Announcing the brand new Funky Challenge for August 15th

Hi there Funky Friends!

Paula here to tell you that it's my complete pleasure to take up my turn in being your hostess this month and to welcome funky friends old and new to the brand new challenge that will run from today (Funky 15th August) to 14th September.

I joined this fabulous design team in February and absoloutely love being a Funkette - and have the best design 'teamies' in blogland. So, as all is fair in love and war, it has become my turn to choose this month's challenge - so I thought I'd go with a theme that is dear to most of us (young and old):

 AT THE SEASIDE 

sneak peek

I don't know about you, but when I think of the seaside, it conjours up all sorts of smells, sights, sounds - AND colours. So this is what I'm looking to see from you this month: Colours that remind YOU of the seaside...

Those colours, I'm sure, will be different from one person to the next. Some will think of the sand, some of the sky (or both), for some it might be the colours of some of the yummy ice-cream flavours available, fluffy candyfloss, stripy rock, the bright colours of the fair rides, fishing boats, buckets and spades, old fashioned deck chairs, wind-breakers, Punch and Judy show... I could go on as this is not an exhaustive list of ideas. The colours we use can be quite different depending on our experiences, which seaside resort you go to - or went to as a child and whether that was in good ol' blighty or abroad (ooh - the colours of the caribbean just came to me!)  Or what about a Spanish holiday or other holidays in far flung places... (i'm day dreaming now)....

Right, before I show you my card - if it's OK, I just have a little reminder and a small request if I may (please)...

The 'Get Funky' design team, quite naturally of course, want to see loads of stunning entries each month - and believe us - we DO see some incredible entries month in month out (thank you all). However, unfortunately, we still receive entries that haven't taken into account our one teeny weeny request - and that is to include at least ONE Funky Hand product in your project - which is such a shame because we even provide a free download each and every month. This means that we aren't able to take into account those projects that don't comply at the end of the month when we are at the point of considering the winner(s) - and after all that hard work you've done too - how miserable and disappointed would that make you feel? :o(

So if you are reading this and are raring to join in this month and still don't have one of Funky Hand's many CD's - just use this months freebie as your one element for now (then you can go and buy a CD or instant download afterwards), and work round it using other products you already have in your stash - just as long as there is at least this one FH element. Phew. Sorry if I sound like a broken record!!!

Anyway Funky friends, I hope you didn't mind me pointing that out - we're not finger wagging people here at Funky Hand cos crafting is all about fun - It's just that that one ickle point needed to be made for when you make a card or project for the challenge!!!

Right, without further ado, here is what I enjoyed putting together for this months challenge using colours that remind me of the seaside - and that is (a bit obvious mind), the sun, sea and sand. I've also used digi's from the Papercraft Factory CD's Colour Me Happy, Dreams Come True and Craft the Year Away.   All three of these CD's have some quirky, but very useful digi stamps on them - I mean, where else have you seen a bucket and spade or a smiling sunshine as well as an icecream cone (and a football boot - see my last DT challenge card) together... N.B. these are not necessarily off the very same CD - but are from the same Papercraft Factory collection of CD's. Nonetheless, these little digistamps are all available and have some fabby uses - some which you haven't thought about yet!!

ta daaa:

I've used glossy accents on the bucket and spade, although it hasn't showed up in this pic.  The bucket and spade - if you notice, are printed over the DP's - but have you noticed how the spotty one is proportional to the bucket?  Thats because in the workspace area of the CD, I have shrunk down the DP as far as I could behind the bucket - then all I had to do was cut it out.  If i'd have left the DP at the normal size - there would have been about one or two spots behind it!!!  Amazing what you can do with that Papercraft Factory programme!  I did two more buckets and spades like this - one of the other sets can be seen on a further card on my own blog post that co-incides with this post.

All the papers used on this particular card have been made using the same three Papercraft Factory CD's too - but as a massive fan of Funky Hand before I was on the DT - which was a 'dream come true' for a fan to be offered a position on the DT (pardon the pun and reference to one said CD!), I was (and still am) the very proud owner of all the other CD's that Anice had brought out including the very first one she took to C&C 'The Funky One' (the other ones I bought from her website or had them on pre-order chomping at the bit until they were released!!!

Before you miss out on some of her original (and equally fabby) work, you may be pleased to know that a limited amount of the original CD's are still available for sale on the website - so please hurry and grab yourself a bargain, because once they've gone, they've gone. Unfortunately, there will be no more production runs of them once they are sold, making room for new and exciting future CD's. (n.b. as a fan, I always found that they're all a great resource for masculine backing papers too).

