Week 30 Challenge - Christmas In July

Hi everyone - hope you're ready for another challenge!

Before we go onto this week's challenge we need to announce the top three from Week 28 Challenge which was Summer Fun.  Some really fabulous creations were entered but there can only be three lucky winners and they are:

1st Place - Chris V - please use the code PD1W3028 to claim your prize
2nd Place - Norma - please use the code PD2W3028 to claim your prize
3rd Place - Cheryl Anne - please use the code PD3W3028 to claim your prize
  
Congratulations to you all - you have all won a copy of our latest collection Bonbon Belles which is worth £17.99!!!. Please all email Nikky and don't forget to quote your winner's code - we cannot release prizes without it!  Blinkies are in the sidebar for you to grab.

We have a few little rules which makes our life a lot easier when we come visiting your blog:
1.  Please follow the challenge theme!
2.  Only enter your creation into a maximum of 10 challenges including Polkadoodles
3.  Please link your blog post and not your blog address with the linky tool - 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 word verification on your blog it really does slow us down when leaving comments - please consider turning off word verification especially as the comment moderation has a spam section.
 

Now for our challenge for this week and the theme chosen is:

Christmas in July! 

Yes, we cardmakers are already thinking of the festive season even though the heat is blistering here in the UK, so get your Christmas stash at the ready and show us your wares!  Our favourite top 3 entries for this challenge will each win a copy of our brand new Christmas collection, Angelberry Christmas, which is just adorable and is worth £11.99!

Lou: for my card, I designed my own mittens template to make a free standing swing card thingy (lol). All the paper, embellies and sentiment are from the Angelberry Christmas CD. When the card is "flat" it will fit in to an A5 envelope.

Kim - My Christmas in July card features a gorgeous digi and papers and sentiment all from the gorgeous 'Angelberry Christmas'!  I've coloured the digi with alcohol pens, added lots of glittery stuff, some ribbon, punched snowflakes and pearls.

Ruth:  It appears that I have broken with tradition this week and gone for the Studio 12 cd - Gingerbread Twist - probably because I was feeling rather peckish and these gingerbread people look scrummy to eat!  All papers and images are from the cd and I've added organza ribbon from my stash.

 JAN - I have made a central stepper card using paper and images from the brand new 'Angelberry Christmas' CD. I couldn't resist this little guy - can you see his shiny nose (with a little help from my glossy accents!)

Lizzie- For my card  I used a digi image from the new mini CD Angelberry Christmas I coloured her using promarkers. Papers are from the Gingerbread twist CD. I used my Stickles glitter glue to jazz up the Marianne die cuts of the stars and icicles. boy it sparkles this card !!! Added some gems and voila !!!

I also made this card using the pre-coloured image and embellies this is all from the Angelberry CD. I used the embellies to make banners !!!  Hope you like it !

Shell- For my card this week I have used the gorjuss new Angelberry Christmas cd. I cut a ice skate shape on my cameo, then added a little trim and a flower to finish

So there is our inspiration this week!
You have until 12 noon on Sunday 4th August to enter and good luck!

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A bottle hanger for your Christmas table

Good morning, it's Anjie here with a little tutorial for you. I'm going to show you how to make a bottle hanger for your Christmas table for a bit of decoration. I've used papers and a topper from the fabulous Angelberry Christmas CD.

To start with I took one of the toppers into Word and added some text using a text box with no lines or background. 

 I then placed the text box over the topper creating my own topper.

Next you need a piece of Kraft card, some papers of your choice, a circle punch, a score board and a corner rounder.

Cut the Kraft card to 10 x 21 cm and your background paper to 9.5 x 20.5 cm. Round the corners and glue together. Place on your score board and score at 7 cm.

. Turn over and find and mark the centre of the top panel. Slide the punch over the card placing the + in the centre of the punch and punch out the circle.

Cut out another piece of Kraft card to 9 x 13 cm and a piece of coordinating paper to 8.5 x 12.5 cm. Round the corners and glue together. Mat this onto the bottom panel.

Cut out the topper you made in word earlier and put 3D foam onto the back and mount onto the bottom panel.

If you have a scalloped circle or a larger circle punch you can strengthen the the punched circle at the top. To do this punch out a hole using the circle punch you used before, then place the next punch over this lining it up and punch out.

Then glue this into place around the the hole at the top.

Now you have a lovely centre piece for your Christmas table.

Week 29 - Let it Fly

Hello there and welcome to our new challenge at Polka Doodles!

