Wednesday, 13 August 2014

Jennie's journalling with her Mother-in-law!

Journalling is a fabulous alternative to scrapping to celebrate and remember family members and events and that is exactly what Jennie is doing today with her gorgeous project...



I love this Maya Angelou quote and thought it would be most appropriate for this rather glamorous photograph of my mother-in-law taken in 1927. I am loving the freedom of creating art journal pages and learnt a lot from creating this page.  There are more details and a step by step on my blog.


Wow, what a stunning example of journalling AND our theme for this month Jennie, thank you!

We're almost half way through the month so if you've not entered yet it's time for you to think about it. We're seeing some fabulous entries already but we're greedy, we'd like to see lots more! >:o) Don't forget, everyone that enters has a chance of winning the Country View Crafts' £20 shop voucher as our winner is selected at random (using random.org).

Our next post will be on Friday when we have another T3 guest here sharing her creativity. We hope you'll be able to join us. >:o)

Chris and the team xxx

Tuesday, 12 August 2014

Blog candy winner

Whoop, whoop! We have congratulations to make to our July Pinterest blog candy winner!

Everyone who joined in has been entered and the winner has been drawn at random using random.org. The winner is...



Well done Lori we'll be in contact with you shortly so that we can send you the candy. >:o)

Thanks to everyone who joined in and to ALL our Pinterest followers.

More tomorrow....

Chris xxx

Monday, 11 August 2014

Gabrielle's journal is.... SENSATIONAL!

Whichever way you look at our next project, it most definitely IS sensational!




I really love words and often turn to quotations to act as inspiration and this Oscar Wilde quotation always makes me chuckle! There are stamped images in the background and then very thin layers of paint over the top to make new colours and areas of interest. The images are from Lynne Perrella for PaperArtsy and I love mixing these images up to make new people. I love using individual letter stamps for each word, the act of stamping each one out gives me great pleasure as I watch each word form on the page! There's more detail on my blog.



Yep, sensational colours, sensational imagery and a sensational project Gabrielle! Thank you!

Whether you like journalling, or another form of crafting, we want to see your creative efforts please. If you've never entered a challenge before it really is simple, just navigate to the main challenge post (HERE) and use the linkie tool to enter.

We'll be back on Wednesday when our wonderfully creative Jennie will be here with her second project for this month. Cya there! >:o)

Chris and the team xxx

Saturday, 9 August 2014

Jenny t3

Hi everyone,

Many of you will know our Top 3 guest today as she is a contributing DT member for several of the most popular craft blogs, it is the very talented Buttons herself... Jenny of Pushing the right buttons!



I've been artistic and crafty all my life, sewing, drawing, stitching, sometimes for pleasure, often out of necessity. As a keen genealogist I needed to find a way of presenting my extensive family history research and discovered the joys of scrapbooking. One thing led to another and card making for friends and family soon took over. A persistent Hels Sheridan encouraged me to start a blog in April 2012, I discovered the world of Distress, and it all grew exponentially from there. As a qualified teacher I have a real passion for sharing techniques and ideas with anyone who'll listen! After all, isn't this about 'sharing the love'?



I was delighted to have been placed in the Top 3 for the June 2014 challenge and given the opportunity to be a Guest Designer at Country View Challenges for their August theme 'Word Play'. Having seen the standards set by previous guests I knew whatever I created for this theme it would need to be something special.



So this card started with a paste-stencilled background that I made, loved and puzzled over, particularly as this month's challenge theme requires words or phrases to be used. Do you keep it simple and just die cut some letters to put on top? Do you attempt to layer things over the whole lot and risk making it way too busy? Well no, in my case you grab a Bigz die and (with heart in mouth) chop into the middle of it to create a frame for the rest of your design. And as a bonus you are left with the central section for another card/project!




A stunning project Jenny, and a fabulous example of our theme this month - thank you so much for joining us today.

