We are Neet and Wendy and we would like to welcome you to our fortnightly challenge, ‘Artful Times’, where we are offering a variety of challenges to inspire you to create in whichever style or medium of crafting you enjoy. You never know, we might even inspire you to create something out of your comfort zone and try out something new.

Yes like all challenge sites we have rules and guidelines. We hope you will read and follow them, we have Oyster Stamps as our sponsor, and of course, a winner and runner up will be chosen each month. We may also have the occasional guest designer.



Sunday 30 June 2013

Friday 21 June 2013

Challenge 32 - White on White

Well, have I got news for you!

A couple of months ago I faced the prospect of running a blog on my own for a while or asking someone to help and then in stepped Sam to help out.  Last week I had an email from someone whose work I have admired for a long time, in fact she was our very first winner here on Artful Times, offering her help.

Please put your hands together and welcome Cathryn to our Design Team.  I think we now have three very different artists working on Artful Times to bring you ideas, for you to spring off from, for the Challenges.

Before I go any further thank you for all the lovely and varied entries for our last challenge.

Challenge 32 is all about "White".  No colour please - just white to be used on your artwork.  You could include clear glass pebbles which let the white background show through, pearls are white etc etc.  Here is what Cathryn and Neet have done

Cathryn made a lovely White Card with pearls and handmade flowers


Whilst I used a white box as my base and Spellbinders dies with a Martha Stewart punch for the edging to decorate.


We both chose to use die cuts but you don't have to.  Perhaps you can think of some other way of depicting something in pure white.  Fabric readily springs to mind with a hint of lace or something - but remember - nothing but white!

Please can I ask once again that you check the Rules and Guidelines at the top of the page.  Some of the lovely entries don't get considered for a prize as they don't stay within the rules and guidelines - someone entered 11 challenges with one topic - we ask that you don't do more than five including ours.  Please check the rules.


Friday 14 June 2013

Winner (Challenges 29/30)

It gets more and more difficult to choose our Winner and Runner Up each time as the entries are all so good.  Really the standard is so high we would like to give you all a prize, but we can't, so without any more ado the Winner between Challenges for "Bloomin' Marvellous" and "Vintage" is

Daniela for her beautiful Pan Pastel card


and a very worthy Runner Up is

Silvie who did the most entertaining and colourful pages in her journal.


It really has been difficult to choose two entries and then it was equally difficult to decide which was the Winner and which the Runner Up.

Congratulations ladies - please contact Neet (email address on the right hand side of her blog) who will send you your Blinkies to display on your own blogs and, in the case of Daniela, tell her how to go about claiming her £10 voucher from our sponsors, Oyster Stamps.

Thank you each and every one of you for joining in with our Challenges.

Please remember you need to tell us how you achieved your finished artwork, have a direct link to the specific entry, link back to Artful Times and not enter more than five challenges (including ours) with the one entry.  All this is at the top of our blog.

Friday 7 June 2013

Challenge 31 is Maps (Cartography)

It's Neet here:

Two weeks ago we said "goodbye" to Von who has been a stalwart of Artful Times since its conception.  Thank you Von for all the hard work you have put into this blog and for commenting to the very end.  I wish you well in your new venture and hope it all works out for you,

Well, the prospect of running a challenge blog on my own was a bit daunting to say the least.  Von had given me plenty of warning that she was going to finish, in fact she extended the date by another month to give me even more time to think about it.  Do I carry on alone, I can't let the followers down, do I get someone else in - what?  Who else will put up with me and my last minute postings?

Perhaps I should not have put in that last sentence.  Why you ask?  Because someone has offered to help me out for a while and I am sure you will all be as delighted as I am to welcome (fanfare of trumpets) ... Sam.  Sam and I have worked together before and as a result become friends in and out of Blogland.  It was so good to spend some time with her at the Lincoln show recently playing 'catch up' on all the news.

Anyway, enough of this chatting - the Challenge is to create something with "Maps" or to give it its posh name "cartography". So without further ado here are the samples from us

A card from me, Neet


and a postcard from Sam


We do hope you join in with our latest challenge but PLEASE read the rules at the top of the page as so many of you could be in with a chance of winning a £10 voucher from Oyster Stamps but you don't tell us anything about how you made your creation. Read up what our rules and regulations require, stick to them and YOU could be our next winner.