Romeo

I love all of the Polka Dot Pals from Little Miss Muffet Stamps, they are such a joy to colour up.
Romeo was released last week, as soon as I saw him I knew that I wanted to use him for my card for the new 'love' challenge starting today over on the LMM Blog...

awww he's all loved up for Valentines day :)
I coloured Romeo with my promarkers, then used my new Marianne heart dies to frame around him, but noticed after cutting that the die had left a crease across his trousers, so I grabbed my pencils and watercolour brush and went over them again, the result being darker trousers than I originally wanted, but they look better now that the crease is less noticeable.
The patterned paper is by Bazzill Basics from a pad called Nordic Pines. Once layered onto the red mirror card, I paper pierced all around the edge and dragged a brown marker through the holes for some faux stitching.
The wide brown ribbon was off a box of chocolates, knew it would come in handy.
The extra embellishments are all from my stash.
No sentiment has been added, I don't think it needs one, so this card could also be used for an anniversary as well as Valentines.

Need some inspiration for your own valentines/love themed card? check out what the other Little Misses have made this week.

I'm entering Romeo in the following challenges:
My Mums Craft Shop - love
Sweet Stampin - in stitches
The Pink Elephant - love
Passion for Promarkers - anything goes
I Love Promarkers - love is in the air

Thanks for looking, have a lovely day x

Smile...

...it's the weekend! :)

Today is a very special day at Little Miss Muffet as we've not only combined the Super Saturday post with some awesome Guests, but we have a very special fundraiser going on too!  Barbara's daughters, Cassandra and Lydia, are participating in a "Jump Rope for Heart" activity at their school where kids learn jump rope skills and raise money for the American Heart Association. 

Learning about a healthy heart at school really hit home for her girls, especially when it came with a connection to a few close family members.  For example, their cousin Ryker had open heart surgery when he was only 6-months-old!  He is now a teen and doing great!  He loves many activities including photography and was the inspiration for a new image Barbara has drawn for today... meet Polka Dot Pals Ryker.

This image is available in the Little Miss Muffet Stamp store but the best part about him is you can also help Barbara's daughters in their fundraiser!  How, you might ask?  There are two ways!  First, for every PDP Ryker purchase, LMMS will donate $2.00 to Cassandra and Lydia's fundraiser!  Secondly, you can also donate directly on the American Heart Association website to their individual fundraiser page by visiting these links:   

Casssndra's Donation Page and Lydia's Donation Page.

But wait, there's more!  That's not the only image you'll get in the package - there are two other very special images.  Those two were drawn and colored by Cassandra and Lydia themselves!  They've entered their artwork into the T-shirt Design Contest for next year's Jump Rope for Heart.  Maybe they'll win, maybe they won't, but the fun was in creating and now you can create with them too!  Both colored and uncolored versions are included.

Thank you for being a part of this fundraiser and we hope you can take action to have a healthy heart even if it isn't via jump rope.  Spread the word and share your creations online in the current LMMS Challenge and/or in the FaceBook LMMS Group too!  Looking for other activity based stamps to play with this weekend?  Then you might also enjoy these other Little Miss Muffet Stamps that feature heart healthy activities such as bicycling, sports, winter fun, playing and even house cleaning!  Oh yeah!

Bicycle, Casper Silversmith Dude, Fancy Sunbonnet Winter, 

Gelsey Faerie, Penny Farthing, PDP Chloe, PDP Gary, PDP Issie, PDP Sally,  

Sonny Honeycloud Tomboy, SSD Anise Combo, SSD Pepper and SS My Ride, 

Here is my card using the adorable Ryker...

Ryker has been coloured with promarkers then fussy cut out, which, by the way, is our current challenge theme too ;)
The ledger paper is from My Mind's Eye 'Hattie' paper pad (think that's my last piece *sobs!*), I found the spotty piece in my ice cream scraps tub but I can't recall which company it's from... I mean the company of the paper... the ice cream was Asda's, probably mint choc chip or raspberry ripple ;)
I set 3 eyelets using my cropadile, and die cut 'smile' using my By The Letter dies.

I'd like to enter this card at:
Kaboodle Doodles - use blue colour
Shopping Our Stash - winter blues
I Love Promarkers - one for the boys
Charisma Cardz - it's a boy thing
Totally Papercrafts - one for the boys



Here's a little more info from the American Heart Association:

Get Your Jump On
Getting bored with just jumping over a rope?  Check out these neat tricks and stunts you can learn with a jump rope.  There are instructions for over 30 ways to jump rope - now how about that?! 

Simple Cooking with Heart 

AHA has recipes that are simple, nutritious and each has a preparation video so you won't miss a step. Get started with Simple Cooking With Heart.

