Steampunk and a Challenge!

Just a quick post from me today as I've been rushed off my tiny trotters and I need to go and sit in a dark room wirh a glass of wine! LOL.

Today my lovely DT have some more Steampunk projects to share with you, please pop over and see gorgeous creations from Elaine, Claireliz, Emma, Jaine and Lisa.

We also have a new challenge over on the Challenge Blog with lots of inspiration! We hope you will join in.

I have lots to share with you next week inlcluding a new kit and an exciting new project!

Have a lovely weekend

Sarah x

A New Challenge

Today is a brand new challenge over on the Challenge Blog and the last one of this year!! Here is my contribution using the sponsors digi stamp and papers from my Tinseltown CD...

Please pop over and see the rest of the DT's gorgeous creations and submit your own creations to win a fab prize :o)

Sarah x

Catching Up!

Wow, what a crazy week and Friday already! I've barely had time to breathe, let alone blog so here I am catching you all up on my crazy goings-on!

Wednesday I met Emma at Selfridges in London for coffee and catching up (and maybe a teensy bit of shopping!) before coming home to about 3 million emails (as I was also out Tuesday afternoon) I'd had no Blackberry for 2 days (not only was the service down but my actual phone broke as well - not a good week for technology in the Hurley household, let me tell you!) but luckily Wednesday I came home to my replacement, bless Vodafone and their 24 hour replacement! So now I have a new and functioning Blackberry I feel like a normal person again (and I can tweet all my random stuff from wherever I am, yay!)

Thursday I had to tidy and organise my studio which look like a tornado at the very least had been through it, I also found a bunch of samples I hadn't yet photographed (more of that further down!) as well as sorting through the last few days deliveries of things to test / review / use / that I had bought on a whim at 3am while sleep deprived *sigh* then I got my schedule and emails up to date and organised.

Today I photographed the samples I found, here is one quick and simple card to share, using my cloud stamp (available from my website) then embossed with my Cuttlebug swiss dots embossing folder...

I love clouds (as you may have noticed) I always remember someone telling me that if you feel a bit blue just to step outside and look up at the sky, the clouds, the rooftops, it literally lifts your mood! (seriously, try it!)

After taking all the pics (not great unfortunately as the light is completely blocked out by the scaffolding all round my house!) I then made myself a giant mug of coffee and sat down with my sketchbook for a day of product planning, design and development, I also made lots of plans for upcoming projects and today has actually turned out to be a super productive day and I've got tons done - love it when that happens! and I've done all this through constant hammering and banging from 7.30 am right through to 4.30 pm every day (mostly on just 3 hours sleep) as I've had my roof redone (hence the scaffolding) my head is banging, I have the biggest set of eye luggage know to humankind BUT I'm pleased with my progress - yay!

Over the next few weeks you may notice a few little changes here on my blog as I introduce some features that I get asked for time and time again (I try to bring you what you ask for!) so I hope you will like the new and improved blog and I look forward to your feedback as ever :o) Next week I have some great features lined up including some Halloween projects with my Cricut Expression, some Christmassy things and my own solution to the almost impossible to find in the UK, Smash Book.

Have a fabulous weekend, and if you haven't already then pop over to the Challenge Blog where you may be able to win yourself some Derwent Coloursoft Pencils in a fabbo wooden box!

Sarah x

Halloween Horrors

Today over on the Challenge Blog is the start of a fab new challenge, Halloween Horrors, I made my card using elements and papers from my Halloween Kits along with my Vampire Digi Stamp, all available from my shop.

 

We are lucky enough to be sponsored by one of my favourite ever companies, Derwent!! Pop over and take a look, you could win a wooden box of Derwent Coloursoft colouring pencils - my favourite colouring pencils! and there is a ton of inspiration from my lovely Design Team. Also, if you scroll back a few posts here on my blog you will even find one of my free digi stamps that you could use :o)

Sarah x

A Challenge!

This week on the Challenge blog we have a fantastic 'Colouring' challenge with a great sponsor - Robyns Fetish Digi Stamps!

Here is my card, coloured with my Promarkers, I love these cute bunnies!

Pop over to the Challenge blog to see fantastic projects from my design team and enter your own creation for the chance to win a prize!

Sarah x

Making Cards Magazine Bonus Projects (July Issue)

For those of you with July's Making Cards magazine I hope you are liking the papers and projects I designed for the summery issue, lots of ice lollies and deck chairs and cold drinks! You can see two of my cards on the front cover (center and bottom right)

Here are some bonus projects for you to get some more out of your papers!

