More garden blooms and a snippet

Hi Peeps, not sure what your bank holiday weather has been like but it's been pretty disappointing here in the Fens, we did see a few spots of sunshine yesterday but with a very cold wind and today it's just grey skies along with even more wind. We have visitors but have managed a bit of crafting while they are off on their training runs.

So I thought I would share a few recent Tattered Lace makes and a couple more photos which I took in the gardens on Friday when there was some sunshine. 

This Viburnum Opulus is now fully out (photo at the top) and I also took a close up against my hand so you can see the size of the huge blooms. 

My first Digitalis is coming out, this is one of several selfsets which have popped up around one of the Japanese Willow beds, it's not an ideal place for them to be growing but seemed such a shame to uproot them until they have flowered.

I couldn't resist taking this photos, amazing how many things of interest to Labradors there apparently are under shrubs because this is a scene I see over and again.

And now some TL shares, above a tag made using the new Essentials tag set which premiered on Create and Craft a couple of days ago, I made a few of these in different colourways as it's a great way of using up snippets of the thick packaging card that I have a habit of hoarding. I am popping over to the Snippets Playground with this one to see what mischief can be had. 

This one was made using the new Mug die set, the mug can be a stand alone card as it opens out but I decided to put it onto a card and use the stencil which goes with the set on the inside, below.

The spectacles are yet another new die which are fun to work with, I kept this one simple with a Brusho background and a computer generated sentiment.............I wasn't sure if the ink would bleed with the water and Brushos but it stayed fixed fine.

The lips were also new last week, for this one I ptinted the 'H' and 'T' on the computer, embossed the panel, tied some pink ribbon and a heat ribbon slide and cut the lips from pink glitter card and placed between the two letters to for the 'O'.

Hope you all have a good Monday.

In the Pink, Rudolph Day and winners

Good morning to you all, it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts where Susan has chosen the theme of 'In the Pink'. Our sponsor is Scrappers Delight and Sizzix.

It's another outing for Penny Black Passionate stamp, I know I have used this an awful lot but I so love the gorgeous image and how many different looks you can achieve with it merely by changing the colours of ink. After inking the stamp with Distress Markers Picked Raspberry, Fired Brick, Peeled Paint and a touch of Fossilized Amber I spritzed liberally with water and stamped onto Fabriano 300gsm card. I did a bit of background stenciling with Picked Raspberry DI and stamped the PB sentiment with the same ink. I also added a PB butterfly coloured in with the same colours.

Please do pop over to the challenge blog to check out the teams work and the prizes on offer.

I was determined to join in Mo's Rudolph Day this time round, I stared the year OK but things tailed off so her is the one for this months challenge.

This is the first outing for the Inkylicious stamp and mask I bought at the Thetford show back in February, in fact I bought another set as well but yet to try those out. I sponged Pan Pastels thought the mask and stamped the image with black archival ink. Some snow glitter on the house and glittery snowflakes although the sparkly hasn't really picked up in my photo. A Penny Black sentiment and bow to finish.

And last but by no means least the winners of the Tattered Lace goodies and the Tote Bag goes to........................

Rachel

And some Tattered Lace goodies..........................

Mervi

Valentina

Barbara Ann

Congratulations to you all, please mail me with your full names and postal addys' so I can send your goodies.

Happy weekend all,

Fabulous blooms

OK so it's confirmed I am fickle when it come to floral stamps !

I have been lusting over the Altenew sets for ages and kept telling myself I already had more floral stamps than I know what to do with, until yesterday that is when I received a mail from My Mums Craft Shop saying some were back in stock. It took me a nano second to order and today the first set arrived, that was the Beautiful Day sent and this morning when another mail arrived I weakened and ordered the Peony Bouquet........well they were the two sets I had my eye on for weeks.

So I had a lovely session playing and they are such fun to work with, the concept of the four layers is so clever and makes the most glorious multi shaded blooms. I used a mixture of Distress Inks and Adirondack dye inks and am really pleased with the tonal results.

I am using the one above for another entry into the current Butterfly Challenge where the theme is Butterflies of course and A for Aperture or Apricot. And also Di's Snippets Playground.........the orange mat has lots of holes in it from die cutting sentiments so I figured it qualifies as a snippet.

I stamped the central bloom then masked it to stamp the next two, masked all three and stamped the leaves and tiny flowers which all come in the set. The sentiment is Visible Image and the little Butterflies made with a punch.

