Pixie Blog Candy

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A little blog candy for you, this time one of our own in-house stamps, namely the hugely popular and totally lovely Dreaming Pixie clear stamp.

Just enter your name and blog in Mr Linky below to be included in the draw.

It would be great if you could mention it on your blog too :-)

Candy closes 25th July. Good luck ♥

xx

A Day out ...

Funny how we never really visit the places close to us; tourists travel hundreds of miles to see them but we forget they are there really - or we put off going there as "we can always go there". Years ago when I first arrived in London I visited the tourist attractions, such as Madam Tussuad's, but I have never taken my girls there, despite living in London all these years. We decided on a day out visiting some London landmarks and our first stop was the famous waxworks. We arrived about 10am and the queues had started to form outside. They didn't look too bad though so we merrily joined them - 12:35pm we were finally in!! it took 2.5 hours to get in, the longest and most tiresome queue I have ever accounted, I pity the people who joined after us as the queue grew enormous by the minute, and no doubt queuing time for some were 8 hours+!! If you go then I would strongly suggest either getting there when they open at 9am, or purchasing the priority ticket, which means you beat the queues, a little like the express passes in other attractions. You can see Aimee didn't look to happy in the queue here:

So AT LAST we managed to get in. Mostly it hadn't changed from when I first visited at the age of 17, there were new models of course, and for the first time also a few attractions. "Scream" had taken the place of The Chamber of Horror, live actors clamber around trying to scare the public walking through - very effectively too. Then Marvel 4D had taken the place of the London Planetarium that used to be housed within Madam Tussuad's. Good show and great effects. Lastly a new taxi ride attraction took you through the history of London, enjoyed that too - mainly because it was so bloody nice to park your bum somewhere!









An hours and half later we were out, longer in the queue than inside. Next we decided to visit the Tower of London, a historic landmark I again hadn't visited with the girls. Thoroughly enjoyed our visit there, you don't realise how much there is to look at and how big it all is. Must say that it is worth the trip just to gander at the Crown Jewels alone, one of the diamonds was over 530 carats!! A girls best friend or what!!!! Wowsa! It's apparently one of the worlds top quality diamonds and is located at the top of the Sceptre. There was a long queue by the entrance but I'd had enough of queues so popped in through the backway and straight into the Crown jewel section - nobody noticed, he he.

One of the Yeoman's who guard the Tower. They actually live within the Tower with their families and you can tell they really care for it. This jolly fellow was our tour guide, he had us in stitches as well as being hugely informative.

We stayed in The Tower until it closed and walked across Tower Bridge and along the embankment. A few things went on there so we watched as we strolled along. Finally tummies were rumbling so we went for a meal at Zizzi's by the Thames. Lovely meal, lovely service, great surroundings.

A good day was had by all, and the best thing was that as we live in London it didn't take us long to get home :-)

That summer feeling

Time for another challenge on Dottie's World and this time Louise set the theme:

I would like you to use a CHARMED DOWNLOAD to make a summery card - or something else if you prefer! OK so that doesn't sound very challenging.......I would like you to make your summer item DIFFERENT to what you would normally make. Maybe you always make tent fold cards so try a side fold card or something completely different! Maybe you always make big cards so make a teenie weenie one, do you get my drift?

OK so I didn't see the "make something different to what you usually make" when I created this one:

Very summary I think with about a million flowers and bright summer colours. Quite unlike my usual colours but I enjoyed playing with stronger hues this week.

I used one of our Meet The Martian images and merged it with a Meet The Martians sentiment so they stand in front of it. I decorated the inside too. Paper is plain cardstock and Bo Bunny striped Flower Child paper. Flowers are all Prima, I also used a couple of Prima Pebbles and various crystals and pearls. Eyelets are We r Memory Makers inserted with my Crop-a-dile (and from the Crop-a-dile pack).

So as I didn't quite get all the requirements I quickly made this side-stepper card, I have never made one of those. Again it is one of the images from the Meet The Martians bundle. Paper is Karen Foster "Rippling Waves", sentiment is K&Co Cut 'n Paste chipboard.

