Paper piecing - Sweet Stampin'

Morning all,

All being well, when this post reaches you, I shall be enjoying some well-deserved relaxation in Filey (on the Yorkshire coast), while looking for seashells and other cool stuff to bring back for crafting with!

In the meantime, we have a paper piecing challenge for you over at Sweet Stampin' this week.

I thought it was the perfect chance to play with one of the Dylusions stamps I picked up a while ago...

I love stamps like these, but husband dear thinks they're creepy. He really doesn't like stamps that have any features missing, such as the eyes here, or the noses on Magnolia stamps. I am personally rather fond of them though!

My fellow Sweeties have pieced some lovely papers for you, so I hope you'll go take a peek, and if you're feeling inspired, please do come and play along!

Have a fantabulous weekend!

Sammy-x

Paper piecing - Sweet Stampin'

Morning all,

Another lovely Saturday (one where I don't have to work is always lovely, even if it does mean catching up on housework!) and another challenge over at Sweet Stampin'.

The theme this week is Paper piecing, which is always so much fun.

I had some real trouble capturing the colours here. Darn that British miserable weather. I'm ready for summer!

Hope you'll all come play with us this week, and enjoy your easter weekend!

Sammy-x

Spots or stripes or both - Sweet Stampin' DT

Morning folks!

Well, there was another episode in the hiatus hernia saga today. Doc told me they won't operate, as it's not life threatening, and instead they'll just treat the symptoms for the rest of my life.
I don't think so!! Aside from the fact that I don't want heartburn and medication for the rest of my life (I'm still the right side of 40, for goodness' sake!), but the hernia is interfering with my ability to sing, and that I CAN'T live with!
So I made an appointment with another doctor, and will try again next week. I fully intend to keep making appointments and making a nuisance of myself until they do something to sort it! lol.

Anyways, there are more fun things to be talking about. Like this week's challenge at Sweet Stampin'. And the theme this week is Spots or Stripes or both.

Easy peasy. I'm sure you're all as bad as me and have stacks of spotty stripy things lying around, no? (Surely I'm not the only compulsive paper hoarder? hehe...)

I opted for both, and put together a card for a friend's birthday. She likes red, so that was my starting point, and I chose a bluey/teal to go with it for contrast.

I do love these stamps. And of course they just beg to be paper-pieced!

Originally this card did not have corners, but before I managed to photograph, there was a slight mishap involving Distress blending tools, lol.

I hope you'll find the time to play along with us this week!

Have a fantabulous weekend!

Sammy-x

Paper piecing - Sweet Stampin' DT

Good morning folks!

Just me swinging by to tell you the new challenge at Sweet Stampin' this week is paper piecing. I always love this theme, don't you?

I looked for a suitable paper in my scraps, and found a lovely little snippet which was perfect for using with this Sassy Cheryl stamp.

I teamed it up with some left-over LOTV paper snippets and contrasting hot pink card and ribbon. add a few gems and there she is!

Hope you'll all find a little time to play along!

In the meantime, have a fabulous easter, and see you in a few days!

Sammy-x

Milestone birthday - Sweet Stampin' DT and DT call!

Good morning everyone!

It's time for another challenge over at Sweet Stampin', and this week the theme is Milestone Birthdays.

But before I share my card with you, I thought I'd give you a heads-up that Sweet Stampin' are looking for new Sweeties to come join us. It's a really fun team and there's a lot of artistic freedom (as long as you use rubber or digi stamps!), so why not apply? We'd love to see you there! Full details are in this post.

Anyways, on to my card. I decided to break in one of my brand new Woodware stamps, and paper pieced the numbers, then used the same papers for the background.

I wanted to make something relatively masculine, but not blue, so I went with greens instead, using Basic Grey papers. The mat is very dark green card, and I added some green starry washi tape and dark green buttons. The "birthday wishes" came with the "18" stamp, and finally I did some faux stitching to finish it off.

And there we have it. Simple, yet fun, and I think it would work for a young man...

Your turn! Take a peek at my fellow Sweeties' work and leave then some love, and then we would love for you to come play!

In the meantime, have a fantabulous weekend!