Summers Day Collection

On the Beach Collection

All papers are free with the magazine or available from their website. All ribbons are from Crafty Ribbons.

There will be another fab card with these papers from Clare on the Challenge Blog tomorrow, so look out for that!

Sarah x

Quick Update

Just a quick update from me today!

Firstly, there are just afew days left to enter the handmade flower challenge over on the Challenge Blog - come and join the fun!

Secondly, I will be posting details of a super duper special offer tomorrow that will only run from midnight Friday to midnight Sunday so keep a look out here or on my Facebook page for all the details, you won't want to miss it!

Sarah x

Challenge Blog

This week we have a fantastic sponsored challenge up on the Challenge blog! I'm so pleased that GallimaufryUK is our sponsor this week - as you know I design for this digi scrapbook company and her fabulous kits have got me hooked on digi-scrapping! I also print out tons of the elements to use on hybrid projects.

The design team have come up with some fabulous projects, both hybrid and digital, using the 'Bloomin Lovely' kit, to inspire you, pop over and see them all here, this is my digi layout:

and here are some hybrid cards I made previously which you may remember...

 

You can ger hold of the kit here or take part in the challenge to try and win it!

Pop over and check out the prizes, because, get this, every single entrant to the challenge will receive a $1 voucher for the GallimaufryUK store - how amazing is that?! So what are you waiting for???

Remember you can use the kit for both hybrid and digital projects. I am working on a digi-scrap tutorial, so if you would be interested then look out for that!

Sarah x

Stitch & Craft Show

Today I went to the Stitch and Craft show at London Olympia, I've never been to this show before so was quite curious to see what it was like. It was spread over 3 floors, the downstairs being mostly knitting (which I can't do!) but I did see the 'knit your own royal wedding' scene in real life which is amazing! if anyone cares to knit me a corgi I will be eternally grateful!!

The middle was mostly cross stitch, fabric, ribbons and stitchy bits. I stopped off here to gaze in wonderment at all the beautiful cross stitch kits I know I will never have time to do and of course to see Crafty Ribbons and drop off some samples to them (more about those another time!)

Here is the Crafty Ribbons stand - apologies the pics arent better but there were tons of people pushing and shoving to get to it! They were rushed off their feet :o) Lots of lovely buttons and bits as well as ribbons and check out that queue! (and that was only some of it!) a very busy show!

The top floor was all papercrafting (heaven!) spied lots of new Tim Holtz bits, some gorgeous rubber stamps and these amazing displays from Decopatch

I then caught the tail end of Dawn Bibby's demonstration and managed a quick hello to Clare and Phil from DoCrafts before they started theirs!

I also had coffee with the lovely Emma who is also on the Kuretake design team with me, I didn't get to meet some of the other people I had wanted to say hello to but its such a busy show that I think it is easy to miss people.

If I'm honest, it wasn't my favourite show I've ever been too as there wasn't quite enough pretty paper for my liking and hardly any scrapbooking stuff but there was a good buzz and mix of products and I would go again :o)

Please pop over to the Challenge Blog, we have a sponsored challenge this week with a prize from the lovely people at Handy Hippo!

Thats all for today, I'm exhausted! Back with more stuff and new release details tomorrow!

Sarah x

Thank You!

I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to everyone that applied for the Design Team, we had about 100 entries!! Now I need to go through them all and shortlist them, its going to be very hard to just take on a few (I've had a peek at a few as they came in and they are amazing!) I may be in touch with some of you to ask a few questions, please give me a week or so to sort them all out and get back to you. I will make the announcement welcoming our new DT members ASAP :o)

So yesterday was very productive, I ended up staying up til 3am (birds were tweeting as I fell asleep, LOL) finishing off some craft projects, doing the finals of two of my illustrations (just need to be coloured) and finally because my head was spinning, a couple of art journalling pages to empty out my brain clutter - works a treat, promise! Here is one of the cards made with the Kuretake Alcohol Inks... (will blog the rest another time) just two colours used here, hot pink and yellow.

The witch stamp is from Lavinia Stamps and the background is part of Tim Holtz stamp, images were embossed (with ultra thick as I could find my regular black, of course I found it this morning when I was tidying up!!) and some distress stickles rubbed over the top. I hadn't embossed anything for AGES!

Today I got all my stuff ready for Stitches (the trade show next week), organised a couple of meetings for next week, set up my Skype (much easier than I thought!) and caught up with the 80+ emails I got yesterday afternoon (see how I get distracted!!) I will probably start colouring in some of my illustrations tonight, yay!

