Chocolate Baroque and something new plus winners.

Good morning to you all, it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week Mervi would like us to use our new crafty goodies for the theme of  'Something New'. Our sponsor is Tattered Lace.

This is one of my samples for Chocolate Baroque using the beautiful Rose Stem Script stamp and the lovely Van Gogh quote, the background is Brusho's, some stenciled harlequins using texture paste, the colour bleached out of the rose and then coloured in with the same Brusho's. These stamps will feature in Chocolate Baroque's first appearance on Hochanda TV on 4th January at 11am and 5pm so I do hope you can tune in.

And a little later than promised as Christmas seemed to go on far longer than I planned, here are the winners of my Christmas giveaway.

However: Although Random Org., came out with this number I am a little concerned as the link from that entry shows up an error when you click on it. So Gwen, could you please mail me with the correct link to your blog so I can update the linky and as it's a rather special prize, check the giveaway rules were followed and so other entrants can visit you. Should I not receive that info by the end of Monday 2nd January I will re-draw/allocate the prize and include details in my next post.

And in the spirit of Christmas I have drawn two more small prizes and the names out of the draw are:

Sandra

 Di

Well done, please mail me with your full postal addy's so I can send your goodies.

And here are a couple of Chocolate Baroque shares, I am a little late with these as our Christmas family days went right through until yesterday and I have only now got back to my craft room.

Both use pre-made backgrounds using the shaving foam technique, I find a stock of them so useful for creating quickly stamped cards.

Please do pop over to the Design Team Blog here to see what the rest of the team have made and the stamps I used.

And one final Allsorts card, this one using a new paper pad and dies from the Mickey Mouse and Friends range by Create and Craft and Tattered Lace, it's one of the batch of cards I was asked to make for Corporate cards to send to retailers of the dies.

Happy New Year to you all.

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a Happy and Peaceful Christmas.

The photo above is Kings Collage Chapel Cambridge taken from The Backs. I went to a small C of E school in a little village just outside the City so that gave the pupils the privilege of attending the annual Carol Service which is broadcast on TV at this time of year, it was always a very special occasion and seemed to mark the start of Christmas for us when we were young.

I am posting this now as the family start to arrive later this week for the Festive Season so I'm likely to be otherwise occupied, there will be between ten and eighteen of us most days so there will be plenty of preparations to be done. I've tried to get ahead and have made and frozen down things like cranberry sauce, stock for gravies and so on, but there's lots more that will need doing last thing.

And I also have a Penny Black share, shame on me as I forgot to post my mid way card yesterday, did the one on the challenge blog but not my own and only just realised, sorry teamies !!

So here it is using Penny Black Venetian Summer and using pink as my 'plus one' colours with black and white.

And last but by no means least my Snippets Playground share, it's a two week challenge this time as it's the school holidays and Miss Di needs a break from all the end of term activities. I used three small offcuts of Fabriano, cut them to the same size, fixed together to stamp the Daisy image from Stamps by Me and a bit of paint flicking, then spaced and matted them into a triptych design.

Happy Christmas.

Blue bingo

Good morning to you all, it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week it's my turn to choose the theme which I have called 'Blue Bingo' and it's two week challenge to cover the holiday period.  It's a bit of a photo heavy post as I ended up with three creations for the theme so decided to share them all in today's post.

And as it's Christmas we are spoiling you with a very special prize worth about £55 from our new sponsor Swedish House Crafts. Suha's UK based store is fairly new and her stock consists mainly of Swedish products and offers something a little different to us crafters. Please do pop over to Swedish House Crafts and take a look at Suha's store and you can even get a 10% discount off any orders placed using this code: FROMSANTABRENDA

Here is the bingo grid, it's a little bit 'edgy' and designed to draw in some inkiness along with colour options based on blue combos. 

