Louise Sims Papercrafter

After an epic journey home which seemed to take forever, we finally arrived and peeled oursleves off the car seats. I think my poor old knees were locked in to a sitting position. Whilst it was great to see mum and spend time in Ireland, the journey gets a little more tiring each time. It must be a sign of age ... It's a new "anything goes" challenge over at Love to Create Challenges and this week I have been playing with my pan pastels to create a simple beach scene. It was great fun and so much quicker than I envisaged. I began by splitting up my card in to three pieces: the sky, sea and beach. Creating with the pan pastels makes the picture "come to life" very quickly and using a rubber, adds highlights here and there which is very helpful when creating clouds. I put the picture behind a handcut frame (with acetate) and placed this on to distresed wood papers. Next I stamped the floral image on to another piece of acetate and cut around it. This

Welcome to the brand new Crafting Challenge at The Pencil Case! The lovely talented Design Team members are excited to show how amazing Lyra Rembrandt Polycolour Pencils are!! This oil based range of pencils have been around for many years and are tried and tested Artist's Quality LIGHTFAST pencils which you will love! Now these great pencils are really smooth and buttery in texture and consistency and offer a fantastic range of bright, vibrant colours which blend really easily and work on a fantastic array of different surfaces. They are German manufactured which means superior quality to many other well known brands and being Lightfast means that unlike other brands you can be assured if you colour an image with Lyra Rembrandt Polycolour the image wont be all faded in 2 days from sitting on a windowsill - UBBER important to us as crafters! So for our first challenge here is what I made using the fab pencils ... I created my background using my a Dutch Doo

Happy Friday everyone and I'm a bit perplexed as to where the last fortnight has gone! Our time in Ireland is almost over and it doesn't seem that long ago that we arrived. A great time had by all ... met up with family and friends, had a few pints of the "black stuff", ate way too much and spent quality time with Mum. For the new challenge over at Polka Doodles Challenges , "Things with wings", I decided to dust off the Festive Hollybobs collection to create my quick CAS card. Although this cute image comes on the CD, as a separate digi image, I have decided to use the clear stamp version for my card. I was very lucky at the end of term and received a huge voucher for Hobbycraft from the children. Whilst I had a list of the "must get" crafting supplies, I also took the time to rummage through the reduced bins. During this rummage I came across some decorative cards and although I didn't know if I would use the cards, my head knew the en

That phrase is definitely a mantra worth living by .... It is definitely one of my favourite sayings from the Premium Craft Brand stamp sets and I do use it whenever I can. My card "sort of" morphed in to something else as the panels were originally joined together but I ended up cutting them up as I couldn't get all my butterflies on! I masked each section off and added my colour (using pearlescent pan pastels) and then over stamped using a Versamark ink pad. I then went back over the stamped images with the same colour pearlescent pan pastel to add a deeper tone. Next I stamped oout three butterflies and coloured them with pearlescent pan pastesl so that they could be layered on to the different coloured blocks. I tried to make sure the colours matched the blocks I wanted the butterflies to appear on. The sentiment was stamped, lightly coloured and mounted on to 3D foam. As added "fru fru", a few sequins and gems were added. Well as is the

We had a great day yesterday acting all touristy in Kilkenny popping in out of all the shops, walk along the river and a quick nose at the castle. We also successful ignored the weather ... which Met Eireann got completely wrong, (or we misinterpreted), so we really did look like tourists! The challenge over at Polka Doodles Challenges is "use something new" and us crafters never, ever find that too much of a problem! Whether it's new dies, stamps, papers, embellishments, images, inks, pens, pencils ...... and the list goes on and on and on and on ....... come on, you know exactly what I'm on about, don't you? So my something new is a wonderful new image from Twiggy and Toots Festive Collection coloured with my new Lyra Rembrant Polycolour pencils. I cut Twiggy out, shaped him and mounted him on to my card base slipping the sentiment behind. I glittered his hat and pom pom for added festive sparkle. To make his eyes "pop", I added a little glaze.