Passion for Markers 12th Anniversary...

 

 *** WARNING – LONG POST ***

Grab a cuppa and a biscuit (or two) and make yourself comfortable!

Good morning dear crafters. We hope you had a good week last week and managed to fit some crafting into your busy schedules...

We have a very special challenge for you this week  at Passion for Markers as it's our 12th Anniversary!...

As it's a special challenge we have a really fun theme for you of "spots and/or stripes" and as the title suggests you can make anything you like this week as long you include some spots, stripes or both!  We are hoping to see lots of entries but please note that as we have extra prizes up for grabs this week we are only accepting a maximum of 3 entries per person for this one challenge only.  The only other rules we have are use your markers and have fun!

As always we have some fantastic prizes up for grabs and our sponsors have been very generous as usual.  Here we go....

------------------------------

Bugaboo Stamps are offering a $12.00 voucher

Crafty Sentiments Designs are offering 3 digi images

Dr Digi’s House of Stamps are offering one lucky winner 2 digi images

JMC Designs are offering one lucky winner 1 digital collection

Leann’s World 101 are offering one lucky winner 2 digi images

------------------------------

Wow we told you there were amazing prizes didn’t we?  Definitely lots of reasons to join in the fun this week!! To give you lots of inspiration we have both Team 1 and Team 2 to share their creations (please click on their names to visit their personal blogs):

Elaine     Julie

Karen     Kitty

Linda     Lisa G.

Lisa M. (that's me!)    Lorraine C

Marie     Marlene

Nat     Sue

Please remember for this challenge we will only accept 3 cards/projects per person.  Also just for this one week we will not be choosing a Top 5 Passionista as we have lots of extra winners, however this will go back to normal next week.

 For my DT card I used the ever so cute, Pig in Wellies from Lee Holland Art - I must admit that I adore this cute little piggy and don't need an excuse to colour him up, especially with his bright red wellies!

Colour List -

Skin - Blush, Dusky Pink, Coral (my favourite combo!)

Boots - Red, Poppy, Burgundy

Puddle - Cool Aqua, Duck Egg

I hope you can get the chance to play along with our Anniversary challenge this week and look forward to seeing all of your fabulous entries!

Crafty hugs,

 

Passion for Markers - Favourite colours...

Good morning, crafty friends! Another Tuesday arrives with a brand new challenge starting over at Passion for Markers...

The lovely Marlene is in the hostess chair and she's given us a nice, easy theme of 'Use your Favourite Colours'...for some of you this may be a difficult choice, but for me it was pretty obvious that it had to include pink?!...

We're being sponsored by Star Jam Lines who are offering one lucky winner a choice of 2 digital images form their online store and there's a lot of cuteness to choose from!...

My all time favourite colour combo has to be pink and aqua - I am very much a fan of contrasting colours (all be it in pastel form!) and it worked perfectly with the pretty image that I got to play with...

This little cutie is called Newborn Bear and I thoroughly enjoyed colouring him up using my Promarkers and a touch of added detail with my Prismacolor pencils. I love the way the inked cloud background turned out and must try to use more colours for clouds than just blue in the future. I popped the image up on foam pads, after fussy cutting leaving a white border and added a few die cut sparkly stars...

As well as my favourite colour combo, this card has one of my favourite crafty elements - CLOUDS, plus it's in my favourite CAS style...so you can pretty much guess that I was rather pleased with how it turned out!

I hope you can find the time to play along with our fun challenge this week and look forward to seeing ll of your wonderful creations!

Hugs,

Ruth Hamilton - Fuschias...

 Good afternoon, crafty friends! I am popping in today to share a card with you that was inspired by a wonderful card creation by the talented Ashley Ebben on behalf of Pretty Pink Posh, although I cannot for the life of me find the original post that she shared to credit it properly (but please check out her fabulous creations by clicking on her name or HERE!)...

I actually used two of Ruth Hamilton Design's digistamps in this pretty pink card - Fuchsias and Rose Bud...

