Fab Friday ATC Challenge

This time Leonie has set the challenge theme as 'A small thing of greatness'. Her ATC on this theme is absolutely wonderful and started me thinking about people who really make a difference! With this in mind I thought about all the people who have inspired me and who have actually 'made a difference' and I came up with Sir David Attenborough who is a truly remarkable man in my opinion. I wanted some words which summed him up and were along the lines of the theme so I hunted through some books until I came up with a quote by the polish-born american writer and humorist, Leo Rostin.

The purpose of life is to matter - to count,

to stand for something, to have it make

some difference that we lived at all.

I feel that these words really fit the man and the theme. I have kept with the sepia/vintage colouring as I am really enjoying using these colours at the moment. I printed the verse using an old-style typewriter font onto plain paper, tore round the edges and inked them with brown ink. Although it is difficult to see, there is a strip of torn paper down the right hand of the atc which has an acetate overlay of a watch. I found a photo of Sir David by googling him and again, I tore around the edge and inked it with brown. After I stuck everything down I went all around the atc with the same brown to give it an aged look.

Papertake Weekly Challenge - Sketch

This week's challenge was using a layout sketch provided by Katharina. This is the first 'sketch' card I have done and I quite enjoyed working within the confines of a brief. I decided to carry on using the same type of colours as I used for the arch I made in the previous post and the rubber stamp I used is from the Stampin Up, Lovely as a Tree set, I purchased from Sara at Time for Crafting. The button was just one from my bits box. Hope you like it!

Gothic Arch Challenge

This weeks theme was 'Heritage'. I used a piece of background paper from a Vintage Memories book, rubbed the edges with a nail file and then inked them, I also repeat stamped a leaf stamp all over in a medium brown. The photograph is one of my great-grandparents taken in the late 60's I think! which I have ripped and then inked around the edges to give a feeling of age. The wording was done on the computer and again, ripped and inked to age it. The big H is a wooden one which I just inked over with a couple of different shades of brown. I enjoyed this theme and it was nice to have an opportunity to look through some old photo's (for which I must make some scrapbook pages) which haven't seen the light of day for a while!

A4 sized Card!

I decided to go completely mad and make a full size A4 card for the spring card challenge on the TFC forum as I have been wanting to try one for a while now and this was a perfect opportunity. I used downloads from the Prima Hybrid site, very pretty packs called Enchanted Garden and Flying Above It All. I re-sized and fiddled about with the images and printed out onto pearlescent paper which I stuck to the card. I used my Kwik-Thread to thread my beads onto the ribbon and did the wording on the computer too using the same colours as the graphics. I then stuck tiny pearlescent beads to the centres of the flowers to make them stand out a little better. Quite different to my usual style but not too bad LOL. I don't know whether I would make many more of these big cards but it was fun doing this one.

Arty Girlz Weekly Challenge

This weeks challenge had the theme of 'doodling' but as I am useless with a pen and my doodling tends to look like a spider with inky feet has walked across the page I have used the computer to do my doodling for me. I used a swirly image from one of DAISIE Company's packs and recoloured it, then I copied it over and over again to create my 'doodles'. The wording is from the Stampin Up set, Sincere Salutations which I stamped with Versamark and embossed with silver embossing powder. The little dragonfly is actually a silver charm but it loks gold on here for some reason! I hope this type of doodling is acceptable for the challenge.

Fab Friday ATC Challenge

This week Leonie set the theme of 'Time'. Mine is probably a bit predictable but as soon as I saw the theme I knew exactly what I was going to do. A while ago I bought some gorgeous Chapel Road Art Stamps from Canada. The one I used is from the set called 'Rock Artishapes' and I stamped it onto gold card four times but completely off-centre each time so you get the whole stamp but broken into section. I stamped it once more onto cream hammered card and cut out the clock face and the wording. I edged the clockface with a dark brown inkpad to lift it into the foreground. I then used some wings which I stuck behind the wording to portray the image that 'time flies'. The wings came from a download from the Enchanted Garden download from Prima Hybrid which I made smaller using Serif PagePlus (my favourite dtp program). I am pleased with the final effect and happy that the colours are how I hoped they would be.

Gothic Arch Challenge

This weeks Gothic Arch challenge theme was Celtic. It took me a while to decide what to do and then I ended up making two of them - I just couldn't decide which one to post so I posted both of them LOL. I used Stampin Up stamps (Lovely as a Tree set which I purchased from Sara at Time for Crafting) for both of them. On the second one I used some embellishments I made a while ago using Friendly Plastic which I think look quite effective. I think that the second one is my favourite, I love the dragon on it!

Craft Club Fun!

Last night was our monthly craft club meeting and our lovely organiser Lindsay decided that it would be great to do an Easter challenge and as soon as she saw the lovely little treat boxes I had made (thank you Anne from the Time for Crafting forum for the instructions on how to make them) she thought they would be a fun thing for us to do and...........she would buy the mini eggs to fill them with! How could I refuse LOL. I made up a load of blank ones all ready with the DST, all the ladies had to do was decorate them. They really seemed to enjoy this and there was lots of giggling and laughing with only one or two minor mishaps with the sticking down of the ends!

Leonie's ATC Challenge

Here is my take on Leonie's challenge of "Beautiful & Bright". Beautiful background, bright man!

Apologies for the flash flare on the photo but hey, its a bright spot!

Decoupaged Birds!

Yesterday I really felt like cutting up something!!! Rather than just cut up random pieces of paper I decided to do some decoupage. I chose a fairly simple image from a Creative Paper Crafts CD, sort of shabby chic meets american quilts (LOL). Added some wording using the computer and DTP to try and use the same colouring and this is what I came up with!