Life's a picnic!

I've made another summery card today, it must be the sunny weather we have had the last few days, it's getting to my head! Although there has been a lot of thunder too. On monday I burnt my neck and shoulders while sitting in the garden, then on the night we had thunder and torrential rain. There was something ironic about watching the rain pelt down, while applying aftersun to my sunburn! So here's my card:

 Yes I got another Molly Blooms stamp! (Two more actually but youll see the other one later.) This one is Molly with Catapillar and I coloured her in with Promarkers. Everything else on the card is from my stash.

Bye for now =)
Hayley x

Versatile blogger award!

Woohoo! Dorset Girl nominated me for a Versatile Blogger Award, thankyou so much!

So if I've got this right I have to say 7 random things about myself, then nominate another 7 people for the award. So here's my 7 things:

1. I don't think I've mentioned this on blogger yet. I'm a blackbelt in karate and run two karate clubs with a friend. Yes, seriously!
2. My car is a purple Renault Clio called Violet
3. I will just about anything apart from custard, gravey and cereal with milk on. However I  will eat dry cereal and I drink milk. Strange I know lol.
4. I am a self confessed shop-aholic
5. I am also addicted to chocolate
6. On my dad's side I am one of the youngest of 23 cousins and two of those cousins have children older than me!
7. At college I studied childcare and had to design and make a soft toy for a child. While sewing it together I managed to sew the toy rabbit's head to my jumper sleeve and the rest of my class thought it was hilarious

Ok so now to nominate 7 people for the award. This was really hard, there's so many great blogs on here!

1. Ashley at Jellybeans odds and ends- Sews lovely creations, including skirts and dresses.
2. Lisa at Craft Fairy- Shares some great die cutting tips and tricks
3. Barbara at Hunny Bunny Cards- Makes gorgeous cards
4. Inspired by Felix- Sweet sewing projects and a cute baby!
5. Carly makes Stuff- Sews gorgeous dresses and is documenting every book she reads this year
6. Jenjoy Crafting-Makes amazing cards
7. Kelly at My Little crafty blog- Makes great cards with Magnolia stamps

Phew, done! Now I'll try to email everyone before I go to bed, its been a long day!
Hugs,
Hayley x

Weekend crafting

Hi everyone, hope you've all had a great weekend! Yesterday we had torrential rain and thunder but today is red hot and sunny. Great, although I can see some large grey clouds moving in, so it may not last very long! I've been crafting over the weekend and here is one of the cards I came up with, I'll try to remember to upload the other one later!

The cute balloon paper is from Abi's Craft, the koala stamp was a free gift off Quick cards magazine and the party hats and greeting are from a pack of stamps I got from Wilkinsons. Stamps are coloured with Promarkers and it was really quick to make.

Enjoy your Monday!
Hayley x

DIY Promarker storage

The last few days I've been trying to find a better storage solution for my Promarkers, as they were living in plastic beakers. In a crafty magazine I saw an advert for a "Desktop Promarker shelving unit" and quickly turned the page when I saw the price, £50!? Scandalous, so I made my version with a large teabag box, admittedly it will be less sturdy than the wooden version but it cost me approx £50 less so I'm not complaining =D

The inside

Plenty of room for more Promarkers!

Flowery paper on top

Fizzy Moon heart paper on the sides

I paper-mached the outside of the box with PVA glue and some of my old magazines then applied a coat of geso. When that dried I realised the box still wasnt very strong so I reinforced the inside with cardboard from an old cereal box then added shelves made from corrugated cardboard. It seemed more sturdy so I papered the sides with floral and heart print papers and viola! Done and made from recycled materials too! I'm quite pleased with it and theres plenty of room for more Promarkers, so I have an excuse to go and buy more! =P

Enjoy your weekend!
Hayley x

Here comes the sun!

Or not... The weather here is awful at the moment, sunny for a little bit, then pouring rain and black cloud for the rest of the day! I've made a summery card anyway seeing as its June, hopefully the weather will brighten up sometime soon! So yesterday I was raving on about my Molly Bloom stamp and how much I love it, so I've made another card, this time with a bit more detail:

I remembered to take note of which promarkers I used this time, so here we go:

Face- Soft peach, blush, sunkissed pink
Arms, legs- Soft peach, bluss
Hair- Lemon
Top- Antigue pink, rose pink, blossom
Shorts and hat- Saffron
Wellies and bandana- Antigue pink, blossom
Sunflower- Lemon, cocoa, leaf green

The papers and ribbon are from my stash and the sentiment is an Anita stamp. The flower is a metal shape onto which I glued a punched out flower and a stick on pearl. I would like to enter this card in the Papertake Weekly challenge which this week is summer themed.

