Rudolph and Butterflies

I am running right to the wire with my Rudolph Days entry, it's not that I didn't have it all made ready, more time running away with me, but at least I can also share the card I made this morning for the new Butterfly Wheel.

So as you can tell the top card is my Rudolph entry using a mixture of stamps from Card-io, Chocolate Baroque and Inkylicious. I started  by stamping the CH branch into a crescent shape using versafine black, then the other images, using Pan Pastels I added some shading, liquid pearls into the branches and white Frantage snow.

The new Butterfly wheel offers options of Green, Navy, Yellow, Not Square, Numbers, No stamping and of course the Butterfly. Well I managed to include all except no stamping, afraid that was a step to far, I did try but was left lost as to what to use for the focal element. Using DI's and glycerine, have to say I am not a big fan of this technique as I find it all a bit greasy, but as Sheena keeps demoing it had to give it a try.

After building up the background I used stencils and DI to add the window, number and honeycomb, then stamped, cut our and coloured the two CB Butterflies and added the sentiment which is also CB.

Hope those of you with snow are keeping warm, just when we thought Spring was almost here we get a cold snap, pretty typical here in the UK

I spy with my little eye................

B for Blue Blossoms

Morning Peeps, time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week I am your host and am repeating one of my themes from last year which proved popular 'I spy with my little eye something beginning with B'. And to tie in with the theme the prizes incorporate the letter 'B'. 

I also have a few of my latest samples for Stamp Addicts who are on Hochanda tomorrow at 10am.

My card at the top uses one of my favourite Penny Black floral images, the beautiful Magnolia. PB's Brushstroke stamps make such a quick and easy card, starting with a colour wash over the base then colouring the stamp with Distress Markers, spritzing with water and in this case repeat stamping round the card. I flicked a little more colour with water distress ink then stamped the Inkylicious sentiment and added a few sequins. I am going to link this one up to Ellies Link Party.

B for Birds and Beautiful

For my second Allsorts card I used some new stamps and a sample I made for Bev at Bee Crafty. A background of Distress Oxide Tattered Rose and Twisted Citron which I mopped as I applied the water as I wanted a soft finish. I then sponged some harlequins using one of their D'inkables, stamped the Silhouette Tree and Flock of Birds with Versafine black and finally I masked and stamped three of the words from Wordage, inked the edges and applied with foam pads.         

And some of my Stamp Addicts samples. It's a well known fact that I don't do cute and not much of a colourist either, but I have to admit I did rather enjoy making these. It's ages since I made a shaker card but those little fishes lent themselves to a fishbowl scene using acetate and little glass beads for the shaker element. The sentiment is computer generated and rather twee by my standards, but it seemed appropriate!

This is Marina, isn't she quite lovely, for this sample I made a circle easel card and coloured her in with Spectrum Sparkle pens. The stopper panel is stamped with one of the shell stamps that will be in the show.

More little fishes along with some of the  ocean grasses, distress oxides for the background, glossy accents for the bubbles and some tiny shells I sources in Majorca a few years ago - need anther trip there as I am running low on the bag I bought.

A bit of inky indulgence for this one, Brusho's added to a really wet background on watercolour card and blown to make them run, by doing each colour individually and drying in-between applibations I was able to contain the colours within themselves without too much bleed off of the other pigments. I then stamped the fishes, jellyfish and seahorse, coloured in and added some tiny shrink plastic fish.

As always my appreciation for your visits and kind words.

Wish, dream, trust

A scheduled post here, unlike last week, this time I remembered !

It's my turn to share some more inspiration over at the Chocolate Baroque DT blog from Lesley's recent shows on Hochanda using the gorgeous new floral stamps and colouring pages.

The above card is one of my favourites from those I made for the shows, I think it's a combination of colours, flowers of course and the inspirational words. My starting place was to use Distress Inks to colour a piece of Bristol Vellum card stock and then add some stenciling. I stamped Wish Flower with Versafine Black, colour in with glitter pens, cut out and fix onto my background. Using sticky notes as masks I stamped the words individually onto offcuts of cardstock coloured with the same Distress Inks, cut out and added to my card, then mat and layered onto the base card. And as I used a few snippets I am popping over to the Snippets Playground. 

This once did take a little time but I really liked the finish result. Using Wish Flower again, but using just the smaller of the two blooms masking the stamp with sticky notes and inking and stamping each flower one by one........make sure you don't forget to remove the mask for each stamping. I then coloured the flowers with pencils, stamped a sentiment from Birthday Words onto a piece of ripped velum and fixed across the stamped panel before matting and layering onto the base card.

