April Showers!

I have just escaped from the garden where it is too hot! I'm having a weekend off from doing books with hubby and from blogging and crafting, but as he's just gone to walk the dogs I thought I'd take the opportunity to catch up with what's been happening. I'm trying hard to type straight after a couple of glasses of vino and as I rarely have a tipple at lunch time it's gone straight to my head!

Thank you for the birthday wishes - it was a quiet day, but yesterday and today I've had hubby at my beck and call .. .. so a trip to the craft shop and lots of gardening! This morning we got a couple of buckets of well rotted you know what from our friendly local farmer so that should keep the roses happy. Yesterday we also got a little table and a couple of chairs so we can sit on our tiny backyard patio for meals - and we've been making good use of them, although the sun has gotten a bit too much for me so I've had to come in doors for an hour or two until it cools down.

I remembered I'd not shared this card with you, it's one of the new digi Lilyboo designs over at Cuddly Buddly and is called April Showers - not too many of those around at the moment! I've coloured with Copics then glazed the raindrops, her pink polka dots and yellow wellies with a Glaze pen - lovely and shiny but of course not showing up. I've also added Stardust Stickles around the edge of the image, the rainbow circle and the patterned paper - I think you can just about make it out.

Copic colours I used:
skin tones with E000, 00, 21 & R00
hair with E50, 51 & 53
pinks with RV00, RV02
yellows with Y02 & 15
greens with YG11 & 41
blues with B0000, B41 & 21
violets with BV01 & 13

Over on the Crafty Creations challenge blog the theme is rain showers so here's one for them.

I am going to have a little lie down now .. .. so catch up with you later!

Row, row, row your boat

On my next Lilyboo card I'm sharing with you today I've used the Row Your Boat digis from Sam's Nursery Rhyme collection at Cuddly Buddly. I've coloured the background bridge with my Copics then inked the edges with Aspen Mist Versamagic chalk ink to take off the stark white, although it doesn't show up very well in the picture. After colouring the cute couple in the row boat I've cut them out and 3d mounted onto the card to create a picture. This is a 5" x 7" card, a little bigger than I usually make and I suppose I could have made the digi images smaller, but left them the size they come. They are very easy to colour as Sam puts in little shade lines so you could just colour flat and they would still look good - and wouldn't they be fun for the kids to play with in the holidays!

I've embellished with two shades of aqua satin ribbons, Martha Stewart punched hydrangea flowers and rose leaves cut with the new Marianne English Rose die set, oh and of course my cream pearl pen.

Creative Inspirations challenge is to use punches and dies - I've got both on my card! The Papertake Weekly challenge is 'anything goes with something new', so I can enter my card with them too.

Nursery Rhyme Digis

Over at Cuddly Buddly the latest releases from Sam at Lilyboo Designs is a range of Nursery Rhyme designs. In each digi set you get at least 1 character plus a background to go with it - take a look at the cards that the Cuddly Buddly team have been working on for some inspiration on how to put them all together. If you click on the digi image it will open and under the image you can see the cards that have been made using that design, click on each one and it will appear in the main screen.

Back to my card then, I've used 'Follow Me' better known to you as Mary had a little lamb. After colouring Mary and the little lamb I cut them out and placed in front of the wall - now that wall is going to be very useful with other images too, in fact Sam has tons of useful background type digi's and I've used an older one called 'flower arch' along with Mary in the card below.

All my colouring is done with Copics and I've inked the edges of the coordinating Lilyboo papers with Versamagic chalk ink - Spring Pansy for the pink papers and Aspen Mist on the aqua. Both cards are embellished with pearls made with my Waco pearl maker pen - pink on the first and cream on the second. On the second card I've had a play with my new Marianne English Roses dies and created the roses from the smaller die. The leaves I've cut from thick handmade paper which is why you can see a mark on one of the bottom leaves - it's in the paper and is a little bit of a rose petal.

By the Cute & Girly's monthly challenge theme for April is just that, cute and girly! So I'm entering either or both of my cards for their challenge, and for the chance to be a GDT member in June.

The One Stop Craft blog challenge is for spots and dots - I have used spotty dotty paper and the pearls are spotty dotty too!

Our Creative Corner have a recipe challenge to make things girly, include a handmade paper flower, ribbon and a touch of bling. My second card is for them with the lacy ribbon and the pearl bling along with my handmade flowers.

I'll have another of my cards made with Sam's Nursery Rhyme digis to share with you in a day or two - best get back to the colouring now! If you want to know anything about these cards, just drop me an email. Aga left me a comment on Saturday asking about how to use the Cuddly Buddly digi papers - I tried getting back to you Aga but my system couldn't recognise your email link, if you'd like to email me we can have a chat. I'm still way behind on commenting too but slowly catching up with you all - thanks for stopping by.