Quirky come back!

Hi Quirky fans, if you are following on Facebook you might already know that we are resuming challenges on March 6th!

We have some new team members joining us, and we are still recruiting so if you want to play on the Quirky team please contact me for details.

I'm still here - just about - after a very tough year. Marg is still here too.

The new team members are:

Diane Marsh.

Diane is actually one of the original team who is rejoining us. Check out Diane's blog - Keep Forever Cards

Tina Rea-Davies aka Tinz

, check out her blog Crafty Managerie.

Jane Willis

 check out Jane's blog - Onions and Paper.

A big welcome to all of you!

Our first sponsors are lined up and so we have great prizes as usual. I hope you will all join us and play Quirky again. Check back on March 6th for details.

Have Fun - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.

Welcome to the new Quirky Team!

We would like to say a big WELCOME to our new AWESOME new Quirky Team mates, and here they all are introducing themselves to you:

Lynne

Hi, it's Lynne here from Pittsburgh, PA where I live with the love of my life, Bob, and our zoo which consists of a black lab, Princess, and 3 kitties - Patches, Chloe, and Sadie.

I've been crafting since what seems forever starting with sitting under a quilting frame threading needles for my grandmother's quilting ladies and then graduating to knitting, crocheting, sewing, machine embroidery, quilting, doll sculpting with the latest being paper crafting!

Paper crafting became a great alternative for quilting as it was cutting little pieces into big pieces into one cohesive project when I had shattered my left arm!!

My projects are basically for the loves of my life, my beautiful grandchildren ages 6 months to 11 years of age including 2 from my beautiful daughter (Lily age 4 and Adam age 2) and my 2 beautiful daughters from a previous marriage sharing with me their children (Luke age 6 months, Nick age 9 years, Zack age 11 whose mother is Jean and Sasha age 10 whose mother is Barbara).

NanaConnie.

I'm a Nana to 6 and great-Nana to 2; family is very important to me, second only to my love of God and church.  I've been crafting all my life and my interests include sewing, crocheting, painting, ceramics, short stories and poetry, plus creative cooking and baking.   Once I retired, I really discovered papercrafts, including scrapbooking and card making.  These days, making cards seems to have eclipsed all other creative pursuits because of the relatively immediate reward of seeing the completed project.  I love serving on Design Teams and playing in challenges.  I'm so excited about joining the Quirky Crafts team!

Pat.

Hello, hola und Hallo! My name is Pat Martin, better known as Patacake. I joined the crafting world when I went to my first rubber stamp workshop. I was hooked, until I discovered all the fun and new supplies for scrapbooking. Once I unearthed the digital world of images, papers and elements, I’ve kept very busy. I am an eclectic artist.

I am married with two grown children, one still in college. The other has gifted me with six grandchildren and a daughter-in-law who shares my love of crafting. We live outside of Chicago (go Blackhawks!). The newest member of the family is a rescue dog, a Silkie Terrier named Wilson.

I belong to crafting groups on Yahoo and design for a few challenge blogs as well as the Outlawz. 

I write for my own blog as well as monthly essays at the Path of Positivity. I've made my own YouTube tutorials, but they're pretty primitive. I enjoy a challenge, and card making is probably my go-to crafting activity amongst all my hobbies. As always, crafters, I have fun!

Marg.

Hiya, my name is Margaret but I do prefer to be called Marg and I'm 54 years old. I have 2 daughters, the eldest is married & lives a few miles away. She's given me a fab son-in-law and two gorgeous grandsons. My youngest daughter is 18 and studying hard at college, in her 3rd year of Art & Design.
Ive been crafting for most of my life but my serious card making/papercraft & upcycling came into effect almost 6 years ago and I've not looked back. Art & Craft runs in the family so I grew up with being surrounded by knitting, sewing and drawing/painting. All of my elder siblings love to make/draw/sew etc (even my brother) and I love to create but I cant knit to save my life lol.

I am quite severely disabled but I craft to keep my hands and mind occupied and it works lol. I love digi stamps but I also like rubber stamps. I have no special artist that I prefer and I have no special style of design.I am honoured to be invited to join Cazzy and all the other DT members of this fabulous challenge blog.

Tracy

Greetings, My name is Tracy and like a lot of crafters I have been creating from a very young age, I remember my first cross stitch and appliqué pieces at primary school. I started papercrafting about 15 years ago when I purchased my first stamping kit.  My crafting took a back seat whilst my hubby and I were running a pub in small village near Coventry, by this time I had accumulated quite a large amount of crafting goodies but with no time to craft it sat nestled away in boxes.


About a year or so later we moved to Somerset where I was inspired to get back into my paper crafting and stitching making all my own Yule and birthday cards.  After a year of living amongst the beautiful Mendip Hills and only 10 minutes from Glastonbury my husband's job saw us moving back to our home county of Suffolk.  This is really when my crafting became a passion, my stash grew to astronomical proportions and I started taking orders for cards and other bespoke items.  I never go anywhere without a notebook because you never know when inspiration will strike!