I felt the need to add the ice-cream in there and of course the sun in the beautiful blue sky because of course it's ALWAYS like this when one goes away (she says with fingers crossed - tee hee!!!).

bits and juice anyone!!

I've paper pieced the ice-cream balls/lumps/blobs scoops, then used glossy accents all over them (which are available HERE on the website)...

The eagle eye'd amongst you may have noticed this:

well, I just had to start singing while I was making this card - so of course - It would have been rude not to have added those words in for a bit of fun (I defy you not to sing it... go on, you know you're going to... see I said you would! tee hee) lol.   Awwww, now I want to be beside the seaside instead of sat here in my conservatory - {{shouts "get the camping gear ready dear, we're off"!!!}} Sad to say, it doesn't quite work like that - boo!

By the time i'd finished my challenge card, I was on such a roll so I couldn't stop there - oh no, I made a further two cards on the 'seaside' theme - but i'll put them on my own blog rather than take up too much of your time up here (what do you mean I already have????) I reckon by now you're ready for the off, searching for your FH CD's in order to join in ((waving)).

However - if (sadly), you don't own a Funky Hand CD, Anice has kindly designed the freebie below just so that you can download it and join in with the funky fun... or go HERE if you want to become the proud owner of a CD which is like a library of funky, colourful designs at your fingertips.

click to go to download site

Just about every other day from now, one of my fellow Funkettes will post their inspirational take on the challenge - so please remember to come back and see look at what they've done- just to get your creative juices flowing...

Right, that's (almost) enough chat from me - but just to recap.

PLEASE:

a) use at least one FUNKY HAND product (it would help if you would just mention what it is - to help us and other readers of your blog too)

b) link your challenge entry post (not your whole blog) to Mr blue frog (inlinkz) at the foot of EACH post throughout the month

c) make sure that your challenge entry (recognisably) meets with the challenge theme

d) ensure that your entry is posted BEFORE midnight on 14th of the month (in this case 14th September)

e) don't backlink to a card you've posted before and only one entry per person please

and finally

e) have funky fun, fun, fun creating your challenge entry

Please remember to link your funky entry to the blue frog (bottom of post)

Thanks for reading and good luck in the challenge - i'll be round to comment on all entries that meet with the rule of the challenge.

Paula x x x

BOYS, BOYS, BOYS... Paula's Turn

Hi Funky Hand Fans

Hope you are enjoying the weather we've been having these past few days - and oops to those who haven't had it so good - I've not checked the weather forecast so hope you get it better soon!!!

Right, on the Funky Fifteenth, our Ruth kicked off this months challenge with the theme 

'Boys, Boys, Boys' 

(See Ruth's original post here).  In addition, you were provided with this wonderful freebie:

to enable all those who don't own anything by Funky Hand (where have you been?) to join in.

Here is my offering this month - which incorporates one of my two boys' favourite colours - orange!

The football boots are digi stamps - from the 'Craft the Year Away' CD, the strips of black are from a patterned paper from the 'Darkness Lifts' collection on the 'Dreams Come True' CD, and finally the blue checked pattern is from the 'Jovial Man' collection from the 'Colour Me Happy' CD.  All the strips were cut using my guillotine cutter.  The sentiment was generated in the workspace area of the Papercraft Factory programme using the 'Impact Label' font.

I cut the circles out using a small circle cutter tool - being careful to use it with my glass cutting mat.

The football boots were printed out on a sheet which had already been printed with a different shade of orange design paper - from the 'Orange October' collection from 'Craft the Year Away' CD - although you may not be able to tell that much; I then went over parts of the pattern with a blue promarker then added black embroidering cotton for the black bootlaces.

To construct my card, I placed the coloured strips down first on my 8"x8" card blank, next I placed the orange, larger circle down - which I'd already matted with the smaller blue circle.  The black 'laces' were fastened at the back of the smaller circle, then stuck down individually so they weren't swinging around! 

I hope you enjoyed my card and it has inspired even more of you to join in this month's challenge brilliantly kicked off by Ruth on the 15th.

If you have a card to enter into the challenge - please use the inlinkz facility at the bottom of each post this month.  Please remember though, if you wish to take part - you must use at least ONE element from Funky Hand in your card - be it the design paper - from a CD, a download - or using a freebie supplied in the past - or even from this month or a digistamp.  If possible - please mention in your post where abouts (i.e. which CD etc) you got your paper/digi from.