We're delighted to see the gorgeous projects you've already entered, a fabulous variety of genres and colours - keep them coming folks please! >:o)

We'll be announcing our Pinterest Blog candy winner shortly so please watch for that and we have more on Monday with Gabrielle, see you then.

Chris and the team xxx

Friday, 8 August 2014

Announcing July's winners

Hi everyone,

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our challenge in July - so many fabulous and varied entries - and thanks too to those of you who commented.

Our winner each month is chosen at random (random.org) to ensure that EVERYONE has a chance of winning. We also award blog badges to our Top 3 and a DT Members' Special Mention badge to the project we feel is the most creative and original in depicting our theme of the month. Here are our winners...






Well done Susan, your blog badge and winner's voucher will be with you shortly.



As Sue C had chosen the topic for the month it fell to her to choose our Top 3 and DTMSM blog badge awards. Here are her choices and what she had to say about them...

There's so many I liked I could have a top 10 at least ! Anyway I have restrained myself and below are my picks :

A beautiful stencilled bag, the attention to detail is stunning and the stencilling is excellent !


The stencilled children on this project really caught my eye, coupled with the fairy I think this is a truly magical piece !


This is a truly elegant project, I loved the transformation and the use of the doily stencil is gorgeous !


I loved all the texture created on this beautiful piece and the gold metallic finish is just stunning !

Congrat's to all our blog badge winners, your badges are on the way.



All of our winers are invited to guest with us next month to show you a project that they've made on the theme for the month. If you'd like the opportunity then please enter this month's challenge to be in with a chance.

Another post tomorrow, a great guest with a fabulous project - don't miss it!

Chris xxx

Sticky post - Blog candy

Don't forget we're offering Blog Candy if you've signed up to be one of our Pinterest followers. Click HERE to see our original post details and to enter.


This post will remain top of the list until the closing date - August 8th.

Normal blog posts continue below this one.

Chris xxx

Thursday, 7 August 2014

Donna's got man's best friend...

Yes, Donna is sharing her love of man's best friend with us today by way of this fabulous tag...



I love to make tags and I love to use quotes so thought for my second challenge piece I'd combine the two loves with a third....my love of dogs....

...pop over to my blog to find out the bits and pieces I've used. Donna xx



Beautiful imagery Donna and such a fabulous example of our theme (as well as a great way to celebrate our love of dogs) - thank you!

We love to see the different interpretations and creative thought processes our guests and teamies have on the same theme. What's your idea? What are you making today? We'd like to see what you make of our theme and the creative spark Alison's topic ignites!

Our next post is on Saturday when we have a guest Top 3 post from the talented Buttons (aka Jenny). We hope to see you then. >:o)

Chris and the team xxx

Tuesday, 5 August 2014

Any excuse to make an album...

Who needs a reason? Not I! With a passion for creating my own box and album templates I needed no more of an excuse than a series of proverbs and sayings to create this album for Alison's fabulous 'Word play' challenge...


Don't be deceived - this simple looking picture actually unravels to a whole lot more! For those of you that want to see the full folding album, or the what and the how, you'll find a step x step with more pictures HERE.

We hope you're feeling the motivation to join in with us this month.....? Remember to follow our simple rules please and remember that for this challenge, greeting card sentiments do NOT qualify as the challenge topic.

More on Thursday....

Chris xxx

Sunday, 3 August 2014

Alison is flying today!

We're on our way with the first of our individual challenges today and as Alison has chosen the theme this month she has the pleasure of leading the way forward...




For my second make for the Word Play theme, I started with the Sizzix die of that name - and stuck lots of die-cut chipboard letters to a wooden ticket, adding Distress Paint and Distress Crackle Paint in Rock Candy to create my background.  The new Layered Dragonfly takes pride of place, hovering over the glossy dimensional die-cut advice to Enjoy The Journey!  Come and see how I did it all over at Words and Pictures...



What a stunning hanging to present this well known saying, it's absolutely beautiful Alison, thank you!

We hope you're busy crafting and getting ready to enter your project for this month. Remember, there is no limit to how many entries you make as long as you follow the rules.

