Welcome to today's Guest Designer, Jennie!

Today we welcome Jennie of Live the Dream as our Guest Designer. Jennie was chosen by the DT as the winner of the 'A Grateful Welcome' challenge. So, let's move on to hear from Jennie!

I am absolutely thrilled to be back here Guest Designing for this challenge. Frilly and Funkie is one of my favourite places to visit and I am always very appreciative of the "how to" posts and inspirational projects made by you all.

I live on the remote UK island of Shetland (closer to Norway than the Scottish Mainland). My husband and I have lived here for 35 years and feel very privileged to be able to enjoy the wonderful way of life here and the amazing natural environment around us. Life is very busy with family both here and on the Scottish Mainland and of course enjoying our crafting journey (my husband is a woodturner!). I have crafted all my life but am really enjoying my current experiments with paper and mixed media - I am also a little obsessed with making flowers!

For this wonderful challenge I have made a Tissue Box Cover which will be a present for a favourite friend this Christmas.

I found a great tutorial for making the base box on Splitcoaststampers: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/tissueboxcover/

(And was delighted to learn that US tissue boxes are the same size as UK ones!) I made the box firstly in brown coloured cardstock and then covered it with Maja Design papers. Then it was down to decorating with my usual favourite bits and pieces: vintage lace and some handmade shabby roses using the Tattered Florals Die (there is a tutorial on my blog here: http://jennie-livethedream.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/paper-rose-tutorial.html). I used the smaller pieces of Maja Design papers to make these little flowers using Donna Salazar Bitty Blossoms die (one of my favourite dies).

I used a die cut piece of Spring Greenery painted with Picket Fence Distress Paint and added a heart crackled with Tattered Rose Distress Crackle Paint.

This was quite a large box to decorate but the large piece of Spring Greenery helped!

I'm sure you'll agree the Jennie's box is beautiful and has provided lots more inspiration for the current challenge 'A Gift from the Heart'. If you would like to be in with a chance to join us as Guest Designer too all you need to do is join in! 

Friday Focus on Buttons!!

A warm welcome to you on this lovely autumn day! I'm thrilled to be here with you for the Friday Focus on buttons. During the next two weeks Linda is generously offering an additional 15% discount on all button products at The Funkie Junkie Boutique. My project features wooden buttons but Linda carries a full selection of almost any type of button your heart could desire. Seriously, you can never have too many buttons in your craft stash!

I often embellish my projects with buttons and especially enjoy using them as flower centers, but I wanted to get away from flowers this time around. I adore vintage button cards so I decided to create my own little Button Card Mini Albums.

I started with a stamp from my stash. My apologies for not knowing the manufacturer, but this is a used clear stamp I won on E-bay with no brand markings. I stamped the image in Tattered Rose and Seedless Preserves Distress inks onto Maja Design papers then cut my stamped images to form the button card shape.

Next I adhered coordinating wooden buttons from Linda's shop that I tied off with tiny twine bows. You can create your button cards using any shape you like. A rectangle would be simpler and more traditional. I was just working with what I had on hand.

I cut 5 chipboard pages for each album, covering them in Maja design papers and distressing the edges. All of the inner pages include an area for journaling or a photo mat.

I considered adding flowers and leaves to my covers but ended up loving the simplicity of the button cards. The sweet and shabby buttons needed no additional embellishment.

I punched a hole in each page and attached the albums with ring binders that I primed with Gesso and painted with Antique Linen Distress Paint.

I gave in to one final urge to embellish by adding bows to each album.

Thanks so much for joining me today at Frilly and Funkie. Now it's time to take advantage of that extra 15% discount and re-stock those button boxes! Sending wishes for days filled with crafty fun!

