Good morning from bright and sunny Greece ! The sun has finally decided to show its face after weeks and weeks of miserable grey cold and snowy days ! Actually it quite suited the mood of the country ! In honour of this beautiful weather my body has decided to give me a cold  am feeling a bit woozy ( no gin involved )  and am back off to bed .

Less is More this week have a great theme for us and one of my favourites. Mandi and Chrissie are asking us to use  ” Die Cuts and Punches ” on our cards I made a few quick ones and here they are

This card was inspired by the very talented Wendy who is in the same Silhouette Flicker group. I used my Cameo to cut out the hand , the paper is Basic Grey Wander Paper Pad and I cut out an oval of the same paper and adhered it to a glass cabochon with Glossy Accents. I really like the simplicity of this card. Do pop over to Wendy’s blog to check hers out.

As its the 14th of the month its time for our second challenge over at Once Upon A …..Sketch and Get Creative. You may remember that at the beginning of the month OUAS and Get Creative  teamed up and both Design Teams swapped places , they following our sketch and we following theirs,  and what a great success it has been so far ! We have have had a bumper crop of fabulous entries for both challenges and are hoping that you will continue to play along  with us for the rest of the month.

This is the fantastic sketch that Nadia has asked us to follow and I will let her explain the criteria for it.

Unaccustomed as I am…….. ( sound like a speech from a wedding ) to posting twice in one day but I felt that the winner of my challenge over at Get Creative and the new Challenge at Crafty Cardmakers both deserved separate posts so anyone interested in  who my winner was please see today’s earlier post.

Over at Crafty Cardmakers our new challenge for the next fortnight is up and running and what a great one it is too ” Monochrome Magic ” has been chosen by the lovely and talented Beth so please pop over  to see exactly what she is asking us do do.

I’m a little boring and immediately chose black and white for my DT card that and the fact that it is one of my favourite colour combinations, here’s what I made

Last month over at Get Creative we had another marathon month of challenges , twelve in total . Each DT member set their own challenge and the winner of each individual channel would be taking the respective DT members place for the month of March. My challenge was to use die cuts and or punches . Once again you wowed us with your fabulous cards and layouts and believe you me if was very difficult to choose an overall winner but there could only be one and here is the winning card

Its the 1st of the month and do we have a surprise for you ! Get Creative and Once Upon A Sketch have decided to swap places this month I will let Nadia and Irini the two blog owners explain :

A short post today ………..whats that,  do I hearing cheering and whooping in the wings  ! Shame on you !! Am feeling a little under the weather and really should be ” under the doctor “(  this was a phrase that was used a lot when I was a young gal ! ) It seems that bloggers bum has returned with a vengeance , too much sitting in front of my Mac is causing me a little discomfort in the back region , maybe I should call it bloggers back then !

Anways…………..after a longgggggggg absence I am finally entering a little something into one of my favourite challenges,  Just for Fun,  that trio of craftyliciousness  have this week as their theme ” Medieval ”  !!!! Von the jamming queen is the culprit what a fertile imagination she has,  and I will be asking her to call upon it when she sees my box !! So let me show you what I mean ….

Well this I suppose could be construed  as  ” Asian ” but I’m  asking you all to use every ounce your your imagination and move it on over to the Medieval category !  It  looks like a card but it is in fact a box with a glass top which was a real so and so to photo. This was the only shot I could get that didn’t have my gorgeousness reflected in it !  For the base I used magic gold card  ( well that’s what it called its self on the package ) I stamped the card with my favourite SU text stamp and then embossed with clear embossing powder, such a waste as you cant see it ! I then inked up my Harlequin embossing folder ( that’s the medieval part ) with black Stazon ink and passed it through the Big Shot. For the dragon I used for the first time this Dreamweaver stencil and coloured it using gilding flakes………never again, I thought glitter was bad this is far worse it actually floats !!! normal breathing just transfers these little flakes to the other side of the room so I had to hold my breath while I was making this portion of the card . The background is filled in with black glitter and the overall image is KITSCH AS CAN BE !!!!!. the black porcelain flowers just arrived yesterday all the way from Hong Kong  !! and add to the overall kitschyness  of the box. One thing is for sure I will never,  ever be using gilding flakes in the near future,  that coupled with glitter makes for one big mess , two blingy mutts and one cranky crafter. It also took me three attempts to make the image so there is an abundance of the stuff still hiding in all manner of crevices in the crafting cave !