This is one of the Colouring Pages which has the lovely Macintosh Beauty image on it, I simply coloured with pencils and framed.

My final piece of artwork today used the focal flower from Mosaic Flower. I started by using Distress inks to add watery colour to a piece of watercolour card the added some random stamping using the harlequins from Decorative Edges and Versafine Black. I cut two die cut circles coluring them with the same DI's as the background, then stamped the flower onto the smaller circle and added some colour again using the same inks. Next I placed some twine onto the base and fixed the circles and also added a few back sequins.

Many thanks for taking a peek today.

Flowers all around

Morning Peeps, this weeks Allsorts theme is all about 'Handmade Flowers', the theme as chosen by Helene. And we have a new sponsor Stickeryou who are offering one lucky winner a whopping $65 voucher to use in their store. And it's going to be rather a long post as I also have a share for the current Butterfly challenge and my mid month inspirational piece for Penny Black and More challenge as well as (yes I am rather late) my shares from yesterday's 15 minute/CAS cards post over at Chocolate Baroque.

Not been about much this week, still suffering the after effects of the oral surgery a month ago. Occipital Neuralgia kicked in earlier in the week, apparently a spin off from the nerve damage so along with Trigeminal Neuralgia which I get as a side effect of my MS I've not had much sleep and rather like a zombie at the moment (hence I forgot my CB post). 

The first card was a Tattered Lace DT creation and the second for Chocolate Baroque, although the flowers on both are made using the Tattered Lace Fleurs flower forming kit. For the first I did some random stamping with Tattered Lace Rare Earth stamps, flicked some watery DI's here and there then fixed the flowers into place and added a sentiment which is also Rare Earth.

Now for my entry for the Current Butterfly Challenge which has a  Butterfly Wheel option as well as the requisite Butterfly and I approached this one as a personal challenge to see how many of the wheel options I could achieve, there are six: Pink, Paper Piecing, Pattered Papers, Peach, Purple and Pearls and do you know what, I think I have nailed them all, well maybe I cheated a little by using Liquid Pearls rather than pre-purchased ones.

I used Pixie powders in purple, pink and peach to create a background, then stamped the Inkylicious Ballerina and sentiment in black Versafine, then the two Penny Black Butterflies onto coloured paper and cut out. Matted that piece onto pink DP, fixed to the base card and then added the Butterflies, wire antenna and Liquid Pearls down the thorax.

And a second Allsorts card which has an Distress Oxide background, random stamping and stenciling using Chocolate Baroque stamps and stencils, a CB sentiment and then flowers made with the same TL system and finally a Butterfly.

And here is my Penny Black and More share using the lovely PB heart script stamp called Love is in the Message inked with Distress Markers and a spritz of water, along with the PB sentiment from the Happy Wishes set inked in the same way to carry the colours.

And a few of my 15 minute Chocolate Baroque shares.............

Hope you all have a good weekend.

Love is in the Air

Morning Peeps, 'Love is in the Air' at Allsorts this week, it's the theme Ellie has chosen for our new challenge and we have a super prize on offer from Marianne Designs.  

I have created a little 5x7 canvas and matching heart shaped box, both of which have been decorated with serviettes and a Penny Black sentiment, I did an explanation of how I did this a few weeks ago here, so won't bore you with it all again. I am linking this up to Ellie's fun blog party here.

My second share is one of my Chocolate Baroque samples from a while back which never got onto my own or the DT blog so though I would share this week as it fits the theme quite nicely.  I stamped the Harlequin Rose onto a piece of Fabriano and coloured in with sparkle pens, then ripped and inked the edges, rolled back one corner and matted onto coordinating card. I stamped a CB sentiment and then die cut some little hearts from purple card and inked and heat embossed three times with versafine and detail clear embossing powder.

Have a lovely weekend.

Friendship and a Butterfly or two

Good morning, today I am posting over at the Chocolate Baroque blog, all are samples from Lesley's Hochanda shows which celebrated Chocolate Baroque's first Birthday with the channel when viewers were treated to some wonderful new floral stamps and colouring pages.

Further down I have also added an extra card as my entry into the current Butterfly Challenge, of course it's a CB image!

This release was right up my street and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed making these samples and it was only time that prevented me making more. Details of all the stamps used have direct links to the product on the CB website if I have tempted you.

So to my first card at the top uses the beautiful Medici Flower. On this occasion I only wanted to use the focal flower so I used sticky notes to cover the areas around the flower, inked it with Versafine Black, removed the masks and followed the same process three times. I then masked the  individual stamped flowers and stamped the Poppy heads from Poppy Meadow along with a inspirational quote from Pretty Poppies. Next I flicked some watery distress ink onto the white space and finally coloured the blooms with sparkle pens.

