Due to popular demand

Here's some more pics of Pepsi, seeing as you've all been asking lol
So here's her playing - this was quite hard to capture because she is just a blur :) 

Sitting Pretty

 

Flaked out...

  

And finally, getting her belly tickled - she lay like this in my bosie for ages

 

Passion for Promarkers #19 - Cool Aqua & Apricot - Make your own Flowers

Gosh this has been a quick week, and thankyou to all those who made the effort to join in with last week's challenge over at Passion for Promarkers. It was a tricky challenge last week, with it being a colour combo PLUS anything but a card. But the entries that we had were gorgeous - well worth the effort.

This week we have a lovely combination, Cool Aqua and Apricot PLUS make your own flowers, chosen by one of our new GDT's, Sam S - for the next four weeks we are being joined by Sam S and Claire and I'm really looking forward to seeing their fab creations.

To team up with the theme of making your own flowers we have a fabulous prize from this week's sponsors . 

This week you could win a gorgeous Martha Stewart Cosmos Punch worth £10.50

 

So, have I whetted your appetite? As a special promotion Craft Obsessions are also offering the promarkers at £1.50 each.

For my DT card this week I thought I'd use up some of my scraps - seeing as my scraps box is starting to take over my desk.  

 Image: Hippie Anya from the greeting farm - kindly stamped for me by Gina (thanks G) coloured with promarkers (of course): Tan and Ivory for skin, Apricot for her trousers, Cool Aqua for her top, shoes, patch on her trousers and flower petals, Oatmeal and Apricot for her hair, Gold for the flower centre and the corn in her hair, Antique Pink for her mouth.

Matted onto sanded core'dinations card cut using Labels 8 nesties in the cuttlebug

The aqua polka dot paper was a freebie from a magazine, the orange dotty paper is Basic Grey Offbeat edged with MS Latice Arch border punch, Anita's white satin ribbon coloured with Cool Aqua promarker.

And the flowers were made with 3 different sizes of Daisy punch from Woodware and more freebie aqua paper and the core'dination card as before. The large clear gems are from my stash and the greeting as usual is Daisy & Dandelion.

And here's Hippie Anya's close-up.....

 

 Remember to go see the other fabulous cards from the rest of the DT - the links are on my sidebar, I'm so honoured to be working with such a talented bunch. Don't forget to visit our 2 new GDT's and give them some love too.

Xmas Manga in Pink, Purple and Blue

As promised here's the same manga stamp, but done in a different colour scheme. It amazes me how different one stamp can look when you use a different colour way. I think out of all the Xmas Manga's from Sugar Nellie, this one has to be my favourite.

 Image: Baubles from Sugar Nellie, coloured with promarkers: Blush and Pale Pink for her skin, Orchid and Purple for her hair, and boots, Carnation and Fuchsia for her dress, Blue Pearl and Bluebell for her tights, Cerise, Bluebell, Purple and Arctic Blue for the baubles.
Matted onto gemstone core'dinations card cut using the labels 9 nesties in the cuttlebug, snowflakes cut from gemstone core'dinations card and DCWV glitter card using a dovecraft snowflake punch and cut in half. Paper is a freebie from a magazine last year and the greeting is from my stash

Here's her close-up... 

Xmas Manga in acetate

I bought 3 of the Xmas Manga stamps from Sugar Nellie when they were released - as soon as they arrived I had them inked up and stamped. I even got 2 of these "Baubles" coloured in, but that's as far as I got. I've been so busy over the last week with the kids and with Pepsi, and Graham being away. But now that he's home I got a wee bit of time to make a couple of cards. So I'll show you one today and one tomorrow.

 Image: Baubles from Sugar Nellie, coloured with promarkers: Poppy and Crimson for her dress, boots and baubles, Pine and Holly for her tights, sleeves and baubles, Blush for her skin, Caramel and Cocoa for her hair. Highlighted with sakura white med gel pen, and clear stardust pen accents on her dress and the bauble tops.

