Am I Late To The Party…?

by verybellemakes

I think I must have missed an important memo somewhere….seriously, I must have been hiding under a pile of paper somewhere, and totally missed Kenny K’s amazing images! I have finally caught up, mainly because he’s sponsoring one of my upcoming DT challenges – but I have to confess I’m hooked!! The images are great, just so crisp and a really pleasure to colour : ) and then I spotted an ice hockey player….!

corentin birthday full

My cousin’s eldest son is a big (and I mean huge!) ice hockey fan. He plays, watches, eats, sleeps, breathes ice hockey… I, on the other hand, wouldn’t know one end of the stick from the other! So finding an image that I would enjoy colouring to pop on a birthday card that he would love to receive seemed like a no-brainer!

corentin birthday flat

I’ve coloured the image with Pro-Markers, and used papers from the Snippets Collection by Studio Calico. I can’t wait to post it to him over in France!! 🙂

11Jun2014

Inky Bee…

by verybellemakes

It’s spotlight time over at Kitty Bee! For this month’s post, I’ve used Birthday Bee, one of three cute little bees included in the Bumble Bee Set #1.

The background was created using a honeycomb stencil and some Scattered Straw Distress Ink. I was careful to keep the shading varied so create depth to the background. The little bee was coloured with Pro-Markers and then mounted on a hexagon of white cardstock which was also liberally doused in Scattered Straw and Spiced Marmalade Distress Inks, then popped on some 3D pads. Finally, the sentiment was printed directly onto vellum, then I smudged some more Distress Ink on the back of the vellum, to avoid smudging the sentiment too. I attached it with a metal brad and a couple of tiny dots of Glossy Accents to stop it flapping too much – I left the end free to curl up though!

birthday bee spotlight full 11 jun 14 flat

Head over to Kitty Bee to add some honey loving bees to your image stash! They’re so cute, you won’t be able to stop yourself 🙂

I’d like to enter this card into the following challenges:

2Cute Ink – Birthdays

Loves Rubberstamps – CAS

Dragonfly Dreams – Thing With Wings

Scrap It Girl – Things With Wings

The Cupboard Trilogy – Use Yellow

6Jun2014

Kitty Bee’s New Baby Challenge

by verybellemakes

Well, I’m back!! The only reminder of the warm weather is my “barely there” tan – as a freckly red-head, I tend to look like I haven’t been away!!

I’m sharing my DT make for the new challenge over at Kitty Bee’s Aloha Friday Challenge, where the theme is New Baby or Congratulations. We were lucky to be sponsored by A Day For Daisies, and I chose to use Blankie for my tag – this gorgeous image reminded so much of bathtime with my little ones 🙂

blankie 6 jun 14

I coloured the image with Pro-Markers, then mounted the image on several layers of aqua and white card. I have lightly distressed the edges of some of the layers, using the Tim Holz Distress Tool – I tend to keep things so crisp, that I struggled to rough up the edges on the layers! The stripy layer is made using some washi tape, which I have had hiding at the back of my drawer for a while. The sentiment was printed directly onto a piece of vellum and attached using a couple of brads.

I look forward to seeing all your gorgeous creations – don’t forget that as it can be either New Baby or Congratulations, you’re bound to make something you can share with us!

1Jun2014

Phew! Made It!!

by verybellemakes

I’m breathing a huge sigh of relief after finishing this card! Although I’ll be nearly home by the time this post goes live, it is actually the last card I need to complete before packing my case and heading beachwards for 10 days!!

Anyway, on with the card! This card is for the new challenge at Sentimental Sundays – we’re sponsored by Paper Pretties and the theme is “Make It Fab-ric!” (nice and easy, just add a little fabric onto your card!).

I chose to use Tommy on my card – his kite seemed to be a pretty good place to add some fabric into my card! As usual, the image was coloured with Pro-Markers and cut on the Silhouette. The sky background is from the In The Woods collection by Harper Finch, I’ve just lightened the colour of the sky slightly before printing it. Two strips of grass were cut on the Silhouette, from the Snippets stack by Studio Calico; Tommy was popped between the two to give an element of depth to the card (I was massively inspired by our Guest Designer Maja‘s card from a couple of weeks ago – thank you!!). The fabric I’ve used for the kite is a scrap of denim-like material that I’ve had in my stash since…..forever!! Nice to finally use a bit of it! I drew the bars from the kite on using a Sakura Jelly Roll. The final touch was the sentiment banner and button – I picked a yellow button to add a little sunshine to my scene!

senitmental sundays 1 jun 14 flat

Hope you get a chance to pop over to Sentimental Sundays and show us how you’ve added fabric (and a sentiment!) to your makes this week. I’m off to carry on packing 🙂

17Apr2014

Anything Goes With The Crafty Girls!

by verybellemakes

Time for a new challenge over at The Crafty Girls! We were sponsored by Sassy Design Studios and Di’s Digi Downloads this fortnight; I chose to work with “The New Sassy Cassy” from Sassy Designs – she looks fabulous!!

