June 2017 - Quirky Things With Wings

To see who won the last challenge see the previous post below this one. {add link to winner's post on the word previous post}

This month is it my turn (Jane) to choose the challenge theme, and I have chosen "Quirky Things With Wings."

Please note that due to Inlinkz expiring on the 22nd June the challenge will end on 22nd June not the normal 28th. 

Due to personal problems this will be the last challenge for a few months.
We hope to regroup and get back in the Autumn, possibly with a new focus more on mixed media and stamping, and we still want a few new team members and we would love any non digi sponsors who can contact us if interested.

Our first sponsor  is:

 Limited Runs,

 who are giving a prize of any 3 digis of the winner's choice

and our second is:

 Bugaboo Stamps, 

who are giving a prize of a $12 voucher.

Bugaboo have a brand new store and now take Paypal, don't forget to check out the weekly freebie and sale offers too!

Now here is some inspiration for you and first of all I would like to welcome our guest designers.

First up is
 Margreet 
who has used Mini Birds with Tea from Limited Runs

The image I have used is Minibirds - tea. I have colored with copics and die cut with a stitched die and added some sequins. The sentiment is part of the digi, but as I wanted to use it on a tag, I made the sentiment in Word, printed it out and used a stitched label die. I put some Glossy Accents on the birds' eyes.

and next is
Michelle
who has used Butterfly #1 from Limited Runs

Art is not about perfection, but about creating. I try to use different materials and see what I come up with. I think a blue and gold butterfly is different and unusual. I definitely like the unusual!

Tracy

My Quirky Thing With Wings is the adorable Mini Bird Mummy from Limited Runs.  Could there be anything cuter or quirkier than a pretty little yellow bird wrapped up in ghoulish mummy bandages?  I printed the image, coloured with Copic markers, fussy cut it out, then used it to make a Halloween shaker card, a quirky mix of cuteness, spookiness and interactive fun.

Now onto the regular team's makes:

Tinz
As this is our last challenge for a couple of months I have made two cards this time - one from each sponsor. From Limited Runs I have used the progressive challenge Digi Steampunk Bug - It did take some consideration as to how I was going to use him but here he is:

I coloured him with Promarkers and used X-cut nexting oval dies to cut the shapes. The holographic paper was in my stash, and the sentiment was just typed on the computer and means 'Don't let the B***ards grind you down', which I thought was great for this guy!

My second card uses last weeks Friday Freebie from Bugaboo stamps - Spring Bird - again coloured with Promarkers and then layered over several scraps of patterned paper - both printed from a Digital Delights Boofle CD-Rom:

Sue

I used Ed the Turkey from Limited Runs coloured with Copics. I ebossed the background with a tree folder as it just didn't look right plain. The fence was cut on my Silhouette and added as without he looked like he was floating in mid air! The trees are Tim Holtz dies cut out in white and sponged with green ink

Diane

My first make is using MiniBirdsCake4 from Limited Runs. I thought this was a great image for cards for young and old, boy and girl. Coloured with Spectrum Noir pens.

 Jane

I have used Dragonfly #1 from Limited Runs and combined it with a stamped sentiment, some pretty dragonfly brads and a selection of papers from an old K & Company stack

Cazzy

Both of my cards are ones I made for previous challenges, I just haven't had the time or a tiny space to work! For this card I used a  Circle Sentiments Little Bird Told me (which I can't find in the new shop, so it may be retired) and Ladybug stack, both from Bugaboo, kinda cute I think! Again ribbon is from Crafty Ribbons.

From Limited Runs I used Mushrooms 7 and a Whootie Owl for my card, with Papermania double sided papers, using both sides matted, and finished off with some some polka dot ribbon. 

Any crafty project is acceptable as usual. Important: BEFORE you link up please add a link to the Quirky Crafts Challenges blog (http://quirkycrafts.blogspot.com - the blog not this post) to your post - or you will not be able to enter. When you have done this you can go ahead and add a link to your blog post or your online photo gallery, SCS etc. using the button or link below. If you do not have a blog (or inlinkz will not accept your non blog link) you can email your entry to us via the sidebar link. Good luck!

Have Fun - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.

An InLinkz Link-up

Winners of March Challenge 2017 Quirky Picture This.

Well I think our first challenge was a bit too challenging (or too Quirky) for most people, although it really wasn't that hard if you read the details. We only had 4 entries, but they were all really good.

Here are our winners:

In first place we have:

Lisa with her great ice hockey card.