We hope to see you on Tuesday when we'll have another project for you.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Chris and the team xxx

Friday, 1 August 2014

We're into August and a new challenge...

Hello everyone, welcome to August's new challenge!

Regulars amongst you will know that each month one of our amazing Design Team Members chooses our theme. This month it is the turn of Butterfly (aka Alison) and she's chosen a terrific topic, sure to be a hit with many of you, it's...........


We're looking for entries that focus upon the written word. Your project may be based upon a stamped saying, a proverb, an old adage, a piece of poetry, whatever grabs you. What the challenge is NOT about is sentiments for greetings cards.

As usual, we will be visually serenading you throughout the whole month (every other day in fact) with a view to encouraging, motivating and inspiring you to get out your crafty goodies, make a project (or three) and join in!  >;o)  At the end of the month we will randomly select a winner (using random.org) who will receive the princely prize of a £20 shop voucher from our fabulous sponsor, Country View Crafts.  Alison willl also be choosing her Top 3 favourites and her Special Mention who will all win blog badges and the chance to be a guest DT with us the following month.

Please remember to follow the rules because entries that don't comply cannot be selected as a winner.

Heading up our catwalk of beautiful projects this month is our guest, winner of last month's challenge, Dragonllew (Jenny)...



Hi I'm Jenny aka Dragonllew from Bournemouth I'm married to Mark and have 3 gorgeous children who keep me very busy . In my spare time I love to craft and having been crafting for as long as I can remember, for the last few years my passion has been card making. My favourite crafting item has to be my pro markers, I love colouring up stamps with them.


I decided to alter a plain Kraft notebook for this months challenge. Because of the size of the book my normal 6 x 6 papers were too small so I had to dig through my rather old stack of 12 x 12 papers where I found these old Fancy Pants papers which I used to create the base layers. I coloured up my favourite digi stamp at the moment with my beloved pro markers adding some glossy accents to make his glasses pop. I printed the quote directly on to the patterned paper and attached it using a paper clip.


And now for the projects from our permanent DTM's...


I've created a simple tag with words at the heart of it.  I started with one of the spare tags I created when I was playing with the Tim Holtz June tag technique.  And if the words are going to take centre stage they deserve a touch of glossy embossing too!




I had lots of fun creating this shabby word piece. Stamping, die cutting, lots of ink and various techniques all went together to make it. For those of you looking for more details, my step x step is HERE.


Great theme for a challenge :) Always love to use words and quotes on  things I make.  I had left the first pages of my little moleskine journal clear but decided now was the time to fill them! Seemed like the perfect quote for the opening pages......


....pop over to my blog to see how it evolved. Donna xx 



I have decorated a wooden plaque with acrylic paints, I am planning to cover all the door panels in the house with my decorated wooden plaques this is No 4.
You can get full details of how this was made from my Blog.



I love words, they often act as the springboard for my ideas and so I was thrilled when I saw we had this as a challenge. I took my moleskin journal and roughly drew some houses in pencil and then wrote, by hand, everything home means to me around the houses. Then I coloured the houses in with Portfolio Pastels. I painted the background with watered down paint and revealed some of the writing in areas by wiping them with a baby wipe. I live at number 4 so I stamped a heart on that roof. I love these pages, as much for the personal message in the background as well as for the lovely bright houses in the foreground! There is more detail on my blog.



For our wonderful theme this month I have chosen the written word and the lost art of letter writing for the theme of my tag.  After creating my background using Vintage Photo and Evergreen Bough I kept the embellishments quite simple.  There are more details on my blog.



I went bright, beautiful and JOFY stamps for my first project. With paints, stencils and embossing paste to the Bg; Yellow is such a joyful colour. My words for this thought provoking statement were all cut using my cricut machine. More details on my Blog.


Journalling was never something that I thought I would be interested in. How wrong could I be ! Words are the perfect embellishment for journal pages and for the ones I'm sharing today I've been lucky enough to play with the fab new Colour Bloom sprays ! For the details hop over to my blog .