Here's another one using shades of blue and purple and I quite like the contrast and depth the deeper colours give. I have so many colour combinations I want to try and can see these keeping me occupied for weeks and you will probably be totally fed up with seeing them soon.

Enjoy the rest of your day everyone.

Happy 7th Birthday Allsorts and a super special prize

Good morning to you all, it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and it's a rather special week as it's our 7th Birthday, I find it hard to believe as that time seems to have just flown by and here we are seven years on and the challenge is as popular as ever. 

We are not having a blog hop, we are just celebrating with a rather special prize......................a whopping £50 store voucher from Tattered Lace, how splendid is that !! And there are more Tattered Lace goodies to be won on my own blog, link above this post or here. Winners for both Allsorts and my own blog will be drawn on Friday.

Obviously as I design for Tattered Lace I wanted to use their dies on my piece but I didn't want to make a Birthday card, so I decided on a canvas. It's an 8x8 canvas and I started by giving it a coat of Gesso, it did come ready prepared but though I would give it another coat.

While that was drying I cut TL Rose Garden Panel from 300gsm cardstock, TL Birthday word which I cut four times and stuck together so I had a dimensional piece and several of the silhouette layers of TL Lacy Daisy.

Once the gesso was dry and I had decided roughly how I wanted the canvas to end up I used the Rose Panel as a stencil and applied a thick coat of Grunge Paste to one side of the canvas and also on the top right corner. At this stage I covered the flowers with gesso and layered them up when dry and did the same with the Birthday sentiment.

Next I fixed everything in place, some lace down the right hand side, a torn piece of corrugated, three little chipboard Butterflies, the Birthday sentiment and flowers, then applied another coat of gesso over the whole piece. I then painted everything with an aqua coloured acylic paint, followed by some pink which I only applied here and there.

Then came the gilding wax, again adding randomly. I wasn't altogether happy with the colouring so laid post it notes over sections so I could control where the pink landed and gave a few spritzes of Dylusions........... the only pink I have is bubblegum pink which is pretty strong so after spraying I spritzed with water and dabbed off the excess until the colour toned down. Finally some ribbon and little bows to hang it.

I really hope you will join our Birthday celebrations..............with that fabulous prize why not and don't forget you can enter up to three times.

Happy weekend all.

Welcome to a walk in my garden

Morning Peeps.............advance warning this is a very picture heavy post...........but I thought I would share a few photos of some of the shrubs and trees that are in bloom around the garden and paddocks at the moment as well as my mid month Penny Black share. 

I also have a card for the current Butterfly Challenge and Snippets Playground. It's been really full on with TL and DT work the last couple of weeks and I have pangs of guilt that I never got time to make anything the last couple of challenges so as I am not at work this morning decided to have a 'me time' play. Andrea is the Guest over at the Butterfly Challenge and has chosen Aperture and/or Apricot to go along with Mrs A's Butterflies, so I set about using up some snippets of apricot colour Trimcraft paper and made an aperture card using Tattered Lace dies. I stamped the Lavinia fairy onto a Pan Pastel background and added some flowers and trailing ivy which are also Lavinia, a spray of flowers and some TL Butterflies. 

My Penny Black card above has a Brusho background, Penny Black Sentiment and Divine stamps and after bleaching out the colour from the flowers painted them with the same purple Brosho.

Now into the garden starting with the early Clematis Montana above which has been glorious this year and this particular one by the side gate has entwined itself into one of the Lilacs and the two together look absolutely stunning. not to mention the beautiful aroma.

A close up of another one of  Lilacs

The blooms on this lilac are huge as you can tell from my hand - pure coincidence that this fortnight my nails just happen to be a perfect match

One of the Ceanothus - and a labs bum

Choisya Aztec Pearl, it's got a wonderful scent

Plenty of blossom on the fruit trees this year

The Harvey Tree - why the name, well when it was just a small tree one of the horses called Harvey (a Palomino) leaned over the fence and chewed it to the ground, amazingly it survived and is taller than the house now. It's some type of Prunus but known as the Harvey Tree

Viburnum Opulus  - it's not full out yet but so many blooms

Another Choisya 

The girls, from left Lily, Daisy (sisters from the same litter) Pixie, Holly (the baby) and Poppy - the gap, well George the black lab was otherwise occupied

Heskey - who needs a good grooming after rolling around on the straw

Gentle Ben

The top hedgerows are full of May bushes (Hawthorne)  and although they are still not fully out it seemed sensible to get some photos as rain is forecast which so often ruins the blossoms

I always think the May flowers themselves are absolutely beautiful

Another Ceanothus, not sure on the variety of this one but the flowers are much larger than any of the others we have. The Garrya alongside it has some nice catkins forming

Thanks for taking a walk round my garden with me, I hope you enjoyed your visit.

