Ribbons Galore !!

Thank you all so much for joining in with our Anniversary Dare - it was wonderful to see all your cards and have so many people celebrate with us.

We've another special dare this week. Bea from Ribbon Oasis is sponsoring a challenge to use her fabbylicious range of Christmassy ribbons on our cards. So Lucky Us - we all received an envelope full of ribbons to play with and below you'll find the cards we've made (so far!) So this week we'd love you to join in and make Christmas cards using lots and lots of fabby, yummy ribbon - now that shouldn't be too hard, after all we all love ribbon, don't we? Don't forget that you can replenish and expand your ribbon supply easily by visiting the Ribbon Oasis website - you'll find so much of the gorgeous twirly stuff there you'll be spoilt for choice - we guarantee it!

Now then, just in case you need a bit more enticement to join in our dare:

Wrap it in Ribbon for Christmas

here's a little sweetener: Bea is giving a ribbonful prize to one lucky darer this week. All you need to do is make a be-ribboned Christmas Card especially for the DCM (no doubling up of challenges this week....), post a link to say where we can see it, or send it by email to daringcardmakers@hotmail.co.uk for the gallery and you'll be in with a chance of winning. Couldn't be easier, could it? So as promised here's what the Design Team came up with using those Ribbon Oasis goodies
Lynne

Kathy

Keryn
Gillian
Jane
Rhi

Jo

Lythan

Saffa

Tempting Template for a Tuesday

Seeing all the beautiful "Circle of Friends" cards you've been making to celebrate our anniversary is absolutely wonderful. We hope everyone else is enjoying this as much as we are. Obviously there's still plenty of time for more entries, and we have an extra little temptation to encourage you to join in. Everyone who makes a card for our anniversary dare and links back to us will be entered into one of our Lucky Dips and the winner will find little envelopes of goodies popping through their letterbox - with love from the DCM! But you've got to be in it to win it - as they say!
Remember you can play along even if you don't have a blog by emailing a photo of your card to our gallery at daringcardmakers@hotmail.co.uk

Now, on to our Little Extra for this week. We're letting Santa's Little Helper have a rest for a couple of weeks, but you can still make a Christmas card for this one if you like. It's ages since we gave you a sketch to play with so that's what we've got for you this time
You can use the sketch any way you like, just as long as we can still see it in there somewhere - so stretch it or shrink it or do whatever else you can to make use of it. As usual we have some cards from the Design team to help get you thinking:

Our Amazing Circle Of Friends

The group of friends who got together to form the Daring Cardmakers back in October 2006 has developed and grown into a huge circle of crafting and blogging friends who come together from all over the world to share their inspiration and their talents so enthusiastically, and are always so supportive of each other's cardmaking.

In honour of all of you who've helped make this blog so successful, and such a friendly place to "play" we've decided to revisit our very first dare for this our first anniversary, but with a twist.

The subject is, as in our original dare "friends", but this time the title is
CIRCLE of FRIENDS
and we'd like you to incorporate at least one circle into your card.

It would make it a very special occasion if for this dare you'd make a card just for the DCM rather than doubling up with other challenges.

Please join in and celebrate our first anniversary with us,
without all of you - our wonderful extended "Team of Darers" and of course all those who've joined us as Guest Designers over the last year it wouldn't be half as much fun.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARING CARDMAKERS ALL

Rhi
Tracie (AKA BONDGIRL)
Lythan
Lynne
Keryn

Gillian
Kathy
Jane
Saffa

Jo

Santa's Little Extra Helper no 2

All your Animal cards are fantastic, what a wonderful range of styles and ideas you're sharing with us. Come the end of the week will it be giraffes, dinosaurs or cows which prove the most popular subject? Those three seem to be heading the Animal League Table at the moment anyway! Still loads of time to get beastly and join in with this weeks "big" dare, but if you're ready for an extra challenge
here's our Little Extra for this week:

"O Christmas Tree. O Christmas Tree"
Want to guess what needs to be featured on your cards this week? Yes, we want to see lots and lots of Christmas Trees - that should help you get those stocks of cards looking a bit healthier.

Here are some from the Design Team to help get you thinking:

Where the Wild Things Are

Thank you all so much for joining in Jane's "Make and Send a Postcard" dare of last week. Hopefully all the UK darers who've been suffering from the Postal Workers strike action will have managed to get their cards sent in the gap before the next strike starts!

