Our first challenge

Welcome to the Crafting Cafe blog!

This post will stay at the top of the blog for the whole month, please scroll down to see the latest posts.

Ours will be a monthly challenge blog and we would love it if you could come along and play along!

Every month we are looking for the top 3 and a winning project.

This is our launch month and our theme for this month is 

Anything Goes....

We would love to see what you create - anything at all. All you need to do is get creating!

This month we are sponsored by the uber talented.......

 LEJ Designs

All the Design Team are working with her wonderful digis and the winner of the challenge will get to chose 4 digis from the LEJ design portfolio - how wonderful is that!

You will see all the inspiring creations from the Design Team over the whole month so please do keep popping back to see what they have created.

Please add you link to your blog here so that we can pop over and leave you some Crafting Cafe love x

Tulips... twice!

Hi - introductions first!

I'm Neil, and I'm delighted to be on the design team for The Crafting Cafe. Looking through all your work, it looks like I have quite a different style and I look forward to sharing more ideas with you. I'm finishing a two year extended diploma in art and design at Leicester College in June, so don't be surprised if one or two ideas spring from what I've learnt there. If you'd to know more about me, or see more of my work, feel free to pop over to my blog at http://perfectly4med.co.uk



For our 'anything goes' theme this month, I've used the fabulous 'Tulips 1' digi stamp from LEJ Designs. I've created two cards, the first using ProMarkers to colour, and the second with Distress Reinkers both on a bespoke background created with Distress Stain and kitchen salt:

A Happy Hello

A happy hello to everyone. Ria here today.

I am very excited to be part of The Crafting Cafe's design team and now sharing my first take on the challenge is just as exciting.

I always love arts and crafts especially cardmaking and sewing. It's only less than a year that I started documenting my creations on my blog Heart for Handmade and each and every project post just makes me happy. There's always something about these creative works that I find relaxing.

With this month's Anything Goes challenge, we are given the opportunity to select an image from LEJ Designs and I have chosen this one called Daisies. This is from their  Floral and Nature digi stamps. 

I colored the images with Promarkers and cut the two Daisies in the right to pop using foam squares. It's nice to put dimensions into cards for added texture. I also used a yellow strip washi tape to run on the left to complement my main daisy image.  I had fun coloring these flowers and I hope you try them too. There's a selection of other interesting digi stamps at the LEJ website so  check them out too.

Now off to my project

Marleen DT

Helloooo everyone...

Today is FINALLY the day, I can shout from the roof tops, that I've been so lucky to have joined the brand new Design team.

Dont forget, we also have a Facebook  group where we have loads of fun and all share our crafting projects.

Do come and join us..

But here is what I have made for this months challenge.

Image is from our sponcer,  LEJ Design

This card sums up my usual style.

Simple, distressed and with added bling..

If you fancy seeing more of my work, you can visit me over on my personal blog.

marleens-crafty-space

And that is it from me for this time.

Thank you for stopping by, and for any comments left behind.

Just for you.

Hi everyone, i hope you're all having a lovely crafty day.

This is my first DT card for the Crafting Cafe,

I'm so excited to be part of the team for their very first challenge.

The theme this month is anything goes.

So get your thinking cap on & join in the fun.

Our sponsor this month is the fantastic LEJ Designs

Lots of love Sylvia  xx

Anything goes.....

Hi everyone i`m Debbie & i`ve been crafting now for around 10 years

it`s not just my passion, it has become my everyday life. 

So imagine how super excited i am to be showing you my 1st dt card,

i feel extremely lucky to be working alongside such talented people

here at the crafting cafe, & also lucky to get to work with an amazing

image from our 1st sponsor lejdesigns.co.uk which is owned by our very

own Lindsay. She has some brilliant designs so please drop by & take a look.

Whats more by entering our very 1st challenge the winner will be able to 

choose 4 digi`s from her ever growing designs.... that is so worth entering for.... 

Good luck to everyone, & don`t forget to come back soon for our new monthly challenge.

Ok, so on to my card! This digi is the Mozpoz coloured image 2

I choose this because as soon as i see the colour of Mozpoz i knew he

would go with my wallpaper ???????????