Congratulations Lisa, you have won a Bugaboo $12 voucher!

In second place we have:

Sue with her fabulous digital scrapbook page.

Sue is in the UK so can choose a mystery ribbon bundle or a £10 voucher to spend with Crafty Ribbons. You might notice that Sue is a member of the Quirky DT, and wonder how she can win a prize - well she entered the challenge before she applied for the DT and has not yet taken part as a DT in a challenge - but she will in April! Not only that she will have some Crafty Ribbons ready for the next challenge sponsored by them!

Crafty Ribbons

In third place is:

Marina with her lovely fresh rowing layout.

Congratulations Marina, you have won a $3 voucher to spend at Bugaboo.

That leaves just one more entry, and we don't want to leave it out:

B.G. Payne Crafts layout of their favourite watering hole!

We want to award you a Quirky Runner's up badge.

Thank you to everyone who entered, and don't forget to check back later today to find out about our new challenge!

Have Fun - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.

April 2016 Quirky Raining Cats and Dogs Challenge - DT Call still on.

Welcome back to another challenge at Quirky Crafts. Thank you to all that entered in our last challenge, they were all fabulous. Let's see if we can get more entries than March. Don't forget that you can enter up to 3 times, but it must still follow the theme and be a new make this month.

The new challenge, for April, I hope, will be as popular and it's chosen by me, Marg, DT member.

The theme is: Quirky Raining Cats and Dogs, and I would like to see any hand made project which has dogs, cats or both on it. In other words you can interpret the theme however you want as long as it has a cat or dog or both on it, stamped, digi, drawn, painted, sewn knitted or crocheted!

Our fabulous sponsor this month is the wonderful:

 Crackerbox Palace.

All of their fantastic images are available in digital form or real rubber stamps, mounted or unmounted or just on cling rubber. The cling rubber version has the image on the back so you can see what you are stamping!

The prizes are:

For our first place winner - 3 digis of your choice.

For our second place winner - 2 digis of your choice.

for our third place winner - 1 digi of your choice.

Cazzy said we don't have any guests this month, and none of last months (Feb) winners have contacted her to collect their badges or prizes. In fact some of January winners haven't contacted her to collect their prizes! Surprised? We are, who doesn't want to collect the great prizes we have?

So here is some inspiration from the team:

NanaConnie

using Crackerbox "Peeking Cat"

This is very CAS.  I printed the image twice; once directly onto the kraft card front along with the sentiment and a second time onto white paper.  I fussy cut the white image and layered it onto the card front right over the image printed there.   I also colored the white areas with a gel pen and chalk.  The lace and bow were added and it was complete.  :-D

Pat

I created my card using "Peeking Cat" from Crackerbox Palace,

embellishing with ribbon, crocheted flower and jeweled flourishes.

Don't you love my made up sentiment?!

I made an easel card with Crackerbox Palace's "Spot the Dog".

Above is the card closed,

and below is the card open with my punchline.

Marg

using Cat and Dog

I have made this card in the shape of an easel card, which does fold
down flat for posting. I decided not to colour the digi in as I thought
it looked really nice in black & white. As I wanted to use orange with
the cream card.  the splash of blue ribbon has silver paw prints
printed on it. The finishing touch was the sentiment, Ruff Day from
Crackerbox Palace as they have a good selection to match.

Cazzy 
using Peeking Cat

This is a card from 2013, which is cheating a little but I am really unwell and have been in bed all week with a nasty virus so I hope I am forgiven. I have also had the folder with my blog photos get corrupted, hope the hard drive isn't about to pack up, and I had to search my blog to find this photo! I will make something new for the reminder, at least one thing!
I have the rubber stamp of Peeking cat which is what I used to make this card, I wanted the cat to be peeking out of a present, so I tried to make it look like that with the ribbons.

Sadly Kelly Patricia is unable to join us this month as planned, she has had to give up crafting for health reasons. We wish her all the best for the future.

So we are still looking for some Quirky team mates - if you are interested in joining us for just one challenge, more than one challenge or permanently please contact Cazzy for details.

To see who won the last challenge see the previous post below this one. {add link to winner's post on the word previous post} Any crafty project is acceptable as usual. Important: BEFORE you link up please add a link to the Quirky Crafts Challenges blog (http://quirkycrafts.blogspot.com - the blog not this post) to your post - or you will not be able to enter. When you have done this you can go ahead and add a link to your blog post or your online photo gallery, SCS etc. using the button or link below. If you do not have a blog (or inlinkz will not accept your non blog link) you can email your entry to us via the sidebar link. Good luck!

