Demo day freebies & raffles plus double discount

A couple of the samples I will be demoing today, top one has lots of  stamping, 

 Frantage and Pan Pastel resist background and a touch of Wedgwood below. All stamps available from Stamp Addicts

Good Morning Peeps, this is a scheduled post so fingers crossed it all happens on time as I am at Stamp Addicts today demoing at their 20th Birthday celebrations. I had originally ducked out of this one, but after losing Buffy it dawned on me that actually I could and perhaps should as it might do me good to get out and about, plus I always enjoy meeting all the crafters on demo days, they are always such fun..

Sarah suggested we all dress up in our party dresses as "we will be partying", well I'm not sure about the party frock as I rarely do dresses other than for formal occasions, plus I tend to get pretty messy with my inkiness, but I might see what I can come up with to get into the party spirit. There are lots of demos going on, free goodie bags for the first fifty visitors, free raffle tickets, 20% off everything in store and on line and lots more, so if you are in the Bedford area today why not drop in and say hello.

Nicola has chosen this weeks theme of a 'Scrapbook l/o' at Allsorts, something a little bit different and although I'm not a scrapper, I did enjoy making this page capturing some of the Olympic moments that were particularly special to my family and I this Summer.

I kept it fairly simple using two of the photos of our youngest son who was a volunteer at the Olympics, the Olympic rings were made cutting out circles on the Cricut machine and then interlinking and the 'gold' medal with just a download from the Internet with some ribbon attached to the top. The letters were cut with a Sizzix die.

Whatever you have planned this weekend, I hope it's a good one for you.

Social Butterfly

Good morning Peeps, I hope everyone is OK.

I know I've said it before, but I need to say it again as so many of you have sent such wonderful messages to me over the last few days about Buffy..............thank you so very much to each and everyone of you.

It looks like our Indian summer was short lived and we've jumped straight into the middle of autumn and yet more rain. And it's been decidedly cold the last few days, Hubby recorded night temperatures of  '0' several nights during the last week so I don't suppose the frosts won't be far behind.

I've got very little artwork to share, I normally have a reasonable selection in my gallery ready to blog, but the revamp of my craft room along with events of the last week and the loss of Buffy means I've done very little crafting for a few weeks. So the best I have to offer is the one above made quite a few weeks ago which I used yesterday to send to the UK Animal Health Trust to thank them for all their kindness.

The butterfly is Penny Black from their Social Butterfly set and the foliage stamps are a mixture of again Penny Black and Inkylicious and simple inking using TH distress and Adirondack inks.

I'm trying very hard to be positive despite it being hard going still, but I've had a trip out and about in blog land and trying to get my act together. As always, thank you so much for your visits and kind comment.

More trees

My apologies to my teamies at Craft a Scene challenge, this should have posted yesterday, but was one of the posts Blogger managed to lose in his enforced interface changeover and coupled with the events of Friday into Saturday I failed to realise it was missing.

I know these things ease with time, but at the moment there is a huge void and lots of tears. I know we have other lovable dogs, but they are all young and playful and yet to develop the art of real companionship, it takes a long while to gain the perception to give a wag of the tail and a raised paw in response to the wave of a hand as Buffy always did.

So at last the cards I made a few weeks ago for my mid month DT post where we have the theme of 'Trees' and it will come as no surprise that I really enjoyed this one and didn't have a lack of ideas.

The top card uses a mixture of Art Impression, Creative Expressions and Stamp Addicts images. Sponging masking and inking as usual and some poppies in the foreground to add a little colour.

My second card was one that came to me in the middle of the night when I was thinking about crafting.......... as you do..............and it occurred to me that a very old A Stamp in the Hand image might work with the Stampscapes mountain range and I'm actually quite pleased how it turned out. The colour is sponged on with Adirondack inks and the little guy in the water fishing is also a Stapscapes image. The pinecones were made using a Tim Holts Alterations die, I'm not sure if it's a new one but I saw it the other week and had to have it. They don't show up too well on the picture above so here's a close up of them, I know it doesn't take a lot to please me, but I think they're really cool.

Thanks for taking a peek and if you have not already joined in our challenge this month or if you've never tried making a scene before, then now must be the time and look forward to seeing you there.