I resized the Fuchsia flowers to 30% and the Rose Bud to 35% in my graphics program and coloured  with my Pro/Flexmarkers in Cerise, Shocking Pink, Vermillion, Pale Pink and a Blender pen. The leaves were coloured with my Spectrum Noir pens in Willow, Bamboo and Camo Green - I also coloured in the leaves and buds from the Rose Bud image to look like those on a Fuchsia plant and cut them all out leaving a white border. 

I cut a panel of white paper to 15 x 10cm and ink blended the edges with Tattered Rose Distress Oxide and spattered with Picked Raspberry and Peeled Paint. I attached the flowers and foliage using a combination of glue and foam pads, then stamped the word Happy from the freebie stamp set of Issue 212 of Simply Cards and papercraft using my stamp platform. 

I stamped and cut out the Birthday sentiment from my favourite Waffle Flower Crafts Happy Birthday Sentiments and attached with foam pads, then finished with a touch of glitter on the stamens of the flower and some pink dew drops...

I mat the panel onto black and white before attaching to a hot pink card base (thank you Gina K for encouraging my use of coloured card bases!)...et voila!

I love the way this card turned out, it is definitely my style and a HUGE thank you to Ashley for the inspiration...I hope you like it too!

Thanks for dropping by and have a fabulous weekend! Hugs,

Ruth Hamilton - Pansies...

Good afternoon, dear Blogger buddies, from a wet and windy North Wales! Crafty time has been rather scarce recently and any time I have had, has been putting together cards and kits for our next workshop...but I got an hour or so to play this afternoon and decided to play with another of Ruth Hamilton Design's pretty digistamps...

 This time I played with the pretty Pansies image and am still on my stencil addiction!...

I imported the digistamp to my graphics program and reduced the size down to 30%, before copying the image so that I had 7 copies. I grouped 5 of them quite close together at the top of the A4 page and spread the other two out for my stencils...

I cut out the centres of the two flower images using small nose scissors, as you can see in the photograph above and then stenciled the 5 images with Distress Inks and Oxides, using my blending brushes to get a nice colour blend...

I then coloured the leaves with my alcohol markers and cut out the flowers leaving a white border. I arranged the flowers in a circle on a piece of white paper 13.5cm square and attached using glue and foam tape to get differing heights...

 

I cut two 3cm squares of green polka dot paper, cut in half diagonally to create triangles and then inked the edges before attaching to the four corners. I mat the panel onto a cream 14cm square, rounding the two bottom corners, then adhered to a 6" square scalloped card base...

I created a banner using Apple Blossom Banners die, inked with Abandoned Coral Distress oxide, decoupaged for added dimension and stamped a sentiment from the Little Birds stamp and die set from June's Issue of Simply Cards and Papercrafts. I also drew around the outside of the die to create a grey shadow layer...

I thoroughly enjoyed crafting for pleasure and playing with these pretty Pansies and if you pop over to Ruth's shop, you'll see she has a number of floral images to choose from, including a Wild Rose image which would be great for this type of card too!...

Thanks for stopping by, crafty hugs...

Passion for Markers - Sentimental...

 Good morning, crafty friends! A flying visit before I pop off to work, to let you know about our new challenge which starts today over at Passion for Markers!...

The lovely Marie is in the hostess chair and has given us a super easy challenge theme of 'Sentimental', so all she would like for you to do is add a sentiment to your project...how easy is that?! We're being sponsored by Di's Digi Stamps whoa re offering one lucky winner a $6.00 voucher to their online store...

Don't forget that since the New Year, you are able to play along with our challenges using any brand of marker pens, alcohol or water based and can enter any type of project, not just cards...so no excuse not to play along!

I decided to play with another of my latest stencil purchases - Lou Collins TEXTures Heart Fragments Stencil and rather than ink through it, I thought I would emboss it and then inked a pretty rainbow using Distress Oxide Inks. I used an image from Time for Tea Designs called Phoebe Hugs and coloured her in with my Pro/Flexmarkers, paper piecing her dress with a plaid paper. I added a couple of pretty heart die cuts and the sentiment from Altenew Beautiful day stamp set...