Sammy-x

Flowers - Milk Coffee DT

Hello my lovelies!

Thanks for all the lovely comments everyone. And in response to some regarding the issues I'm having with Blogger:
I've had the occasional "empty" blog feed since I started by blog last summer, but a refresh usually fixed it. Recently it has started getting worse though... First needing half a dozen refreshes, and now it seems no amount will help when it decides it doesn't want to co-operate, which seems to be most of the time. I'm also having real problems with trying to load Mr Linkies that have pictures (text-based ones seem to work ok), which is causing untold problems commenting on challenge entries, or entering them myself. It's incredibly frustrating, and I've put in a query to Blogger to see if they have any solutions. Fingers crossed!

But on to happier things (luckily posting to blogs I have admin rights to works about 90% of the time!).

There's a new challenge over at MilkCoffee, and this fortnight we want to see Flowers. Well, that's hardly going to pose much of a problem for you all now, is it?

It certainly didn't for me, though I did make something a little different from my usual...

I used the lovely Lisbeth Loves Sunflower, and teamed her up with some Jillibean soup papers. I paper-pieced her clothes and headband, then picked some embellishments to match... The vellum oval is something relatively new to me. I tried with a regular piece of card first, but I found it "hid" too much of the card, then hit on the idea of using vellum instead, which I think worked far better.
I'm also not very used to using so many different colours at once, but I have to say I rather enjoyed that aspect! And I located some card candi I thought worked well... I keep forgetting I own a rather large supply of the stuff, and really should remember to use it more often!


Well, I'm certainly looking forward to seeing your entries (because enter you will, yes?) - provided blogger will play nice and actually show them to me! - and here's hoping I'll be able to catch up with you all soon!

I'd like to enter the following challenges:

Craft Mojo - spring flowers
Papertake Weekly - Bingo (gems, die cuts, flowers - amongst others!)

May your day be truly excellent.

Sammy-x

Sweet Stampin' DT post - Tags

Good morning all,

It's time for a new challenge at Sweet Stampin' and this week we're looking for TAGS. You can make a tag (or tags) or use one on a card, the choice is yours!

The sponsors are

for the monthly prize, and

who will be providing the prize for this week's challenge.

I made this set of tags using the Funny Owls image from The Stamp Fairy.

I decided to make 2 pairs, girlie and masculine, and paper-pieced them with suitably coloured papers.   

The girlie papers are from "Great Expressions", a brilliant find in Poundland, and the boy's ones were magazine freebies.

I fussycut the owls and mounted them on white card with foam squares to give extra depth, and I coloured their beaks and the branches with Promarkers.

The tags were die-cut using Sizzix Framelits "Tickets" dies.

I then added an eyelet and length of ribbon to each to finish them off. Oh, and the eyes are covered in Glossy accents to make them shiny!

So, that was my take on the TAGS idea. So, what about you? I know you all want to go off and join in with this challenge, but before you do, go check out the lovely makes my fellow teamies have prepared for you!

I look forward to seeing your entries!

I'd like to enter the following challenges:

Crafty Ribbons - Anything goes with ribbon

Crafty Cardmakers - Paper piecing

Eclectic Ellapu - Anything but a card

Sammy-x

First go at paper piecing!

A couple of weeks ago, I won a set of stamps from Little Darlings, and amongst them was this Saturated Canary stamp.
Coincidentally, I had an as yet unused paper pad sitting on my desk I really wanted to have a play with, and the two just worked really well together. I paper pieced her skirt out of the cherry paper, though I did colour it afterwards with an ivory Promarker, as I didn't think it worked well bright white...

And I decorated the inside with the same papers...

I enjoyed my first outing into paper piecing, and I think I may well do a lot more in future!

Recipe:

Image & sentiment - "Cherry on top" - Saturated Canary
Medium - Promarkers
Paper - Dolly Mixtures - Amy
Card candi
Red and white card from stash.

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenge:

Saturated Canary challenge blog - Paper piecing
CCEE Stampers - Fruit
Milk Coffee challenge - Paper Piecing

Happy crafting!

Sammy-x