Pan Pastels A Winters Tale

Before I say anything else, I want to extend a huuuuuge thank you to everyone for their comments on yesterdays post as well as all the kind mails I received. You can't begin to imagine how much they are  appreciated and although I shed many more tears as I read them, each and every one of them helped me get through a horrid day.

I've got up this morning trying to be positive and although I still feel totally wretched did at least get some sleep last night so set myself the task this morning of trying to discover what blogger had done with all my scheduled posts. But it's still a mystery to me, several posts were scheduled before my interface got switched on Thursday but are nowhere to be found, so I've had to rewrite this one and apologies to all my teamies at Allsorts for being so late this week.

When Emma came up with her theme for this week 'Inspired by a Song' my fist thoughts had to be associated with Freddie Mercury and Queen. I have been a member of the Queen Fan Club for many many years and as far as I'm concerned there has never been another voice in the world of pop to match Freddie's. During the last weeks of his life, Freddie  composed many meaningful and poignant songs and it is one of those that I chose as the inspiration for my card. 

A Winter's Tale is from the album Made in Heaven which was released in 1995 after Freddie's death in 1991. It is said that Freddie's inspiration for this song came during the hours he spent staring out the windows of their recording studio at Lake Geneva. The song is described as having a psychedelic dreamy feel and reflects what Freddie saw out of the windows.

I wanted to create a cold frosty feel and used distress inks and pan pastels for the background, stamped and embossed the Penny Black Winters Ledge image, then added glitter to the branches to give a winter feel. The sentiment is computer generated.

I also made a second card as one of my Flonz Craft stamps kept calling out 'Lady in Red' by Chris de Burg, the song which he wrote with reference to his wife Diane. I have paper pieced the image with Teresa Collins DP's which I also used on the card base, a die cut swirl and leaves and decoupaged flower from the same DP to carry the colours.

Today we are going to have lunch with one of our sons and his family, this is something we've not been able to do during the last ten weeks as it wasn't possible to lave Buffy for very long. In fact apart from basic shopping trips and one to a friend in early August which had been planned for months, we have hardly left the house.

Whatever you have planned, I hope you have a good Sunday and again my grateful thanks to you all for your kindness. 

Buffy

Summer 2009

I'm so sad to say that the day I had been dreading came yesterday and we lost Buffy last night.

In the end all quite quick and unexpected. The two of us had been having a productive crafty session with her laying at my feet as usual, until she started vomiting and hemorrhaging mid afternoon, our vet referred her direct to the Animal Health Trust at Newmarket for a blood transfusion but after a few hours she was so weak I had to make that horrid decision and she died looking comfy with her head on my lap.

The scans showed the disease had spread to her liver and heart, although the reason for the haemorrhage was unclear and until yesterday she had remained bright, happy and playful. Two weeks turned into ten weeks and she showed incredible resilience till the end.

The guys at the Animal Health Trust were as always fantastic and caring and we are so lucky to have the Countries leading animal research and medical centre so close, it's not the first time we have been there over the years.

I shall miss her like fury and my craft room where I've been sitting for hours since we got home seems so empty, but I'll get my act together a.s.a.p.

Summer 2009

Buffy left with George front, son Alex's lab and Abbey, daughter Joy's who we lost last October

The new Blogger interface seems to have lost all my scheduled posts so my Allsorts one will be here in due course.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr Blogger

Good morning Peeps and thank you to everyone for your visits whilst I have been without my computer. I'm not sure which way is up still as my craft room is still in disarray although I can see some forward movement and at least I got my computer back into action again yesterday, so needless to say I now have a weeks worth of catching up to do.

And on top of that it seems blogger has decided I have to use the new interface and has removed the option to revert to the old one. Suffice to say I absolutely hate the new interface, there is so much white space coupled with everything being spread around a much wider area that my already dodgy eyes are playing havoc with me and at the moment it won't take much for me to pack up blogging altogether.

So all I can share with you today are a couple of cards made a week or two ago as the uproar my craft room means I haven't made anything for well over a week now.

The top card is a Stamplaot sample and to create the background I use distress inks, one colour at a time onto an acrylic block and spritzed with water to create a random patchwork effect, stamped Woodware JGS273 in vintage sepia and embossed with detail clear and added Frantage aged spice around the edges.

