Cornell goes back to school

Good afternoon, peeps! I hope you're all bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready for the Bank Holiday weekend.

This is one of the wonderful Mo Manning's images and Cornell is the name that Mo has given to her. I thought she's be perfect for a Back to School card - I have five to make in total for my five grandchildren. Three of the five are making new beginnings this term - number one granddaughter, Holly and number three grandson, James are both starting at senior school and number one grandson, Matt is going off to sixth form college. This card is for number two granddaughter, Lucy who is about to start her final year at Junior school.

I used a sketch from the lovely Bev and it's so kind of you hun to provide this wonderful resource for us all to use - thank you! I'm afraid I haven't the faintest clue which Copics I used to colour the image because this is part of the batch of images I coloured when I was last away from home and I didn't keep a note. I'm off again this weekend with my Copics ready and packed but I'll try to keep some notes this time!

The papers are from my new Prima pack called 'Fairy Flora' and The Glitter Pot have it here at a very good price - I thought I should just stop stroking all these papers and use some. Every one of the designs in the pad is absolutely gorgeous and you could well be seeing more of these! I punched the edge of the top paper with my Martha Stewart Doily Hearts punch.

The flowers are some Prima ones from my stash and some are from Wild Orchid Crafts (link in my sidebar) and I just cut some leaf shapes from some scraps of very old DP. I wasn't sure about using the rainbow ribbon after I first put it on to the card but I think it's grown on me. Anyway, it was from Fantastic Ribbons although I can't see this width on their web site now.

Finally, I distressed the edge of the Nestie shape the image is on with Forest Moss Distress Ink.

I hope you like this card and have a great weekend all of you!

Bye for now

Diane x

Aubrey Bumblethorpe

I thought I would share with you this card that I've made for my hubby's birthday. His birthday isn't until next Monday but when I was considering when would be the best time to upload this, I had to confess that he probably wouldn't even know how to find my blog let alone think of looking at it, so I reckon I'm safe!

I chose this image from Just Inklined mainly because we have an ongoingjoke about buying a trike (of the Harley Davidson type not a red plastic one with wooden wheels!!) and growing old disgracefully. When I saw Aubrey, I had to confess that there is a certain likeness to DH in the beard and the specs but, thankfully, there it ends! This is what my hubby looks like and, as you can see, he has more hair than Aubrey!


It was ironic that the lovely Mina posted a card with the exact same image to her blog only yesterday - I wasn't copying hun, honest! I'd already made the card when I saw your lovely post.

The DPs in the background are from K & Co, 7 Gypsies and Bo Bunny. I embossed the Nestie label with the Cuttlebug Happy Birthday folder and distressed the edges with Faded Jeans Distress Ink. I was away from home when I coloured the image with my Copics so I don't have all the colours for you but those I do I'll list below. After colouring with the Copics, I used my Faber Castell watercolour pencils to deepen the shadows and to 'grey down' Aubrey's denims, which were looking a bit too laundered to be real. I also added Glossy Accents on his specs, spanner, belt buckle and boot straps and finished with buttons charms and ribbon from my stash.

Copics used:
Skin: E000, E00, E21, R11, R20
Beard and spanner: C1, C3
Tshirt, boots and belt: W1, W3, W5, W7
Denims: B93, B95, B97, B99

I must get on now with some back to school cards and a project for a local group with which I'm involved.

Bye for now,

Diane x

Just Magnolia Challenge

Good evening, peeps and happy Tuesday evening to you!

Yay! I finally managed to get a card made for a challenge and I'm just about in time to enter it because I know this challenge closes tomorrow. This week it's a sketch from the lovely Bev and I must say that I really enjoyed working with it. I decided to use Bubbling Tilda as the image since she hadn't even seen ink since I bought her and I've coloured her with Copics (I'll list the numbers below). The DPs are from Magnolia, Papermania Henbury Lane and Crafty Individuals Springtime pad. The pearls and dewdrops are from The Hobby House and the flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts. The leaves have been punched with my McGill Pine punch and the ribbon and lace are from my stash.

Copics used:
Skin - E50, E00, E21, E11, R20
Hair - E51, E53, E33, E57
Bubble pipe - YR20, YR21, YR23
Tilda's dress - B000, B00, B02
Tilda's wings - Blues as above + V01, V12, V15
Bubbles - C1, C3
Shadow - W1, W3, W5

I added Stickles Stardust to the bubbles and Tilda's wings and Glossy Accents to the bubble pipe. The circle (cut with my Nesties, of course), is distressed with Milled Lavender distress ink, as is the sentiment, which is from Hero Arts.

I hope you like it. I'm sorry for the gloomy photograph but it's a bit like the skies over Yorkshire at the moment! I can see the purchase of a light tent looming evre closer! It's unusual for me to be posting so much - wouldn't it be great if I could keep it up?!!

Diane x

Look out, there's candy about!

Hello and happy Tuesday to you all!

The lovely Jodi is giving away no less than TWO sets of the Magnolia Summer kit on her blog. Please hop over there now by clicking on the title of this post to leave her a comment and give yourself a chance of winning this awesome candy!

See you all soon.

Diane x

Disaster Recovery

Disaster??? Well, there were two of them! Firstly, I looked at my blog (now you know I'm a bad blogger and I don't look at it every day!) and lo and behold, no background! Then there was this little square telling me that the picture or video had been removed from Photobucket and the pesky little thing wouldn't go away! Well, thank goodness for Google, which gave me the answer to the problem. If any of you other lovely peeps have the same problem, it's apparently because The Cutest Blog on the Block have removed some of their backgrounds from Photobucket but not all of them. The secret to getting rid of the pesky little square is to remove everything associated with TCBOTB from your blog - that took a little hunting down.

Anyhoo, I hope you like the new look blog....I think I prefer the slightly 'cleaner' lines.

The second disaster was the card. The little scene was originally going to be mounted in some photo corners that I'd cut and distressed, but then I forgot to clean my craft mat before I turned over the background to put DS tape on the back. I found that the sky didn't look so good with Walnut Stain splodges in it! How did I do that?? I couldn't believe it!! The solution was to cut off the original sky and create a new one by sponging some clouds and then adding the original background on foam pads to give some dimension.

All in all, I'm not too disappointed with the result but, although I absolutely love these Kioshi papers from Basic Grey, I think that the addition of these has created a card that looks too busy. Lesson learned - when using a scene on the card, remember to keep the area behind it to plain colours. What do you think?

Everything is coloured with Copics:

Tilda's hair: E29,E31,E25
Wings: C!, C3
Skin: E50, E00, E11,E21, R20
Dress & butterflies: V91, V93, V95
Petticoat: RV000, RV00, RV02
Fence: E42, E43, E44
Grass: G20, G21, G24
Flowers: R81, R85, YR21, YR24, B63

I stamped the images with Adirondack Slate and I deepened the shadows on Tilda's clothing with Dusty Concord and Victorian Velvet Distress ink applied with a small, dry stencil brush. The wings and the butterfly have Stardust Stickles on them for a bit of bling. The leaves are cut with my McGill 'Leaves' punch, the ribbon is from Fantastic Ribbons and the wonderful flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts which is where I also obtained the Crafters Pick glue I used following a tip off from the lovely Bev, so thanks for that hun! Using it was like a revelation when it came to arranging and fixing the flowers.

I'm entering this card in the Flutterby Wednesday Challenge.

If you've managed to read this far, well done! I don't know how this managed to turn into such a dissertation but thanks for visiting today and I hope you pause to leave me a comment so that I know that you've been around. I really do appreciate them so much.

Have a peaceful Sunday!

Diane x