Have Fun - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.

An InLinkz Link-up

Winners of the January challenge - Let's Quirky Celebrate!

What a great start to 2016.  We had some lovely entries and a such lot of them. The requirement was to have the word celebrate, or celebration somewhere on your creation.  The 14 entries that were eligible to be in the top three were the ones who had the words "CELEBRATE" or "CELEBRATION" on them somewhere that we could see.   Unfortunately, the others had to be disallowed or it would not be fair to the ones who followed the requirements.

Our sponsor for this challenge was the wonderful Stitchy Bear Digital Outlet, who have such a wide range of digital images and artists that we can always find something we love!

Didn't our new team do well, too, with some lovely examples for our first challenge together?

Sadly, Lynne is unable to continue at the moment, due to health reasons, and we are saying goodbye to her already.  Thank you for all you have done in your first month with us Lynne.  We hope you will come back to us when you are able.

Stitchy Bear Digital Outlet.

Now for the important news that you all want to know, here are our top three who are all prize winners:

In first place with a stunning 1920's Art Deco style card is Yogi!

Congratulations, Yogi, you have won 3 digital images or sets of your choice from the whole of the Stitchy Bear store!

In second place with some crazy cats on her lovely shaker card is Rae Ann!

Congratulations, Rae Ann, you have won 3 digital images or sets from the ones used by the Quirky DT and listed on the challenge post.


In third place with a very pretty shaker card is Stempelomi!

Congratulations, Stempelomi, you have won 2 digital images or sets from the ones used by the Quirky DT and listed on the challenge post.

Finally we have a Runner Up, and that is Kevin with this beautiful card.

Congratulations, Kevin, we have a Special Runner Up badge just for you!

Please, can all of you contact me with your choices of digital images, and I will send your personalised winner's badges and arrange for you to get your prizes.  We would love you all to be guest designers in our March challenge if you are able.   Please let me know if you can join us.

Thank you to everyone who entered, and don't forget to check back at 6 pm today to find out about our new challenge!

If you would like to join our happy team please contact me by email or the contact form, both in the sidebar.

Have Fun - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.

Quirky thank you's and lots of news.

We have a lot of thanks to give out at the end of another Quirky Challenge year.

First of all Lyn and I would like to thank all of the Design Team members for their wonderful projects this year. We are sad that they all had to leave us, for various personal reasons, and we wish them all the best in the future.

We said goodbye to Gabriela a few weeks ago; really she said goodbye to us. We are saying goodbye to Monica, Doris  and Gabriela all at once - leaving just the two of us oldies!

This is the reason (apart from the fact I was ill in bed for most of the last two weeks) that you might not have got a comment on your entries, with a record number of fabulous entries and only the two of us - well it could take a while so maybe you will let us off this time round! Some people entered more than once, in some cases more than three times, of course those entries had to be deleted. If you get a comment on one of your entries, please accept it for all of them.

This is also why we are running a DT call, and the good news is we've actually had some good applicants  and three of them have joined the team so far - but we could do with a couple more, so if you would like to become part of our Quirky team please contact me and I will give you the details of what is involved.

Hot off the press: in 2016 Quirky challenges will be Monthly, starting on the first Sunday in each month and not 2 weekly, the reason for the change is because Lyn and I have a lot to deal with in our daily lives and it will take the pressure off quite a bit. It also means you might be more inclined to apply to join us! You might have seen this mentioned on our Facebook page.

We want to thank all of you Quirkettes for playing along with our Quirky challenges all year, without you there would be no challenge blog! We loved visiting your blogs and seeing your wonderful creations, and we hope to see many more in 2016.

We want to give a BIG thank you to all of our sponsors during 2015, they provided us with some great prizes and wonderful images to use too. Here are the sponsors, they have made our challenges special, thank you all:

Bugaboo

Crafty Ribbons

Crackerbox Palace

Digital Delights

Ditzie Designs

Jiggery Makery

Limited Runs

Meljen Designs (now closed down)

Robyn's Fetish

Stitchy Bear Digital Stamps

Sweet Pea Stamps (closed down)

That Craft Place

The Cutting Cafe

So everybody can give themselves a round of applause now - hip hip hooray!

Don't forget to come back on Sunday 3rd January to meet the new team, and to find out about our first challenge of 2016!

