Vintage at Allsorts

Good morning, time for another challenge at Allsorts and this week Tracy Mouse is going all 'Vintage'. Our sponsors are Jiggery Makery and Jessica Lynn Originals.

It's been a fabulous week with our Allsorts Birthday challenge and the winner of the Tattered Lace £50 voucher can be found on my post of last evening on the challenge blog. The DT's offering prizes will announce winners on their own blogs and the winners of my Tattered Lace dies are:

Mrs A (ValeryAnne)

and

Rhonda

Well done to you both, please mail me with your full names and postal addys.

Now onto my artwork, I recall a discussion in blogland a few years ago when it was being debated if Vintage had to be tones of brown and dusky pinks as that seems to be the perceived idea, but I think since that time it's been accepted that Vintage can be any colour, it's more the style of the piece that reflects the style, well that's certainly the road I am going down with one on my pieces today.

So following that principal my first card is blues and greens with a touch of brown thrown in for good measure. It's actually a card I made some time ago for Stamp Addicts but I never did get round to blogging it so today seemed like a good opportunity. 

The background is of course Dylusions and stenciled grunge paste, some random stamping and splattering's of frantage along with SA clock and retro flowers, seed beads in the flower centers and seam binding.

But just in case I made a second card in browns and pinks, distressed the DP which is a piece from my stash and used some hessian across the card. I coloured the lace and seam binding with distress inks, cut two hears using Tattered Lace essential hearts, some roses, pearls and TL Cherish sentiment.

Happy weekend all.

Rudolph Day and more garden shrubs

Ceanothus Concha, this is a fairly young shrub and reached about 7' high this year

Morning Peeps, I hope you all had a good weekend, the weather was a bit iffy here so no barbie which we hoped might be an option, but never mind as it was nice to spend time with family.

I was determined to join in Mo's Rudolph Day this time round and managed to get a card made using Penny Black stamps and a bit of colouring with my Sepectrum pencils. I cut out the top section of the image so that it sat over the aperture created with a TL oval die and placed it over the sentiment, some stickles and a bow

And here are a few more photos of the shrubs presently coming into bloom in the gardens.

Mexican Orange Blossom with a lovely scent, this one is a young bush of only a couple of years

Ceanothus Thyrsiflorus Skylark, we started off with the idea of it climbing one of the pergolas, but it's taken on a life of it's own and well over 12' high now and a stand alone shrub almost as tall as some of the fruit trees

Viburnun Opulus Roseum, every year it gets a really hard prune back and every Spring it just takes off like a triffid, this year it's well over 10 feet tall and the blooms are huge as the photo below shows against my hand

Aesculus Hippocastanum - Good old Horse Chestnut. We planted 50 forest trees about 20 years ago, several of which were Horse Chestnuts, all are maturing nicely now and will be splendid specimens in years to come

Thanks for visiting and hope you all have a good week.

Happy 6th Birthday Allsorts and Tattered Lace dies to be won

Good morning, I hope you are ready for the bank holiday weekend whatever you have planned and lets hope the weather is kind. Please accept my apologies for the lack of activity for a whole week, I have been rather under the weather and on the hospital run again, but fingers crossed things are slowly getting back to normal.

Today is Allsorts 6th Birthday and we are celebrating in style with a very special prize to be won..............a £50 Tattered Lace shopping voucher. Plus, there are some more Tattered Lace dies to be won which I shall explain about a bit further down this post.

I find it amazing that we are six years old, I have been on the team since day one and little did I think that we would still be going and in fact getting even stronger after six years and there could only be one there really this week, it's 'Birthday's. 

Yet more Tattered Lace dies to be won

As well as the fabulous Tattered Lace prize to be won at Allsorts, I have two more of their dies to give away, but there is a slight twist as I shall be selecting two winners from the followers over at the Tattered Lace Blog, so if you are not already a follower do pop over there to be in with a chance of winning one of the beautiful dies pictured above.

As I am very fortunate to be on both the Tattered Lace Design Team for TV work as well as their inspirational blog team, my DT piece is of course using their fabulous dies. It's four month since I was invited to join them and I'm still having a ball and loving working with their products. My canvas above..............which I will add was tremendous fun to make.........is also on the Tattered Lace Blog today along with how I created it so I won't bore you with all the details here as well.

I hope you all have a lovely holiday weekend and I do hope you will join in our Birthday celebrations this week.

Anything but square and jagged edges

Good morning, time for another challenge at Allsorts and this week Susan want to anything but a square on our work. Our sponsors are Deedees Designs and do read down about next weeks very special challenge.

I have gone with a circle easel card cut with Tattered Lace essential circles and scalloped circles, I am always rather partial to easel cards and especially round ones and this Penny Black Poppy lends itself to this shape.

