DOODLE FLOWER

This was such a quick and simple card to make as well as extremely economical!
It only needed a black pen,and one small off cut of patterned paper, plus some foam pads to 3d the elements (although little off cuts of corrugated card glued both sides would have worked equally as well).
Once I had scribbled/ doodled some flowers on the patterned paper I roughly cut them out, added some extra doodled centres matted onto foam squares, some doodled leaves cut out and finished with a doodled border and handwritten sentiment

I thought this would be a cheerful card to send someone I know who is very under the weather.

The actual design was taken from Claire's challenge at Do crafts, so this detracts slightly from the clean and simple style I have tried to adopt this year, but I did resist the temptation to use ribbons and embellishments as the design used most areas of the card surface.
I was also inspired to doodle on patterned paper as the challenge at DYSU is "patterns". I really like this look and will experiment with this a bit more...it's a great way to use up scraps!

Beach Inspired

This was a very quick card to make....took a little bit longer waiting for the paint to dry!!!

It is for a couple of challenges and primarily for my B-I-L and his partner who recently wrote me a thank you letter..it was such a joy to receive a proper and entertaining letter in the post so I just wanted to acknowledge how much I appreciated the thought. As they live near the sea (lucky things can see the sea from their flat) I took inspiration from a beach look..... plus the tester pots I had in the shed were all very suitable for this theme.

The actual design was taken from Claire's sketch challenge at Do Crafts and the distressed look is the next challenge from DYSU , despite it being distressed I tried to keep to my resolution to keep it simple....slightly difficult bearing in mind the busy sketch plan and distressing which doesn't lend itself to simple!! but I did resist the temptation to doodle round the stamped blocks!

I have found a fab new ink blending tool......MEMORY FOAM INSOLES!! my daughter and I both had to fit some insoles in new shoes and luckily we both have small feet so there was plenty of off-cuts but they were only a £1 a pair anyway. I also cut a square of the foam to make my stamping block.

The design was completed by printing the lettering on my computer and randomly cut out then stuck on, some thread bought from the charity shop (20p!) pulled the design together.

WINTER WISHES - Cute as a button/New Resolutions

I am a big fan of the blog Free Digital Stamps. Its an amazing site bringing together links for lots of free images that people create and generously share for free, and of course a perfect blog when considering card making on a budget. It's through this site I have discovered a great new challenge blog launched last week called Do You Stack Up. Their first challenge is called "Cute as a button". So I created this little snowman as a belated Christmas/Winter Wishes card for a young friend.

I actually didn't want to make the card too Christmassy. I ignored the wrapping paper I was going to use as a backing and decided to chop up some very pretty scouring pads I recently bought....they are so sparkly.... and soft!! (rubbish at scouring though!). I chopped a small square of card and covered it in wide doubled sided tape and stuck on some of the fabric I left a little overhanging edge to softly curl round
A little hat chopped from my teabag box, some of the green fabric for scarf and holly, some facial details with a permanent marker and a greeting from and old xmas card, finished my little snowman off.

I would also like to submit my card for Creative Craft Challenges, another great friendly challenge blog that I love joining in particularly as that blog started at the same time as my blog. their challenge is "New Year resolutions".....and my New Resolution is to try and "keep it simple". I love simple cards but am constantly tempted to overwork cards so I am going to try and not be tempted to keep fiddling with my cards!!....not sure how long that will last?!?