Friday, September 25, 2009

Announcing The Character Cafe New Design Team Members!

Hi everyone, we're super excited today to be announcing our new Design Team Members. We had soooo many applicants and the decision was close to impossible. In the end, we just had to do it, a part of the job that wasn't so great. We really want to thank all you ladies who applied. Everyone of you were truly talented and we felt that any one of you would've been a fine asset to our team, however, there were more of you than spots available! Without further ado, here they are...

Returning Members... Sr. DT!

Billie
Heather
Sara

New DT!

Angela
Annamarie "Lola"
Deanne
Diane
Donna
Piali
Rachel
Sarabeth
Sheri "Fink"

Tune in next Friday for our first Blog Hop with our Fabulous new Team, win some prizes, get a freebie, a discount and best of all, loads of inspiration!!! Don't forget to visit our new team members and say hello! See you then :)

Well, I didn't want to leave you without some inspiration (it is Feature Friday afterall!) and so I'm sharing this card I made for my son (yes, 3 of my 4 kids are born in September... ack). I've posted one for my dd on my blog since I entered it in the My Time to Create Colour Challenge (check it out if you have time!)... Here's my card!




Card Deets:
  • Image: Syd Nutty from The Character Cafe coloured with pencil crayons & OMS, Gina K Sentiment (inside), misc. stars stamp
  • Paper: Wassau, Bazill Cardstock, Bo Bunny
  • Basic Grey brads, Sakura Glitter pen, Nesties
Hope you enjoy!!!

Happy crafting,
Kendra & Kelly

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Winner Blog Candy!!!

Hi all, it's Wednesday again and boy did the day fly by! I'm sorry I'm posting so late. It's been crazy around here.

We want to thank all of you who participated in our polls and blog candy. I'm sorry I never did get the picture to post, not sure what happened and then, well, life happened and my bad because I had forgot that I never ended up getting it to work!!! Well, here's one (it's so bad, I know!) and it's not the one with the embellishments (that's on my other computer) but they're there too...


So, you want to know who won?! Well, we threw the ballots in the cat tree (again - handy thing, that tree is!) and pulled out Aud's name :) Congrats Aud! E-mail us with your address and we'll mail out your crafty package ASAP.

So, Friday is the big reveal on who our new DT is going to be and we can't wait! It's going to be an amazing few months with some fantastic girls to work with. We just know that you're going to be blown away :)

We're working on some big things at The Character Cafe too. We've got a new website (almost done, phew!) and a new blog plan for you too! We hope that you enjoy what we've got in store for you, we think it will be great. We've got some fantastic designs to launch as well (of course!).

Okay, enough for today, I've got a ton of work to do still and time's tickin'!

Happy crafting,
Kendra (& Kelly)

Friday, September 11, 2009

Final Feature Friday with the First TCC Design Team!

Well, it's with mixed feelings that we have Feature Friday today. This is the final time our current (and 1st ever) Character Cafe Design Team will be featuring projects using TCC images. We have been fortunate to have such a wonderful group of women to work with and we want to take this opportunity to thank them from the bottom of our hearts. They have been so patient, understanding, helpful and EXTREMELY TALENTED!!!

Some of our team have agreed to stay on with us for the next term, but most have had or wish to move on and pursue other endeavors. We're excited that so far, we get to keep working with Heather, Billie and Sara, but we're also excited for those of you that are trying new things and we look forward to following along. Regardless of which direction our team heads, we wish them the best of luck, lots of success and happy days! We will continue to follow and enjoy your creations :)

Okay, enough sap from me today! If you haven't seen our Blog Candy yet, check it out and please vote in our polls to the right... help us re-vamp TCC!

Also, visit our DT for the last Feature Friday and show some love!!!!

Billie, Sara, Heather, Colleen, Mary, Elaine, Tesa and Steph

If you're interested in joining us for the next DT term, check out the details here and let us know... you have until Sept 20th!

Happy crafting,
Kendra

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

TCC BLOG CANDY!!!!