I bet all your brains are thinking `WALLPAPER`

Its the best freebie you can get .... Once a month i pop into B & Q & grab myself

some wallpaper sample (they`re free & they don`t mind how many you take) lol

When i get home i cut them into A4 sheets (i normally get 2 or 3 sheets out of i sample) 

& they`re ready to use when i need them.

This particular piece of paper is from my very own dining room wallpaper, hope you like it

I`m loving all your wonderful creations that have been entered into this months challenge, 

you are all so talented, please pop back again to see what our

wonderful design team have to show you, we would love to see you. 

To find out more information on my card, pop over & see my blog at

http://debscraftycreations.blogspot.co.uk/

Let's Go Shopping

Welcome to Day 19 of our February Anything Goes challenge at The Crafting Cafe.

It's Mags here today and so excited to be sharing my first post for The Crafting Cafe challenge.

I live in the East of England with my hubby and two lovely daughters (well, one is at uni at the moment).  I am not sure they will ever move out (they have it too good I think lol).  I have always been a creative person and have tried many crafts in  my time - knitting, crotchet, cross stitch etc.  About 3-4 years ago my Mum introduced me to cardmaking and the rest is history - as they say.  I still work full time and can't wait for the day when I can retire.  I keep telling hubby to win the lottery for me but to no avail lol.

Anyway, here is the card that I want to share with you today.

I used this image from our lovely sponser LEJ Designs for my project.  I decided to do something a little different and I made a gift card.  The little pocket on the front is just big enough to fit a gift card in.

For full details of this card just pop over to my blog and take a look.

Now it's over to you.  Looking forward to seeing your entries in our 'Anything Goes' challenge.  Don't forget to keep popping back throughout the month to see more fab inspiration from the DT.

Thanks for popping by.

Mags

xx

Simply Sentiments!

Hello Everyone! This is the other Claire here, also known as Claire H, to help with the confusion! I am delighted to have been chosen to be on the Crafting Cafe DT, and am looking forward to working with so many talented people and being able to show you what I can do!

 

I began cardmaking about 20 odd years ago, and missed a few years inbetween, but really got back into it about two years ago. I started blogging about 15 months ago, and the bug has really bitten. I am lucky enough to be on two very talented design teams, and find that there are never enough hours in the day, juggling around my job and being a mum! I am also a Reiki practitioner.  I hope you find inspiration from my cards, and please don't hesitate to leave comments letting me know what you think!

 

My card for today is showcasing one of the sentiment digis that are on the LEJ Designs website:

 

 

 

All the details about the card can be found on my blogpage here.

 

Thank you for taking the time to look, and please come back tomorrow to see what one of the other DT have come up with.

 

Love and light

Claire xx

 

 

 



Anything Goes Challenge - Tulips

Hi Everyone and welcome to my very first post here at the crafting cafe challenge blog!

My name is Claire and I live in the north east of England with my husband Richard and our two cats, we both work full time but in my free time I enjoy creating!  I haven’t been into crafting all that long but in the short space of time that I have been I have tried out a ton of different techniques and have acquired a huge amount of crafting goodies!!  My personal blog can be found HERE if anyone would like to check it out!

So my project for my very first post is using the tulips digi from LEJ Designs:

To create my project I first printed out my digi and coloured the tulips using my distress markers (victorian velvet, milled lavender, worn lipstick, peeled paint and pine needles), I inked around the edges of my square with tumbled glass distress ink then I used the crackle stamp from Indigoblu stamped in vintage photo distress ink.  Then I gave it three coats of UTEE to give it an old ‘tile’ appearance.

I then used the fancy frame mask from Splodgeaway to create the background using distress inks (old paper, vintage photo, mustard seed and victorian velvet) and cut n dry foam.

I mounted my ‘tulip tile’ onto the background in the centre using foam pads, then added the ribbon and backed it onto the green cardstock before finally mounting onto my 8x8 card blank.

I hope you enjoyed my very first project and that you will join in with the challenge this month – the theme is Anything Goes!!

Thanks for visiting and I hope to see here soon!

Claire x

We've Got Chemistry - Anything Goes Challenge

Welcome to Day 14 of our Monthly Challenge "Anything Goes" at The Crafting Cafe!

