Week 1 - Giveaway & Shades of Grey sketch

Well helloooo Polkadoodley's! Happy New Year!! We all hope you've had an amazing Christmas and New Year and it's now time to work some festive calories off with lots of fab new challenges! We have some really exciting things going on this year so make sure you check in regularly for all the news...

We are all VERY excited to announce our brand new Polkadoodles Club - the Pen and Paper Circle! There are no costly membership costs to this, you just sign up on pre-order if you want the issue and wait for it to drop through your door - simples! We'll be bringing you an exclusive stamp and some other goodies each time together with a fabulous step by step project magazine which is entirely put together by the Design Team and is full of inspiration - there will be at least 12 projects plus loads of other hints and tips each issue! If that's not a good enough reason to sign up we don't know what is! We're overwhelmed by the response so far (Nikky has had to quadruple the initial stock she ordered) but you still have until 15th Janua

ry to order your kit, so get in now to make sure you can get hold of yours!
Also, make sure you tune into Create and Craft TV (if you can't get it you can see it on www.catchup.tv) on Sat 7th Jan at 11am and 4pm for lots more ideas and inspiration with Nikky!

Before we get onto the challenge let's announce the winners from challenge 49 - A Quick Christmas Card:

1st place: Julie B, 2nd place: Neli, 3rd place: Pauline - well done to all of you!

Please email Nikky for your blinkies - the first placed winner receives a £10 voucher to spend in the Polkadoodles shop!! Please put in the subject field of your email your placing and the challenge number - this will make Nikky's life a lot easier!

The Polkadoodlers have a few little rules which makes our life a lot easier when we come visiting your blogs:

1. Please follow the challenge!

2. Only enter your creation into a maximum of 10 challenges including Polka Doodles.

3. Please link your blog post and not your blog address with the link below - this saves us from searching your blog for your entry.

4. And please no back-linking to previous posts - these will be disregarded from our top three voting.

5. If you have comment moderation and word verification on your blog it really does slow us down when leaving comments - please consider turning word verification off

especially now that comment moderation has a spam section.

It's my turn - Nikky - to set this week's challenge and for this one the lovely peeps at Letraset have kindly donated a special set of Flexmarkers which I've asked them to put together for us...all in shades of Grey! The challenge runs until Sunday 15 January at 12noon GMT.

I love using sketches and find them really useful when I've lost my mojo, but in addition to the sketch I also asked everyone to use different shades of grey for this challenge too. You can do this with your papers or just with your image if you like but the project overall needs to have a monochromatic look. If you're clever you might be able to squeeze some greyish blue hues in there too. So let's see what everyone made...

Nikky...*cough* I set the challenge and kinda missed an important point - the shades of grey bit LOL!! I decided to upload my card anyway and if you want some great tutorials on how to colour with Grey tones then get yourself a copy of Simply Cards and Papercraft magazine this month and checkout the first in my series of monthly features I'll be doing this year which are focused on colouring techniques. On this card I used Kuretake's Kurecolor alcohol markers and our Be Nighbours range of rubber stamps. The papers are my favourite of all time and are from the Pretty Sweet CD...

You can see a tutorial on my blog for the colouring for this one and also the samples which used Greys in the magazine features here.

Josie: Loved this challenge for the sketch but also the colour shades. I recently got all the grey Pro Markers and this was good practice. First of all I printed the backing paper from the Pretty Tuff CD Rom, then I took the image from the Pretty Sweet CD Rom. I coloured the image, the ribbon and the flowers with my grey Pro Markers. On the rose in the image I went over it with a clear Wink of stella glitter pen and glossy accents on top of that. I then added a Craftworks Sentiment and some Frou Frou Bling.

Daniele, what a great challenge, I have used images and papers from The Love & Cherish Cd to create this anniversary card, adding a feather and grey pearls for a touch of bling.

Anne - I used the Not For Girls Definitely For Men CD and started by colouring up the image using my copic markers. Then It was a simply a print job with these fabulous papers. I also loaded the plain grey papers into my graphics programme and added my own text to match ( or as near as I could) so it all matched. Some brads, eyelets and a bit of white cord for the embellies and I was sorted.

Lana - For my card I have used papers and toppers from the 'Not for Girls Definitely for Men CD. I was worried when I realised we needed to make our creations in shades of Grey as I love bright and colourful cards, however I think the mod scooter images are perfect for this challenge. I did the complete card using Photoshop.

Doreen - For my card I used the image frome the fantastic Pretty Sweet CD Rom and the paper is from the Pretty Tuff CD Rom. I embellished with ribbon, lace and flowers. I love the monochromatic look.

Miria For my card I used images, sentiment and papers from Pretty Tuff. I coloured Claude and the car with Zig Art&Graphic Twin and Wink of stella.

Joanna - For my card I used papers from the Sundae of Seasons CD and the stamp from the Neighbours range. The image was coloured with water colour pencils and cosmic shimmer water colour paints. To embellish the card I used lots of die cuts and glitter!

Claire - Loved this challenge Nikky. Gave me the chance to use up some papers I'd printed from Not for Girls cd alongside the cute dog from the Pretty Tuff cd coloured with promarkers, a little added doodling and crackle glaze.

Fliss - The image, sentiment and background paper on my card perfect for the boys in the family came from the fabulous Pretty Tuff CD and the script paper from the Not For Girls CD. My oval panel was embossed with a brick wall folder and inked with Pumice Stone Distress ink. My image was coloured first with Promarkers in all the shades of grey I possess and I then added some detail with Prisma pencils.

Ruth: I've delved way back into the Polkadoodle archives and used Not For Girls cd for all my card plus a bit of embossed acetate (you can just about see it!) plus some buttons and embroidery thread from my stash.

Net - I've been norty! So no change there then ;)) I've printed out various grey papers from the Pretty Tuff CD - (which is B E Y O N D lush) I then inked up the super sweet BevvieBoo and coloured her in various greys. Then I thought... which is always dangerous..... and the pink came out. Well just a bit and then pink card to layer up with. I hope I'm forgiven.... but i

ts stuck down so I guess I am.

Alan: For this Challenge l used the FAB cd PRETTY TUFF. Has loads of images that you can build and create a card for those Men/Boys in your social circle. I tried to keep it clean. All the papers and images were worked on using a simple D.T.P that we all have access to and normally some are free to get hold of. Any questions please ask. will reply a.s.a.p Happy crafting in 2012 you all.

Good luck with the challenge (please remember our rules!) and the deadline for entries is Sunday 15 January at 12noon GMT.
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