Vintage at Allsorts

Good morning to you all, it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts where this week Mervi is our host with the theme of 'Vintage'. Our sponsor is Marianne Designs.

It's a bit of a lengthy post because I also have some rather overdue Chocolate Baroque and Tattered Lace shares, the CB was one for the 15 minute card posts over on the DT blog yesterday and the TL ones a selection of the many made for Create and Craft TV shows over the last couple of weeks.

Back to my Allsorts card at the top, the image is Indigo Blue which I stamped in sepia archival ink and added a little colour to the Poppies with spectrum pencils and then inked and distressed the edges. The DP's are from stash and I have no idea of the make. Again I distressed the edges and did some machine stitching around the pink piece, matter them up at an angle and placed a piece of net fabric behind the focal image although it doesn't really show up very well on my photo. Some lace, pearls twin and flowers to embellish. 

I do hope you will pop over to the challenge blog and see what my teamies have made this week and of course join in with the theme.

I used CB Song Thrush which I randomly stamped using just sections of the image...........when I do this I don't mount the stamp onto a block, I hold it so I can bend the stamp to concentrate on specific areas of the card.............then heat embossed with detail clear powder, added distress inks, a CB sentiment and a few sequins. 

The cards above and below use the new Pin Bot Butterflies from TL, they are beautifully details stamps and for both cards I kept the design simple. The one above is similar to one I blogged a while back, the background was created with Brusho's Orange and Lemon.............sounds like a nursery rhyme coming on here.........sprinkling the dry powder onto Fabriano cardstock, spritzing with water and then tilting the card to disperse the colours. The Butterflies are cut from card coloured with the same Brusho colours. A TL sentiment and some sequins.

Again I kept the design simple, some stenciling on the background, ribbons and a Visible Image sentiment and Butterflies cut from glitter card..................despite the intricate design they popped out of the die with one run through the e.bosser.

This is one of a number of cards I made using the TL Spring into Summer papercraft and stamp set, they are such pretty colours and I really enjoyed making the cards for this show.

The above card used the Ship die from the Men's Collection, these samples were not actually for TV but for promotional purposes but I think I will find these dies very useful for masculine cards. It's a pretty simple card with a big masked sun and sea done with Pan Pastels and the ship decoupaged. I also added a stamped sentiment and birds.

And finally one of my makes for this weekends shows, I confess I struggled with balls of wool and needlecraft dies but have a feeling with those crafts being so popular there are those that will love working with them.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend, not sure what the weather has in store for us but a repeat of last weeks sunshine would be most welcome.

Blots and Splatters

Today sees the start of a new challenge at Fashionable Stamping Challenges and this month our theme is Blots and Splatters. As always there is a generous prize of a $20 shopping voucher from FlonzCraft.

My starting place was a piece of white 300gsm cardstock which I splatted with Cracked Pistachio and Fosillized Amber DI's by dabbing each onto a craft sheet, spritzing with water to get a watery consistency and then picking each up individually with a clean brush and literally flicking onto the left side of card. If you are worried about getting too much ink onto your card try holding the ink loaded brush over the card and tapping lightly with your finger, this gives you a bit more control over where it lands.

Next I used an Inkylicious background stamp and using distress markers inked just a random section down the middle of the stamp to achieve a strip of stamping - I used Black Soot and stamped off first to get a softer finish. I then did the same in the other direction. The Butterfly is Penny Black which I inked with the same colour inks but using distress markers, spritzed with water and stamped onto an offcut of card, cut out and mounted onto my card and added wire antenna. The sentiment is Visible Image.

I will be popping over to the Snippets Playground with this, I heard a rumor that the fine weather has prompted the idea of a diving board over the pond. I'm non too sure about getting into that murky water, but quite like the idea of running a bit of newt fishing competition (they all go back in of course)...........when I was young it was the weekend activity in our little village, no games machines, tablets or mobiles in those days, plain simple self made fun, well until I was a bit older and the lure of the hay barn beckoned........I say no more !! 

My thanks for your visit today and I hope you will come and join in our challenge this month.