It's Michelle B. with you today and I have been crafting in some form for a number of years.  Once I was introduced to Copic Markers and Digi Stamps, I've placed my scrapbooking on hold (my 14 yr old son will eventually get his baby book done!) and have run with card making.  I have my own craft room, the dungeon as my boys refer to it, and love having my own space to create in.

I'm thrilled to be a part of this fab Design Team and am ready to show you my project.  I have fun working with "The Experiment" by LEJ Designs and the sentiment is from Kraftin Kimmie.  I thought this image would be perfect for Valentine's Day!

I colored the image with my Copic markers, added a bit of glitter and used glossy accents on the bottles.  The paper is from the Love Story collection by Fancy Pants Designs.

Now it's your turn, I can hardly wait to see your creation!

Hello - Lyndi Here!

HI THERE!

 

I'm Lynne, but known to a lot of my crafting friends as Lyndi and one of the new DT Members for The Crafting Cafe Challenge Blog along with a whole lot of other very talented people.

 

I'm super excited to be a part of such a wonderful DT and had a lot of fun with my card for the first challenge that you can enter above!

 

I live in Beith, Scotland with my hubby Billy, two sons Robert (16) and Ross (5) and our cat Barney (6). I have been crafting since my mum taught me to knit when I was 5 and started card making after my sister decided that it would be a good idea if I made her wedding invites etc...

 

Since then crafting has taken over my life from making CAS cards to Altering bits and pieces and turning them into works of art (well - to me they are LOL). I'll never stop crafting and am quite keen to learn some new things like glass blowing and stained glass art. My husband has also taught me to weldand apparently I'm 'not bad' at it - high praise coming from my hubby :oD!!!

 

I work part-time at the moment and can't wait to retire so that I can spend all my time creating. Hopefully by then I will have my own craft room (at the moment my dining room table is straining under the weight of all my craft stuff) and it will likely be bursting at the seams with stash, but you can never have enough stash. 

 

This is the card I made for the challenge:

 

To find out more about how I created this card using LEJ Design's 'An Angels Touch' digi stamp please visit my blog here.

 

Now it's over to you! Let's see your creations for the Challenge, which this time is anything goes. You have the chance to win four digi images from our lovely sponsor LEJ Designs!

 

Looking forward to spending time with you all and seeing your wonderful creations :oD xx

 

Love n Kisses

 

 

 

 

 

Greetings and giraffes

Happy Sunday everyone!  Amanda here with my February project using one of the lovely Lindsay’s gorgeous digi stamps.  First, I should introduce myself though, as I don’t get onto the Facebook group as often as I’d like.  I live in Bedfordshire with my college sweetheart Adam, my little collie-sheltie cross Molly, and, since September 2011, my little baby boy Bob.  I’ve been a freelance papercrafts and jewellery designer/demonstrator working mainly through do crafts for a few years.  I’m having a break from demos for a while though, as I’m not yet ready to contemplate leaving little Bob for a whole day.  I’m soooo happy to be on the design team, as Bob takes up as much time as I can give and some housework has to happen, so I’ve been in a bit of a crafting wilderness.  Making a commitment to craft, even just once a month, means I’ll definitely make the time for it, so thank you, you’re all helping me stay sane!

Onto my project… I fell in love with Lindsay's sweet, tottering giraffe straight away.  It's perfect for new baby or first birthday cards, and I’m planning to use it to scrap some piccies I have of Bob’s early walking too.  It also gave me an excuse to use some yummy Tim Holtz papers I bought a couple of weeks ago, as they’re really giraffey colours.  This was my first foray into digital crafting and I really enjoyed it.  Stamps are quite an obsession of mine (after paper of course!), but they are just the one size, and do take up a lot of space.  I loved being able to decide how big to make the image, it opens up so many possibilities!

Anyway, here it is.  I hope you like it.  Full details of what I used are on my blog.  Please stop by and say hello, and don’t forget to enter the challenge!

Crafting Jack of all Trades -master of none!

