Funky Hand - Word Book!

Just wanted to share a basic word book that I made for a colleague at work.
It was her 60th birthday and my work mates asked me if I could make a special card for her, so I explained the idea of a word book to them and they loved it! :)

Obviously the ladies name is Heather and as she does not have a favourite colour I chose these lovely pastel shades from the Dreams Come True cd-rom in the lovely floral pattern.

As the name is quite long for a word book I trimmed the right edges off and cut right to the outline of each letter.
Then I laid them out, overlapping the letters slightly and trimmed off the left edges to make a level spine which I staped together and added ribbon to decorate.
The last two pages had to be extended with the offcuts from the other pages but I lined the lines in the pattern up and you could hardly see the join as the insides of the pages looked like this:

Where the joins were I made sure to place a greeting circle and or flower embellies i made with a punch and some glitter glue.

To make the greeting circles I used my nesties to cut the circles out of complementary card, a plain colour for the top layer and a dotty embossed pattern for the base layer.
Each member of staff at work was given a circle and asked to write their birthday message on it.

She was thrilled with it and I was too as I think it's a really lovely way of using a word book.
TFL, Ni :) x

Get Funky! Challenge - Zing Into Spring

I'm back on track this month for the new Get Funky! challenge - Zing Into Spring with my card ready for uploading. :)
This month's challenge is hosted by Lou and her criteria is using spring colours of greens, yellows and lilacs as well as the obligatory FH product.

The card is for a relative who needs some real cheering up right now so I needed a quick card, with a basic, not over the top, layout and this colour scheme seemed perfect!
The backing paper is actually a spare page from a word book I've just made (to be uploaded soon!) using the Dreams Come True cd-rom hence the nice purple lines on the edges of the sheet, and it fitted perfectly on this DL card blank. :)

The frame is one of a pack from my stash as are the daffodil stickers.
The thinking of you sentiment is from my JustRite stampers set and the scalloped ovals are nesties.

A simple card this time, yes but I hope it does the trick of bringing a smile to the face of the recipient.
TFL, Ni x :)

My FF hosted Challenge - Sketch!

Morning! Ok so I am always blogging my FF challenge cards from the DC forums, well now I'm hosting the challenge for the first time and this is the sketch I have come up with for it:

I can't take credit for the layout as I saw this card in a big pile of samples on tv recently (can't credit the maker as no names were given, but thank you for the inspiration!) and I loved the layout so I made a sketch!

The challenge is here so if anyone wants to join please pop over, the more the merrier, I'd love new people to join us! :)
If you are not a DC member then it's free & quick to sign up and its a fab forum, not just for great challenges!

Here is my card:

I used my favourite colour purple which I normally revert back to for safety when trying something new lol!
The stamped image was a gift that I coloured in (very basically!) with promarkers and layered onto plain & scalloped circle nesties.
Scallop border punch is DC, embossing folder is CraftsToo and I inked the embossed bits to highlight.
No idea where the sentiment stamps came from as they're so old, I dont care for the text much anymore but its all I have that worked for the strip design!
Ended with my new card candy, never used it before and thought I needed to try (there goes my stash diet!), I quite like the look and love that the white will colour with promarkers to match other images.

TFL! Ni :) x

Get Funky! Challenge - Show Us Your Heart

This is my last minute submission for the latest Get Funky! Challenge hosted this time by Jules.
For the 'Show Us Your Heart' challenge the criteria was as always to use at least one Funky Hand product AND you needed to include a heart too.

Here is my card;

Another shaped easel from me, I think I am officially addicted lol! I just love them!

It's pretty obvious to see where one heart is but it's not as easy to tell from this photo that the 3 gems on the base of the card are also little purple hearts too! :)

The purple & green backing papers are the same design and are from my 'Dreams Come True' cd rom, the 1st of the excellent Papercraft Factory releases from FH! They are from the So What! & Just Happy collections.