My top card follows the blue and yellow, no design papers and dimension. I used a really dark blue cardstock and repeated stamped the Butterflies image from our sponsor and heat embossed with yellow embossing powder. Next I stamped the Happy Birthday stamp in blue versafine and also stamped out a few more butterflies and cut them out to embellish. Using TL dies I cut two more layers and mounted all into the centre of the base piece using foam pads to give dimension. Finally I placed the butterfles, added wire antenna and liquid pearls, flowers ad a bow.

For my second piece I used the blue and yellow, stenciling and dry embossing, although it takes in some of the other options as well. I started with an 8 x 8 wooden frame with a flat removable canvas in the middle and started by giving the frame and canvas a generous coating of gesso, then painted the frame with a darkish blue acrylic paint, then a thin coat of crackle glaze and a coat of an off white acylic and was really pleased with the cracks. I used DI's, inks and sprays to colour the canvas and then stencilled two flowers using white stencil paste and when dry laid the stencil back over and coloured with distress crayons and some script stamping in-between with an Visible Image stamp.

The flowers decorating the frame are Tattered Lace Trios, cut and embossed with the matching folders and then coloured with the same inks and crayons. The leaves are Hero Arts, stamped, cut out and coloured again with inks and crayons. A computer generated sentiment and three chipboard Butterflies stamped with the same VI script and inked.

My final share follows the blue and purple, dry embossing and masking line and started by masking the top and bottom of the card along with a sun. Then used Pan Pastel to create the background, then using dye ink stamped Daisy and  and used a fan brush to add some 'grass' to the bottom using diluted D's. After removing the mask I added the rather nice flourishy Happy Birthday, dry embossed just the top and bottom white sections of the piece before matting with purple and adding to a white landscape card.

Many thanks for popping in today and I hope you will go over to the challenge blog and see what my teamies have created and of course join in with our theme.

Early Spring

Morning Peeps, a quick post with a couple of Chocolate Baroque shares following our twice monthly posts over at the DT blog where we aim to show ways to make fifteen minutes cards using the fabulous CB stamps.

One of my most recent CB stamp sets is the beautiful Springtime Edges and as I love that time of year decided to ink some of the stamps up and share an early hint of Spring with you.

For the card at the top I used the reverse side of a piece of Centura Pearl, added a mask for the sun and Pan Pastels to create a soft background. Next I stamped one of the Snowdrop images using black archival ink, added glitter to the flowers and a sentiment from CB Words of Inspiration.

For my second card I used the silhouette Snowdrop image from the same stamp set and stamped onto a background coloured with distress inks. The sentiment is from CB Glorious Spring stamp set. 

Both of these cards were really quick and easy to make and well inside fifteen minutes proving you don't need to spend ages on a card and can come up with something really pretty when you are in a rush.

Thanks for popping in today.

Live in the Sunshine

Today sees the start of a new challenge at Fashionable Stamping Challenges and this month our theme is 'Anything Goes', a nice and easy one over the holiday period when so many of us are busy. As always there is a generous prize of a $20 shopping voucher from FlonzCraft.

I found this heart having a clear out of my overflow craft room........aka one of the spare bedrooms.......so decided to have a play with my new Cosmic Shimmer Gilding Polishes, apparently you can add them direct to wood without a base coat but I had already given the heart a coat of gesso and it blended fine. I used Fern, Aqua, Purple and Gold. 

The polish dries almost instantly so next I stenciled the same polishes over the base and...........this is the really good but about the polishes........you can stamp with it was well so I stamped around the edges with a really old Inkadinkadoo stamp. Next stamped the Heartfelt flowers onto a piece of card coloured with the same polishes, cut them out with the matching die and layered up. The sentiment is from Inkylicious, masking each section of the stamp to get three individual pieces, the wording is too close together to just stamp and cut but it is easy enough to do this way. Finally some lace and pearls and finito.

And with all those snippets I am popping right off to the Playground with this one, Miss Di is still under the weather (get well soon Miss) but you know they say about when the cat is away.............

