Incy Wincy and Magical Crafts challenges

Hello again everyone :)
The challenge this week at Incy Wincy Designs has been chosen by Liz, and she's told us all to use our favourite embellishments. I chose gems, as I've been sticking them on and in all sort recently. There's a fab prize on offer too, so pop over and post your own entry :)
And, I'm late (not surprising) but Jackie posted a recipe to follow for Christmas cards over at Magical Crafts. The recipe was:
2 papers
1 image
1 brad
and some sparkle

The image is a freebie from Wendy's Digital Doodling blog, I made the papers and the sentiment in Paintshop, the ribbon is sparkly (and it's actually an iridescent pale blue, I'm not sure why part of it looks green in the photo) and I stuck a snowflake peel-off on a plain brad to make it Christmassy :)

Wendy's Digital Doodling challenge

You know how much I love digi stamps? And you know how much I love freebies? Well, the two are perfectly combined the the current DD Challnege.
Wendy has a fab free digi stamp of her character Tilly, perched delicately on a fairy cake, and this is the 4x4 I made with it.
Tilyy and the hearts are decoupaged. I stick small flower gems in her hair. In real life, the ribbon isn't as bright and the matting layer under the sentiment isn't as dark, but you get the general idea. If you like the image, why not pop over to Wendy's blog and have a go yourself?

Casing Chris!

I went blog-hopping this afternoon for some Halloween inspiration, and I spotted some beautiful silhouetted work on Chris' blog, which I loved. If you haven't already seen her work, you should really go and have a browse.
And, in homage to Chris, or in honour of Chris, or, let's face it, just straight out copying Chris, this is what I came up with.
The text is from a poem called The Hag by Robert Herrick.

The dark side

Ok, I was meant to be staying off Paintshop today, but it didn't last. However, I didn't make any papers and I didn't use any gradients, lol, so I'm counting it as progress :P
This digital piece is for two challenges.
The first is the So Artful challenge, where you can pick up wonderful free spider's web image, which forms the basis of my piece.
And the second is Art on the Dark Side, who are celebrating the 13 days of Halloween.
The lady and the hat images are both from Dezinaworld :)

Yup, it's another set of free papers

Freshly finished in Paintshop, please feel free to click on the images and then save them to use in your own personal craft work. If you do make anything, I'd love to see it :)













Thanks for looking! :D

Lots To Do challenge - simply a card :)

The current challenge over at Lots To Do is to make a card, with no other restrictions at all. LOL it seems to have been a while since I've made anything that wasn't following some rule or theme or colour combo, I nearly forgot what to do :P
The image I used is available for free download at the very talented Inger Harding's blog, and the papers are the ones I made the other day.
But I am quite pleased with this one, although I can't get a great photo. The pearl card that I used for layering looks much darker in the photo than it does in real life, it's actually a sort of muted purple. And the rest of the card looks more colourful when it isn't being over-shadowed by the dark layers in the pic :P LOL, so here's what my card doesn't really look like :P

Pollycraft Birthday Challenge and blog hop!

The lovely ladies over at the Pollycraft blog are celebtaying their first anniversary with a blog hop and a challenge and oodles of prizes, and it's open until the 26th October, so pop along and have a look :)
It's a colour challenge, and the colours are Tangerine Turquoise and Chocolate. I went for a more muted look, and used lower opacities on all the colours, then made some dotty backing paper to match. The image is Mischief, available as a digi stamp for a limited time only from the Pollycraft shop.

More free papers

I've been playing again. I did this set in 6x6 size, but if any of you have a preference as to whether I upload free papers in A5 or 6x6 format, just let me know. And you can of course re-size them, but if everyone and his mother prefers one shape over the other, I'm happy to go with the flow. Again, just click on the image to see it full-size, and then right-click and save ;)













Thanks for looking, and if you make anything with these, I'd love to see it :)

Incy Wincy Design challenge - Wildlife

The current challenge at the Incy Wincy Design blog is "Wildlife", so I hope this cute little birdie from Pink Petticoat counts. As is becoming the norm for me, I coloured the image in Paintshop and then made some papers to match. The whole set of papers is available free to download a few posts below this one, but I didn't want to post the card before now as I sent it to Cheryl, so I wanted to make sure she got it before I posted.