Matted onto green core'dinations card cut using oval scallop nesties in the cuttlebug, the card base is papermania acetate. I added a square of  silver mirri card behind the front, and a scallop circle journalling spot to the inside.
And finally I added papermania embellies to hide where I had glued the mirri card
Here's the close up...

Promarker Storage.

One of my fabulous team-mates at Passion for Promarkers, Ida sent us a link to Camilla's fantastic money saving idea for Promarker storage. Those of you who know me well, know that I have been trying to find a cheap and effective way to store my promarkers. When I only had the 92 pens, they were easy enough to store in little galvanised planters that I'd bought in Asda, but with the addition of the 56 new colours, the planters were threatening to take over my desk.

I love Camilla's idea, and it got me thinking. I would have to travel to Edinburgh or Glasgow for our nearest IKEA, and lets face it, I'm not gonna travel all that distance and just come home with a DVD rack costing under a tenner am I?? 
So, I'm on a bit of a budget with it being close to the end of the month and the fact that we've forked out for a plasterer AND a new puppy this month, so this is what I came up with...

This unit stands approximately 34cm (roughly 13.5 inches) high, 20.5cm (8 inches) wide and 15cm (6 inches) deep so it takes up minimal space while still giving you quick and easy access to the pens. This is the thing that really put me off buying the Letraset wallets - the fact that I would have to buy umpteen of them, unzip them every time I wanted to use the pens etc etc.

 This second pic gives you a better idea of the size, that's a 30cm/12" ruler next to it.

 So this was how I spent part of Friday afternoon. And this is how I made it...
I bought 2 sets of stacking DVD/PS2/Wii/game storage trays from dvdstoragetrays shop on eBay  plus I used 7 empty DVD cases - I used the ones without the DVD tray part (you know the bit inside the case that holds the DVD in place) that I purchase from Jetcase to store my unmounted stamps.
Anyway, I cut the spine from each of the DVD cases which gave me 14 shelves. So I assembled the storage trays, inserted my shelves and then got to work adding the coloured sticky dots to the ends of all 148 promarkers - ugh!!

The rest of Friday afternoon was spent at Tiger Tiger in Aberdeen, the reason being I was a finalist in a competition that one of the local radio stations, Original FM, was running for a long weekend in New York. Unfortunately I was knocked out in the 2nd last round, but hey-ho, it means I won't miss the kids parents nights, or Willow's consultant appt, or have to cancel my bodyshop party. 

Colouring with Promarkers #9 - Animals - Horses

I think almost everyone has at least one animal stamp in their collection and so we have decided to do a series of tutorials on colouring animals with promarkers. I thought I'd start with a horse as its a popular theme, especially with little girls. I love this image; Charlotte's Horse from Whiff of Joy, designed by Alison Acton. Although its a cartoony type image it's also realistic in form and shape.
First things first, the image is stamped onto IQ Smooth 160 g/m2 (availabe in Staples stores, not online) with Memento Tuxedo Black ink. And I'll be using the following promarkers; Sandstone, Cinnamon, Cocoa and Umber. (I have also used Vanilla for the mane and tail which is not pictured)

The first thing I do is to imagine where the lightest bits would be, this is the bit that most people fin the most difficult to imagine. The easiest way to do it is probably to do an image search of horses on the internet. This is one that I found - it might look awfully complicated - but if you almost close your eyes, so that you are looking through your eyelashes, it is easier to see where the light and dark areas are.

So I have started with the lightest areas and very roughly coloured these areas with Sandstone

Then I take a small section at a time and colour the remaining white bits with Cinnamon. Then blended using the Sandstone in small circular movements.

Next I take the Cocoa promarker and using small strokes, colour the darker areas. Then blend with Sandstone

The I repeat the above 2 steps (with the cinnamon, then cocoa) for each of the other small sections

I took the Umber promarker and added tiny shading to the darkest areas - the furthest away hind leg, and the back of the other three legs, and the shadow behind his jaw then blended with the Sandstone again.

Then I moved onto his mane and tail. I coloured the areas that I imagined would be hit by the light source with Vanilla.