Hi there,
Christine Saunders here - I thought I would introduce myself to you lovely crafting ladies and I'm so pleased to be part of the Crafting Cafe. I think of myself as a Crafting "Jack of all Trades" - but believe me I am definitely a master of none.
I just love to play with all things to do with art and craft.  Painting is one of my great loves, that and Stained Glass which is how I started crafting really.  I now design my own stamps and papers.

I just love to play with craft materials and get so excited at the thought of using something "different" either new or recycled to create with.   You may find I post a variety of crafty ideas on here which I hope you will find interesting.

As a freelance Designer and mainly working for DoCrafts and WoW Embossing powders Iv'e been lucky enough to have the opportunity to use a variety of products. I'm now expanding my horizons and trying out new materials, and will be posting tutorials on my blog (www.christinescraftyart.blogspot.com)

For this first post,  I thought I would show a couple of pictures of the kind of things I will be posting on this blog in future. The first one is some Enamelled jewellery I recently made on a short break away in one of the  Sport and Craft Hotels (which I thoroughly recommend). I had the opportunity of trying out Enamelling and Silk Painting (a future post) which I absolutely loved.

I look forward to seeing all your crafty creations using the beautiful Digi's and finding out what talents lie out there in the great Crafting Cafe and beyond. Happy crafting everyone.   Chris x

A Loving Embrace & A Freebie

Good morning bloggers!

It's Dawn here to introduce myself & share my DT creation
for your inspiration!

I have been crafting pretty much all of my life one way & another.

My Mum taught us all to knit at a young age & it went on from there!

I love trying out all sorts of different things! I am a frustrated artist as
I would so love to be able to draw but unfortunately I can't! lol

I was inspired to make cards when I saw what my Mum had been up to!
I attended quite a few Do Craft demo's with my Mum & I
 learnt a lot from those as well as being inspired by the wonderful designer,
who happens to be our very own Nikki of all people!   

Here's my card!

The beautiful image I have used is called 

Loving Embrace by our sponsor,

 LEJ Designs our very own Lindsay!

You can read more about my card here!

*During my Blog hopping to comment on all the wonderful entries for our 

First Ever Challenge at The Crafting Cafe I spotted one entry 

which was sporting a freebie sentiment that I created & offered ages ago on my blog!
I can't tell you how excited I got!

I've decided to share the link with you today so you can hop on over to my blog

& snag it for yourself if you wish!
Thanks for visiting us today! I can't wait to see your entry!
Love & hugs Dawn xx

A Big Hello From Me

Hi lovelies, I am Lindsay and it's  my turn to post some inspiration for you today it's  really quite exciting to be doing my first post on our new challenge blog, big thanks  to our lovely Nikki for having me on the team.

Since it's  Anything Goes this month and my digi store is  sponsor I thought I would use one  of my newest digi's on this card which can be found  here .

Full details on my card can be found on my blog here and I would love for you to stop by.

I hope that you will all have fun joining in with our challenge and keep hopping back to see all of the DT's fabby inspiration that will be getting posted  through out the month.

Thanks for reading this post

Lindsay xx

Thank you

Hi there, Nikki here, and today I get to introduce myself and share a project with you.
I am a crafter through and through and I love to try all different kinds of crafts. (well I'll try anything at least once!)
I adore papercrafting and sharing my ideas with everyone too.
A year or so ago I came up with the idea of the Crafting Cafe on Facebook (if you are on Facebook, make sure you come on over and join us)... you will find us HERE...
The idea behind it was to create a friendly place for crafters to share their blogs and projects.
The cafe is a wonderful place where so many friendships have been made.
This year, I decided to expand on the cafe and here we are - The Crafting Cafe blog was born.

This month we are being sponsored by LEJ Designs, and over the next few weeks as the Design Team introduce themselves to you, you will be able to see the projects they have all created with Lindsay's wonderful designs.
I choose to work with the daisy, this is what I created...

I love this digi, you can resize it to any size that you want . I thought I would keep my design black and white as I love that classic combo.
The theme for this month is anything goes - and we really would love to see what you create.
Remember to add your link to our launch post and we will pop on over to visit you.
Pop back over the course of the month to see what the rest of the Design Team has created.
Happy crafting,
Nikki x