I do hope you will come and join in our challenge.

Christmas lights, fairies are out to play and a puzzle

Good morning to you all, it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week Helene would like to see Christmas Lights, we have some lovely Christmas dies to be won this week.

Further down you will also find my share for the current Butterfly Challenge, however as it's December and the Butterflies are all in their chrysalis stage, this month is all about Fairies and those magical beings. Also a share of a few of the pieces I made for yesterdays Tattered Lace Pick of the Day on Create and Craft TV.

Now I know you saw one of this a few weeks ago, but in my defense it was a different colour, in fact I made several of these in various colours for our children, I thought they would make a nice change to a Christmas card.

The base is a rattan circle from Hobbycraft and the Heartfelt Creation Poinsettias stamped onto card coloured with Dylsions, heat embossed with detail gold powder and then cut  using the coordinating die before layering up. The sentiment is Penny Black again stamped and embossed onto the same sprayed cardstock. When the Pinflair was set I entwined a string of TL Bright Heart LED craft lights and some strings of Anna Marie pearls and ribbon bow.

For my Butterfly Challenge card I have gone all Lavinia with a Fairy and Unicorn, both stamped in black archival onto a sky created with Brushos and the bottom area coloured with Pan Pastels. Some toadstools, Poppies and branches which are also all from Lavinia. Glitter on the Fairies wings and Poppies and magic dust added with Stickles.

And the Tattered Lace shares, to be honest when the dies first arrived I was a bit unsure about them, but the artwork soon changed my mind as some of the images are absolutely beautiful.

Happy weekend all, I do hope you will join in our Allsorts challenge this week and a heads up that next week we have a rather special prize for our Christmas challenge.

A touch of Art Deco

Morning Peeps, a really quick post with a few Tattered Lace shares of the new Art Deco dies which you will catch on Create and Craft TV today at 11am and 5pm. Have to say I thoroughly enjoyed working with this release, especially the lovely Art Deco ladies, always think it was such an elegant era.........providing of course you had an hour glass figure.

While I'm here I would like to welcome my new followers, thank you so much for joining my crafty pursuits. 

I would also like to hop over to the Snippets Playground.........well hobble would be a better description.......but can't miss out on Parsnips Christmas end of term bash this week, mulled wine and mince pies for all. The G45 paper on the top card is actually gutted in the middle as I cut out the focal elements from there..........I won't say her clothes as I believe the piece of cloth is all that is protecting her modesty. So I covered the hole with a piece of embossed card which is unusually frugal for me I have to say. 

And a heads up that there is another new TL release later this week and it's also rather lovely.

Many thanks for popping in today.

All rather floral

It's time for our challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More where our themes 'Floral Fancies' and 'Black and White plus One'. As always there are wonderful prizes to be won at both.

My Penny Black share uses PB Blush stamp and the matching die called Bashful as well as another PB background script stamp and sentiment. I started with a piece of black pre gesso coated linen fabric, sanded it down to bring down the colour a little, then randomly white embossed the script and rubbed gold gilding polish around the edges. Next I stamped the flowers on bacl card, cut them out and coloured with the same gilding polish. The same polish was added to the TL leaves, flowers and little cameo.

I recently acquired some Stamps by Me stamps, I love Toni's approach to her designs, all so elegantly crafted and once stamped they need very little more adding. I used two coloures of distress inks and black for the outlines and sentiment, flicked some od the same watered down colours and mattered up using TL pin dot frames.

Please do pop over the the challenge blogs to see all the inspiration from my team mates and of course the super prizes on offer.

And in case you missed my post yesterday about Swedish House Crafts, you can get a 10% discount off your order using this code: FROMSANTABRENDA. 

CAS at Allsorts

This is what the professional photographer who took this rather good photo said in his piece: "A special team vest, a well chosen spot with a view of the Eiffel tower, and a runner towards the front of the 30, 000 pack. If only it was always this easy to spot them!"