When I'm not crafting (or working) I enjoy taking walks with my husband and our Newfoundland dog, Fergus.  I also love writing (I have been published a few times), photography, baking, flower arranging (having won awards for both), reading, reviewing, blogging, sewing, camping and spiritual learning.

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.

Reminder time - Challenge #24 - Christmas Like In the Good Old Days

It's reminder time, you have until midday December 7th to enter this challenge with your vintage altered christmas projects.

Remember, it could be a bottle, a thin, a notebook, a frame, etc, whatever you want, but you must meet the 3 requirements: vintage, Christmas and altered project. (Sorry no cards are allowed, if you enter a card you will not be making it to the top three).

This time we are lucky to be sponsored by STITCHY BEAR STAMPS  who provided the team with the perfect images for this challenge, and you can win some fabulous prizes if you are picked by the team to be in our top three!

Our first place winner will win 3 images of choice from the whole of the store.

Our second place winner will win 3 images from of the DT´s chosen images.


And  our third place winner will win 2 images from the DT´s chosen images.

Stitchy Bear Digital stamps provided the following images to the team:

Stitchy Stamps
Magic of Christmas
Window Shopping

Coosty Creations
Poinsettia Digital Stamp and  a paper from the Paper Pack

Lil Diva
Winterville
Lil Angel

Now here is some more inspiration from the team:

 First, we would like to welcome our new 2 month Guest Designer -

Konica! 

Konica is so excited to be on the team, and she has started a week early and made this gorgeous altered tin:

Konica said: I just wanted to share with you my altered creation - well...I have used Li'l Diva Stamps - Li'l Angel and poinsettia paper pack.
Well done Konica, we love it, and I hope everyone will visit your blog to see more information(and more of your creations) and to welcome you to the team!

And here's some fabulous makes from the rest of the Quirky Design Team!


                                                          Cazzy  (Here at last)

will be along later, busy with schedule for next year!                                             

Here I am, sorry I am late but life got in the way of crafting this time, and you might wonder why this is all I have to show for my hours of work, well I did alter a watch box but when I looked at the photos it is so awful I am not even going to show you, I might put it on my blog though. This is an altered sweetie jar, I used Winter Ville and painted the lid gold, finally adding some tinsel ribbon I bought from Crafty Ribbons.

                                                             DORIS

might be a bit later too

     GEMMA

Christmas is fast approaching, and this challenge has really filled me with Christmas spirit.

The focal Digi image in this wall hanging is from the fabulous Stitchy Bear Stamps, which I coloured with Inktense Pencils, Portfolio Oil Crayons and a waterbrush.  I distressed the edges of the Digi stamp and made small tears which I curled over, then edged with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.  This made it look worn and old.

The background was a collage of vintage papers and replica vintage Christmas postcards from my own stash. I punched some snowflakes out of canvas and embossed them with silver powder to stand out.  I just love the way the main image stands out so much on the muted background, and I know exactly where I'm going to hang this for Christmas.... Xxx

                                                                  Lyn

 I altered some beer mats, strangely we appear to have rather a lot of them! I've covered them in some vintge papers  I had from a magazine and then inked them and the digi images from our sponsor with Vintage Photo and then tore around them. I printed out the word SNOW and tore this out so on each beer mat it reads 'Snow', Noel, Oh Christmas Tree and Winter. Then I added glitter glue. The reindeer is a stencil, also from a crafty mag.

Vintage really isn't my favourite, or altering things, but I also hate to give up! This was a Nuttella glass jar (Nuttella long gone!) I printed the digis onto thin acetate..and then threw some embossing power over it as soon as the sheet came out of the printer. I gently heated it, adding a bit more embossing power to make the actetate look frosted. It then went through my Xyron and was stuck to the glass. The candle was lit and the lights turned down...

                                                                             

 MONICA

For this challenge reminder I used this beautiful digi, "Magic of Christmas", provided by our generous sponsor, Stitchy Bear Stamps.

I altered a plain wooden tray, painting it with dark brown acrylic paint, then a coat of crackle medium and then a light coat of french vanilla acrylic paint.  When the wooden tray was already crackle, I apply distress ink to the borders. Then, I cut a dark brown background with a lacy border to add the digi. I colored the digi with Spectrum Noir pens, using golden and browns, to keep the vintage look.

To enter this challenge link your post HERE


Have Fun - The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.

Winner and New DT member news

Sorry for the delay folks, with so many great entries it was soooo difficult to choose but finally we managed it.

The DT are please to announce that the winner of the Stitchy Bear voucher is: Lena, with her wonderful Lily of the Valley card.

Lena please email Cazzy via the link in the sidebar who will arrange for your voucher to be sent to you.

More good news.

You may remember a while back we asked people to let us know if they were interested in joining us on the Design Team (DT). We are very happy to announce that our first new DT member is the talented: Diane (applause). Diane is already a Quirky Crafts challenge winner with one of her gorgeous creations and has joined us as a guest a few times too. I am sure you will love her work.

We will be announcing another new DT member very soon.

Also don't forget to enter our doubly sponsored challenge detailed below, and come back and vote for your favourites too.

The Quirky Crafts Challenge Design Team.