Bye for now =)
Hayley

Playing with Molly Bloom stamps

Yesterday I found this adorable Molly Bloom stamp in my local craft shop and I couldn't wait to ink it up and start crafting! I loved it so much I made two cards straightaway!

So I made this one first in sweet pastel colours, I coloured and shaded with promarkers (sorry I forgot to list exactly which colours I used). Then I decided to make another one in brighter colours.

Its such a sweet stamp, I'm half way through colouring another one in, think I'll try blonde hair this time =D
Hugs,
Hayley

Polka Doodles challenge- Things with wings

Hi hope everyone is having a good weekend! I'm having a very lazy one up to now, I've got tonsilitus so I have to stay at home and take lots of tablets *sigh*. I'm feeling much more cheerful now though because staying at home has given me loads of spare time to be crafty and I found out this morning that I am one of the lucky blog candy winners from the Polka Doodles blog hop. Yay!

So while I'm still on the subject of Polka Doodles, here is my entry for this weeks challenge- Things with wings

The stamp is a freebie off this months issue of Simply Cards and Papercraft magazine, which I coloured with my promarkers, I found the papers at my local market, flowers, ribbon and sentiment are all from my stash. I added waterfall stickles to the fur trim on the fairy's dress and hat to make it sparkle, don't know if you can it on the photo (I can but I know its there =D)

Enjoy whats left of your weekend!
Hugs,
Hayley

Charisma Cardz challenge- How old?

Hi everyone! This week I made my first "commission" for my cousins 18th Birthday card from my grandparents. I was stumped for a while, boys cards are so hard, but then I looked through my stash and found the perfect thing! Can you tell what it is?

Its a star shaped weight from a helium balloon! My mam got a balloon for her 50th Birthday and I kept the weight after the balloon went down. I added stick on numbers and sewed the star onto my card.

Sorry for the shine on the photo. I would like to enter this card for the Charisma Cardz challenge- How old?  Bye for now =) x

Using promarkers

When stamping in cardmaking there are a few options for colouring in your image. The first stamps I used were quite small and I used ordinary colouring pencils to colour them in. This worked quite well but I was curious about Promarkers and Copics and when I got some slightly larger stamps the colouring pencils didn't look very professional. I bought a few Promarkers from my local craft stop and started experimenting, I bought singles, not a packet of markers so I didn't have any instructions to follow. I decided to make a quick tutorial for anyone who is interested in using Promarkers but wasn't sure where to start. This is my first tutorial so please let me know what you think and tell me if its hard to follow or doesn't make sense!

1. Equipment

You will need a stamp, an ink pad, some card to stamp onto and a few promarkers. I bought 10 markers to start with in colours that I thought I would need the most. Theres a huge range of colours to choose from.

The type of card you choose to stamp onto is really important, anything shiny or glossy and the ink will rub off. At the same time some card/paper is too absorbent- I tried to use promarkers on a sheet of handmade paper from a craft shop and the ink spread outside of the lines of the stamp and went really blotchy. Normal paper and card without a glossy finish work fine but I like using scraps of linen card- it stamps and colours really easily and looks professional.



The stamp I'm using was a freebie from Quick Cards magazine

2. Stamping

Peel your stamp off the protective backing that it comes with and attach to a clear acrylic block - Note- This is what the instructions on packets of stamps tell you to do, I didn't have any acrylic block so for small stamps, I place them on the lid from my ink pad, they usually stick to it naturally and this works just as well as a clear block. For larger stamps you can use a clear CD or DVD cover.

Ink up your stamp and press firmly onto your card or paper then lift it off carefully so you don't smudge the ink.

3. Colouring

Finally, the fun bit! :) Promarkers have 2 ends, the fat end for colouring larger areas and the pointy end for smaller areas and detailed bits. Colour your stamp in small strokes, always going in the same direction or your stamp ends up with streaks like a bad fake tan! Colour in the sections that use lighter colours first- if you go over the lines into another section no one will notice if you put a darker colour over the top. If you do this the other way round its very noticible... Trust me on that one lol.

Lightest colours first, that way its much easier to fix mistakes

And there you have it! All done =) If you go over the lines of the stamp- very easily done until you have had some practise- like I have on the bottom present (on purpose to demonstrate... *ahem*) you can cut out the stamp and no one will ever know.

I hope this has been helpful and actually made sense. I haven't decided what to do with my newly coloured in koala yet but he will probably feature on a card very soon!

Bye for now
Hayley x