Welcome to Quirky Crafts Challenges

Welcome to Quirky Crafts Challenges the place where any craft project is allowed.

We're a small design team with big inspiration.

On the first Sunday of the month, at 6pm UK time, we will set a new challenge which will close on the 28th of that month at midday. The DT will pick their top three favourites and you could win a prize and join us as a Guest Designer. Winners are posted on the first Sunday in the month (midday usually) before the new challenge - don't forget to come and check if you are a winner.
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Showing posts with label Daire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daire. Show all posts

Sunday, 13 October 2013

Challenge #21 - Favourite Things

Hi everyone!

It's Daire here! I have some big news for you today... this is my last ever challenge as part of the Quirky Crafts Design Team. I've had such a great time over the past ten months; I've really loved stretching my creativity in new and exciting ways but unfortunately I have to prioritise 'real life' things for now.

For my final challenge I'd like you to create something using your favourite things; this could be your favourite colour, your favourite technique, your favourite theme, your favourite brand... whatever you like! The one rule is I want you to tell us which of your favourite things you've used, otherwise how will we know?

Cazzy added this - haha!


This challenge is sponsored by Robyn's Fetish, who have provided the team with great images to work with, and Crafty Ribbons :





There are also some great prizes on offer for our three favourite entries:

1st Place - Your choice of 5 images from Robyn's Fetish.

2nd Place - A voucher for Crafty Ribbons, to buy ribbons, buttons and more!

3rd Place - Your choice of 3 images from Robyn's Fetish

Now for some fabulous creations from our guest designers:

Tress said: "I used the image from Robyn's Fetish, My Little Cook.  As for favorites...this card includes many of them!  Little girls' hair worn in doggy ears (too darn cute!), cooking (I'm a passionate cook), green (my color), chocolate chip cookies (yummy), shoes with embellishments (thankfully they still make sandals for women with flowers on them, lol), and last but not least I used my favorite coloring medium of Copic markers."


Kemly said: "Things I like: Within the things that I like and enjoy the most, is Christmas, a time where we have the perfect excuse to share with friends and family. We can give ourselves permission to eat candies and many different meals, enjoy the beautiful decorations, full of brightness and color. Enjoy the illusion of children waiting for Christmas to receive their wishlist, brought by Santa and his good friend Rudolf to celebrate Baby Jesus birth. In my project, I resurrected the idea of the arrival of Rudolf, with his magical red nose, in front of the sled, coming from town to town giving away smiles everywhere.
Thank you very much for the nice opportunity to serve as Guest Designer."

For more ideas and inspiration, look at what our design team have been up to....


Daire


For this challenge I decorated a tea tin (my favourite drink) using a selection of my favourite black and white papers: pages from a colouring book, a page from a Mandarin poetry book, some hand doodled papers (one of my favourite things to do) as well as the book worm digi stamp from Robyn's Fetish (if you you read my blog you'll know my favourite way to spend my time is getting lost in a good book). I pasted all my scraps on using my favourite adhesive (Collage Pauge) and finished it off with some of my favourite sparkly things (rhinestones, glitter glue and sparkly nail varnish). Check out my blog tomorrow if you want to see what I'm going to be using this tin for (I'll also be giving away a free printable!)



We are also saying goodbye to Valou for now, she has come to the end of her 2 month GD spot, apart from the reminder post and voting, and we would like to thank her for her beautiful contributions to our challenges. Thank you Valou, all the best to you and your family and we hope to see you again in challenges, and of course you can apply for another 2 month GD position.



Valou said:
For my favorite things, they are flowers as well as blue and pink, my two favorite colors. 

I made a wall hanging in the shape of a giant tag. The gorgeous digi stamp was provided by 'Robyn's Fetish' and was lovely to use. 
This challenge's theme was to use our favourite things.  This gave me the chance to use all of the items I love to use the most. I used several sheets of my favourite Christmas papers, tore each one into pieces, inked around them and paper pieced them together onto the giant hardboard tag. I coloured the reindeer in with some of my favourite mediums, including Inktense blocks, and Portfolio crayons. I also love to use Prima resist canvas (as the leaves), Treasure Gold, and Distress ink pads. I really enjoyed this challenge.

I used Paul Penguin sleighing (thanks to Robyn's Fetish) on my card, and my favourite colour combo of purple and bright green, I also love penguins and all birds. The card blank is my favourite sparkly glittery purple card, and I raided my stash of precious buttons for some purple and bright green ones. I also love to use ribbon and this bright green ribbon is from Crafty Ribbons.