We have very much enjoyed seeing your cards for this dare and every single dare we've set over the last year. This is dare 52 and next week we will celebrate our first anniversary with a very special dare......
On to this week's challenge then

Hellooooo, Kathy here to set you a really Beastly dare this week! The theme is ANIMAL and you can use anything that's animal inspired - not those diddy little ones like bugs, birds and butterflies (though you can include them in your design of course) but what I'd really like to see is bigger, wilder, more fabulous or fantastic creatures So you could maybe use animal die cuts, animal prints on paper or fabric, or maybe animal words or phrases "grrrrr get down tiger"!!!! You could invent your own wild and wonderful beasties, or go back in time for dinosaurs, or into the world of mythology for all sorts of incredible creatures. How about a card in the shape of a tiger, elephant or monkey? Now, there's a challenge for you.... I'd love you to all go really wild over this one and have loads of beastly fun

Please come back and let us know when you've made your cards so that we can visit your blogs to see how your animal instincts got to work - and if you don't have a blog, - no problem, send your photos to daringcardmakers@hotmail.co.uk and they'll be popped onto our wonderful gallery for all to see.

Kathy
Keryn
Lythan
Tracie (aka Bondgirl)

JaneLynneGillianSaffa

Rhi
Jo

Santas Little Extra helper no.1

Firstly, apologies to those who think they saw this yesterday and then it vanished.....your eyes weren't deceiving you! Someone, who has a very red face atm got her days all muddled up and posted early! hehe oops!
There's still plenty of time to join in Jane's clever dare to make a postcard which you then have to send, but as usual, midway through a DCM week we like to throw out an extra challenge for you to play with.
Just before setting the new challenge, we have a message from Tracie who looks after our gallery - she's been busy uploading photos that have been sent in for past dares, so there's loads of new cards on display there now - the link to the gallery is at the bottom of each Links List, so it's easy to drop in to see all the cards. If you'd like to add your cards to the DCM gallery the address to send them to is daringcardmakers@hotmail.co.uk

This week we're starting off a series of Little Extras to help you (and us) get ready for Christmas (yes, it IS coming....). We're calling it "Santa's Little Extra Helper". We'll take a break for something else we've got planned at the end of this month, but then we'll return to help you with those Christmas cards.

So here's your first "Santa's Little Extra Helper":

Christmas Words

We'd like you to use Christmassy words on your card, not just in the sentiment but for this challenge the word/s should form the main focus of your card - like in Rhi's "In a Word" dare of a couple of weeks ago
So, you could use chipboard or wordy paper for instance - check the link to Rhi's dare and of course the relevant links list for even more ideas.
We'd love to see your cards, so please pop back and leave us a message when you're ready to share your wonderful work with us all.
Here are some to get you thinking.
Have fun

Answers On A Post Card.....

Hello Happy Darers !!! It's Jane here ! It's my turn to dare again .........and I'm still on the postal theme ......yep thats right - I want you to design a post card - and whats more I want you to actually post it! Aren't I mean ? Honestly, its not as bad as it sounds- just a bit more thinking 'outside the square'.....excuse the pun :0).

Thank you so much to everyone who has taken part in Lynne's frame dare (65 comments no less !!) as always we have really enjoyed seeing all your lovely creations.

So come on ! I dare you ! Have a go and join in. As usual, you can share your creations with us by sending us a link to your blog- or you can send us an email to daringcardmakers@hotmail.co.uk.

Here's a few of the design team's creation to get you inspired.

Now, we have an exciting few weeks ahead of us- as we are coming up to our FIRST BIRTHDAY on the Daring Card Makers blog! We are busy making plans, so watch this space ! Also, we the design team are currently on the lookout for a new full time design team member - and as you all know, both Gillian and Lynne were recruited from our current darers- so be prepared- we might be knocking at YOUR blog next !!

Jane
Gillian

SaffaKathy

KerynRhiLythan

Jo

Little Extra Post Haste!

It's fantastic to see you all getting nicely "Framed" for Lynne's dare, please keep them coming as we love to see all your wonderful cards and all those inspiring ideas you bring to the blog.

Now, if you're ready for something extra to get your teeth into here's our Little Extra challenge for this week:
Post Haste
We'd like you to dig out all those used stamps you've been saving, or even use a brand new shiny one and use a postage stamp on your cards. No cheating allowed - no rubber stamps or other such stuff - we want you to use a REAL postage stamp for this one.

We're looking forward to seeing what you come up with as we just know you'll be posting (hahaha) some fabby cards.
Here are some from us to get you thinking