I love all things wordy and playing with words always brings to mind my collection of gorgeous wordy stamps, so what better way to play with words than to create a mini album to hold some of my favourite words to live by . For all the details and what's inside please pop across to inkypinkycraft .



We support and encourage crafting of all genres here from contemporary to vintage, from CAS to shabby chic and grunge, from card making, scrapping, tag art, journalling, altered art and home decor. Our individual posts commence on Sunday and will feature every alternate day throughout the month. We try and bring you DT makes that cover as much of the spectrum as possible - all we'd like now is for you to get crafting and join in!  >:o)

Have a wonderful August!

Chris and the team xxx



Tuesday, 29 July 2014

A reflection of Paula's art...

Today we have our last post for this month and it's a guest spotlight from the talented Paula Whittaker of Just For One Day who won a Top 3 blog badge back in May. Paula is sharing her make with us to show how she used her stencils to create this stunning piece of altered art...



"Hi….my name is Paula, and I started cardmaking in February 2004 as I wanted to make a special card for my aunt - I haven’t really looked back since. I love stamping, working with colour and the CAS (clean and simple) style."



"I was thrilled to have made the Top 3 in Mays Challenge and was delighted to have been asked to join in with this months Challenge of “Stencil It”. I began with an Ikea mirror, the first thing I did was used the Cargo stencil by Tim Holtz to stencil through some PaperArtsy Grunge Paste. Once the paste was dry, I used a grey paint to cover the whole frame, paste and all. I tried using some PaperArtsy Crackle Glaze next but it didn’t really work, not sure why though! My next paint was a PaperArtsy Fresco one called ‘Beach Hut’. I then stenciled the wording using Memento black ink (it just happened to be close to hand!) I then dry brushed white paint over top, then a little bit of grey.

Thank you so much for letting me take part in this months challenge and sharing my project with you all."



Clean and smart, elegant, beautiful and so, so effective Paula, this is GORGEOUS - thank you!

This brings us to the end of our posts for July but you still have another couple of days to enter and have the chance of winning the £20 shop voucher donated by our fabulous sponsor, Country View Crafts!

Don't forget we also have our 'Magpie Surprise' competition running too which is open to anyone to enter (HERE).

Enjoy the last few days of July, we'll be back on August 1st with another theme to challenge you. We hope to see you then!

Chris and the team xxx

Sunday, 27 July 2014

Sue B's moment in time...

We did warn you that there were still more stunning projects to come and we weren't telling fibs! This glorious make from our talented Sue B is a wowser of a project and who wouldn't want to pull this out of an envelope......?



"Embossing paste applied through various stencils to create dimension and texture, and then coloured up extensively! Step by step over on my Blog."



The colour work and stencilling on this project is awesome Sue, it's a work of art - thank you!

We have one more project to show you and you certainly won't want to miss it so please pop back on Tuesday when we will be featuring another guest spotlight to complete the month's posts.

Chris and the team xxx

Friday, 25 July 2014

Gabrielle always shines!

With the end of the challenge drawing near we still have several projects to show you. The old adage of saving the best until last may well be true because we have some beautiful projects to end the month with. We intend to get the last ickle bitsy tiny drop of creativity from you as we can to entice you to enter this month. >;o)

Leading the end charge is Gabrielle who has created this beautiful tag for you...



"My second project for our Stencil It challenge is a tag. I have added layers with stencils in the background as well as the foreground and I even stencilled the sentiment! That's dedication! I have recently discovered bright colours and this pink pops off the page but is tempered by the shots of blue for balance. If you would like to see how I made the tag, there are more details on my blog! Gabrielle x"



A stunning tag Gabrielle, gorgeous colours and great use of stencils. What a fab way to remind us that we can even use our stencils for our sentiments - thank you!

We hope you're nearing completion of your project because we keep our challenges open right until 5 minutes to midnight on the last day of the month! Please keep them coming.

On Sunday Sue B will be with us to show you her second DT piece for the month - please don't miss it!

Chris and the team xxx