I am linking to:
Allsorts - Summer Days
Sukkersott - Summer
Daring Cardmakers - We are Sailing (my second card)

Pop over to DW and see what wonderful creations the other DT members came up with. Why not join in whilst you're there, there's a prize up for grabs this week :-)

Thanks for popping by ♥

Gorjuss

I had to make a birthday card for DD2's friend so decided to try out one of our new(ish) Gorjuss decoupage sheets. This follows the card sketch I made for the Charmed forum, I posted it a few days ago so scroll down to see it :-)

I'm linking to a few challenges:
My Time to Craft (Butterflies)
One Stop Craft Challenge (Colour challenge)
Totally Gorjuss (thinking of you)
caardvarks (Birthday)
Creative Cardcrew (Die cuts)

Products used here are: K&Co paper (from Lotus Tea Rose pad (glitter flower paper) and Cut 'n Paste paper pad (pink spotted)) - the striped paper somes with the Gorjuss die-cuts - "Millie" uses Fairytale alphabets - "Giggle" is a Tim Holtz ticket - Prima Love Story flowers - Ribbon is from American Crafts, I was giving hundreds of these away for free with orders for a while, all out of stock now.

Initially I had another Prima flower instead of the K&Co butterfly - oh we do like to faff don't we LOL



Thanks for popping by ♥

Sketch Challenge

So it was my turn to set the sketch challenge on the Charmed forum for July. The challenge runs for one month and we can of course make as many examples as we like. Here is my first card:

Sarah Kay stamp Best Friends Forever coloured with Copic markers - Prima lace corner - Tim Holtz ticket - Prima roses - Tim Holtz Shabby Vintage papers - Prima Pearls. I glittered with Stickles and glamour dust.

Martha Stewart Loop corner punch on pink panel. The brown border was created with a MS edge loop punch.

Here is my sketch:


Thanks for popping by x

Vintage

Cor! What happened to you lot last week!! No-one seemed to want to play in our last challenge! Bet you were all out enjoying that summer sun! My goodness it's been a hot week and it's continuing into the weekend. I am writing this Saturday evening and it's been sweltering all day - hottest day this year. We went out last night, Shrek 4 and then eating out, and it was hot as we walked back at 9:30pm! Hope it doesn't get any warmer cos that's not what I'm built for LOL

Anyways, the challenge this week has been set by our lovely Gunn, and this is what she wants:

"This time I would love to see Vintage style on your cards, and be inspired by summer. It could be the colors, flowers, time of year and so on. Make the card or project in Vintage style and you are good if you - REMEMBER TO INCLUDE A CHARMED DOWNLOAD, that`s the most important thing with these challenges."

I used one of my favourite images from our newest collection "Once upon a Time", along with one of the new sentiments in the bundle - isn't this mother & child image just fantastic?? Enveloping her baby in her love and protection she gazes with pride at her newborn:

I used one of the FABULOUS charms from The Girls Paperie collection, I LOVE THESE! Also on there are some hydrangea petals I had from years ago, they are mulberry but with a special coating on them, just fab. Pearls and crystals are Prima - that BEAUTIFUL rose is Prima Belle Arte Aquarius - papers are DCWV - and Prima lace. I coloured the image with Copic markers.

I decorated the inside too and used one of our sentiments from the same bundle. I used stickles frosted lace and very fine glitter dust around the edges of the sentiment here and drew a few doodle flourishes in one corner. I also used a Martha Stewart corner punch here.

I roughly concertinaed the top of one of the edges, not sure if you can see that too well, perhaps better on this picture:


All edges inside and out have been roughened with a Tim Holtz Paper Distresser.



I can see myself using this image for all my new baby cards in future, it's totally adorable!!

Please join our challenge this week, we would love to see your work. Pop over and check out the fabulous work created by the other team members...

Thanks for stopping on your way around the World Wide Web :-)

Sketch Challenge

Lovely Carmen from the Charmed forum has organised a sketch challenge rota on the forum, each month one of us post a sketch and we all try to make something from it. Here is my interpretation of Carmen's sketch. Wish I had done it differently with big dragon and little castle, but oh well, it's too late now LOL

Images and sentiment are OF COURSE from our newest collection Once Upon a Time. I heat embossed the sentiment with clear embossing enamel and really liked the effect, will certainly use that on more of my sentiments now. That gorgeous Rose is Prima Belle Arte, Butterfly the lace is Prima too. Papers are appropriately DCWV Once Upon a Time. The outer circles on each of the images have been Perfect Pearled and enamelled.