Right, have to dash or I'll be late for work! I do hope that you can find the time to play along with our simple challenge this week and look forward to seeing all of your wonderful creations!

Crafty hugs,

Passion for Markers - Feminine...

Good afternoon, crafty buddies! Another Tuesday rolls around, which means a brand new challenge starts today over at Passion for Markers...the lovely Lorraine is in the hostess chair and she's chosen a simple theme this week of 'Feminine', so we'd like to see all of those pretty, girly creations...

We're being sponsored by All Dressed Up who are offering one lucky winner the choice of 2 digital images from their online store...

We were lucky enough to get an image to play with and I went with the pretty Beret Girl...

I started my feminine creation by picking out some pretty papers from the Sweet Dreams and Vintage paper pads from Make & Create at The Works and then coloured my image to coordinate (this makes a change from my usual "colour an image only to find I don't have any papers to coordinate with it?!")

I coloured Beret Girl with my Pro/Flexmarkers, using one of my favourite pink colour combinations -

Skin - Blush, Dusky Pink, Sunkissed Pink

Hair - Cinnamon, Shale, Umber

Skirt - Cocktail Pink, Cerise, Shocking Pink, Vermillion

Top and Beret - Cool Grey 4, Cool Grey 5, Black, Pebble Blue, Blender

I gave her a yellow rose in her hair and then tied this in by adding the yellow stars. The sentiment was stamped using Waffle Flower Crafts Birthday sentiments and the word wishes is from the O Christmas Tree set that came with Simply Cards & Papercraft magazine. I finished with a die cut star from Memory Box Precious stars set and some glitter...

I love the way this card turned out - pretty and feminine without being too sickly pink (if that's possible?!) and hope that you can find the time to play along with our challenge this week! I look forward to seeing all of your wonderful creations and if Lorraine has a hard a job as I did trying to pick out a Top 5 last week, then I don't envy her!

Hugs,

Take one stencil...

 Good afternoon, crafty friends! So it seems my obsession with stencils is not waning yet?!...I needed to order some basic white card stock from Craft Stash and whilst there, I noticed that there was a BOGOF on selected stencils...well, it would have been rude not to put a couple in my basket?!

I decided to have a play with the Art Style Flowers Stencil from the TEXT-ures range by Lou Collins and wanted to try and make a card using this as both the background and focal point...

I began by inking the whole stencil background in Cracked Pistachio and Speckled Egg Distress Oxides, then removed the stencil and softened the image by blending over the top with the inks, using my blending brushes. I then inked some of the flowers using Cracked Pistachio, Peeled Paint, Tattered Rose, Abandoned Coral and a touch of Wild Honey in the centres, before fussy cutting leaving a white border...

I cut the panel down to 15.5 x 10.5cm and inked the edges with Cracked Pistachio before attaching to a 5 x 7 inch card blank. I cut a white panel 12.5 x 7.5cm and mat this onto cream. I stamped and gold embossed the word Birthday from Waffle Flower Crafts Birthday Sentiments stamp set onto pearl vellum and wrapped it around a piece of peach tone polka dot paper, cut to the card width by 3cm and mat onto cream. I also stamped the word wishes from Bright Rosa's free stamp set with SC&P, embossed with gold and fussy cut, again leaving a white border...

I attached the polka dot panel across the bottom third of the card and then slipped the white panel underneath the vellum strip. I then arranged the flowers before attaching with glue at the bottom and foam pads at the top for a bit of dimension. I added the wishes with foam pads and embellished with some glitter on the birthday sentiment and a few pearls in different sizes...

I just love the soft finish that stenciling and Distress Oxides give and hope I've inspired you to have a play with stencils too!...

Off to get ready for work...I need to win the lottery so I can just play at my crafty table - working is so overrated! 

Crafty hugs,