Have a great Christmas, or Holiday break and see you in the New Year - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.

Design Team Call and 2 Month Guest Designer call.

If you are looking for the latest challenge scroll down to the post below or click HERE

The Quirky Crafts Team are recruiting for a new member of the team!

There are some requirements and we want to see what you can do, the current DT will make a team decision on who is going to join us.

The person we are looking for:
1. Must have a blog, if you don't already have one now is a good time to start! Of course you need to be able to take reasonable quality photos of your work and post them on your blog with details and links when challenges go live. You also need to include links in your sidebar to Quirky and the rest of the DT.

2. Must take it in turns choosing the next Quirky challenge, which may involve choosing a challenge that fits the available images from the sponsor.

3. Must be able to make up to two projects every two weeks to the challenge requirements, which may be cards or other paper craft projects.

4. Must choose and use one or more of the sponsor's digital images per project per challenge.

5. Must upload your own DT example photos to the Quirky Crafts challenge blog post and add your own write up and links before the challenge post goes live.

6. Must comment on some of the entrants blogs about entries to challenges, on behalf of Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team, in accordance with the allocation system.

7. When challenges close, must look at all entries and choose their top 6 favourites (which meet the challenge requirements) and communicate them to the team in time for the winners post to go live the following lunchtime. (Challenges close lunchtimes Saturday, the winners have to be worked out and post completed before lunchtime Sunday).

8. On your challenge turn, you must collect the team choices, total up the scores and schedule the winners post from the previous challenge to the Quirky blog. You must also draft the new challenge post for everyone to add to.

9. If another DT colleague has problems, must be able to cover in emergencies.

10. Last but not least - must have a Quirky imagination and sense of humour, we will be looking at your blogs to see if this is true!

Please note:
 a) the team communicates via a closed Yahoo group, you will need to create a Yahoo account to take part.
b) images provided by the sponsor are solely for your own use and must not be distributed to others or sold, in other words the sponsor's policies must be adhered to.
c) Yahoo is fine, it is just a group thing where I put the sponsors images so the team can get them easily, and there is a message facility so when you send a message everyone gets it by email, and you can reply by email too, or you can go to Yahoo and reply. Once you sign up for Yahoo you don't need to join anything except our closed group if you don't want to. We will help you loads if you join the team.

So after those Quirky 10 Demandments, here is what we want you to do:

1. Enter a project into each of the next 3 Quirky challenges (either starting with 14th Oct, or the current challenge and two following challenges) and put DT after your name each time.

2. Email Cazzy and tell us something about yourself and why you think you would be good for the Quirky challenge blog.

3.Add your blog link below with DT after your name.

Inlinkz will remain open until  3rd November, after which it is too late for DT applicants to enter the 3 challenges required.

If you make it to the top three in any one of the three challenges you will of course be Guest Designer two weeks later, and if that will count as one of your 3 challenges if it falls at the same time, in other words you won't need to enter another make challenge for which you are GD.

For all of you who would like to be on the permanent DT but don't make it this time round we may offer you a 2 month Guest Designer spot.

If you don't want the permanent DT position and would like to be considered for a 2 month GD spot, enter your link with GD after your name and don't forget to enter 3 challenges as above.

2 month GDs requirements:
1. Must have a blog, if you don't already have one now is a good time to start! Of course you need to be able to take reasonable quality photos of your work and post them on your blog.

2. Must be able to make one GD project every two weeks to fit the challenge requirements (can make up to two) which may be a card or other paper craft project, and email a photo to Cazzy at least two days before the challenge starts.

3. May choose a digi image from the selection available to the team.

4. Must use a sponsor's digi image on your project.

5. Must not reveal challenge details in advance of challenges going live.

6. You may be required to comment on allocated entries to challenges on behalf of Quirky Crafts.

7. You must email Cazzy or we won't be able to contact you.

8. Ideally you should have entered some Quirky challenges in the past, or should enter some now so we can see how you handle our challenges!

Please note: images provided by the sponsor are solely for your own use and must not be distributed to others or sold, in other words the sponsor's policies must be adhered to.

If there is anything you don't understand or want more details on please email Cazzy using the link in the sidebar.

Inlinkz will remain open until 11:30 am GMT 3rd November, after which it is too late for DT applicants to enter the 3 challenges required, please click on the big blue frog at the top to enter.

We look forward to seeing what you can do, and perhaps joining us!
The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.