The images are the ones contained within the bundle - you get coloured versions as well as black and white. Originally I had coloured these in with Copic markers.

Thanks for visiting the Charmed corner of the web xx

Once Upon A Time...

...there were 13 gorgeous images and over 40 super sentiments - and now you can get your crafty mitts on them!! Yes, we have a FABULOUS new collection ready for you and we are very excited about it - and believe it or not this ENTIRE FANTASTIC collection is the mere prize of a normal little stamp!!.

The beautiful images have all been expertly drawn by our wonderful Lou, and the sentiments created by me. We hope you enjoy this amazing collection, there really is something there for every occasion. ENJOY!!

ATC Cards

If you have never tried making ATC's (Artist Trading Cards) then why not have a go and join a swap? I bet there is one going on most craft forums, and I also bet you're going to enjoy creating them. The size of a playing card they are great fun to make. We have our July swap on the Charmed forum and I set the theme, choosing Country/Primitive. Unfortunately due to a complete absence of working memory I had left mine till the last minute, they should arrive at the host today, instead mine will be sent today - oops.

But there is a silver lining, I had forgotten to watch Vampire Diaries so could watch that on the iplayer whilst creating, yay!!! End of the series now, can't wait for it to start again. That's another programme that I wish I had watched from the beginning. Iplayer is fandabbydosy don't ya think? Fanbloodytastic for people like me who never seem to have the time/forget to watch it first time around! Which reminds me, must check out to see what's available from Come Dine with me - I am totally hooked on that programme, although Mr Narrator is becoming a tad too patronising and sarcastic. Still, he still manages to crack me up at times despite his now total lack of diplomacy :-)

I digress, back to my ATC cards. The swap called for three cards and I just made them all virtually identical. Too much effort to think about making them different. I drew a typical primitive border, added a funky chicken and sentiment, stamped a few hearts on the background, and added a little gingham ribbon and a country button tied with twine. I used Copic markers to colour everything in.

Mustn't forget to tell you about Eclipse that I watched yesterday - IT'S FAB!!!!! Go see it girls, you'll love it! Best of the three that's for sure. Plenty of action, plenty of bated breaths, plenty of lurve. Definitely one I want to see again and shall buy when the DVD is released. Big thumbs up from me and my girls.

Thanks for visiting, have a g-r-e-a-t week! x

HOT IT UP!!

Helloooo, here I am with my weekly post. Every good intention of blogging more often soon flies out of the window as life takes control.

I'm pretty excited because we have a wonderful new collection coming VERY SOON! The collection comprises 13 gorgeous images drawn by the wonderful Louise and 40 sentiments created by me. I used one of the images as a preview in my card for the Dottie's World challenge this week, Lou used another for her DT card so pop over and check it out.

I set the challenge and as it's getting mighty hot out there I want to see fiery colours, red/oranges/gold that sort of thing. PLUS your project must of course include a Charmed download!

This beautiful image is Princess from our new collection, NOT OUT YET, but when it is you'll find it HERE. I coloured her in with Copic markers. The sentiment is one I created for the bundle.



I created a little corner ensemble with lush Prima gold leaves and gem centre (both unfortunately discontinued now), and lovely red roses. I just couldn't get good pictures today and had to take the card into the garden to captured some of the richness of these heavy totally fab leaves.

I added a beady border around the sentiment and in one corner (not pictured, but see main piccie).

I hope you like it. You can get this coloured image within the bundle too, to use either when you need a quick card, or perhaps for inspiration - so you get each main image in both black & white and coloured.

I'm off to the pictures later today with my girls. We are watching the new Twilight movie, Eclipse, and I don't mind telling you that I am sooo looking forward to seeing it. According to reviews it's the best one yet, I'll give you my critique later, he he.

Please pop over and join the challenge. Thanks for popping by x