I based my layout around the current sketch over at Seize The Sketch – I used to play along regularly, but haven’t for a while as my DT cards are usually ready weeks in advance; not so this time though as it’s the Easter holidays for both my children, so we’re making the most of some free time and sunshine by spending our days catching up with friends in the park!

STS-#18

The image was coloured with Pro-Markers. I worked hard on the hair again this week, and I reckon it looks like I might be getting a little better at it! I have watched so many YouTube tutorials on colouring hair that I really should be an expert 😉 – but it’s one thing listening and watching, another thing entirely when it comes to reproducing the delicate shades of light, and not over blending!

sassy designs 17 apr 14 full

All the papers are from the First Edition Summer Breeze paper stack – it’s been lurking at the back of my paper box for over a year now, and has only ever been used a couple of times so I’m pleased to have made a little more of a dent into it today!

The final touches were some peach ribbon, tiny dark peach pearls on the bottom paper and an oval shaped sentiment, created using the print and cut function on the Silhouette.

sassy designs 17 apr 14 flat

Hope you get time to pop by with an entry for our Anything Goes Challenge at the Crafty Girls!

I’d like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Seize the Sketch – see sketch above

Fairytale Stampers – BINGO (flowers, glitter, pearls)

Digi Choosday – Use 2 Patterned Papers

16Apr2014

Little Birdhouse Gift Box

by verybellemakes

Last week, I needed to make a little Easter treat for the daughter of a very good friend. I like to make a little gift bag or box for her and fill it with a mixture of smaller eggs, rather than give her a commercially boxed egg. I was going to go down the tested route of bunny or chick shaped boxes until I found a cut file for the cutest little birdhouse by Lori Whitlock in the Silhouette Online store…

birdhouse full

I adjusted the size of the birdhouse slightly, in order to make maximum use of a sheet of A4 cardstock, but made no other changes, just decided on a paper, lined it up on the mat and pressed cut… Then I filled it with allsorts of Easter goodies!!

birdhouse

I had little trouble finding the perfect ribbon, so I coloured a piece of natural coloured ribbon with my Pro-Markers – I coloured the underneath, so that the colour of the spots was not changed. A little glue dot added to the underside secured the ribbon in place without needing to tie a bow.

I hope she likes her little birdhouse on Easter morning 🙂

3Apr2014

Easter Egg Delivery

by verybellemakes

It’s new challenge time over at Crafty Girls! We are sponsored by A Day For Daisies and Glamoureyes, and there are some great prizes to be snapped up!

I chose Easter Egg Delivery by A Day For Daisies for my card – I loved the idea of a little sprite delivering the eggs, with the help of a kaleidoscope of butterflies! The layout is based around the current sketch challenge over at Friday Sketch Challenge (flipped sideways):

I deliberately kept the design of the card quite flat as I will probably be posting this card off to my god-daughter in Sheffield, so I’d rather keep the postage down! The papers are all from the Dovecraft Back To Basics III stack – my favourite for Spring themed cards at the moment! After colouring the image with Pro-Markers, I softened the edges with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink to imitate the sky as a background. The spots on the Easter Egg were added with a Sakura Jelly Roll pen – unfortunately they didn’t turn out quite as I had hoped, there are too many, too close and the sizes are too uneven! Finally a little touch of Stickles on the wings (although it is impossible to see in the photos!).

Make sure you pop over to the Crafty Girls and have a peek at the projects from my teamies – you won’t be disappointed!

I’d like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Friday Sketch Challenge – see sketch above

Sparkles – Easter Parade

4 Crafty Chicks – Colour A Stamped Image

Creative Moments – Things With Wings

Crafting With Butterflies – Easter

City Crafter – Easter

Crafty Boots – Easter

Paper Makeup Stamps – Pastel Colours

Lexis Creations – Easter

Paper Nest Dolls Norway – Easter

16Mar2014

Cute and Cuddly

by verybellemakes

“Cute and cuddly, boys. Cute and cuddly.” Any other Madagascar fans out there? I’ve had Skipper’s voice going round and round in my head since I saw the theme for the new challenge over at Sentimental Sundays! Must spend some time on the sofa with the kids and a DVD this weekend, I think 😉

So, as I mentioned, our theme is Cute and Cuddly, and we were very lucky to be sponsored by MilkCoffee, home of some really cute and cuddly images!! I chose Lola and Bear (I think it may now have been retired) for my card – definitely the perfect image for the challenge!

The backing papers are all from the Harper Finch I’m Yours (Pack 1) digital paper collection. I thought the XOXO paper was just perfect!

