A school...of fish!

It's Keryn's turn to set the dare at Daring Cardmakers this week here is what she says:

"Early next week all the children that have been on holiday from school in New Zealand for approx seven weeks will be returning to their new classrooms. Mother's will all be breathing a sigh of relief as their routines return to normal.

To celebrate this I want you all to create cards using the theme of school. If you've got children at school what they're up to might inspire your card, if not maybe memories of your own school days might be your inspiration."

I have to say that I was struggling with this one as I don't have children at school and couldn't think of a card theme that would let me use the card for anything else later, then into my head popped 'school of fish' and I knew that would work for me and the dare!

The image came from the Collage group on Flickr and I coloured it with Copics, paper and sentiment sticker are from a little 6x6 scrapbook kit by Papermania. Ribbons from stash.

Mucha Sunrise

This is the gorgeous background that Jeanette at Soartful has provided for the challenge this week.

Here is my version. I've used a Mucha image from Last Door Down the Hall, some of my own sunrise photographs with a couple art masks, one from PTon and the other from Sine. The text and the border are from Cottage Arts and it is finished with a watercolour overlay from The Scrappin' Cop.

Win a Tando - Hugs and Kisses Board

Tando Creative is a chipboard design company run by Di & Tony Oliver, Di is also a member of Bubbly Funk Forum and asked some of the forum members to decorate pieces for this board. The board is now up for grabs on the Tando Creative blog, full details of how to enter the competition are also at the bottom of this post.

This is the piece I decorated. The chipboard heart was covered with wadding and then some batik fabric, the pearls were handstitched to the fabric and I embellished it with a flower I recycled from a card I'd been sent - nothing is wasted!

Tando Creative Ltd are running a competition to win this fabulous decorated Hugs and Kisses Board. This board is unique as it is a larger version of the one available to buy and has been specially made just for this competition. It includes a chipboard base and 10 completely individual chipboard pieces that have been beautifully decorated by ladies from all round the country. The pieces have all been signed on the back by the artist.

The competition is open until Sunday 14th February when a winner will be picked at random to win this prize.

To enter the competition all you need to do is make make any project, whether it be a card, altered art, scrapbook page etc using a piece/pieces of Tando Creative chipboard. The project must be made for the competition so not shown previously on blogs or galleries.

Tando Chipboard is available from the Bubbly Funk Shop

Oh no, Snow!

The Fiskarette Monday challenge this week is to make a project with a snow theme. I haven't done many digital layouts recently so thought this would be a good time to do one.

Papers and Elements from Winter Wonderland by Scraporchard DT (2008)

Friday Photo Flashback

This week for the flashback I thought I'd show you an earlier verison of 'Me and my boys' circa 1989!

Click on the FridayPhoto Flashback logo to visit the blog and link to other pre-digital photographs.

Happy Birthday Son!

It's my son's birthday and I was a bit unsure what kind of card to make for him. When this happens I head for the Sketch File and Kathy had a great sketch for me. I combined Sketch #17 with some Funky Hand papers from the new CD: Papercraft Factory and a silhouette of a 'chocolate' labrador that I found online, a few bits of embellishments and it was done!

Coasters to Calendars

The Bubbly Scrumptious Challenge Blog, Vanilla Sugar, has Coasters as the theme for January. There were lots of interesting ideas by the Design Team but I really didn't need any more actual coasters, so I had a look at Splitcoaststampers resources to see what projects there were on there and found THIS little calendar.

My coasters are not the crafting chipboard kind, they are real coasters that I bought in the supermarket when they were on sale 6 for £1.00, so they are somewhat thicker than the ones used in the project. That meant that I couldn't cut them with either my Bind-it-all or my Crop-o-dile! So I made a binding from card in the same way I did with my Christmas Album.

The project instructions link you to a place to print out your calendar. I used the photo of me with my boys that was taken at Christmas, I love this picture.

All Papers are Websters Pages 'Postcards from Paris' from Bubbly Funk Shoppie.

When it came to a little embellishment, I thought I'd make this bunch of cherries using some faux flower stamens I got years ago from Lakeland and a couple of bits of leaves from a leaf/stem ribbon.

I have to say I am really pleased with this and it is going to sit on my desk at work.