The FF bear has been stamped and coloured with promarkers and no my colouring hasn't got any better yet! (Just realised this is an older photo as the heart also has glitter on now too!)

The letters were cut on my bigshot, using my quickutz Phoebe alphabet.

The flowers were made using the Daisy cuttlebug quilling dies with my bigshot and also have glittery centres now!

Hope Mum likes this as much as I do! TFL! :) x

FF Challenge Card - using home made 'nesties'!

Here is the card that I made for a recent fort-nightly DC, FF Challenge.
Our host was Laineymo and her brief was to make a 'Bright & Springlike' card, using spring time yellow & green colours and gingham!



The gorgeous image was a stamped one, donated by a lovely DC member (Thank You!!! <3 ) and coloured in very basically with my promarkers.

The gems were in a set of 16 pairs of adhesive corners that I picked up for 99p in Dunelm's sale.
There are three layers of gems to each corner, however being frugal and not wanting to go over the top on the 'bling', I just snipped off the larger outer layer to add to this card and will use the smaller double layer elsewhere.
By doing this I am making 16 pairs into 32 pairs, thats 3p per pair, not a bad buy then!

Now, I have a small love affair with labels 1 nesties (but do not have the cash to buy them just yet!) and so when I saw this packaging left over from some Papermania chipboard shapes I knew I had to use it!

As you can see I had 2 of these sets, I kept one as it was (left image) and cut the blue edges off the other.
To make my large shape I traced around the original pack top and bottom onto plain copy paper, rotated it 90 degrees and drew around the top and bottom again to join the sides up, simple!

Now I have 2 templates with a striking similarity to labels 1 just from my recycling!

I layered all my papers up, drew a green line around the 'nesties', added the bear on some foam pads, the adhesive corners and stapled the ribbon on with a mini stapler with loads of colour staples that I bought from The Works, for just 99p again! Ta-daa!

TFL, Ni :) x

2nd & 3rd Blog Awards!

Ok so finally I am back with my next post on my other blog award, which also turned into my third one after some comments! :)
So my thanks go to Kate & Carrie, both of whom I would like to call online friends as well as fellower Docrafters who I take part in challenges with and love their work! :)

This award is the 'Stylish Blogger Award'

To accept the award you must share 7 random things about yourself:

1. I have only been abroad on holiday once, that was Kos when I was about 19!

2. I am a neat freak, everything has its place to live and must be lined up just so, lol! The stuff that doesn't have a place yet is a complete tip though!

3. I went back to college and completed my Business Management degree in September 2010.

4. (follows on from above) Was graded a 2.1 with 0.1% off a 1st. Luckily my tutor realised admin had mis-typed my scores and actually I'd earnt myself a 1st Class honours degree!

5. I love music and going to 'gigs'. Most recently was Foo Fighters, though the best was Green Day! :)

6. I love things in the style of Rennie Mackintosh, I have various vases, mirrors, photo frames, jewellery, lamps, candles and probably more!

7.  I am a big supporter of the National Trust, I love visiting their houses and would love to work for them one day!

Well that's that, not very exciting I'm afraid!

***

Next I am supposed to award 15 recently discovered bloggers with this award.
However I hope neither of these ladies will be offended but I have decided not to pass this award on.

This is due to the fact that I am so very new to blogging and have not devoted much time to it yet that I have found it very hard to find many smaller blogs that I follow that do not already have this award.

Also as wonderful as these awards are I do not wish to get into the habit of just passing these along to people when in reality they are a form of chain letter, and I do not want others just starting out with blogging to feel they must keep passing these on too instead of why they actually started their blog, like me, to share their creations!

I have decided that if I love someones blog, and am truly inspired by their work, I am goin to make myself a little icon that I will offer to people instead of one of these mass circulated awards, they may not want it but thats how I am going to show my appreciation in the future!

I hope this post does not offend anyone and I do feel it is an honour to think that someone may want to pass an award onto me in the future, but I hope they will accept my decision to decline greatfully.
 
Thanks for reading if anyone even got this far! Ni :) x