Some Odd Girl Challenge

Just a quick one to share my entry to the Some Odd Girl sketch challenge this month. My card doesn't strictly follow the sketch but I hope they won't mind too much when they see what I did with Tropical Mae.

Inspired by the lack of Summer in the UK this month (probably the wettest July ever recorded), I wanted my entry to radiate warmth and sunshine. I attempted this by creating a sunray design made up of various patterned papers to provide a suitable background for Mae.

Mae herself has been coloured with Promarkers and I paper pieced her dress with a lovely pp from Basic Grey.

The sentiment 'blue skies and sunny days' is from a Papertrey Ink stamp set.

Procrastination Station

So much for getting flying on the yo-yo's... So far the 'grand' total is 7 LOL! I've just been procrastinating so much lately.

I have been making cards still though, so here's a round-up of the latest...

This was a thank you card for an amazing friend who took me to see Coldplay at the Emirates Stadium, just because she knew I'd always wanted to see them live! I used the Harvest Berries stamps and die from Papertrey Ink and the sentiment is from their Movers and Shakers set.

I used the same colour combo, Melon Mambo and Concord Crush, to make this birthday card for one of my best friends...

I've used the same stamp sets with the addition of a houndstooth background stamp.

Next up, a birthday card for a friend's little boy. The dinosaur stamps are from MyCuteStamps and the Argyle background stamp is from the same set as the houndstooth one, but I can't remember where I bought them - sorry!

The next two cards are for a very special little dude by the name of Jess. All I can say is that he's a really cool cat and deserved two cards for his birthday...

Digi stamp from Pink Cat Studio and sentiment stamp from Papertrey Ink.

This was mainly done on the computer, using Word. I pasted four of the digi image, from Soft Pencil, and then added borders, shadows and colouring. I added a marker pen effect to thicken the lines of the stamp. The 'birthday' border was from a pti stamp.

Finally, my piece de resistance...

I was lucky enough to win the new release of digistamps from SomeOddGirl last week. I decided to use 'Bicycle Kaylee' and try to the cloud colouring tutorial posted on the SOG blog. Here's a close up of the image...

I paper pieced her dress using some really cute floral paper from the Konichiwa range by Basic Gray.


Phew! Maybe I haven't been procrastinating as much as I thought after all!

Yo-Yo crazy

I'm so far behind with blogging at the moment but I've still been busy creating. I've got some cards to show soon but for now I wanted to tell you about a new project I'm embarking on. It's called the Yo-Yo Along and details can be found on the SewTakeAHike blog here.

Basically, I'll be creating fabric yo-yos (also known as Suffolk Puffs) to make into 'something'. I very much doubt I'll be making 1008 like in the original, but I'm planning on making up to 84, using two charm packs in the pattern 'Hunky Dory' by Moda.

My only memory of these yo-yo's is that they used to be popular in the Seventies for making soft toys like the ones pictured below.

I'm hoping that whatever I create will be rather more modern! Maybe something like this gorgeous cushion...

...or this stunner from Amy Friend...

I'll keep you updated as the yo-yo total increases ;D

Postcard Challenge - England

A little later than planned, I finally finished my England postcard. I steered clear of all the stereotypes like cups of tea and bowler hats and went for a countryside scene instead.

When it comes to English artists, top of the list for me is David Hockney. I knew he'd done a lot of countryside pieces recently, using his iPad, but I wanted to see if he'd touched on this in any of his older work. I found a couple of perfect images to inspire me and ended up going with 'Road across the Wolds' from 1997. This is Hockney's original...

...and my rather poor tribute...

I wish I had been able to capture the vibrancy of the original but until I own the full palette of Promarkers (yeh right!) I have to make do with the limited colours I own.

I love the patchwork of fields showing various crops and those hay bales. This really sums up England to me.

Here's the reverse of the card...