When I saw this little cook I knew I'd have to hunt out my favourite cooking papers and do my favourite thing, which is lots of layering and 3-D-ing, add my favourite brads and buttons and of course colour her with my favourite Promarkers! See the inside and more detail on my blog!

Doris - may be along later, but is not well.



Hi!!! this proyect is a mix up of different things I like the most. I´m not a skill crafter, so I have trouble cutting with scissors or cutters. So, since I have met my Cameo machine, I felt in love with it and I do everything with it. This recipe card gift box was cut with it. Next, I love Tim Holtz techniques, so I used a regular white cardboad and ink it up with my distress inks, after that I embellish the cardboard with some blue ink swirls and add some shimmer with blue metallic perfect pearls. I chose "My Little Cook" digi from our sponsor Robyn´s Fetish, because I like to cook for my family. I color my image with my Prismacolor pencils. I like to color, I find it so relaxing. Finally inside the box you will find one of my favorite recipes "Coca Cola Carrot Cake", I hope you try it and you will understand why is one of my favorites. Greetings from Costa Rica.

*Is 1/2 CUP of vegetable oil.

Remember - we love to see any kind of crafts entered. Cards, art journal pages, needlework, scrapbook pages, paintings, quilts, sculptures, shadow boxes... EVERYTHING is welcome!

Note: we have one more image we haven't showed you, and that will appear on the reminder post next week!

 Please add a link to your blog post (not your blog) or your online photo gallery, SCS etc. using the button below.


Have Fun - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.

Sunday, 21 July 2013

Challenge 15 - An Octopus's Garden

Hi everyone!

I hope everyone (in the UK) is enjoying this uncharacteristic stretch of summer we're having... we don't usually get more than a week of sun! 

If you would like to find out who won the last challenge click here.

It's my (Daire's) turn to set the challenge this week, and there's a theme (and a song) that's been bouncing around my brain for a while... Octopus's Garden by The Beatles. So this time I want your creations to be inspired by this song... it doesn't necessarily have to feature an octopus, but to be eligible for one of our prizes you must incorporate something from a garden and something from under the sea.

Here's a video of Octopus's Garden to get those juices flowing:



Now check out our great sponsors for this challenge, who are generously offering prizes to our top three entries:

Squigglefly will be offering three images or sets to our 1st place winner.

Paper Pretties will be offering six images to our 2nd place winner.

Robyn's Fetish will be offering three images to our 3rd place winner.

Are you ready for some inspiration? Look at these awesome creations from our Guest Designers and Design Team for some ideas:

Guest Designer - Leeann
Leanne used  Billingsley from Paper Pretties, look at the fishes on the backing paper, and bubbles paper too.

Guest Designer - Kali

I used the image Birthday Octopus from Squigglefly. I coloured the image with my Copics. I cut out the image and cut a frame for the image freehand. I chose a blue design paper for the background, because it remind me a bit of water. As decoration I used lace and rhinestones. I hope you like this card. 

(We love it Kali - you've included two things we love here at Quirky Crafts, vibrant colour and yummy texture!)

Guest Designer - Marina
Marina used Bubble Fish from Squigglefly, we love the realistic bubbles! With the bubble backgrounds and the matching flowers and sign this is perfect for the challenge.


I started out this art journal page by copying out the lyrics to Octopus's Garden with a Sharpie, and then covering it in an acrylic wash. I then added another layer of paint, by sponging it over an octopus shaped mask. I coloured the 'Butterfly Blossoms' image from Paper Pretties with felt tips and gel pens, and added a few smudges of craft paint and gesso, to make my garden seem like it was under the water. Originally the butterfly was joined to the flowers, but I snipped him off and moved him, because I thought a butterfly flying around under the sea was appropriately whimsical. My final touches included a doodled border, and a sentiment borrowed from an old copy of Cosmo. I have something else planned for our reminder post, so make sure you head back over next Sunday!


Doris used images from Squigglefly to make her first card, on the front are Crabby and I think a made up octopus! The paper is like bubbles underwater too.


Inside the card a pop up garden with more Squigglefly images clearly having a great time in the garden with umbrellas and buckets and spades.


For her second card Doris has used Paper Pretties images, and added her own octopus tentacles. Ocean backing paper finishes off this frame card.

Cazzy
This card is made using images from Paper Pretties, I used Daisy (fish in bowl), Billingsley (diving duck), Butterfly Blossoms, Max Splasher (dive bombing dog) and Hani (parrot in treasure chest). Most of these come with several great sentiments, Best Fishes is one that comes with Daisy.
 Lyn
At last, I'm here too! I've used this lovely little fish from Squigglefly. The colouring was done on the computer and most of the background too. The backing paper I did myself. You'll find that and my card on my blog on a Tuesday post!!