Most of all, thank you for reading my DT post - and hope that you can join in if you haven't already - and if you have - good luck!!!

Paula x x x

Anyone for Tea Darling - It's Paula Here?

Hello to all our regular 'Get Funky' readers - and a massive warm welcome to any new ones.

I hope you are going to join in with the challenge this month which is based on this sketch created by Anice:

The Design Team all loved this sketch and couldn't wait to get going with it - we sure hope you do too. If you want to read how Anice kicked off the challenge - please click HERE where she will tell you all you need to know about joining in. If in doubt - you just need to ensure that at least ONE of the elements on your project is from either a Funky Hand CD or Funky Hand Download from the website, but if you own neither - here is a very generous funky freebie download paper that you can use to join in with this months challenge. Just to make it a bit easier - could you please tell us which collection from which CD your paper is from.

Click on the pic of the freebie in order to take you to the place where you can download it (please don't share the file with anyone - just direct them to this blog and encourage your crafty friends to take part too)...

Well, without further ado - here is my project this month, which I completed using the 'Dreams Come True' CD, the collection is called 'Delightful Fun'

I hope you like the colour scheme as much as I do - those deep pinks with the taupe colour along with black looks very classy I think. The image is from the Papercraft Factory set of CD's and comes with the 'Craft the Year Away' CD - but can be used with any of the three CD's when used in the workspace area. I have used similar colour Promarkers to highlight the image to bring it all together. The sentiment stamped on the front is from a collection from my stash.

Well, that's it for me this month (where does the time go?). I hope I've inspired you to join in and even take a look at the CD's again - the potential of the Papercraft Factory CD's is phenomenal... even the older, Funky Hand original CD's have some stunning papers on - and are very relevent and on-trend now. It's as if Anice was ahead of her time with her designs when she created them - or you could even say that they are infact timeless - and just really useful all the time, any time!

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look at my DT project, don't forget to keep an eye out for more inspiration from the rest of the team too.

Remember to click HERE to find out about entering - or if you are a regular, enter by clicking on Mr Frog below this and every post on this months blog posts.

Take good care of yourselves and see you back here soon

Paula x x x

Get Funky Challenge for May - Master Chef Recipe

Hi Everyone, it's Paula here.

It's my turn to show you what I've come up with for this months challenge, which was set by our Kathy on the 'Funky Fifteenth'!  Kathy has set us a great challenge this month by giving us a recipe to follow - and I know that all the DT have been cookin' up a storm for your inspiration this month!

Kathy has asked us to include the following in her recipe: 5 flowers, 3 different papers, 2 buttons and a ribbon - all mixed up with a light seasoning of a sprinkle of gems and/or pearls.

Well, well, well.  Where to start huh!  I knew straight away that I wanted to do a larger card, so I got two sheets of 300gsm A4 card and printed this months freebie on one side of each of the sheets.  I love how Anice has designed this paper which some of us think resembles Kraft paper (with a bit of a pattern to it).

I decided to use the 'Shabby Saturday' collection of papers because of the lovely pinks and creams that have a 'shabby chic' quality about them.  The collection includes 24 sheets of papers and element sheets which include flowers that are ready to just print and cut.  The collection also includes a co-ordinating alpha collection and has sentiment toppers too.  Check it out here in the download section of the web shop where you will also see some more samples in the gallery.  

Anyway, I decided to print the cream and pink polka dot paper on the reverse of the freebie paper - and did this to both sheets.  I then scored both pieces at 8" because at first I was going to make an 8x8" card - then decided not to cut it down entirely and instead, make a sort of a spine - with the 8x8 bit as my 'canvas'

To attach the sheets together, I punched each sheet, starting in exactly the same place so they would match up perfectly, with my EK Success ribbon border punch, then threaded pink 5mm grosgrain ribbon through - this attached the two sheets securely enough not to warrant doing anything else, but in the end I did put some adhesive up to the scored marks where the card will open. (Check - one ribbon used!).

The large flowers were printed then cut from the elements sheet included in the collection.  The smaller flowers are from exactly the same elements sheet but printed at 50% (through the windows live photo gallery), then cut and mounted.  I scrunched and folded them to make them look like they do - infact, I gave them a right rough time!!!  The leaves were cut freehand from a sheet found in the 'Mint Madness' collection, folded to resemble veins in the leaves then lightly touched with a green chalk ink stamp pad. (Check - 5 flowers used - and so far, 3 different design papers used).