Winner WIW - Stickles!!! Random.org generated the number 2 when input range of 1 & 2... therefore, Paula, CONGRATS! You won 2 Cafe Images of your choice... and a Guest Designer position in October... I will be e-mailing you with more details :)



Here's hoping that your summer was a good one and for those of you with school age children (like us) that have headed back to school... yahoo!

We've hit a milestone here at The Character Cafe... a bit slower than some and maybe sooner than others, but either way we're thrilled to be approaching 5000 hits on our blog and even more on our website! Thank you too all our supporters and followers for sticking with us through our learning curves, and bumps and scratches.

To celebrate, we are offering some blog candy... yes, we all love candy don't we?! Since we do digital images and not physical stamps, we thought we'd give some of you out there who might be a bit leary of digis and those of you who may not have a great printer, or a working one at all, a chance to try our images and replenish your stash! We're giving away our biggest prize ever...

(Insert Picture here - Blogger trouble uploading.... will post as soon as possible)

24 Character Cafe digital images (digi stamps)
already printed on Wassau paper using a laser printer and heat set
as well as...
Various embellishments such as flowers, brads and eyelets


Printed in the same fashion, these images have been water coloured as well as Copic coloured and pencil crayoned with OMS so you should be good to go with no smearing :)

We want your feedback! We are looking to change things up at The Cafe and we want your help. We love doing what we do and we want to keep our customers/supporters happy and offer what you want so in order to do that, we have to pick your brain!

To be entered in our Candy draw, what we would LOVE for you to do is...
  • VOTE in our polls (2 of them) on the right telling us what you think. We did this so that you could be anonymous in your opinion, and keep it simple, but if you would like to expand or have something else to offer, please let us know via e-mail (charactercafe@gmail.com) or in your comment.
  • Add a post/link back to us on your blog telling everyone about our Candy.
  • Post a comment so that we know you've been here and we enter you in our draw! (make sure we can reach you if you win because we'll have to mail your goodies to you)

Simple right?! We think so :)

Now, on another note... we are so excited, we just can't wait to show you a sneak peek of a new design we've been working on! Why not let us know what you think about her in the meantime?
Don't forget, if you like what you see and want to be part of our new Design Team, our call is still open.... check out the details and send us your application. We're accepting applicants until Sept 20th!

The polls are open until Sept. 23rd and we'll do the Blog Candy draw and let you know the winner when we announce our new Design Team on Sept. 25th :) See you Friday for our final Feature Friday with our current Design Team...

Until then,
Happy Crafting
Kendra & Kelly (the Imaginary Illustrator)


Enter your name in Mr. Linky, but you can comment as well with input (good or bad!)


Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Work It Wednesday – Using STICKLES!

Winner of last weeks' sketch challenge (surprise, I know!) is GINGER!!!!
I will be contacting you shortly regarding your winnings as well as some info on our Guest Designer position!!! Congrats Ginger, thanks for playing along :)

When my group accepted The Character Cafe Design Team position, we were asked to prepare a Work It Wednesday post for a chosen date and topic during our term. I {Billie} chose Stickles as my tutorial for today. I hope you have learned something from our past Work It Wednesday posts and that you can use some of this information too. :O)

Stickles are a small bottle of Acid Free “glitter glue” used to add BLING to pretty much any project. They are available in an array of colors! Michaels and Hobby Lobby carries them, as well as many, many online retailers. They run $1.50 to $2 a bottle, depending on where you purchase them!

Here I will show several ways I’ve used Stickles, as well as included 101 uses for Stickles, which you may copy & paste into a Word document. This is not my creation and I honestly don’t know where it originated. It has been bouncing around in a few of the Yahoo groups I belong to! If this is your information, please let me know and I’ll give credit where credit is due! :o)

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For the first photo, I used our school colors (maroon and gold) to cut the word “Read” on the Mickey & Friends Cricut Cartridge. I layered the two pieces together and used Black Diamond Stickles around the edges of the letters to make them stand out.