Remember, we want to see both something from a garden and something from under the sea in your project, now go get quirky!


Please add a link to your blog post (not your blog) or your online photo gallery, SCS etc. using the button below.

Have Fun - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.

P.S. Don't forget to pop back over next weekend for some more Design Team inspiration!



Sunday, 12 May 2013

Challenge #10 2013 Myth and Magic and Must Use Paint

Hi everyone! It's my (Daire's) turn to set the challenge again and this challenge is:

Myth and Magic and you must use paint on your project.

 I hope you enjoy incorporating some of the magic of mythology into your pieces! You can enter anything you like: cards, ATC's, art journal pages, collages, tags, bookmarks, murals, tapestries, bags, scrapbook pages... anything! As long as you used paint somewhere.

A couple more things I'd like to say:

Sadly this is Caro's last challenge, due to pressures of work she is bowing out but we know you will be seeing her on either the GDT or entering challenges. Caro is one of the founding members of the team and we all wish her the best for the future and thank her for her contributions over the years. Caro we will miss you!

And also, a big thank you to Cazzy for helping me draft this post! I'm in the middle of doing my end-of-year Uni assignment, which unfortunately is taking up a lot of my time!

The sponsors of this challenge are the fabulous:


Crackerbox Palace make real rubber stamps and ship to anywhere in the world, stamps can be wood mounted, foam mounted (printed on the back), or unmounted.

Crackerbox Palace have provided the team with some lovely stamps to use, and you can win a very generous prize from them too:

1st Prize is a $20 voucher from Crackerbox Palace
2nd Prize is a $15 voucher from Crackerbox Palace
3rd Prize is a $10 voucher from Crackerbox Palace
Please note the voucher does not include postage.

Here are some examples from the Design Team to inspire you:

Caro

I have used the Crackerbox Palace Dragon and sentiment to make a card for my nephew.  I used watercolour paper and covered it with a wash of blue watercolour paint before stamping the dragon onto it in distress ink broken china to make the background paper.  I then layered the sentiment for the centre of the card, then decoupaged the corner dragon and coloured it in using promarker pens.  I finished the card by adding peel offs!


I used my Crackerbox Palace Stamps called Rena's Unicorn, Sleeping Dragon and the sentiment "If you can't stand the heat don't tickle the dragon" to make a door hanger. I used Fresco paints to make the background, these are new to me as you can probably tell. I also used Sparkly Mod Podge and Artist's gel medium with glass balls (the dragon's bed) which I coloured with Distress ink. The images are coloured with Promarkers. I love these images!
This is my project. It is an Easel card in bronze and beige tones, and I use acrylic black paint in the middle of the top card.  I used a beautiful unicorn stamp, courtesy of our sponsor Crackerbox Palace . I gave him a small shadow in light blue, almost imperceptible, I used glitter to the moon and also to a fairy, that I cut as an additional element. Plus I used flowers and ribbons.
I got nice and messing painting this castle with acrylic paints and adding the sentiment and dragon from our sponsors Crackerbox Palace . They were stamped in black ink covered in clear embossing power and then zapped with the heat gun. Then I cheated and coloured them with ProMarkers. (The paint was covering up the lines!) I've added a couple of brads for 'handles' and gone round the whole thing with a black Tempo marker pen. And here's my second card....

I've used the same stamp and sentiment from our sponsor. I covered a blank card with some medieval looking backing paper rounded off the corners and edge it all in brown ink, then painted it with some metallic paints, which  I had as freebies from a magazine. I also made the flowers the same way, add a spray of colour with some Cosmic Shimmers. They left a nice sheen on the paper and of course, I made a nice mess!

And finally to me! I made this set of notecards using the Stone Face stamp from Crackerbox Palace (as soon as I saw it I thought of those statues from Ancient Greece). I definitely used a lot of paint on these! I started by finger painting on a sheet of watercolour paper then did a bit of brush painting and stamped yet more paint with a couple of handmade stamps. I chopped the sheet into four (so they were perfectly card-sized), added a border and stamped my Stone Face in brown acrylic before adding a few pen doodles. I like that they go together, but aren't too 'matchy matchy'. I'll be sharing a more detailed tutorial of these on my blog tomorrow.

We can't wait to see what you come up with!

We will show you some more examples next week on the midway reminder post.

Please add a link to your blog post (not your blog) or your online photo gallery, SCS etc. using the button below.
Have Fun - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.
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Sunday, 17 February 2013

A Supernatural Love Story

Hi everyone! Welcome to the latest Quirky Crafts Challenge - to see the winners of our previous challenge scroll down to last post. This is my (Daire) first post, so I'm excited to see what you all come up with!