I really love this image, it's called Mosaic Flower but to me it yells out Chinese Lanterns. I stamped the image with Versamark and heat embossed with detail gold powder, coloured the flower hears with pencils and rubbed some gilding wax around the edges. Some twine and a button tied around before matting onto a pieced of corrugated and then the base card.

I painted this little box with acrylic and shimmer paints, then used a stencil and texture paste to add some flourishes. When dry I used a slightly darker pain to highlight the stenciled patterns and added gilding flakes here are there and along the opening edges. The flowers on the top were cut from one of the colouring pages, coloured in with pencils and fixed to the top along with some die cut leaves.

My final share today used the new Floral Delight stamp which I stamped once, masked and then stamped part of the stamp a second time and coloured in with pencils.  Using a mask I added some sun rays and stamped three of the words from Wish Flower, cut out and added individually to the finished piece.  

And I found this lurking in my CB folder and I think it should fit in OK over at the current Butterfly Challenge selecting the colour cream from the spinning wheel. I know, I don't enter for weeks and then twice in the same fortnight, but it's one of only a couple of challenges I ever enter and I would hate for it to fold due to lack of support and people shifting over to the 'quick fix' social media options. I know from personal experience that it takes a great deal of time and effort to keep a challenge running so I hope more of you will pop over and join in the fun. Valery Anne even offers prizes and that's something that doesn't happen at all challenges these days.

For this card I stamped the beautiful Summer Fayre stamp onto Fabriano using Distress Ink and simply dragged out some of the colour. I then stamped the Butterflies a second time, this time dragging out a little more colour and decoupaged them

Thank you so much for popping in today.

To hear the Angels whisper

It's time for our  new challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More where our themes are 'Anything with Flowers' and 'Love, Hearts and Flowers'. As always there are wonderful prizes to be won at both. 

It's a bit of a long post as I am sharing some rather overdue Rare Earth samples, the stamping arm of Tattered Lace, the new stamps featured on Create and Craft recently and there is another new release coming up on 9th February, some really unusual floral stamps.

Be Crafty are sponsoring us at Stamping Sensations and as I love watching Sam's inky demo's it was the perfect excuse to indulged in one or two of their stamps and of course their BEAUtanicals Poppy was the obvious choice along with this rather nice sentiment. I created a Distress Oxide background, added some soft stenciling and stamped both stamps with Versafine black and coloured the Poppy with Distress Markers.

My Penny Black and More is a bit of an inky one using PB All you need is Love and Words Sweet. My starting point was to use regular distress inks to create a background, to get this softer feel I dab the inkpad onto acetate starting with the lighter colour, spritz with water and lay the acetate onto the card, this way you can control how much or little you add. Dry with a heat gun and do the same with the darker colour. Next I stamped parts of the collage stamps......I prefer to hold the stamp rather than use a block so I have more control over the stamping. Two die cut hearts coloured with the same DI's,  stamped onto the smaller, layered up, some twine, stamped sentiment and sequins. Lots of snippets here so am going to pop over to see Miss Di and Parsnip over at the Snippets Playground with this one, it's been a while so am expecting detention at the very least.

And one final quick and simple card using Be Crafty's small Teasels and Flock of Birds, stamped onto a penal coloured with Pan Pastels.

And now for the Rare Earth shares, with the exception of the layered flowers, they are a bit 'edgy' and lend themselves perfect to a bit of grunge and ink..................

I would like to enter this one onto the current Butterfly Challenge which has a letter wheel along with the requisite Butterfly, so I am hoping the checked background with I created with a gridline acrylic block and DI's will fit the bill.

Happy weekend all.

Spots and stripes and Allsorts

Morning Peeps, it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week  Kath would like to see spots and/or stripes on our work. Our sponsor this week is Digistamp Boutique plus there is another prize on offer as well.

Thanks for being so kind the last few weeks, I think I am steadily on the mend, not done any serious crafting as yet but hope to put that right before too long. Working ahead on DT work really pays off for me with such an unpredictable body and again this week's creation was made back in December and pre scheduled.

So my starting point was to create a background with Distress Inks, next I stamped the beautiful Penny Black Chinese Lanterns image using Distress Markers direct to stamp and a spritz of water before stamping along with a PB sentiment. Next I used stencils and DI's to add my spots ans stripes.

Please do go check out the challenge blog to see all the inspiration from my teamies.