Finally, please pop over to the Challenge Blog, a new one has gone up today and there are some fabulous projects from the Design Team!

Sarah x

Very Quick Post

A very very quick post today as I'm in the middle of a million things (only very slightly exaggerating! LOL)

First up, please pop over to the Challenge Blog as a new challenge has gone up today from our Guest Designer Tammy.It's great to see so many of you participating in the challenges now, and it's growing all the time!

Secondly, one of my DT girls, the lovely Melly, is in the process of setting up her own Challenge Blog and is having a DT call - please take a look here and email her, shes lovely so I'm sure her Challenge's will be fun!

And finally there is just 5 Days left to apply for my Design Team!!! Please go back a page to see the requirements and apply :o)

Thats all for now, I'll try and be more fun tomorrow, promise!

Sarah x

What was I so excited about yesterday??......

well now I can tell you..... :o)

Some of my illustration work is being shown at this years Bologna Book Fair!! How exciting is THAT! The fair is a HUGE event where lots of agents and publishers and book packagers meet and do booky / illustratory meetingy things and make deals and coo over pretty pics - some of them will be mine this year - woooo! - and other important businessy type stuff, natch ;o)

So now I have 3 weeks to work manically on some new things and dig out some of my existing best work - as well as everything else I'm doing obviously. I'm on kind of a manic schedule right now, on the surface I seem very calm (mostly because at least half of what I'm working on I'm not allowed to tell anyone about right now!!!) but under the surface I'm paddling away like a crazy person - but to be honest I wouldn't have it any other way!

On top of all that, today I got turquoise nail polish, it totally rocks my world... I'm working my way through bluey tones at the mo as I find they compliment the yellow my engagement ring the best, this is my absolute fave though, think I need a big turquoise ring for the other hand, Primani here I come ;o)

My heads a little bit spinny now, too much excitement (and coffee most likely)

On another note please pop over to the Challenge Blog - Clare's new challenge has gone up today.

Sarah x

February Guest Designer!

Please give a big welcome to our February Guest designer Tammy!

Tammy is a stay at home mum of one who lives in Canada and loves to craft - you can see her blog here. Her first card will be up on the Challenge Blog tomorrow along with a brand new challenge, so please pop over and take a look!

The way our Guest Designers work in future will be changing slightly so Tammy is the last one for the current schedule - keep your eyes open for details of the changes soon :o)

Today was a bit of a fabbo day actually, I spoke to someone about a terrific project, found out some great news which I should be able to share with you tomorrow if I get the OK! (expecting a text from my mum about 5 seconds after reading this asking me what it is, LOL) and started some new projects for Kuretake and Crafty Ribbons which I'll be showing you in the next few days.

Crafty Ribbons sent me a load of new ribbons not even on their website yet - soooo gorge, do you spot those skullies? and bunnies? LUSH! if you spot one you like and can't find it on their website do give them a call and let them know you saw it on my blog and they will be happy to track it down for you, they're so nice and very helpful so don't be shy!

Also, Derwent are having a fantastic competition which you just have to check out here, soooo wish I could play along! LOL

You may notice it looks a bit different here today, I rearranged some things and spread it out a bit, what do you think?

Sarah x

p.s. if you are looking for the Design Team call, its a few posts down!

What Am I Up To Now??!

Today I had a lovely and very productive day in my newly revamped studio finishing off samples for CHA - thanks to everyone for the comments yesterday! It is definitely much more enjoyable with its current layout - I was starting to feel uninspired in the old space.

Today I have another bit of news, I am now working on the creative and marketing side of a fab Digi-Scrapbooking company!

GallimaufryUK is run by the lovely Penni, a very talented digi designer who makes lovely digi-scrapbooking kits. I must say I've never been that excited by digi scrapping until now! I am also helping her out with getting the marketing side of her business organised, something I've taken a step back into recently - nice to have some diversity in your work!

She has also very kindly agreed to sponsor one of our challenges over at the Challenge Blog in the near future so keep an eye out for that!

I will be posting some of my digi layouts very very soon, as well as some hybrid stuff, you know me, I need the feel of paper still! LOL - in the meantime you can buy Penni's kits over at Scrapdish - her new 'My Love' Valentine kit was only released today - I havent even had chance to look at it properly!

Thats all from me today, I need to go and scrub the Promarker off my hands before dinner, I have a very green hand (I will show you why when I can...!)

