Blog Hop time - whoop whooop!

Hi everyone! I'm sorry but there's no card from me today as I am too stacked out, my feet haven't touched the ground this week, but welcome to our fantastic blog hop and candy giveaway! So if  you came here from the Polkadoodles blog you're in the right place!

Our fabulous sponsors Marianne Design are giving you the chance towin this adorable Garden themed Creatable as part of our blog hop! 
Creatables are handy stencils that cut and/or emboss. They can be used in many machines, with all kinds of paper. The cut-out and embossed shapes are ideal to make your cards and other creative projects even more beautiful. We also have this lovely cuter than cute Snoesjes stamp, a fabulous 32 page paper pack and we adore this stunning flower ribbon - this candy is just scrumptious!!

In addition to this wonderful Marianne Design candy the first prize winner will receive a brand new Sugarplum Daisy CD AND a Candy Doodles CD from Polkadoodles PLUS 2 further winners will also receive a Candy Doodles CD - so there are 3 chances to win our Hop!!

Here is what you must do: (you might find some extra candy along the way from the DT so make sure you go visit them all!!)


CHALLENGE STAGE 1: Now, we know not everyone likes to do a hop for whatever reason, so we still have our normal challenge for the week which is EASTER themed - you must make a card or project which is Easter themed.

But that's not all...

CHALLENGE STAGE 2: Our second challenge is the blog hop - if you hop along with us this week you will find that the Easter Bunny has arrived early and left some hidden goodies on some of the Design Teams blogs - but you have to hop though the whole list to find who the Easter Bunny has visited!

You need to complete both the Easter themed challenge and the blog hop to be in with a chance of winning one of the fantastic prizes on offer! If you've never taken part in a blog hop before it's easy peasy...all you need to do is visit each blog in turn and for this hop each Polkadoodler will give you a LETTER (be careful - some of the Polkadoodlers may have more than one so make sure you collect them all!) Now add all the letters together, unscramble them and leave a comment on the Polkadoodle Challenge Blog (comments will be moderated!) telling us what the word is. You MUST follow this blog and link to the blog hop on your own blog to be eligible to win, so make sure you click follow in the sidebar!

Your entry will automatically be judged for the Easter themed challenge BUT we will know if you have completed the Blog Hop so if you haven't you will still only be eligible for the random blog candy hidden amongst some of the Polkadoodlers.

So you got to my blog ok, and to be in with a chance of winning MY special candy in addition to the big blog hop you MUST follow my blog and leave me a comment beneath this post. One lucky winner will receive the new Sugarplum Daisy CD, Candy Doodles CD and the Sugar Birdies CD PLUS 2 stamps - the value of this candy is over £50 ($90!!)!!! But remember you MUST follow my blog to be in with a chance and leave a comment for me - we would also love it if you could link to the main blog hop or to this page on your blog too to help spread the candy word!

The letter that you need from me is the letter G

So now you have done all that you now need to go over and see Fliss to see what she has in store for you!
Happy Hopping folks and good luck!! (I will reveal the candy winner on 13th April! 
xx

Shabby Chic

Woahhh! What a busy few weeks it's been! I have been like a whirling dervish almost meeting myself coming back this past month, there have been times I didnt even know what day it was lol! Serious.

So I've been working on our cute new CD collection Sugarplum Daisy. Soooo cute! We launched the CD at GNPE at Harrogate last weekend - I love Harrogate show, it's 20 minutes down the road from us so I always try to do a launch there first for our local peeps and it is always a very very busy show for us. It's quite noticable at the mo with the economic climate and lots of shops closing that the shows are suffering a little - there seemed like lots of good craft companies there but all seemed to have much smaller stands this time round.

