streetcred edge at the moment, so far I've not found anything to justify the extra price other than they look prettier & are easier to organise. However, if you are planning on going for the whole collection that the easy identifiable lids on the ciaos might be the better option. I personally prefer the bullet nib on the promarker. Before making your decision check on your local stockists. Our local art shop stocks promarkers which is obviously a huge plus for me as I can stock up on single pens as and when I need them. Either way, the two challenge websites are great fun to follow and often have technique tips as well. If any of this has been of use to you, please leave me a comment below. Thanks.

Update 9th Oct: Ekk, I've just found another art shop in town the stocks the ciaos. I'm spoilt for choice now!

Passion for Promarkers Challenge

This is my first attempt at the Passion for Promarkers weekly challenge having only just discovered the website. I probably wouldn't have put these colours together but they look fab and work perfectly with some paper I'd had hanging around for ages.

We had to use Apricot and Cool Aqua promarkers and incorporate flowers somewhere. The colours are actually brighter IRL but didn't quite come out on my camera. The little tag says 'enjoy'. Thank you for looking.

I used:
Stamp: Surfer Ian from The Greeting Farm
Colours: Promarkers in Cool Aqua, Apricot and skin tones.
Paper: by Artic Frog

World Cardmaking Day

I work Fri and Sun evenings so I've not had much time to get crafting for World Cardmaking Day this week, but I did manage to squeeze in four cards.

The first one is for the Passion for Promarkers challenge this week.

Up next is the card I made for the UKS Happy Daze card for World Cardmaking day. The challenge asked us to use brown, turquoise and circles. The stamp is Ferdie Fox by Sugar Nellie and I've coloured it in with my Prisma Pencils.

Next is a card that I made for my friend's daugther's 2nd Birthday. Again, I've used promarkers to colour it. The stamp is an adorable Gorjuss Girl stamp from Sugar Nellie stamps. I love the Gorjuss Girls and I hear that they will be releasing more stamps in October. I hope so as these girls are so cute.

Our close friends, Amber and Chris, celebrated their second anniversay earlier this week and this is the card that I made for them. The patterned paper is from Basic Grey and flowers are by Prima. The wedding cake does suggest a wedding rather than an anniversay but it was all I had that would work at the time! I hope they like it anyway. It's always difficult sending homemade cards as you never know whether they like it as much as you do.

Well I've not posted for over a year so lets see how I do this time. Mind you, sometimes it does seem rather pointless posting when no one is actually following. So I guess, I need to get creating some cards and layouts again. I feel like I haven't scrapped in a dangerously long time.

I've found a really useful site on how to use promarkers so that's got me excited about my stamps again. Especially, now that I've got some gorgeous Anya and Miss Anya stamps, which work so well with promarkers.

So, watch this space as they say!