Sarah x

Free Download

I completely forgot to mention in yesterdays post that the picture of Alice is a free download! If you click on her you can download the larger file by right clicking and saving!

Of course if you want the rest of the characters and the digi stamp versions you can get hold of the 'Wonderland' CD in my shop!

I hope you will play along with the Alice in Wonderland Challenge over on the Challenge Blog :o)

Sarah x

New Challenge!

Just a very very quick post today as I have a banging headache! Please pop over and check out the challenge blog - it was my turn this week and I chose a theme of 'Alice in Wonderland'

I hope you will come and join us!!

Sarah x

80's Revival!

As most of you probably know by now I LOVE vintage! my favourite is 40's and 50's but I can get on board with anything pre 90's! So each week I try to do little things, partly to try and kickstart my inspiration and put me in a good mood and partly just to use some of the lovely vintage goodies I've collected over the years. If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed my tweets about headscarves, puffball skirts etc etc... Well today was once again 80's day, mostly because it meant I could wear my gorgeous woolly pom pom legwarmers! It was sooo cold, the perfect time to wear them - it seemed to set off a little trend on Twitter, hello to any of my fellow legwarmer wearing Tweeters who have come to visit :o)

I'm thinking tomorrow will be a 50's / 80's hybrid day with a headscarf and more legwarmers - they do keep you nice and toasty on cold days like today!

Today the first Christmas Journalling prompt went up over on the Christmas Blog - please come and join us and share your work, the things we've seen so far have been gorgeous - I do love some Holiday Season inspiration! I did start some crafting today but my fingers were frozen in no time! I do want to try and get my first Journal page done a bit later though. I'm also working on some projects with the Ink-A-Balls which I'll be sharing soon!

Don't forget tomorrow is a new Challenge over on the Challenge Blog so keep an eye out for it!

Sarah x

Introducing.....

my newest member of the Design Team (as promised!)..... Patsi!

Patsi has been crafting for 4 years and loves stamping and colouring, especially Prisma pencils and of course... Promarkers! (who doesn't!!) Patsi makes some gorgeous cards which you can see on her blog here! She was so keen to join the fun that she joined in this weeks challenge before she even received her DT pack, I like that ;o)

Pop over to the Challenge Blog to see this weeks challenge, there are some fab samples this week (including Patsi's!)

Thank you to everyone who applied to be on the DT - I think I have replied to everyone, that will be all for this year now as we are so close to Christmas and I have some HUGE projects on at the moment. You can still send me your blog links which I'll keep on file.

I'll be back later with another post and hopefully I'll be able to share some of my recent news!

Sarah x

New Fings!

Lots of new things to tell you about today.....

Firstly a brand new kit, if you are doing December Daily or Journal your Christmas you will love this kit, it has backing papers, embellishments and digi stamps for you to put together to make your journal! You can get yours here for the bargainous price of £6.99! There are also some new Digi Stamps up and some special offers / sale stuff - grab yourself a bargain!

Secondly, there is a new challenge up on the Challenge Blog from our lovely Guest Designer, Jackie, pop over and join us!

Thirdly, I'm working on bundles more new stuff for you, seriously I am FLAT OUT! and I think you're going to love it, I can't wait til its finished myself so I can go and play with it all! Keep an eye out for those new launches starting from the weekend.

This week has been super stressful with one thing and another, why is it that just when you think all is going OK something jumps and bites you? grrrrr! A tiny break from the avalanche of YUK being thrown at me would be nice if anyones listening! thank you :o)

On a positive note I have my appointment with the specialist for the end of this month which will hopefully be helpful and a review with my own doctor in the morning.... fingers crossed! This thing can be beaten and I'm determined to do it!

And it's not all bad, I did get some happy mail today, which I can't tell you about just yet but will be able to soon, yay!

Finally I'll leave you with a little vintage project I knocked up the other night. I ordered the new Pink Paislee / House of 3 Parisian Anthology stamps (from Happy Daze - thank you Moira for the super fast delivery!) and I was dying to try them out but with nothing really in mind, so I just started stamping (onto a blank vintage postcard from Artistic Stamper)

Thats all for today!

Sarah x

A New Guest Designer!

A new month means a new Guest Designer and this month we welcome Jackie!

Jackie has been crafting for over 5 years, she loves to stamp and colour in and she doesn't wear pink ;o) You can see her blog here

She has already produced some fab work which you will be seeing over the course of the month. She will also be setting the challenge tomorrow over on the Challenge Blog.

A BIG welcome from all of us!!

Sarah x