Dare You To Digi Stamp, colour challenge

It's a colour challenge over at the Dare You To Digi Stamp blog, and the colours are oange, yellow, and either black or white. Not my first choice for colours, lol, but I think it turned out ok. :)
The image is from Sketching Stamper, I coloured it in Paintshop (quelle surprise :P) and then made the papers to match :)

Lots To Do challenge - free papers!

The challenge this week over at the Lots To Do blog is "Brights". I've been immersed in Paintshop recently, and am starting to get the hang of things (a little bit at least :P) So, I made these papers to go with a particular image, and last night I made a decoupage card with them. And this morning when I woke up ready to take photos I realised that the silicon glue had bled the colours and the whole thing looked like a smudgy mess! :o
So, I've no card to show you, but the papers are what I was most pleased with anyway. I hope you like them too, please feel free to download them and use them in your own craft work, and if you do make anything with them, I'd love to see it :)
Just click on the image to see it full-size, then right-click and save to your own pc. :)

So Artful Saturday challenge - suitcases

The challenge this week over at So Artful Saturday is to use the free image of suitcases that is kindly provided. Very fitting as Jeanette is on her travels this week. I don't have any plans to travel at all, but everyone can dream, right?



The suitcases were free from the Art Freebies blog (where the challenge is hosted), the bird and wings are both from Dezinaworld, and the woman came from either Art Freebies or Dezinaworld, but I can't remember which, I'm afraid. The background is a rice paper effect, overlaid with a vintage world map.
And. lol, I know the phrase is more normally plural, but to me, it looks like she's thinking of one specific journey, hence the singular :)

Dezinaworld lace challenge

There's another great prize available this month over on the Dezinaworld blog, and the theme for the month is lace. I'm slowly slowly getting the hang of Paintshop, but there are soooo many buttons to play around with, so at the minute there's a lot of trial and error going on :P But, at least when you work digitally, errors don't mean that the piece becomes unusable because it can all be undone and re-done as many times as necessary (lol, quite a few, in my case :P)

Digital Two for Tuesday

There are two free images available every Tuesday on the Digital Two For Tuesday blog, and the challenge each week is to make something with them. They're quite masculine images this week, and I certainly was planning on something masculine when I started, but then it began to grow and include some pretty lace and flowers. This is my first piece of digital art that's been made just for creative fun rather than to be used as something on a website, I'd love to know what you think :)

Sophisticat Challenge #5

There's a great sketch this week over at the Sophisticat blog, designed by the lovely Cheryl, with the added challenge that it should include some bling, so I hope my gems count :)
The papers are from Funky Fairy, the image is from Pollycraft, and I did the sentiment in Paintshop.

Funky Fairy Challenge #36

The theme this week at the Funky Fairy Challenge Blog is "Transport" Lol, and once I realised that a sled is a form of transport, I knew what I wanted to do. I made a very simple Christmas card, using backing paper from the FF Simply Swirls collection, and made the mats and the sentiment in Paintshop. It's a really fab prize this week, a spot on the FF Christmas workshop, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed :)

Lots To Do Challenge 40 - Places or cities

The challenge this week over at the Lots To Do blog is to make something on the theme of Places or Cities, and I've made this vintage Paris ATC. The images are all from The Graphics Fairy, apart from the sentiment which I did in Photoshop with an overlay by Tammy Jackson, available at her Voodoo Scraps blog
The background is a street map of Paris, the Eiffel Tower image is a postcard, and, lol, the other piece is actually the front cover of an old catalogue that sold ornate mirror frames, but I don't read French, and to me it looks like a fancy menu or theatre programme :P

Incy Wincy Autumn challenge

The current challenge over at the Incy Wincy blog is "Autumn" and to use the colours Orange, Green, Brown, Red and Yellow. There's a fab prize on offer, so pop along and give it a go :)
I made this 4x4, using paper designed by Dorthi, whose work you can find at her blog HERE, and the little girl image is from a Creations by JJ CD. Having the papers all randomly layered like that made me think of a pile of autumn leaves, which I liked, hope you do too :)