'Just For Fun': 22/03/2009

Friday, 27 March 2009

Grand Easter Egg Hunt Game Tutorial Winner...

As part of the Easter Blog Hop at The Pink Elephant last weekend many of the Design Team did tutorials on Easter projects. There were Easter Baskets, candy dishes and all manner of great things - if you didn't get chance to look do pop over there as Easter is getting closer and you might pick up some great tips.

My tutorial idea was to make a treasure hunt game consisting of decorated cards with clues on them for children to follow to find their Easter goodies.

If you would like to see the whole tutorial and all the cards I made please visit The Pink Elephant or you can click on the appropriate link in the tutorials section in my sidebar.

Each of the clues was in the form of a rhyming couplet. I love creating silly rhymes and children absolutely love guessing the ending rhyme - especially when there is a treat at the end of it!

As a treat for visitors to The Pink Elephant and those who contributed a rhyme to the tutorial I had some blog candy on offer.

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed. There were some really great rhymes in the comments. I loved all of them, but I particularly liked ...

and the decision was so hard cause the contributions were fantastic but the prize has to go to...

Joni

who said...

'Wonderful Ann! Your teaching talent has shone through your tutorial and thoughfulness of the children's activity. I can't wait to do this little egg hunt with my own little ones this year! I love rhyming so I thought of a few:

"You're almost to the final treat!Your next clue is where you brush your teeth..."

"Great job! Now go and take a look - you'll find your next clue in your favorite bedtime book."

"I'm so proud of you! You make a great Easter bunny.

Now hop to the next clue where we keep all of your money." (piggy bank or little coin purse)

Okay, I'll stop!! Or this post will be a page long. haha! Now I'll get busy and start planning my own egg hunt. Thank you so much for the inspiring ideas!"

Thank you so much for your contribution Joni - it was quality as well as quantity. Well done.

I will leave my email address on your blog so that you can let me have your address to send your prize to.

Thursday, 26 March 2009

All that glitters...

I do hope the glitter shows up on this card as it has been made for the challenge at ABC where we have reached the letter G in the alphabet and the design team have decided to go for 'glitter'. I have used glitter card embossed with the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder to create my background.

The main silhouette image was printed on to acetate and then attached to the glitter card using brads.

I love the effect of glitter card layed under acetate - it's magical which is ideal for this particular image. My card is also for the 'my favourite things' challenge at Charisma Cards . Silhouettes either in rubber stamp form or images to print out are definitely one of my favourite things and I love glitter card too!!

I've added black corner peel offs to draw the eyes in to the central image and ribbon embellishment just because...

Hope you like my card.

My ca

Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Spring Quilt...

The challenge at Roses on Paper at the moment is to make a quilt card. As I was sorting out my craft stuff recently (well okay ransacking things to try and find something I thought I had) I found a Hot of the Press book on quilted cards. A book that I have had ages and not used because it seemed a shame to pull out any of the papers.

Anyway I still haven't used any of them, but I did use some of the ideas in the book to create my card for this challenge.

The papers I have used are from another HOTP and the beautiful stamp is one of the stamps in the Spring Set by Whiff of Joy. I wanted to get an exact colour match on her outfit to the quilting papers so I paper pieced.

My card is also for the challenge at Stamp Something where they want us to 'Think Spring' - strangely enough their challenge this week is being sponsored by Roses on Paper.

Tuesday, 24 March 2009

Another 21st card...

Just a quick post today to show another of the 21st cards I made for Shelley. I had to do one of them like this just to check out the possibilities of being able to do BIG numbers on my Cricut!!!

This card is an 8" x 8" so the numbers really are huge. The paper with the pink hearts is from the DCWV Rock Star pack and I've combined it with black shiny card and silver mirri card.

Monday, 23 March 2009

Pink Elephant Easter Blog Hop Candy Winner...

Thank you so much everyone who took part in the Easter Blog Hop at the Pink Elephant. The lovely comments and feedback we received about the event were just overwhelming.

I also had a great time reading about your favourite rabbit characters. I've not actually counted the votes, but I think Bugs Bunny seemed to be very popular.

My own favourite is Thumper out of Bambi - that phrase 'If you can't say anything nice then don't say anything at all' is one that many of us (including me) would benefit from saying to ourselves from time to time.

Anyway less rambling and on to the important news...

After writing out all the names and checking who should get a second try in the hat the name pulled out and winner of the Hero Arts Stamp set is ....