The second card uses one of Ruth's A Passion for Stamps images which has been paper pieced, an embossed panel and a Cheery Lynn lattice panel at the bottom over the matching DP.

Have a good day everyone.

Purple Passion

Note added: Apols I've not got to many of you this week, all good intentions to blog on my lappy did't really work out as I forgot I don't have the voice recognition programme installed on that and I find the keyboard all but impossible to work with.

Hopefully Blogger is playing fair and it's Saturday morning when this pops up as it's one of the scheduled posts I prepared before I had to 'close the doors' on my craft room for redecoration and so on.

This week at  Allsorts one of our lovely new design team members Tracy has come up with a great theme of 'Purple Passion'. Now I know my card looks distinctly blue in the photograph, but despite taking numerous pictures in different locations it still looked the same colour, but I can assure you it most definitely is lilac and purple, in fact I used distress markers dusky concord and shaded lilac from the spring collection.

I stamped the background using the second generation inking from Tim Holts Papillion stamp sheet and then stamped the main image by inking direct to stamp and spritzing with water for stamping. The main background piece was stamped all over with a penny black lace background stamp using versamak and clear embossing powder and then inking the whole piece with dusky concord and shaded lilac. Some ruffled ribbon and diecut roses and leaves.

As always, many thanks for popping in and hope you have a lovely weekend.

By the sea

This is going to be a really quick post because my craft room is in uproar and most of my goodies packed away. Why I hear you ask, well hubby decided my craft room was ready for an overhaul and on Sunday morning without warning ripped the carpet up, so yesterday was a mad rush to finish DT work and schedule posts for the next week or two. I will still be able to comment/blog on my lappy but I store all my images and prepare posts on my desktop as it's visually much easier for me to work with.

My card is one I created playing with my new Pan Pastels, I won some in their challenge and needless to say one thing led to another and I 'needed' more. I am totally blown away by how easy they are to work withm they blend beautifully and using the small sponge tools you can even colouring with them, my whole card was coloured with them alone. So I thought it only right I entered my card into their challenge this week. The stamps are Sheena Douglass.

Hopefully it won't be too long before I get back to normality craft wise, but I'm a realist and know these things don't happen overnight, especially as hubby will be trying to fit everything that needs doing around work.

Pan Pastel - By the Sea

Layering up

Don't the weeks roll by, seems it Saturday already again and this week at Allsorts one of our lovely new teamies Sarah wants us to layer up on our work.

I've used another of the lovely Vintage Ladies stamps from Flonz Craft, paper piecing the dress. The vocal image has been stamped and impossible detail clear, masked and then the background softly distressed and some random stamping with a music script stamp. A Tim Holtz clock cup on some coordination card, Spellbinder leaves, Sizzix roses and the stick pin made from matching beads.

I hope you'll join us at the challenge this week and look forward to seeing all your entries.

Have a lovely weekend everybody.

Christmas candy....plus one

Candy one

A pack of Bo Bunny Christmas DP's, set of assorted embellies, set of Crafters Companion Christmas stamps, set of four penny Black Christmas stamps, more embellies, Judikins double sided bolio stamp, five packs of Christmas toppers, Christmas satin ribbons.

I thought this would be a good month to have some Christmas goodies as a candy prize, so many Peeps seem to be in full Christmas mode so these will help some lucky person along their way.

Plus another little giveaway so there are two lucky Peeps,

Candy two

 Some Teresa Collins 12x12 DPs', matching embellies and ribbons

Same rules as usual: 

1) I'd love if you were a follower, but not one here just for the candy, 

   (I will discount any candy followers/candy blogs)

2) Post the main candy picture on your sidebar with a link back here.

3) Leave you name with Inlinkz below.

I will do the draw for two winners on 30th September 2012.

A few more of Ruth's flowers

Poppy digi printed onto acetate, laid over crumpled and inked tissue paper then coloured through from the reverse using Copics. Butterfly from
the fuchsia stamp set.

Good morning to you all, hope everyone is OK and those of you in the UK enjoying a little bit of this late summer sunshine. But it is turning very cold at night and last night it went down to 4° here, so I don't suppose it will be long before the frosts set in.