Before we go onto this week's challenge we need to announce the top three from Week 27 Challenge which was to Make Your Own Background.  Some really fabulous creations were entered but there can only be three lucky winners and they are:

1st Place - Debbie Simpson - you win a £10 voucher to spend on the Polka Doodles website - please use the code PD1W2927 to claim your prize
2nd Place - Juliet A - you a win a Download Bundle - please use the code PD1W2927 to claim your prize
3rd Place - Nancy D - you win a Download - please use the code PD1W2927 to claim your prize
 

Congratulations to you all. Please all email Nikky and don't forget to quote your winner's code - we cannot release prizes without it!  Blinkies are in the sidebar for you to grab.

We have a few little rules which makes our life a lot easier when we come visiting your blog:

1.  Please follow the challenge theme!
2.  Only enter your creation into a maximum of 10 challenges including Polkadoodles
3.  Please link your blog post and not your blog address with the linky tool - 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 word verification on your blog it really does slow us down when leaving comments - please consider turning off word verification especially as the comment moderation has a spam section.
 

Now for our challenge for this week and the theme chosen by our new teamie Claire C is to:

  Let It Fly

So we'd like to see your creations featuring anything that flies so it could be birds, butterflies, bees, fairies, angels - we're sure you get the picture!

We have some fantastic prizes this week too:

1st Prize is a Fredericka CD rom, 2nd prize is a Download Bundle and 3rd prize is a Download.

Karon - For my card this week, I decided to use a sentiment (by me) as my focus.  I used the new Bonbon Belles CD and used the precoloured hot air balloon, three different sizes and two of them are popped up on foam dots.  The papers are also from this fabulous CD compilation.

Claire C. I've used this  beautiful image from Fredericka Mini CD collection and created a scene using distress inks and a brayer. I'll be back later with a tutorial if you fancy having a try at this technique. 

Asha - I'm flying a flag and banner. The image is just one of the many gorgeous toppers available fromthe Bonbon Belles Double CD, as is the patterned paper. Extras from my stash include some ribbon and bling. Instead of adding a sentiment, I highlighted one from the background paper by stitching around it. 

Bev here with this week's DT piece. I used Heather a pre coloured image from Bonbon Belles, I used some contrasting card from my craft box. adding an embossed oval behind the image but everything else on the card is from the tropical sorbet section although you will be spoilt for choice as there's so much packed onto this fabulous double CD.

Lizzie - For my card I used the wonderful Bonbon Belles CD. I made my card as a heart easel card, using distress inks. I cut flowers out from the CD, layering the middles and adding gems for the centers. I then cut out one of the Owlie images from the CD and popped her on top, added some gems as stoppers and voila ! I should have glittered up my owlie  I just remembered !!

Fliss - I've also made my card with the new and totally gorgeous Bonbon Belles new double CD which has so many possibilities as you'll see over the coming weeks. My creation is quite simple and features one of the fabulous butterflies and most of the elements are from the Chocolate Lime collection (I can still remember loving those as a child!). I cut out one of the gorgeous floral frames from the Marshmallow collection as I love pink and brown combined with green and added this to the card blank with lime polka dot paper, a stunning butterfly and one of the many fabulous sentiments.

Alethea - I had so much fun making this card using the new BonBon Belles double cd. I used the pre-coloured hot air balloon which I layered and cut out the flags so it looks like they were blowing in the wind! I also 3d'd the basket and the flying sign, which I added the sentiment from!! I put it all onto the cloud paper which is also from the BonBon Belles double cd. I then added the bird and the buttons! I decided I the hot air balloon needed a passenger so I found this sweet little girl on the Double Sprinkle of Kraft cd rom. To finish off the card I rubbed some white shimmer chalk over the bird and clouds!

Miria - I made a quick and easy tag using a ready-made one from fab BonBon Belles double cd.. 
I matted it on kraft and added two matching butterflies from the same cd to give dimension; I distressed it all. No embellies but a mesh ribbon.

Sally - Hi there! This weeks challenge is Let it Fly.  So I thought of beautiful butterflies.  I chose two butterflies from the Bonbon Belle CD Rom in turquoise and brown, printed them on white photo paper and then on vellum. I also printed off one of the background papers with butterflies on of course from the CD Rom also. Distressed the edges with my pan pastels and adhered it to a Kraft card.
I also had a flower die cut which I also distressed the flowers with a light coating of pan pastels, adhered it to the card added a bow and the two butterflies putting the vellum ones on the top of the others to make their wings like they were in flight. I also added some pearls on the flowers and butterflies and a sentiment.

Lidia Hi all First of all I wish you a super weekend and tell you that I loved this challenge because I really like butterflies and that uses a lot to make my card from the Bonbon Belle CD Rom that uses paper also found in this CD hope you like!