I secretly love love, so I couldn't let Valentine's Day slip by ignored... but at the same time, I don't love the heart, flowers and pink ruffles side of things so we're going to go a bit quirky... For this challenge I want you to create something on the theme of 'a supernatural love story'. You could make a card, an art journal page, a bookmark, a tapestry, a scrapbook page, a stained glass window, cake decorations or just a doodle. Let your imagination roam free!

This challenge has two sponsors, so we've had some great images to work with:


Doodle Dragon Studios is offering a $10 gift voucher for our first place winner and a $5 gift voucher for our third place winner.


Limited Runs is offering 3 digis of your choice to the second place winner.

So, let's see what our fabulous Guest Designer and Design Team have been up to...

Guest Designer Stempelomi (Beate)
Beate used Goober from Limited Runs and said:
I coloured the image with Copics and then cut out. The Spellbinder heart and background are embossed with craftconcept folders.The # 1 stamp from MFT is stamped on the heart before embossing.
The Gober doll is placed on the heart with dimensionals, decorated with buttons and is holding a banner with "1.Love". The punch alphabet is from Sizzix. The panel is mounted on a red distressed cardstock for contrast and attached with brads,than adhered on kraft cardstock.

For her second card Beate used two of Dustin's romantic dinosaurs from Doodle Dragon Studios. Beate said: I coloured the dinos with Copics and some stickles and cut them out.On the heart I complete the image with a sentiment.
The background scene is composite of 3 different cardstock.(white,dark grey,grey)
I glued the dark gray on the white card,then inked the white space with Distress inks and stamped the background images. I embossed the grey cs and stamped some grass on it then glued it on. Finally I adhere the dinos.
Two lovely examples from Beate, and if you want to tell her you like them please pop over to her blog.



This is a Valentine's Card made using 'Goober' by Limited Runs. The background is made of strips of black and white photos and the image is coloured in using watercolours and Prismacolor pencils.


I used 'Coral' by Limited Runs on this art journal page. The background is made of numerous layers of paint, writing, doodles and prints to create an abstract seascape. For more information on how I created this, check out my blog.

I used one of the romantic dinosaurs from Doodle Dragon for a Valentine's Day card for my 5 year old who loves dinosaurs.  He didn't think it was fair that he made me a card and I hadn't made him one!  For this I layered various patterned papers, used a heart die cut, then stamped the freebie wings stamp from this months crafty stamper and cut them out to attach to the heart, then placed the dinosaur on top.  The sentiment was printed on my computer using a standard windows font. I finished the card off with gold peel offs.

My second entry was a tag for Alex's present and used another Doodle Dragon romantic dinosaur and a heart key both coloured in with promarkers.  I made the background to this tag using my new gelli plate with two diffferent layers of paint, and then stamped some extra hearts and the word 'love' on top.  I finished it off with a Tim Holtz reinforcer, heart brad and painted diecut heart which I doodled on for added impact.
 
I used these strange but cute love bugs from Doodle Dragon Studios to make a picture on a small canvas for my grandson's wall when he is here. I am not sure they are supernatural enough for the challenge though.

A supernatural love story on a card, using images from Limited Runs Sally Stitches and Gober, and a freebie sentiment also from Limited Runs which says Pucker up Lover, very funny! All imaged coloured with Promarkers or Trias and cut out by hand. Hearts are cut with Spellbinders  dies.
I have more work in progress - watch out for more to come! 

Doris 


I want to show yow my interpretation of the love for self, love which is not bad, but in the extreme can be sickly. For this I use from Limited Runs the digi Sally Stitches to make my birthday party invitation cards and this is the image I like most. I coloured it painting with watercolor matte pencils, I also use some phrases and embellishments. The base was cut from the studio cutting file. But, this is not all, you can visit my blog for more Supernatural ideas.

 
 This is what  I did with Nikki's 'Goober' from Limited Runs. First I 3D-ed him and then coloured him in different grey Promarkers and added him to a slightly misshaped piece of black card. Added some ribbon,  a beaded heart topper I've had forever and some punched out hearts too. All the papers are PinkPetticoat.  Link to the freebie font I used will be on my blog later. (Might be late as I'm not here!) Adding another card later in the week....


...and here it is. This time I've used three of Doodle Dragons fabulous images. The little devil cupcake has been 3D-ed and all the papers are by PinkPetticoat...back over to Daire....


Aren't these great?!

Please add a link to your blog post (not your blog) or your online photo gallery, SCS etc. using the button below.

Have Fun - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.

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