Then used Sandstone to colour the rest of the mane and tail and blended with the Vanilla

I kept adding more layers of Sandstone and blending with Vanilla until i was happy with the effect

And this is the completed image made into a card

To download the tutorial, click on this icon 

Paparazzi

The sneaky paparazzi were caught out today, using their super-duper zoom lens (not really) poor little Pepsi was papped while she was having forty winks today...

 

 But the sneaky paparazzi didn't get much photo's after she woke up...

Sorry, no pics

have been busy busy today, so no pics of Princess Pepsi or any crafty creations I'm afraid, but i did stumble across this fab trailer for New Moon

I'm so excited now, can't wait until November 

Passion for Promarkers #18 - Emerald & Marine - Anything But A Card

Hi there, thought we'd have a day off from the puppy mania so I can show you what I've done for this week's challenge at Passion for Promarkers.

To be perfectly honest, when I found out that the colours chosen by the fabulously talented Guest DT's for this month were Emerald & Marine, I thought "UGH" what on earth was I going to do with those colours, PLUS, to take me completely out of my comfort zone Sarah B had added the Anything But A Card to the brief.
BUT I started colouring images with this colour combination and decided I liked them, A LOT.

Anyway, the bit you're probably more interested in is the prize thats up for grabs this week's challenge is sponsored by the Halloween crafts range at Baker Ross/Yellow Moon, and the winner will receive a voucher for £10.00 to spend on anything from the site

 
 They have sponsored us previously and you might remember that I was a bit cheeky and asked if you could use the source code for Extra Special Parents if you placed an order with them. I would really appreciate this. As you may or may not know, Extra Special Parents is the charity that Graham and I started up in 2006. Its a support and signposting forum for parents and carers of children with additional needs. A great many parents, mainly from across the UK, but we have several members worldwide, find our charity to be a lifeline - its not easy being a parent and its even harder when your child has additional needs. Two of my 3 kids have additional needs, my son Scott has Autistic Spectrum Disorder and my daughter Willow was born with Imperforate Anus and we felt the need to talk to other parents who were in the same boat, and so ESP was born. So IF you place an order with Yellow Moon, please consider entering the source code "SSH10729" so that ESP receives the commission on your order - at no extra cost to you.

Yellow Moon sell a vast range of craft items for children and adults as well as toys, games and stocking fillers. I've often purchased craft stuff for my kids from there - if only to keep them away from Mum's Stash lol

This week I created a wee stocking or sock gift bag, I used a free Lauren Meader template from Papertrey Ink to create it. 

 

Butterflies stamps from The Crafty Pad, coloured with Emerald, Marine and Cool Aqua promarkers

Paper is from the original colossal pad from Papermania, thick cream cardstock from my local paper mill.

WRMK large eyelets set with the Cropadile 

various ribbons tied to the wire handle

greeting is from the papermania "touch of teal" kit

kars paper lace

pink stone brad is Papirloftet, jump rings and dragonfly charm from stash 

and of course the template is Lauren Meader 

  

 Remember to check out all tha fabulous creations from my fellow DT members and also our guests Sarah and Caroline as this is their last week with us. Its been fabulous working with both of you, your work is stunning

The puppy bore

are you sick of hearing about Pepsi yet?

Pepsi rules

well my little baby was a complete super star last night, didn't hear a peep out of her - she slept all night. No little presents on the kitchen floor for me.
and she got out of her bed and was all excited to see me this morning, her tiny little tail was nearly wagging off lol. Then my little superstar went over to her puppy training pad and did a little piddle. So she got heaps of praise and cuddles for being such a clever little girl. Not long after that she did a poop at the edge of her training pad - she missed a wee bit, but she was so close I had to give her praise for that too.
She's in her bed sleeping right beside me at them moment, but she's been very active this morning - ate almost all her scrambled egg breakfast too
ok I know I'm becoming a puppy-bore so I'll shut up now and leave you with some pics of her killing her soft toy last night.

 

And one of her snoozing in the sun this morning...