Hugs,

Ranger Inkssentials Non-Stick Craft Sheet	Tim Holtz Tonic Studios 9.5" Titanium Scissors	Ranger Inkssentials Glossy Accents	Ranger Inkssentials Wonder Tape - 1/8"	Dina Wakley Media Mediums - White Gesso
Maja Design 6x6" Scrapbook Paper Pad - Vintage Summer Basics	Maja Design 6x6" Scrapbook Paper Pad - Vintage Autumn Basics	Maja Design 6x6" Scrapbook Paper Pad - Vintage Spring Basics	Ranger Tim Holtz Seasonal Distress Ink Pad - Seedless Preserves	Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad - Tattered Rose
Ivory/White Jute Twine	Tim Holtz Ranger Distress Paint - Antique Linen	Prima Embellishments Wood Buttons - Lyric	Floral Decorated Wooden Buttons - 15/16"

It's All About Wendy...

Hello everyone and welcome. Jenny here as your host for the second week of the latest Frilly and Funkie challenge. We are celebrating all things Wendy Vecchi for this challenge so let's see your 'Wendy' style projects (your entry does not need to include any actual Wendy Vecchi products, only her style).  If you are unfamiliar with her products and style take a look at her amazing blog HERE and her Pinterest boards HERE, as well as at the fabulous projects created by the Design Team.

The winner will earn a Guest DT spot here at the Frilly and Funkie challenge blog, and everyone who enters will have the chance to win a randomly drawn $25 spending spree at The Funkie Junkie Boutique.

The guidelines for entering are simple: create a new vintage or shabby chic project following the challenge theme, link it below to your post (not just your blog) and also include a link back to this challenge in your post. You can combine our challenge with up to 10 challenges (including this one) to be in with a chance of winning. Make sure you follow these rules as unfortunately we have had to eliminate entrants from the prize draws in the past when they have entered too many other challenges. If you are entering through a public forum please use the keyword F&F. Also, please be sure to turn off your Word Verification so our design team can leave comments on your blogs.

Now it's time to unveil what the Funkie side of the team have created for this theme (click on the photos for close up views and the links to see more on each team member's blog)...

Jenny Marples - Pushing The Right Buttons

Nicole Wright- Canadian Nickel Scrap'n

Nicole Wright- Canadian Nickel Scrap'n

Sue Carrington - Stamping Sue Style

Linda Coughlin - The Funkie Junkie

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WEEK ONE

And here's what the Frilly side of the team have created for this theme (click on the photos for close up views and the links to see more on each team member's blog)...

Nancy Dynes ~ Tattered Treasures

Rebecca Deeprose ~ Paper Primrose

Cec Wintonyk - CW Card Creations

Linda Coughin - The Funkie Junkie

With all that inspiration to get you thinking it's now your turn to share your Wendy Vecchi style projects using the link below. We look forward to seeing what you come up with. And don't forget to come back to see what the Funkie side of the Design Team come up with too.

For now take care of yourselves, Jenny xxx

Challenge Winners - A Grateful Welcome

Welcome to the Frilly and Funkie challenge blog for the start of a new week, and it's time to announce the winners of the 'A Grateful Welcome' challenge. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to enter with some fantastic projects. Although there were fewer entrants for this one, we were still left with some difficult choices to make due to the high standard of those who did. This time the Design Team voted for #4 Jennie Atkinson.

Jennie's incredibly stylish textured wreath was the perfect home decor item for providing a grateful welcome to any guests at this time of year, and we loved the way she'd created those realistic leaves. Congratulations Jennie on being our favourite for the 'A Grateful Welcome' challenge and winning the opportunity to be a Guest Designer here at Frilly and Funkie for a future challenge.

And Random.org has chosen a winner for our $25 gift certificate to The Funkie Junkie Boutique. Our congratulations this time go to #5 Sandy Diller.

A huge thanks from the Frilly and Funkie team to everyone who took part in this challenge and congratulations again to our winners. Please email Linda at thefunkiejunkie@gmail.com for the codes for the winner's badge and to give us your email address for the Guest Designer details (Jennie) and for the gift certificate details (Sandy).

Our current challenge, 'It's All About Wendy', runs through Tuesday, November 18th. We hope to see you entering this time around so that you too can be in with a chance to win. And remember, you can enter up to 10 challenges including ours, and a maximum of 3 entries per person to our challenge. Please remember to link back to our challenge in your entry and mention in your post that you are entering this Frilly and Funkie challenge.

Have a great week everyone!