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Here I have cut my name on the Cricut, shaded it in with a little purple ink and completely colored the letters in with Lavender Stickles. Don’t mind my messy handwriting! I wasn’t intending on leaving that part in the photos, but it worked. ;o)

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For this one, I covered this dark brown Prima flower with Diamond Stickles to give it an all-over bling effect.

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For this little pink flower (can’t remember if this was a Prima!), I used Icicle Stickles to add a little bling to the center.

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This is a little hard to see, but if you click on the photo, you should see a slightly bigger image that you can hopefully see! I cut a “Drippy Goo” SVG on my Cricut and added some Stickles to give them different effects. For the top one, I used Ruby Slippers to give a “bloody” look. This would be cool on a Halloween page or card. For the bottom “goo”, I used Frosted Lace Stickles to give an “icicle” effect.

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This paper doll is one I made a while back. She was cut from the Paper Dolls Dress Up Cricut Cartridge. I used Black Diamond Stickles on the details of her tutu and Cotton Candy Stickles to color in the hair bow and shoes. She usually hangs above my desk, but I took her down (temporarily) for this photo! ;o)

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For this spider web patterned paper, I added Diamond Stickles to only a portion of it to let you see what a difference it would make.

Hopefully between my examples above and the list of uses below you will find some information useful for this week’s challenge!

Your challenge for this week is to use Stickles to add bling to your project!

101 Uses for Stickles

1. You can use Stickles to outline the letters in your titles.

2. You can use Stickles to outline the patterns, pictures & designs on your patterned papers.

3. You can add a little shimmer by spreading it around with your finger!

4. You can use Stickles on handmade cards.

5. You can use Stickles to make flowers glittery.

6. You can use Stickles to make “glitzy photo corners!”

7. You can use Stickles to make firework photos glittery!

8. You can use Stickles to make the “trails” from butterflies and dragonflies.

9. You can use Stickles to do doodle dots and stitches.

10. You can use the clear one which is AWESOME on stickers etc. to really make them look special. The Basic Grey cardstock stickers become 3-D and really spectacular! !

11. You can use Stickles to outline the veins in leaves.

12. You can use Stickles to add to the clothing on Bella stamps to make the girls look ready for a night on the town!

13. You can use Stickles to make brads sparkly!

14. You can use Stickles to make ribbon sparkly!

15. You can use Stickles to make icing on cupcakes and cakes shimmer.

16. You can use Stickles to make waves look 3-D.

17. You can use Stickles for making cherries/fruit shimmer as if wet.

18. You can use the color Orange to make the “fire” on the end of a birthday candle!

19. You can use Stickles to make rain drops or water drops from a watering can.

20. You can use Stickles to make fairy dust around a fairy’s wand.

21. You can use Stickles to decorate your kids school supplies instead of buying designer stuff.

22. You can use Stickles to cover entire cutouts.

23. You can use Stickles over the designs on grunge board. It looks great!

24. You can use Burgundy Stickles as the perfect color to add blood droplets on your Halloween LO’s.

25. To cover clear embellishments entirely and make them oh so sparkly!

26. You can use Stickles under transparencies, to adhere them. Looks great for bubbles.

27. You can use Stickles for decorating t-shirts. When they’re worn down, ripped or you tired of them, cut out the design and scrap it. More mileage this way.