The square mat in the centre of the card was printed again, from the Shabby Saturday collection - this was to create a contrast on the whole page.  To invert the corners, I simply used a circle punch each corner - which does the opposite to rounding it off.  Spellbinders Large Labels and Small Labels makes the same shape - but not the size I needed, so measure and cut your square / rectangle, and nip each corner with a circle punch.  Obviously different size circle punches will give a different effect.

The ribbon across the page is another design from the Shabby Saturday collection.  I cut 2 strips from the length of the A4 sheet then did a random pleat across the page - just secure in place with a glue runner.  To here I attached my sentiment, which wasn't the original one I wanted to use... I had cut one of the sentiments from the sentiments sheet in the collection - then lost it.  Because I wanted to complete my project, I used a topper from a selection I had in my stash and distressed the edge with an ink pad just to leave it looking less plain.  Either side of the sentiment I added my final ingredients - 2 buttons.  (oops - I sneaked some mirri card onto my card - please forgive me!).  The ornamental corner is a cuttlebug

Finally, I mixed all my ingredients together - then added my seasoning, which was a generous portion of diamond Stickles, and here is the final result:

Granted, it will never qualify for a 'clean and simple' challenge - but sometimes its good to indulge!

Please remember to go HERE to Kathy's post to read how to qualify for the challenge - but if you know by know what is required of you - use the linky thing below to upload your challenge entry card/project.

Thank you so much for dropping in and looking at my DT Challenge card - 'til next time, this is Paula signing out!!! x x x

Spots and Stripes - The Best of British!

Hello everyone, it's Paula here.

I'd just like to start by thanking you for joining me on Funky Hand's challenge blog today and also to wish all our Funky Hand readers a very Happy Easter Monday.

Well, it's my turn to share with you what i've been up to with this months challenge that our Debs kicked off on the Funky Fifteenth of April with her beautiful card. Go here if you want to check it out again.

This months challenge of 'Spots and Stripes' has been one of my favourite to date, especially as Debs quite rightly pointed out that Anice has created a fabulous paper collection of rainbow polka dots recently (oh, and remember that until 10pm on Easter Monday, there is 25% to take off the price of this very collection).

The polka dots collection perfectly matches with the feebie

that Anice has kindly provided for you to use - and which our Ruth used when she made her gorgeous set of matching cards which can be seen in the last post.

I decided to go for something that two of the colours in the new polka dot collection particularly conjoured up for me when i saw them together - and particularly as feels a bit topical this week, with rumour of a special event happening towards the end of it!

I made my card into a Birthday card instead - but all things patriotic and the fabulous polka dot selection definitely inspired me.

I have attached the sentiment (on stripes) to acetate which I made slightly larger than A5 so that I could fasten it around the back of the card. This is because I didn't want to attach it to the actual card because it would have detracted from the corner of the flag - and I thought attaching it to the acetate made it look like it was floating.

Here's a pic of the inside of the card

The white square blank bit is where you would write your message.

Here is the back of the card:

I added a strip of the red stripe (from another card i'd done) to hide where i'd attached the acetate just to finish it off at the back.

I thought making a Union Jack would be much easier than it was - but then realised that making a rectangular shaped flag go onto a 6x6 square card was never gonna happen!!! Therefore, my card is actually now A5 in size. I had to mock on up by doing a template in Microsoft Publisher - so that I could cut each component of it up in order to make individual templates for all the dotty bits of paper.

While I was working on this project, my son's friend said "are you copying the picture on your kitchen mat Paula?"...(erm, no) - then the penny dropped... that's where i'd seen it before! I have a glass kitchen cutting mat that has a retro Union Jack on - the cross is a polka dot pattern - and believe it or not, I hadn't realised until Andy had said (doh)! I only 'see' it every day! Amazing what you look at without actually 'seeing' it or noticing it huh?

Anyway - with the Royal Wedding taking end at the end of this week, and having just had St. George's day - I'm feeling suitably patriotic.

If you feel inspired by this or any other card that your fabulous DT has brought to you this month - upload an image of your card by clicking on the blue frog at the end of this post.

Good luck if you do, but remember to make sure your creation has at LEAST ONE FUNKY HAND PRODUCT in it to qualify - if you ever think you have uploaded by mistake - just let the team know. Also - as a help to the design team when coming to view your blog, please could you mention which Funky Hand product you've included in your creation - and which CD or downloadable it was from - or just mention that you used the freebie.

Watch this space for more fabulous DT creations which will be posted right up until the new challenge is brought to you on the Funky Fifteenth - of May!!!!

Paula x x x