I stamped and embossed the Poppy with versafine black and detail clear and coloured with Spectrum Noir pencils.............we all know I am not a colourist and am always searching for a colouring medium I feel confident working with. After watching these demoed on C&C a few weeks ago when there was a fantastic deal of all five sets at a club price of about £65 I took the plunge and went for them and I am actually beginning to see the appeal of colouring in and actually enjoying it.

I added a little light stenciling around the Poppies and added some pearls and a Penny Black sentiment and ribbons.

And a little advance notice that next week we celebrate or 6th Birthday at Allsorts, it's going to be rather special................... there's a little clue in the sidebar badge which we hope you will display on your own blogs to help us spread the word and of  course join in the fun next week.

I also have a second card which I have made for this month Butterfly Challenge, I have not had time to join in for some weeks so thought I had better show my face again, I rarely enter challenges but like to make an exception for this one. The theme this time is 'J for jagged edges' and of course a butterfly. So a perfect opportunity to distress the edges of my main piece and add some frantage, a background of Dylusions and stenciling, a Penny Black butterfly and sentiment (cut down into three), seam binding and pearls.

Happy weekend all and as always thank you for your visit.

New Trio sets from Tattered Lace

Hello Peeps, I hope your week is going well.

Tomorrow sees the launch of lots of new Tattered Lace goodies and lucky me has been playing with them for the last couple of weeks and today I can share a few with you.

The new Trio sets are so clever, each set has three dies, a small embossing folder and there are stamps as well. Needless to say I have been in my element with so many flowers to play with and quite a few have been given the inky treatment, plus I have also done some colouring in.........I know shock horror..............using the new Nursery Rhyme stamps along with the matching dies.

I used the Sophie (leaves) and Kirsty Trio sets on the top card, as soon as I saw the latter set it yelled out Poppies to me, but to be fair it makes so many flowers including lovely Pansies. Both the background, Poppies and leaves have been given the Dylusion and Mica spray treatment along with some masking and grunge paste.

I have used several of the Trio sets on this one, Emma, Kirsty, Sophie, Rebecca and Nicola and a Pan Pastel background. The sentiment is also Tattered Lace which I cut down into two parts

Little Bo Peeps from one of the Nursery Rhyme stamp sets, I masked the sheep to create a flock............might make it easier for her to find them as well !! The flowers are made from the Rebecca Trio set

A fairly simple matted and layered card using the Tractor die and With Love from the Get Started set which was POTW recently

I cut these flowers from felt and the dies cut through it perfectly with just one run through the e.bosser. It doesn't show up too well on my photo, but I was really surprised to find the felt picked up the pattern from the embossing folder really well

I used the Rebecca Trio set to make the roses, Sophie the leaves and dipped them along with Butterfly Wondrous into UTEE, shading all with Pan Pastels

Thanks so much for taking a look today and I hope you get time to see some of the programmes.

Blossoms and birds - take two

Clematis Montana

Good morning Peeps, I hope you are all having a good week. Thanks so much for all your very kind comments on my last few posts, also welcome to me new followers.

No craft to share today, I am deep into Tattered Lace samples which I can't share quite yet, but keep your eyes open for some fabulous new products coming up on Create and Craft TV on 14th/15th of May. So instead I thought I would share some more photos from the garden which I took bank holiday Monday when we had an hour or two of lovely sunny weather in the afternoon.

Wisteria Brachybotrys Shire Kapitan Fujii, the beauty of the blooms and habit never fail to wow me

Clematis Montana, two years ago I cut this one right back as it was looking really bedraggled with little flower, last year it did nothing and the family were convinced I had killed it, this year it proved them all wrong and looks glorious in the corner of the secret garden (with a fence much in need of replacement)

Polygonatum odoratum, it's an amazing plant as it comes from nowhere to three feet high in just a couple of weeks. Supposedly it has good healing properties for arthritis and skin conditions and widely used by the Chinese

Syringa vulgaris - or good old common Lilac, this one is always the first to bloom and has a glorious scent, especially in the evening - I took this photos a couple of days ago, just look at the blue sky, ever since it's rained

Looking across the back of the orchard at a few of the apple tree, the pears are all at the front and had an abundance of flower this year, note the end of a yellow lab in the bottom left corner

And on this one I seem to have got the back end of a black lab, they get everywhere. One of the Choisya's or Mock Orange Blossom, this one is only a couple of years old and looks like it will grow into a beauty, it's another with a lovely scent

And I thought I would also share a few of our garden birds.............