I'm still working away with Ruth's lovely artwork and I am thoroughly enjoying the versatility of the Pick of the Bunch rubber stamp sets and had a really productive weekend preparing magazine samples using them, but it will be a while before I can share those so in the meantime here are a few of the others I have come up with.

Ivy from the chrysanthemum stamp set stamped and embossed onto heat resistent acetate, fixed over base card stamped with Penny Black sentiment lightly shaded with distress ink

A little update on Buffy as so many of you very kindly enquire about her, she has been quite remarkable the last few weeks but we can see a noticeable deterioration in her the last few days. Although she remains content her tummy is becoming quite distended and as it does her appetite is reducing and I can't help but wonder how much longer she has. Our vet has been so supportive and told us exactly what we need to look out for when 'the time' comes, but it's so hard watching her and knowing the inevitability of her condition.

Single flower from the Rudbeckia stamp set, stamped and masked and surrounding area inked with the same colour and an embossed panel over the top with Penny Black sentiment

Whatever you are up to today, I hope it's a good one and as always my thanks for all your visits and kind words.

A real mixed bunch

Good morning Peeps, it's the first Sunday of the month so time for new challenges which means my post is a bit top heavy with photos again.

We have a real collection of varying themes for you this time round.................at Craft a Scene challenge we want to see 'Trees, at least three of them', At Stampalot  we have some photo inspiration which involves soft pastel colour a touch of lace and a feel of Victoriana and at Penny Black and More we are in Christmas mode with 'Early Christmas Makes'

My card at the top is some inky indulgence, lots of Art Impression stamps and with a bit of artistic licence could be the landscape very close to home. We have quite a lot of Monkjack Deer roaming wild in the fields,  they are such beautiful but timid creatures and we also have a large population on Canada Geese so those in my scene just might be coming down to land on the lake across the side field. Then the horses of course and when I was still fit enough I loved nothing better than an early morning hack across the Fens, now the best I can manage is to groom them, but it's still wonderful to be close to them and all these marvels of Nature. 

My Penny Black DT pieces both use some of the new 2012 Christmas releases, you will find links and details on the thumbnails below. For the card above I also used some of the new Madison DP's from Penny Black, the pads have 48 sheets with a real range of designs suitable for all year round.

On the card above I inked direct to stamp using distress markers and a spritz of water before stamping and distressing the edges a little. The DP is a new Christmas one from Imaginisce and is double sided which is always a bonus. The Poinsettia is made from a spellbinder die, it's one I bought this time last year after totally falling in love with, it soooooo useful.

My final share is my Stampalot DT piece and I've taken the colours and lace from the inspirational photograph. The image is La Blanche and I coloured in with Derwent water colours. For some odd reason the roses look somewhat florescent in the picture, but they really are not in real life.

I really hope you can join in with our challenges this month and look forward to coming round visiting all your entries.

News on the horizon

A very good morning Peeps, still very crotchety at this end, why is it that I always take twice me long as 'normal' folk to mend............well of course I know the answer to that one, but it still irritates like fury when my wings are clipped and everything takes twice as long as it should.

Anyhow, I can still pass on my news (below) and as it's Saturday we have a new challenge for you over at Allsorts and this week my lovely teami Debs would like to see anything but a square or rectangle. And no, I've not lost the plot, the square card at the top is not my DT one for Allsorts, they are below. 

The one above is for Flonz Craft.....................I was invited to join their new DT a few weeks ago ........been bursting to share my news...........and it took my just a few moments to accept, it may seem like a moment of insanity but since I was introduced to their stamps only a matter of weeks ago I absolutely loved working with them so the answer was easy really. You may ask why do I take on more, well the less mobile I am the more I take refuge in my crafting............it maintains my sanity...........there are those who would question that but it's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

There's more Flonz news to come which I will be sharing with you in a few days time, so watch this space.

So now for my Allsorts DT cards and two for me this week, the easel card below using an image from one of our sponsors DigiStamp Boutique and some paper piecing which I thought worked well with this particular image. The other one is using the lovely Go Create arched dies, a little bit of inking and a sun of course and the lovely Hero Arts poppy image which is also paper pieced plus some stamping in the background with Hero Arts Harlequin and Old French Writing.

Whenever you had planned, I hope you have a lovely weekend and as always many thanks for dropping by.