We, however, had a larger one as we keep finding we can't squish enough people in and we can't have any elbow fights going on LOL!! We had the pleasure of the lovely Leonie Pujol demoing with me this time, man I love that girl she is so lovely, I love WYSIWYG people, dont you?As in people where What You See Is What You Get - no airs and graces, she's just how she is and I love people like that, I can't be doing with ego's, I always feel a need to chop those down with a nice big pair of chunky secateurs LOL! Sadly there seem to be a lot around!  Anyway, after the show it was lovely to catch up with "our Leonie" and my wonderful bestie Michelle who was awesomely kind enough to help us on the stand for the day, over one of the most delish Chinese meals I ever ate in my life it has to be said. There was mucho laughter and snorting and me showing myself up by not using chopsticks and accidental flinging of noodles everywhere and a damn good girlie gossip - thanks girls, it was a brilliant weekend!

Then onto the week - 10 hours of Pick of the Day shows with Letraset on Create & Craft TV on Wednesday and Thursday, together with showcasing the Sugarplum Daisy CD too and if only you all knew how much my feet hurt all week thanks to big old blisters from wearing trainers and no socks at Harrogate lol, ouchie ouchie ouch! (dont even go there with my feet I have the worst feet in the entire universe since childhood, they are the bain of my life. My "bludgeoned" feet are what they are better known as!). I was literally hopping about one foot to the other behind the counter by the end of Thursday lol, so if my colouring was outside the lines now you know why! I really should ask to sit down I don't find colouring whilst standing up the easiest thing in the world to do, why does it never occur to me?
Anyway, onto Friday and another TV show at 8am (hate 8am's they mean being IN the studio by 7am so a 5.30am start at least, boooo! :C  ) ...Basically Bare with Kuretake and a fab show, it was fab to finally be able to get a bit messy and inky on a TV show, in 3 years it was the first time I've ever been able to do an altered media show and I loved it, just wish we'd had more time!  Basically Bare is a newish Company in the US who manufacture raw books and embellies which are awesomely good for altered media, scrapbooking and cardmaking and I am in love with this range! Believe me you are going to see loads of it on my projects from now on! I will do another post with loads of samples etc for you to see later on in the week.  There will be more shows to follow soon so if you missed it make sure you keep checking back, Basically Bare is quite unique in what they offer. So it was a lovely show - completely amazing samples from the Kuretake Design Team, and then by 10am I was on the road for home at last, back to the ginger ninja's. Oh, and the hubby of course ; )
So after a really busy week, today is challenge day over at Elisabeth Bell's World blog and the theme is Shabby Chic and Distressing. I must confess that I forgot to do my post in advance so this was a last minute make at 6pm last night and I pulled out my Prisma's to colour this as quite honestly I can't quite face another alcohol pen this week! Did I tell you that apparently we shipped out over 70,000 marker pens in 2 days on the shows - 70 THOUSAND!!! 70 THOUSAND pens!! Can you imagine???!!!! Oh my word!!! Thank goodness they're not all going to one person LOLOL!
Anyway, enough waffle, here is my card offering...

The image is Elisabeth Bell's Tooth Fairy which you can get here from Lissy Bee's wonderful digi shop - have you been over there yet? I love Lissy Bee's designs, she just has an ability to capture a mood with her girls so wonderfully well. Have you also joined in the Digibells blog hop yet this month?? You can win this digi!  The papers on the card are from both Pretty Sweet and the new Sugarplum Daisy CD.  The strawberry red paper on the right hand side has been distressed with spackle through a leafy template and distressed up around the edges to give it loads of grungey texture and the other bits are just from my stashbox, chipboard letters from the Girls Paperie which I love because they're such a useful size and I coloured them with Kuretake's Zig Painty pens. If you've not seen these yet check out my Kuretake post later this week - they are completely awesome and every crafters NEEDS them in their craftbox!!
Right, time to head off, this week I have yet another busy one, a gazillion samples to photograph, magazine tutorials to complete for Simply Cards & Papercrafts and I need to put my editor head on as it's time to start putting together the Polkadoodles Creative Chronicle magazine for the Pen & Paper Circle club - not heard of it? Where have you been?? You can check it out here.  Also, watch out Friday as we have a blog hop with loads of fabulous candy going on the Polkadoodles blog - you seriously need to be watching out for it, there are some awesome prizes!!
Tatty bye for now, peeps!!xx