yummy colours in pdcc#33, and a fab prize

How cool is this stamp set?  It's from Practicing Creativity, our sponsors at The Play Date Cafe this week.  I just LoVe that tree, and you could make a flip flop tree and flip flop flowers with this set - FaB!!  If you want a chance of winning these stamps, you just need to enter our colour challenge this week using Mona's yummy colours:

I've just bought a peg bag in these colours funnily enough, and with wooden pegs it matches the challenge perfectly lol! 

I got out my kraft envelopes when I saw these colours though...I just LoVe working with brown paper, and once found some cardstock this colour too - that didn't last long!

I nearly missed an appointment I was so engrossed in this project - I just LoVe this colour combo :)  In fact, there's a lot of favourites in this project - the colours, brown envelope, spray ink, adirondack paint dabbers, flowers and little bitty bits!

The spray ink is a summer sticky fingers spray - aqua.  The flower stamp is from Botanicals plate #1 by The Artistic Stamper.

And the punch is my only Martha Stewart one, hydrangea border :)

This week we have additional inspiration from Courtney Baker of Practicing Creativity as well as our regular designers - why not hop over to the Play Date Cafe to see what yumminess they've produced, and visit their blogs to leave some love :)  And don't forget, play date entries just need to use our colours, they don't have to be cards!

wedding card

take a heart from an unfinished project

some mulberry paper, pearl gems, and previously embossed card

some butterflies from a cupcake wrapper

and you have a quick wedding card

just goes to show you should always keep those bits n pieces handy!!

a camping trip in the VWcamper

Here she is, all packed up and ready to go.  We didn't go far on our inaugural trip, and there were just the four of us as Tom is in the US with his Aunt, Uncle and Cousin (lucky Tom!!).  

The hawthorn bushes you can see behind the tent are on the bank of the River Severn, Shropshire.  And on the other side of the field is the steam railway - a perfect spot, and perfect weather (if a little hot!!).

The awning worked out brilliantly.  We ordered it online so hadn't seen it in 'person' as it were but it was very easy to put up, and fitted well to the camper.

I finally, finally gt the curtains made.  This is the van set up for George to sleep.  We all took a turn each to sleep in the van.  I love how the curtains have poppers to hold them in place :)  They need a couple of adjustments but overall I'm really pleased with how they turned out. :)  Here's the view from the back of the van when it's set up as a double bed [with Sophie grinning away there after she sneaked in!

challenging myself with 'peach' for pdcc#32

How stunning is this wedding cake?!!  It was made for a friend of mine, by another friend, and the girl who made it hadn't really done anything like this before.  It was just STuNNiNG!

I spend a lot of time thinking about colour, looking out for great colour combos, and taking notice of the colours other people use in their artwork.  Peach is NoT one of my colours!  I think it looks pretty on this cake, but I would never in a million years use it in on a card etc.  But being the kind of girl I am, and being on a colour challenge design team, I decided to really challenge myself this week:

I have to say, it wasn't easy tracking down these colours!  3 exactly matched buttons and a packet of paper flowers later though, I actually ended up using my lemonade dabber paint and dried marigold distress ink to make a book cover.

The background paper and the images are all scrapbook papers from The Cubby Hole, distressed with dried marigold.

I LoVe the squares - they're a Twiddleybitz piece.

"the future comes one day at a time"

busy, busy, busy...

... so I'm soooooooooooooo looking forward to going away in our little vw campervan tomorrow :)  We were supposed to go today but I didn't get the curtains made in time!!  I promise to put photos up when we get back next weekend.  Malc's been fixing and polishing her, and she's now resplendent.

I've had a really busy couple of weekends, last week I was at The Stamp Attic, and this Saturday at The Cubby Hole.  Carol has started holding exhibitions of artist's work at The Cubby Hole so when I walked in the other day the walls were filled with colour.  

The canvases were a riot of colour yet very precisely and exquisitely painted.

We set to work creating our own riots of colour after embossing metal and covering little books.  

 books by:

Christine    Wendy

me   Suzanne   Tracy

Lisa (+Lisa turned her sampler piece into a bkmk)   Tracy E   Sue

I really enjoyed teaching this workshop.  I taught it last week too but my phone was playing up so I didn't do well on the photos front. 

exciting news!

I feel truly, truly honoured to have been invited on the USArtQuest design team, along with

Suzi Blu 

Lea Cioci 

Jessica Griffin

Jan Hennings

Terri Sproul

Connie Vogt

and our senior design team leader, Julie Ranae :)

Watch this space, and those of my fellow design team members, to find out what it's all about :)

pdcc#31 on my poor neglected blog!

This last week has just been soooooooooooooo mad busy so Thursday has come round rather quickly for me.  I've got loads to share, just haven't had a minute to sit down and sort out photos etc. 

 I had a fabulous weekend teaching down at the Stamp Attic where Ruby and I decided to challenge ourselves for this week's play date cafe challenge and use the same papers and embellishment.  Whilst discussing the play date cafe over coffee, Ruby asked me how long the challenge had been going.  I said I thought it was about September when it started when Joanna piped up "I know how long it's been going...30 weeks!"  Well, Ruby and I could hardly stay on our seats we were laughing so hard - two members of the design team who hadn't clocked the numbers in the weekly titles lol

Julie chose this week's colours, and Ruby and I did have fun amongst the paper stacks in Wendy's shop (Wendy has lOAds of papers :) )

The papers were called 'So Sophie' which is very appropriate for me as that's my daughter's name. 

I also added in an element of punching, courtesy of Martha Stewart, some die cut butterflies from a cupcake case, and some Ippity stamps from the set 'Where you should be'.

Butterflies and flowers feature in many of our designers contributions this week so don't forget to check them out.  And a big thankyou to everyone who plays along with our challenge this week - they were certainly popular colours!!

Here's Ruby's card with mine so you can see them together :