You have until 12 noon on Sunday 28 July to enter and good luck!

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Creating a brayered scene with a digital image

Good morning, Claire C here with a tutorial to show you how to create a brayered scene using a digital stamp, I've used one of the lovely images from the Fredericka CD, she's called Anya and I wanted to sit her in front of a lovely summery scene.

Now your scene is finished you can colour your image and finish your card

Thanks for visiting, don't forget to scroll down to see all the gorgeous projects from my lovely teamies for this weeks challenge.

Claire xx

Love and hugs

Hi all, it's Dee here with today's post for Studio 12. I used an image from the new mini CD Angelberry Christmas and the papers are from The Studio 12 Gingerbread twist CD.  I printed the image onto vellum, then coloured it in with colouring pencils on the back, which gives it a lovely muted effect.  I inked the edges with a brown chalk ink pad and fixed the vellum panel in place with some small heart brads.

Don't forget to check back tomorrow for the weekly Polka Doodles challenge.

Using a word document to create a one layer card

As a person who can be a little bamboozled by technology at times, I thought it would be nice to go back to basics to create my project. I use word to create many of my sentiments or use it to create pages of designs to then print on Safmat. So this made me think, whether I could use the same skills to create a one layer card and you guessed it, I did!!!

I am using Word in Windows 7 for this project.

Open a word document and change the paper orientation to landscape. As I will be making my card front first, I need to work on the right hand side of the open page. To begin insert your first paper design from the CD of your choice. I am using the Bonbon Belles CD and in particular the Coconut Ice and Apple Lagoon sections.

Begin by inserting a design on to your page using the "insert picture" option. Once the paper design is on your page you will need to format it so that you can then move it around your page. Highlight the design and then use the right hand button on your mouse; this will bring up a sub menu (see photo below). Scroll down to "wrap text" and then over to "square". This will allow you to move the paper design anywhere on your page. Remember to do this for every item you insert in to your design.

Once this part is done, you can now resize and move your design to cover the right hand side of your page. If you want to make the paper a set size, you will see that when the item is highlighted (blue lines appear around design), in the top right hand corner of the menu bar, there is a size section. You can enter the dimensions you want to use in here (see photo below) ...

To create my sand/land part, I am going to insert a shape. Go to the "insert" section in your tool bar and then along to "shapes" (see photo below). Choose the shape that you want to use and then draw it on to your page.

Now did you know that you can change your shape and make it do lots of things? Make sure your shape is highlighted (see photo below) by clicking on it. A "drawing tools" tool bar will now appear. Begin at the "shape fill" section and scroll down to "picture" section. Click on this  ...

This will now let you fill the shape with any design you like. Highlight the design you want to use and press "insert". Your shape will now "fill" with your design.

Your shape will still have a solid line around it and as I wanted the two designs to blend, I have chosen to remove the line. Using the same section as for above, go down to "shape outline" and a further sub menu appears. Make sure you then highlight "no outline" (see photo below) ...

There is still even more you can do to your shape .... like add a shadow, reflection, glow and more! This again can be found in the same section on your tool bar as for the above previous actions. Photo below gives you an idea of some of the options but you can have fun playing with them!

Well here's the "designing bit". Add a selection of images you want to use to create your card front. You will need to make sure that you "format" them (as per the background) and resize if necessary.

Here's my finished card front and I have layered the gorgeous, lickle beach huts one behind the other. I have added a sentiment to the front of my card but not quite sure if I really like it's placement there .... maybe it will go on the inside. Print off your design and if you are using an inkjet printer, turn your card over to print on the other side.

Here is the design for the inside of my card which is identical to the background I created on my card front. For speed, "copy and paste" each layer, placing them side by side. I then printed off the design.

Okay there is one bit you might need to do as well which is make sure each object is in the correct order. If you want to bring a design to the front or back, highlight (click on) the design and then use/click  your right mouse button. A sub menu will appear. Scroll down to either "bring to front" or "send to back" and this will place your image either in the foreground or background. In the photo below (as an example), I have asked the yellow paper to go to the back and you can see how it has disappeared behind the clouds paper.

Once you have finished printing, fold your card in half and trim down if necessary. Voila, a simple, one layer card.

However, me being me, couldn't resist adding some texture, shape and height to my card! I created a shaped effect by cutting around the beach huts and clouds, plus layering some of the beach hut elements.

On the inside I created an inner panel with the sentiment, finishing off the design with that gorgeous bunting. I have also printed off some more embellishments from the CD, to add to my picture.

A closer look at the top of the card, cutting around the clouds to create an unusual edging to the top.

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and it has inspired you to use your word package in a completely different way.

Lou
x