Before I go on to this weeks Allsorts challenge I wanted to share the above photo of one of our son's Alex running the Paris Marathon, it was a while ago but I only just received this photo and it's such a good one I wanted to share. He runs a sub three (under three hours) which gives him automatic entry to London and elite position start. We were there with him in Paris and the whole event had a really laid back feel to it and Alex being sponsored by Asics gave us entry to their hospitality enclosure right on the finish line.

OK, now on to our new challenge at Allsorts and this week Annie has chosen the theme of  'CAS'. Our sponsor this week is Digistamp Boutique and Tattered Lace, so twice the reason to join in.

Further down I also have a couple of shares using stamps from a new UK based on line craft store Swedish House Crafts and..............you can get a 10% discount off your order using this code: FROMSANTABRENDA. Further down you will also find my entry to this weeks Snippets Playground, I'm mighty late to the party this week but should sneak in before the gates close.

I have used a new image from Stamps by Me, it's called simply Daisy. It's one of Toni's lamination stamps with a silhouette and an outline stamp, I used an Adirondack dye ink for the silhouette element and a slightly darker one for the outline and sentiment which is from Inkylicous. The great thing about the lamination sets is that you can't go wrong as the whole idea is to give a very random finish. Please do pop over to the challenge blog to see all the inspiration on offer from my team mates.

Now for the cards using the stamps from Swedish House Crafts, the background of the above card was created with gesso, distress crayons and lots of water. I then stamped the Butterfly stamp.....a lovely wood mounted one..........centrally and then twice more using just part of the stamp to create a kaleidoscope of Butterflies. I then stamped again onto offcuts of card coloured with the same crayons and decoupaged. Next I randomly stamped Splats with distress inks then some deeper colouring ones using purple gilding polish which I also used around the edges. This one is also my Snippets share, using lots of offcuts for the Butterflies.

For this one I masked a section of the base card and used Pan Pastels and a sun mask to create the background,  then using dye ink stamped Daisy and Little Rudbeckia, removed the mask and added the rather nice flourishy Happy Birthday and some gems. And don't forget you can get a 10% discount off any orders placed using this code: FROMSANTABRENDA

Happy weekend all.

Christmas with Baker Ross, Allsorts and Rudolph Day

Good morning Peeps, what on earth has Blogger gone and done with out dashboards, I am so sooooo fed up with all his shenanigans lately. As if the verification robotic's with commenting wasn't bad enough, now he's made seeing all our blogs in one quick look impossible, OK if you only have just the one, but when there are several you need to deal with it's a right rigmarole getting anywhere. I am almost at the point where I could give it all up and I don't say that lightly.

Right, moan over and it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week Kevin has chosen the theme of  'Anything Christmas'. We have two sponsors this week, Marianne Designs and A Day for Daisies. 

Our Allsorts theme also coincides nicely with months Rudolph Day's Challenge, plus I also have some shares further down using products from my latest box of goodies from Baker Ross so it's a bit of a heavy post.

I have used an image from A Day for Daisies which I printed out twice for the focal image and also a strip of the same image as a border across the bottom of my Tattered Lace stepper card. I coloured the images with Spectrum Sparkle pens, decoupaged the main image and flicked some red DI around the blooms. And finally some pretty ribbon on the side panels.

I am guessing it will be the last Rudolph Day's Challenge this year, my how that time has flown by. But am rather chuffed with myself as I made a promise that I would enter every month this year and apart from when I was on holiday manged to do so. Thank you Mo for all your hard work keeping the challenge going.

The latest goodies are from Baker Ross's Christmas range, the fun thing is that it's always a surprise what is inside and it's a great way to get get the creative juices flowing outside the comfort zone.

I have used several of the goodies on the wall hanging above and I absolutely love the Bark Stars, they have such lovely textures which really lends itself to inking up, on this occasion I used gilding polish on them and it really brings out the natural patterns.