Be a healthy family!One of the easiest ways to avoid having problems with heart disease in the future is by taking steps to improve your family’s health today.  With childhood obesity being a serious threat to our children’s future, it is important for parents to act now to ensure our children live long, healthy lives.  Learn some easy tips on how you can help develop a healthier home.

AHA Kids We've Helped
Thank you for helping kids with special hearts!  When you do an American Heart Association event, you are helping kids like these! Meet some of the kids you can help. Read their Heart Stories.

Monster sized love

There's a LOVELY new valentine release today at Little Miss Muffet Stamps.

There's 3 new digi stamps, one of which is a Polka Dot Pal, and you'll definately want him for your collection.... yes I said him...and you can find him HERE with all the other new release images.

In rubber, there's the lovely Sugar 'n Spice Doll Thyme, PDP Lydie, and a whole new selection of Bugaboo's to choose from too, one of which i've used for my card today...

This is Monster Rose, coloured with promarkers. The sentiment is computer generated.
I didn't quite have the right shade of pink card stock, so I used white card and coloured the edges with a pink promarker. The patterned papers used are old magazine freebies, both from a pad called 'Emma's Garden' by Jennifer Ellory.
The flowers were made using my SU boho blossoms punch and some pale green gems.
The stem and hearts are Marianne dies, 2 of the new sets that I was lucky to have for Christmas.

You'll find more LOVE over at the LMM blog, and remember, there's still time to take part in our fussy cut challenge too ;)

I'm entering this card at:
Sentimental Sundays - more than 3 layers
The Pink Elephant - Pink/Red/Your choice (I chose green)
Incy Wincy - flower frenzy
Crafting By Designs - get your girl on
Fab 'n' Funky - all about the words

thanks for looking :) x

Lisa's Craft Mojo

I found a new (for me anyway) craft store today...Craft Mojo.



I found the store via Lisa's blog after admiring her cards and drooling over the papers she used on them.

I've just placed my first order with Craft Mojo ;)

Lisa is offering someone a £10 voucher to spend in store, but you've got to be quick to put your name down, she draws a winner on Saturday. You can link up HERE.
Good luck everyone! xx

What a fuss!

There's a new release AND a new challenge over at Little Miss Muffet today :)
There's some real cuties in today's release, Polka Dot Pals and Sugar 'n Spice Dolls, and for those of you who like the Tangled Flowers Border, you may just fancy colouring up the 2 new tangled border images too.
Here is one of them, Tangled Arch Border...

I've teamed it up with Polka Dot Pals Feline Sitting, then coloured the arch and a few extra sections of it again to fussy cut out and layer up on this card. Which brings me nicely along to tell you about the new challenge (and the reason for the title of this post), we want you to fussy cut (cut out) your image this time please.
You can see my fussy cutting better in this pic...

The paper beneath the arch is by sizzix (little sizzles - country) and the greeting is by Stampin Up ('bring on the cake' stamp set)

Don't forget to stop by the LMM blog to see what the other Little Misses have made this week too. I'm sure they will inspire you to join in this fun challenge :)
Thanks for stopping by today xx

I'd like to enter this card at:
Wags n Whiskers - anything goes
Crafty Calendar - let's celebrate
Crafting By Designs - anything goes

Monster Signs

Little Miss Muffet Stamps is sponsoring over at Hiding in My Craft Room this week, so I thought i'd make a card for their challenge which is to use up our scraps.

Today is my Husband's birthday, and my son needed a card for him. Dave's nickname for Jake is "Monse" (short for monster, even though Jake isn't really a monster, but he had his moments... Terrible Two's... nuff said eh?) Anyway, it's one of his nicknames that Dave still uses to this day, so a monster image will be just perfick...

I've used Monster Signs. I added the text to the signs with my paint program.
The papers used for this are mainly from different My Mind's Eye pads and there's a Stampin Up paper there too. I mostly buy 6x6" pads and cut down to fit my cards so I get quite a few 6x1" strips left over, so this challenge is perfect for using some of those up to make this background for my image. I chose the papers that matched mostly with the colours i'd used for the image. I took a 4" square of cardstock and glued the strips across it, trimmed the edges down a little, and folded them over to the back side before gluing the square in place on my base card. But it needed something else, so I drew around the square with a white gel pen to frame it.
Monster Signs was fussy cut out then added to the square with foam pads.

If, like me, you have an ice cream tub of scrap papers (ice cream all eaten first of course, any flavour you like), then you might want to join in too ;)

I'd like to enter this card at:
Papertake Weekly - anything goes
Penny's Paper Crafty - anything goes 
Charisma Cardz - birthdays
Wags n Whiskers - anything goes
Crafty Calendar - let's celebrate

I'm his Leia.