Green 'woody' woodpecker, he's been living with us for a year or two and last year introduced 'the wife' and together they raised a family

Chaffinch - last year we had a family of them and am hoping they have nested in the garden again, he's been pretty frantic lately so it looks as though there is a family somewhere

Honey Buzzard - no I didn't take the photo, they fly very high and my photo skills are not that good, but I wanted to show you what we see on an almost daily basis. They are not native to East Anglia, but about three years ago we sighted them over near Peterborough and last year they were regulars overhead so we think a family of them have settled close by

Bullfinch, we have so many of these in the gardens and hubby moved one of the feeders to just outside the kitchen window a couple of weeks ago to see if they would use it and it didn't take them long to feed from it, apparently quite unconcerned that it was so close to the house and people

Blue Jay, very private birds and always hesitant but they do venture out to feed on the seeds the smaller birds throw out of the feeders, a few weeks ago we had five feeding all together, quite a rare sight

And finally Molly the Moorhen and chicks.....yes lots have names !! We have several families living in and around the top pond and they always feed across the paddocks and with the chickens. They are such timid creatures flicking their wings and run off at the slightest noise so getting a photo takes forever and this one is from last year. One of the most distressing things I ever saw was a couple of years ago when a family were walking their young and a Kestrel swooped down and airlifted one of the chicks away, the poor mother Moorhen stood out the the paddock all afternoon squawking and crying

I hope I've not bored you with so many photos, but I so love this time of year with all the rebirth of Nature and can never resist taking photos, albeit it not always particularly good ones. The May/Whitethorn is just showing a hue of colour, we have a whole hedgerow of it along the top paddock so you can be sure there will be some photos of that.

Shabby Chic at FlonzCraft plus some overdue Tattered Lace

Morning Peeps, time for our May challenge at  FlonzCraft Vintage Stamping Challenges  and this month our theme is 'Shabby Chic'. As always there if a fabulous $20 on line store voucher to be won from FlonzCraft.

I decided to make another pocket fold card, the same as the tutorial here. I love this gorgeous Docrafts DP, it's not a brand I buy very often but I actually bought two of this one so I didn't run out. After distressing the edges I inked with DI Tea Dye and layered up adding a pink tatty rose, some lace and seam binding.

The image istamped onto the tag is Art Nouveau Girl with Dog which I inked with versafine and embossed with a WOW powder, cut out and place over the background which has been stenciled with Sheena's Parisian stencil. I hope you will join in this month with a chance of winning the great shopping voucher.

Using the new Bunny border die which matches the large Bunny released a few weeks ago

And a bit overdue, here are some of my makes for the current Tattered Lace Pick of the Week on Create and Craft TV along with one from Wednesday's Pick on the Day which is also featured on the TL blog today. I will be back into the craft room today working on the next TL releases for next week, so lots more goodies to look forward to.

Using the new Ditsy Clematis and frame from the POTW Get Started set

This is one of my makes from the Pick of the Day Wednesday using the new 3Diemensions handbag die along with some other TL dies

Using the Duck, Monkey, Lion and Elephant border dies, Happy Birthday and letters from the Shutter Card set

All the elements on this one are from the Get Started set except the handmade flower and leaves

Hope you all have a good Bank Holiday Monday.

Flowers, dies and punches

Time for our monthly challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More where our themes are  Flower Power and Dies and Punches.

My card at the top is my Stamping Sensations make using an Indigo Blue stamps which was well overdue for it's first inking. I started by creating a background with Dylusions and Glimmer Mist, then stenciling with pearl paste medium for the honeycomb pattern and distress ink for the Gothic arch. I then stamped the image into the arch with black archival ink and stamped a second time, cut out the flowers, colured with Dylusions and decoupaged. I am not sure about the origins of the sentiment but I have a feeling it's a Sheena one.

My Penny Black and More piece is one of my recent Tattered Lace makes for Create and Craft. I had a vague idea in my head of what I wanted to achieve and from there on it turned into a bit of a labour of love and took the best part of a day. I also posted it over at the Tattered Lace blog today.

I started by cutting the five squares which are 140cm each and fixing them together with little scored spines cut from offcuts of the same card. I then created the little box again using the score board and made it slightly larger than the size of the squares and deep enough to hold them when folded up.

I distressed all of the edges before adding G45 DP and a coordinating ribbon and bazzil punched with TL delicate flower border to decorate the box and concertina of cards, using the scrip design on the reverse of the cards so the spines were all neatly covered. I then cut six TL essential ovals and decorated with a mixture of Penny Black stamps, TL dies and ribbons.

And I have one more for Stamping Sensations using a Crafty Individual image which I stamped and embossed with details clear powder and coloured with Spectrum pencils and matted onto some Trimcraft DP plus a floucy bow of seam binding, lace and string.

Hope you all have a good Bank Holiday weekend.