Elaine at My Creative Corner

Yeah!!! So pleased for you Elaine. Hope you enjoy using the set as much as I do mine.

My other blog candy prize will be announced on Friday 27th so if you haven't seen or added a rhyme to my Easter Egg Treasure Hunt Tutorial yet there is still time.

I know a lot of us were really busy being spoiled rotten or spoiling our own mums yesterday so if you missed some of the action at the Pink Elephant do have a look when you can.

The DT members did some really exciting tutorials - alongside my treasure hunt Lori did an embellished paper clip and a tag book and Angela did a tutorial for an accordian book.

It would be a shame to miss taking a look at these.

Pink Elephant Challenge 7

Wow it's Monday and that means a new challenge at the Pink Elephant. As many of you will know we have just had a very special weekend and I do hope that everyone who took part in the Easter Blog Hop really enjoyed it - I know I did.

I will be announcing the winner of my Hero Arts Blog Candy later but right now let me tell you about this week's challenge. It's a fantastic sketch by the supremely talented Robin - oh my have you seen her work? Amazing - do stop by her blog, Robin's Artful Musings and take a look - you will not be disappointed.

This week I decided to transform a plain notebook I bought in a sale recently. I really need a book to store all the sketches I use by the Pink Elephant team and the ones from other challenge blogs too. I think the sketches are way too good to only use once, but if I do use them in the future I want to be able to give whoever designed them the credit they deserve on my blog.

As you can see on Robin's sketch the large area is embossed and as my note book is quite a lot larger than a Cuttlebug folder I had to cheat a little to cover the area necessary.

I thought this may be a technique that some crafters may not have seen before so I decided to do a little tutorial showing how I get round embossing a large area.

First of all cut your card to the size you require and then place it in the embossing folder so that as much of the area is embossed as possible. As you can see in the photo luckily the width of my card fit the embossing folder, but not the length.

The next part is a little trickier - you need to turn the embossing folder and line up one or two sets of dots (depending on how the pattern falls) that have already been embossed so that they will be embossed again alongside the remaining card area.

This technique will not work with all embossing folders, but as you will see is fantastic for using with the Swiss Dots folder.

When you remove the card from the folder you will see that because of the flat part of the folder one line of dots has become flattened.

This is easy to remedy.

Turn the card over and lay on a piece of foam - I use my pricking mat. Then carefully using a fine ball tool emboss the holes back in again by rolling the tool gently where the embossing was before.

When you have completed each one turn the card over and as you can see the embossing is very effective and it is hard to tell where the join is.

I also sanded my embossing to make the dots pop even more.

This is the finished book showing the elasticated page marker in place.

Sunday, 22 March 2009

The Grand Easter Egg Treasure Hunt

Yeah it's time for my tutorial at The Pink Elephant Easter Blog Hop. I hope everyone is having a great time and not too tired from all that hopping around to take a look at my Easter Project. I know my friend Max has two very sore feet she has done so much hopping!!!

When my children were little (and even now at nearly 24 and 21 they have both asked to play) they loved the Easter morning search for eggs and giving them puzzle clues just added to the fun.

Head along to The Pink Elephant to see my game in full - it involves lots of rhyming clues. I do hope you like it.

For those who would like to help us out by adding more rhyming clues to make the game last longer (believe me the more clues and cards you have the better your children will like it) I have some funky blog candy on offer.

Check out those socks !!! Just right for keeping your tootsies warm while you are creating your work for the Pink Elephant challenges. To be in with a chance of popping these on your feet and doing some stamping with the Stamps Away floral set add a rhyming clue in the comments to my tutorial on The Pink Elephant.

Ella's Easter Egg Scramble

Here is my word for Ella’s Easter Egg Scramble:

fadilodf

To play this game, if you didn’t arrive here from The Tip Room, you’ll need to head over to The Pink Elephant and start from the beginning.

Once you have all 8 words unscrambled, send an email with your answers to thepinkelephantblog@gmail.com with the subject “Ella’s Easter Egg Scramble” by Sunday night at midnight EST.

Be sure to check out the other games going on this weekend at TPE too! There are some great prizes to be won!

Now that you have your word from me, be sure to head over to Trudi's blog The Pink Petal to get another scrambled word.

Have fun!!!

Oh and don't forget to comment on my post with the Messy Rabbit Easter Card for your chance to win a Hero Arts Cupcake stamp set.