28. You can use dots made with Stickles to border a page!

29. You can use Stickles for slug trails.

30. You can use Stickles for snail trails.

31. You can use Stickles to decorate tennis shoes.

32. You can use Stickles to decorate buttons.

33. You can use Stickles to decorate ribbons.

34. You can use Stickles to make a spider web sparkle in a Halloween LO.

35. You can use Stickles on handmade tags.

36. You can use Stickles to add bling to hats or crowns.

37. You can use Stickles to make jewelry gleam!

38. You can use Stickles to make belts shine!

39. You can use Stickles to add pizzazz to purses & some shine to shoes!

40. Add Stickles to all or any misc accessories! (whether it be in a LO or IRL.That’s up to you! LOL!)

41. Add stickles dots to decorate lots of things, especially stamped swirls or flowers.

42. You can use Stickles generally anywhere on your LO, just to add some bling!

43. You can use Stickles to highlight just one letter in a title and make it POP!

44. You can use Stickles to make a circle or square of dots to frame closely in on a face or object in a photo.

45. You can add Stickles to the center of flowers.

46. You can run Stickles along swirly-swirls!

47. You can use a line of Stickles to make a thin (or thick!) border around anything (or everything!) on your page.

48. You can use Stickles to highlight the shadow on stamped letters.

49. You can use Stickles to stamp with them!

50. You can use Stickles to embellish concert LO’s.

51. You can use Stickles to make flourishes on your flourishes and make them look embossed.

52. You can use your Stickles to add bling to a star.

53. You can add them to flames to make them shimmer, glow & come alive!

54. You can use the color Cotton Candy to enhance.Um, well, Cotton Candy!

55. You can use the Candy Cane Stickles for.Candy Canes!

56. You can use the Icicle Stickles for.Icicles.

57. You can use Waterfall Stickles for.Water & Waterfalls.

58. You can use Orange Peel Stickles for.Oranges.

59. You can use Stickles to make the lines of a shooting star!

60. You can use Stickles on flowers to make them sparkle!

61. You can use Stickles as paint (dot a little then spread with paintbrush)

62. You can use Stickles to make a proper Disco Ball!

63. You can tear paper snow for cards or layouts & run Stickles along the top edge of the snow.

64. Stock up on the white/frosty colored Stickles.Stickle the paper or the ghost shape flakes.You can also stamp snowflakes and put Stickles in the center of the snowflake.

65. You can add Stickle to anything that you stamp!

66. You can use Stickles on paper piercings.

67. You can use Stickles on die cuts.

68. When using jewels, outline the jewel with Stickles.

69. You can use Stickles to outline a journal box.

70. You can use Stickles to decorate a cast.

71. You can use Stickles to decorate gift bags.

72. You can use Stickles to decorate wrapping paper.

73. You can use Stickles on feathers for Mardi Gras or Las Vegas LOs.

74. You can use Stickles with a stencil instead of ink.

75. You can print out stuff from Google, then add Stickles and top with Diamond Glaze to make homemade sparkly stickers!

76. You can apply Stickles to the top of Thickers.

77. When glitter comes off of stickers/paper, you can fill it in with Stickles to make it back to normal!.You can use Stickles to glue more glitter on top of the sticker!

78. You can use Stickles to make the eyes on a Disney Princess cut with your Cricut.

79. You can use Stickles to create rays of sunshine!

80. You can use your Stickles to create a rainbow!

81. You can use Stickles to make a heart (or hearts) shine!

82. You can use Stickles to make stars glitter & shine!

83. You can use Stickles to make moonbeams shine!

84. You can use Stickles on die cut Christmas trees to make the bulbs sparkle & shine!

85. You can add Stickles to your own Christmas ornaments or Christmas ornaments as gifts!

86. You can use Stickles to add shine to a trophy.

87. You can use Stickles to a title block.

88. You can use Stickles to add sparkles to a Shamrock.

89. You can use Stickles to add sparkles to an Easter Egg.

90. You can use Stickles to add rays of light to a Christian cross.

91. You can use Stickles to create firework frame around something (For example, a name or an object!)

92. You can use Stickles to make fish glimmer.

93. You can use Stickles to make water reflect (ocean, lake, waterfall, ripples, streams, fountain, aquarium, etc.)

94. You can use Stickles to make a reflective mirror.

95. You can use Stickles to highlight Art Deco from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s or 90’s found in the backgrounds of pictures.

96. You can use Stickles to highlight a monogram.

97. You can use Stickles on inchies.

98. You can use Stickles on tear bears.

99. You can use Stickles to add bling to automobiles.

100. You can use Stickles on your Disney Princess pages.

101. You can use Stickles on everything & anything & as long as you still have Stickles to use!

Thanks again for stopping by and please be sure to check back again!

Billie