Saturday Step X Step - Christmas Card

Hello everyone, it is Cec here and it is my turn to present the Saturday Step X Step and I decided to show you how you can make a shabby Christmas card that is still flat enough to go in the mail and not cost an extra arm and a leg for postage.  So here is how I went about it.

I started by stamping this Tim Holtz blueprint stamp on water colour paper with Black Archival ink.  After I trimmed it down to the size I wanted, I decided to try my hand at colouring it with Distress Inks using a water brush.  I normally colour with Prismacolor pencils and blend with odorless mineral spirits so this technique was a bit of a stretch for me.

I am happy with results (you will see it in the finished card below) but wish I could have gotten a bit more shading.  I did learn that you need to grab as much colour from the pad on the first pass because if you have to go back too often, the brush has too much water in it.  I also realized that I had to use a couple colours to get the shading as I would have using any other medium.

Here are the colours I used:

Body - Pumice Stone
Arms - Walnut Stain
Scarf & Band on Hat - Festive Berries and Aged Mahogany
Hat - Black Soot
Holly Leaves - Peeled Paint and Forest Moss
Nose - Spiced Marmalade and Rusty Hinge

I also added some Xmas Red Stickles to the berries on the hat.

Next I started preparing my papers. I decided to stick with traditional colours so the first thing I did was to emboss a piece of red card stock.  I also cut a piece of striped Bo Bunny paper that I found in my stash and a backing piece from the Mistletoe collection by Memory Box that I have had for ages.  Next I distressed the edges of each piece with my scissors and then curled and tore them more with my fingers.

Once the papers were distressed, I took a makeup sponge and some white craft paint to the edges and to the raised areas of the embossed piece (a tip from my friend Pamellia).

The next step was to make the two snowflakes.  These were kraft corrugated cardboard and were a little gift from Linda at The Funkie Junkie Boutique but I wanted to make them white so I sprayed them with some White Linen Dylusions spray.  There really was no need to lay the colour on quite that heavily because I knew I was going to do more with them but the spray nossle wanted to spit rather than spray.  This seems to happen after the bottles sit for a while because this isn't the first time it has happened to one of my sprays.  Good thing I was wearing an apron - lesson learned once before.

Once the snowflakes were dry, I sponged a wee bit of paint on them and then hit them with some crystal glitter while they were still wet.

I created a simple tag with a stamped sentiment and added a loopy bow of burlap string.  When I put the card together I also added a little piece of burlap and some white buttons from my stash (the flattest ones I could find).

 

So you can see that with some texture and just a few simple embellishments you can make a great card that will go in the mail. I know in some countries a square card costs extra to mail but not here in Canada - thickness and weight are the determining factor. So if your country charges extra for square, make a rectangle - it will be just as gorgeous.

The following products used in the creation of this card came from The Funkie Junkie Boutique (and don't forget, the Distress Ink pads are on special offer right now!):

Welcome to today's Guest Designer, Lynn!

Today we welcome Lynn Price of Experiments in Paper as our Guest Designer. Lynn was chosen as the DT winner of the 'Colours of Autumn' challenge and we are so pleased to have her join us here at Frilly and Funkie.

So, now it's time to hear from Lynn.

Hi – this is Lynn here. I am delighted that my initial foray into online challenges gave me this opportunity to stretch my nascent skills even further.

I am a nursing professor at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, with a geriatric practice as a nurse practitioner. These two job responsibilities keep me pretty busy, but I try to give some evenings and most weekends to exploring the world of paper crafting. I am new to all things paper, having come from many years of designing my own quilts. I thought paper would let me complete projects a bit quicker, and so far that is the case – though the “what the heck am I going to do with this” stage seems just as long!

I have spent the past year watching a lot of online tutorials/posts as well as taking on-ground classes, and of course collecting supplies! Now I venture into actually using this stash – and still learning from all of you!

For the "It's All About Wendy" theme I made a two-sided triptych sampler using Wendy's archival inks, stamps and embossing powders, as well as some of her favorite techniques.

I'm sure you'll agree Lynn's project is beautiful and has provided even more inspiration for the current 'It's All About Wendy' challenge.

If you would like to join us as a Guest Designer too all you need to do is join in with the current challenge too.