So much for the short post ! Just writing about it and reliving it has given me a headache ! Do pop over and visit the gorgeous girls at Just for Fun  they have some wonderful pieces of inspirational art to drool over and inspire us with.

Right am of for a lie down, the boss has given me the day off to rest and recuperate so am away to do just that.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.

Marie

Evenin All ! Do you remember that catch phrase ! Well anyone in the UK over a certain age ah hum … like me,  might just remember it , answers on a tag please to my email address ( just kidding )

Over at Crafty Cardmakers its time for a new challenge which has been set by the lovely Jack , she has asked us to use beads on our cards,  sounds simple eh.! I personally had a little difficulty with this one . Am not really a beady person so all the more reason for giving it a go ,  in fact I gave it several goes all of which ended up in the bin,  except for my DT card.

We are kindly sponsored for this challenge by The Stampman (and Lady of course!) who are offering the winner a £10 voucher for their store, you can spend this online, in the shop or if you’re lucky enough to see them at a show! They have a ton of items in store, enough to tickle any crafty taste buds.Another of our new Sponsors Di’s Digi Downloads   who are offering a 10 dollar gift voucher .

Yes its back ! the pokey tool has been mysteriously returned to its rightful place , I know how concerned you all where about it , well at least Vicky alias Crafting Claire was . Lately I have been playing with my new Cameo which has just been returned to me  it was unwell and had to be returned to the UK to visit the die cut doc. I had had it only for a week when it refused to produce the goods , it arrived a few days ago so have being making lots of little intricate designs with it. ( see previous post ).  Horror of horrors upon its return my pokey tool did a runner and I was left using a cocktail stick to weed out the negative pieces,  no fun ! I accused my youngest son Ari of being the culprit as I had seen him eying it up suspiciously lately and asking a lot of questions about it. The funny thing was that I didn’t confront him with it but I mentioned it on my blog , which he doesn’t read  or so I thought !  The next day the Mr Pokey was back on my desk as if by magic! so………..

When I saw this morning that Chrissie and Mandi at Less is More where asking us to ” Cut it Out ” it seemed like fate had intervened , not only was my Cameo working but my pokey tool was back in my possession .  I had made several cards this morning but only managed to photograph one as my little doglett Bailey was taken ill and I had an emergency dash to the Vets ( all is well now ) upon my return mother nature had taken its course and turned the lights down low so couldn’t get decent photos .

Would also like to link this to Cas-ual Fridays who are asking us to use black and white and not a hint of another colour ! Think this first one fits the bill !

Hope this is not too over the top ! My lovely Cameo and gorgeous Mr Pokey are responsible for this creation,  looks easy but believe you me my full bin is testimony to the opposite,  getting the right measurements and layout is a tad tricky if you are dense like me !

Good morning from a freezing cold Thessaloniki !

So have fun and get Creative.

It seems that Tag Tuesday may just become an addiction! Another one ! I had such fun not only taking part but seeing all of the beautiful entries , such stunning work. If you haven’t been by  then I urge you to pop over , you will be amazed and inspired. I was really impressed I can tell you but that’s more than can be said for my dogletts Rosy and Bailey who where banned from crafting den due to copious amounts of glitter and glue attaching themselves to every object in the room. When they where finally admitted entry they still managed to get all blinged up even after I had hoovered ! If you have ever seen a porky French Bulldog and a tiny weeny pinscher sporting glittery fur and depositing it all over the house then you can well understand why they where locked out in the first place !

The theme this week is ” Snow, Sports and Games and  for my tag  I decided to go in the opposite direction and steer clear of the sparkly stuff, that and the fact that the other ladies do it so much better !

This is quite a large tag and as you can see my icicles are defying nature and growing out towards the side , I am using my ” artistic license  ” here, I  did try them in more natural positions but well, they just looked too” normal ” I used some foam dots between the layers to give the illusion of dimension. The whole tag was created solely with the aid of my Silhouette machine not a stamp or even a jot of glitter in sight !  The sentiment such as it is  and for those of you like myself suffer from bloggers blindness is a compilation of  words relating to the theme, snow, ice, skating , sledding, you get my drift  ( pun intended ) . Anyways hope you like it !

Am also linking this to Paper Creations Ink who are asking us to use die cuts/punches on our work 

Just one more thing the greenery is not part of the tag …… what you had guessed that already, of course , silly me !

Right am off to visit you all and ooh and ahh at your wonderful creations

Until next time……….

Marie