When it came to the image, I faux paper pieced the dress with the bluebell paper from the I’m Yours stack on the Silhouette – I love the way the pattern is smaller on the top than on the skirt. I was then torn over how to colour the bear – should I faux paper piece him too? Or should I attempt fur with the ProMarkers….? I headed to Google to find a fur tutorial and came across an excellent tutorial on Ideas To Inspire. I loved the way the inks worked with the watercolour paper, and then remembered I had some in my old stash! I dug it out and set to work using the tutorial as a guide. Firstly, I printed the image, with the faux paper pieced dress on a piece of watercolour paper and then coloured the image with ProMarkers – although it looked a little uneven when the ink was dry, I’m delighted with the blends I’ve achieved. I’ll admit that the image on the card is my second attempt though; I tried browns for the bear in the first attempt, but didn’t like the combination of colours when I put it with the backing papers. I find the grey works much better in this case.

The banner was cut on the Silhouette; the bluebell paper is a larger version of the pattern on the dress from the Harper Finch papers, the two solid colours are just colour matched to the other papers from my stash.

The button was also a bit of an aha! moment! I have some epoxy buttons in my stash, but they’re the wrong colours or wrong sizes for this project. So I adapted a button cut file from my Silhouette library, coloured it in light grey and pink before printing and then cut four copies. I stuck them all together with Mod Podge, then stuck a generous layer of Glossy Accents all over to create a shine! Added to a piece of twine, it finishes the card off just as I hoped!

I based the card around the current sketch at Sweet Sketch Wednesday 2 and I’ll be entering the challenge later today!

Make sure you pop over to Sentimental Sundays this week – I’m sure you’ll have some cute and cuddly projects to share with us this week!

I’d also like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Sweet Sketch Sunday 2 – see sketch above

2Feb2014

Anything Goes at One Stitch At A Time!

by verybellemakes

Here’s my card for the new challenge over at One Stitch At A Time:

I used the Steampunk Sailship collection, which includes the image of the ship, plus three complimentary papers. I cut the four cog shapes on the Silhouette, three from a lovely bronze cardstock, and the final one from plain white cardstock, using the print and cut option. I coloured the image with Pro-Markers and then blended some Starlite Silver Brilliance ink over the top, to create a foggy, smoggy look to the cog as it looked far too crisp and clean for steampunk!! The bronze cogs were also dirtied, using Black Soot distress ink.

The paper is one of the three included with the image. I popped the card together, using 3D pads to give a bit of depth.

It’s a nice, easy theme over at One Stitch At A Time and you could win all the images used by the DT for challenge 196 as we are sponsored by the Stitchy Bear Digi Outlet! Make sure you pop over and have a look at the other DT projects too.

Thanks for reading x

31Jan2014

Shades Of Grey (….And Black, White And Red!)

by verybellemakes

Aha!! Thought that might get your attention!! 😉

I’ve got some really exciting news to share…a new collection of adorable images is being released today over at Kitty Bee Designs!! And to celebrate we’re having a blog hop! If you’ve been following the hop, you will have arrived here from Theresa’s blog (The Scrapbooking Queen) – if you’ve stumbled upon it by accident, the full list is below. Now I know you’ll want to make sure you get along to each and every team member’s posts to leave a comment as one lucky person will win a digi of their choice from the new release…. I’ll point you in the right direction in a moment!

There are 12 new digis in the release; my card for this hop features Heart Strings Raccoon – between you and me, I’ll confess that he tugged at my heart strings as soon as I laid eyes on him!! As I’m sure you’ll know, raccoons are black, grey and white, so I chose to keep to a very monochrome colour scheme for the whole card, just accenting with red hearts!

The image was coloured with Pro-Markers, mainly keping to the Cool Greys. The hearts were coloured in Carmine, Berry Red and Ruby, with Sakura Jelly Roll for the highlights and Glossy Accents to give them a lovely sheen. The papers are from the Dovecraft Back To Basics Monochrome stack – I’ve had my eye on this paper stack for a while (along with the ribbons and polka dot buttons!), so I took full advantage of my monochrome plan!

Along the edges of the two banners strips, you can see some silver stitching – after seeing Mirella’s amazing hand stitched borders, I was inspired to give it a go! In the past, my stitching has always been a bit (read: a lot!) shaky, so this time I pierced the holes in the paper first, to give myself a pattern to follow, and then filled in the stitches with some metallic embroidery thread that I usually use for hanging decorations on my Christmas tree! Have to admit, I’m pretty pleased with it! The stitches are relatively straight, neat and even – although I won’t be offering to let anyone look at the reverse side, as it’s a totally different story!

I based this card around the current sketch over at From The Heart Sketches, as it was too sweet a chance to pass up!

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve read enough here! Please don’t forget to leave a comment if you want to be in with a chance to win an adorable new digi! And then carry on your journey, your next stop is Niki – Stampn’HI! I’ve popped the full list here too, just in case you’ve missed anyone:

Kitty Bee Designs Blog

Shirl – Creations by Shirl

Larissa – Muffins and Lace

Katie – Katie’s Crafts

Leanne – Finding My Groove

Taniaj – ManxMade

Julie – I Made A Card

kel – Scraps & photoGRAFFS

Theresa – The Scrapbooking Queen

Victoria – Very Belle Makes

Niki – Stampn’HI

Zella – Joyful Expressions