I started out with a large piece of 600gsm Fabriano, coated it with gesso and gilding polishes, then randomly stamped with text. Next I used texture paste and a stencil to add some Christmas baubles and when dry replaced the stencil and coated with BR metallic acrylic paint.

I mounted the piece onto BR Hessian.........do check this out as it's excellent value for money compared with that sold in many high street shops. I also added a strip across the middle of the piece before adding the stars, a computer generated sentiment, BR twine and two Roses made from cutting circles from BR Glitter Paper and a seam binding bow.

There was also a pack of BR Christmas baubles in my box which I coated first with BR Gesso, then painted with BR Acrylic Paint  and a coat of crackle glaze before stamping with a variety of small rubber stamps and adding a little colour and BR Glitter. And by sheer coincidence the new tree I ordered from M&S for the conservatory was delivered yesterday so I assembled it to check out the lights and was able to pop the baubles on to take my photo.

Have a good weekend one and all.

Blogger dashboard changes

Most of us have now got the new Blogger dashboard changes and from what I am hearing most share my thoughts and dislike it with a passion.

I started a post on Blogger forum here where people have been sharing their thoughts.......all negative so far. There is also one "expert" comment asking people to send feedback to them.......little orange tab that comes up bottom right when you are in the new so called dashboard.

If you only have the one blog it might not affect too much, but if you have nine to deal with as I do it's a total nightmare. Yesterday I intended scheduling posts on the various challenge blogs and I can't begin to tell you how time consuming and laborious it was and in the end I gave up.

I know Blogger is pretty intransigent but we can but hope strength in numbers just might get through for once, so please if you share my thoughts on the changes please do send feedback on one or even better both of the suggestions above.

Trees, leaves and flowers

Good morning to you all, it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week Kath has chosen the theme of 'O Christmas Tree'. Our sponsor is Crafty Ribbons.

It seems to be a recurring apology just lately and again I am saying sorry for not getting to your blogs for a few days, still lots of pain and typing remains difficult and to add insult to injury the vertigo has made a reappearance. I am wearing my pain machine much of the time and as it needs to be plugged into the power supply I am pretty restricted what I can do.

Further down you will also find a few more of the samples I made for today's Stamp Addict shows on Hochanda TV, Sarah and Vicky will be on at 8am and 2pm. Also and rather belatedly, my mid month Penny Black creation, sorry I'm all behind teamies.

I don't have an abundance of Christmas Tree stamps, but I do have more than my fair share of tree stamps so I decided on a slightly different approach to the theme starting with the lyrics from the lovely German carol 'Oh Christmas Tree' which I printed onto a sheet of plain white card.

I then used an oval mask and coloured the aperture with Pan Pastels before stamping the scene using Hero Arts stamps and finally matting and layering with coordinating card. Please do pop over to the challenge blog to see all the inspiration on offer from my team mates.

A fairly quick and simple on for my Penny Black make, I used Distress Markers to ink the stamp, spritzed with water before stamping and added a PB sentiment and framed using TL dies.

Now for the Stamp Addict shares and you might remember I promised you there was a lovely Rose stamp being launched today, here it is..................

The background is Burushos, the Rose bleached out and then coloured in with Brushos. The sentiment is a new one as well and I know it is about red Roses, but I am using artistic licence here.

And one of two with the beautiful leaf stamps, the background of the one above is Brusho's as are the leaves cut from card coloured with the same, background stamping and sentiment also Stamp Addicts............loving Autumnal colours and inkiness this one is my real favourite from my latest batch of samples for Stamp Addicts.

The background fur this one is Distress Crayons, then stamped over with black archival.

And a Red Rose, Broshos again for both the background and colouring after bleaching out the flower and then decoupaging the main bloom. The sentiment looks a bit crooked but seemed alright in real life, now I wonder, the screen will tell me.



I shared the large Moose the other day, this is the identical smaller version.

Have a good weekend all.