It's my husband's birthday tomorrow, and I'm using this image for his card this year... Han & Leia by MayzyArt, and it's a freebie too! My hubby likes the Star Wars films so this is perfect.

I coloured it using my promarkers, then fussy cut out.
The papers are from MME (Stella & Rose, Hattie) although the text paper at the bottom is a scrap left over from a digi paper that I colourised a while ago.
I framed these papers with brown funky foam strips that I 'sort of' made to look like a belt by setting eyelets into it.
The greeting is a punched heart from silver mirror card, a 'u' cut using a By The Letter die, and 'Husband' stamped from a Fizzy Moon stamp set.

I'd like to enter this card at:
Papertake Weekly - anything goes
Penny's Paper Crafty - anything goes
Charisma Cardz - birthdays
Wags n Whiskers - anything goes
Crafty Calendar - let's celebrate

Jasmine

The Little Misses were given a free rein this week to showcase whatever we fancied colouring up...

This is Jasmine, she's a Sugar 'n Spice Doll available in rubber from Little Miss Muffet Stamps.

By the way, she has a sister (a digi) named Coriander, whom you can grab for free at the moment along with a few other challenge freebies that Barbara is kindly offering to those of you who would like to snag one for your collection.
You can find them HERE.

For my card, I started by deciding I wanted to use this spotty paper from MME's Stella & Rose 'Gertie' pad, knowing that i'd also like to use kraft cardstock and gold shimmer paper with it.
So I started colouring Jasmine. Now, in my head, I wanted her to have a red dress and a brown bear, but my hands decided the opposite to that! and i'd started to colour the bear red before realising what i'd done. lol. Looks ok though eh?
The layout for my card was inspired by Sam's sketch over at Sunday Sketch & Stamp, but I haven't followed it close enough to join in their challenge, I just wanted to give recognition to where I saw it first.
'Thank You' is from a selection of All Night Media stamps bought for me by my Daughter. I cut it out using one of my cArt-Us frame dies.
The lacy edge strips were made using one of my new Marianne dies on gold shimmer paper.

I'd like to enter this card at:
The Pink Elephant - thank you
Craft Your Passion - fancy borders/edges
Papertake Weekly - anything goes
Shopping Our Stash - use something new (border die)
Inky Impressions - something new (border die)
Penny's Paper Crafty - anything goes

Thanks for looking, if you fancy a challenge, we have an easy peasy sketch challenge still going on ;)

My fave five

I recently took part in Debby's challenge to choose our favourite five christmas makes, my post for that is here (or you can scroll down).
Well Debby is also asking us to choose our favourite five makes from all our cards of 2013 too. So I thought i'd join in too. It's nice to take a look back through the cards we have made, triggers some nice memories too.

You can find the link to each card's original post beneath each photo, just click on the name of the main image used...


 using The Stamping Boutique, Tulips



 
 using Motivet, Cat with Flower



 
 using Beccy's Place, Blossoms



 
 using Bugaboo, SB Strawberry Basket



 
 using Little Miss Muffet, Polka Dot Pals Andy




 
using hand cut and punched card



 
 using Little Miss Muffet, Sunflower Patch


Yeah, I chose seven, sorry Debby! hope that's ok, but I did originally have 11 favourites and whittled it down to 7 lol.

Thanks for looking, have a great day! xx

Claudia's Tutu

oooh my first post of 2014...Happy New Year everyone!
Wishing you all a very happy, healthy and crafty 2014, and with emphasis today on the 'crafty' there's a new challenge over at Little Miss Muffet Challenges, and to kick off the year, we have a sketch for you...

Here's my take on it...

This image is Claudia's Tutu, and i've coloured her with promarkers, cut her out, then stuck her down with foam pads over a die cut frame shape (cArt-Us die).
The papers used here are Dovecraft vintage christmas (spotty), and Sizzix 'little sizzles - country' (both yellows, the plain yellow having been embossed with my stylised flowers embossing folder)
I punched and layered the flowers and added a bit of sparkle to the centre of each with a crystal gem.
The green die cut leaves are the last few left from a pack that I bought quite a while back from a well known auction site.

Hmmm, now i'm not too sure I should have used yellow, but I supposed it's different from the 'norm'.

To see what the other Little Misses have made using this sketch, please pop over to the challenge blog :)

I'd like to enter this card at:
The Pink Elephant - anything goes
Papertake Weekly - Pick of the Year (Die-ing for a Punch)
Shopping Our Stash - use the last of something (die cut leaves)
Crafting By Designs - anything goes
Crafty Creations - anything goes

Thank you for stopping by today :)