Way to Grow

Morning everyone and first I must thank you for all your Birthday wishes and cards this week, if I've not done so I will get round to thanking you all but a tad déjà vu, nasty meds, kidney pain, migraines etc. But at least the sun has been shining which is wonderful.

At Allsorts Gail is hosting her first challenge since joining the team and has the fun theme of 'Way to Grow'. Prizes come from Highlight Crafts,  AALL and Create and Stampendous.

Lots of different AALL and Create stamps The Great Outdoors (370), Flower Journey (904) and Elemental Notes (905), stencilled background using Digits Checked (110). I masked border stamped with Elemental Note, coloured ad cut out the wellies and sentiments form same set as the wellies with a pen nib to reflect the border. Popping to Path of Positivity with this one......and the Snippets Playground as the wellies, flowers, birdie and sentiments strips are all offcuts.

A card for the new Rudolph Days challenge, the bauble stencil which so many of us have is from Sweet Poppy, DI's to add the colour, Lavinia Rabbit and Hare and sentiment from my Christmas Magic stamp set (£16.99 here mounted, £14.99 unmounted, or from Create and Craft TV). 

Butterflies, Bees and blooms

Morning everyone, a new challenge at Allsorts and Mervi had chosen the theme of 'Bees, Blooms and Butterflies', although I'm actually hosting this week as Mervi has left the team after more than ten years, we really will miss her. Prizes come from Craft Stash, Highlight Crafts and AALL and Create and winners will be drawn on Friday.

The focal image is is called Insectual Healing (1093), one of Abs (AALL and Create) own designs as is the Frayed Frames (26) die. Image coloured with Ecoline pens, always a challenge for me, especially shading so as my youngest Son always say's "it is what it is".

Thanks for all your kind messages earlier in the week, partly sorted but a little way to go still, felt OK after the procedure, it's the meds now making me feel ropey and hoping some can stop after next CT scan.

Happy weekend all.

Summer Rose and Buck House

Morning everyone, it's mid way reminder time at We Love Stamping and Stamping Sensations where our themes are Fabulous Florals as selected my me (transparent as ever) and a Mood Board along with the usual option of AG with your stamped element. 

Note added: MIA and apols for lack of visits. Nearly eleven weeks, several GP telecom consults and A&E visits fobbing me off with a Crohn's flare up, Thursday an A&E registrar listened, sent me for a CT scan, stones in both kidneys (again) and one lodged in the urethra so today a 'day trip' to have the lodged one dealt with.

Back to my shares and I wasn't terribly happy with the colours of my WLS make above as the pocket looks way off colour from the Rose, in reality the colours were pretty close. Made the pocket from a 12x12 sheet of Bazzil, score board and border dies, AALL and Create Rosy Posey stencil (138) and Sent with Love stamp set (831), stitching stamped from Time Heals All (1110). I would like to share this at the Path of Positivity challenge. 

More Lavinia using again the Digitalis, Felicity sitting in the fore contemplating her day and a kaleidoscope of Butterflies appropriately called Flutterbies. The sentiment is a really old one from Stamp Addicts.

And a couple of the first official photos from our day at Buckingham Palace for the Investiture. I was waiting for more before I shared but the system is rather archaic and they are sent hard copy proofs, a few at a time, these scanned so not as clear as I would like. Owen is not one for fuss and bother but said he throughly enjoyed the day. 

As you can see he's grey, myself and his siblings we all went that way at school (Clairol is my best friend!). When he was first in the Police Force he was nicknamed badger as at the time he still a a hint of black down the sides, as he climbed the ranks and moved to the Home Office the name seemed to disappear, wonder why!

Masculine

Morning everyone, a new challenge at Allsorts and this week I am your host and given tomorrow is Fathers Day a theme of 'Masculine' seemed appropriate, plus I know it's one that pushes some of us (me included) outside our comfort zone so really is a challenge. Prizes come from Craft Stash, Highlight Crafts and AALL and Create.

It's been a long whilst since I bought any new Penny Black stamps as the cost of them in the UK now is pretty prohibitive. But I had seen a couple that really appealed for landscape scenes so decided to treat myself and here's the result of my first play. Above alcohol inks using a puffer and heat gun to move the colours about to create a (sort of) scenic feel then stamping with black archival ink. The sets used are Panoramic and just the trees from Snowy Village.

The same sets used here onto a Pan Pastel background and Fox and grasses from Lavinia. I felt the fence and bushes needed some Birds so managed to mask the wire on the larger stamp to add a few.

Just dream

Morning everyone, a new challenge at Allsorts where Lolo would love to see 'Flowers galore'. Prizes come from Craft Stash, Highlight Crafts and AALL and Create. Also got a couple of photos to share further down, a fun one of the Horses and the Poppies are out!

AALL and Create released a beautiful new collection this week designed by Abs, I'll be honest and say I've declined some of the recent releases as I'm not a colourist and felt I couldn't do them justice. But as this release is floral I was persuaded to give it a go and above one of those samples. I used Best You Ever Had (1176), Bound to Return (1179), Explosive Bombosive (6) and Power of the Word (754).

I would like to enter this into the new Path of Positivity challenge where theres an optional theme of Goals/Dreams. 

In other news, migraines so, so, still there with the odd clear day, but don't think as violent as the last few months so maybe the treatment is doing something to help. I had an interesting 'educational' day yesterday, the consultant I see for Pernicious Anaemia asked me to be the patient in a video for NHS distribution aimed at encouraging GP practices to promote self injection of B12. I'm lucky as the district nurse does mine every six weeks, but many struggle to get one every twelve weeks, my Daughter and eldest Granddaughter included who both have PA, so I'm hopeful the video will help many like them, it affects far more women than men.

I was hesitant as unlike insulin and migraine injections which come in pre loaded pens and pretty easy to administer, this is a standard needle and injection, but first one done and wasn't that bad actually which is just as well as I need to do them every other day for a good few months to try and get on top of all that's going wrong with my body. 

A second one using flowers from a number of MCS collections, all cut on the Scan and Cut and my favourite Penny Black sentiment, the card was for the Birthday of one of our Granddaughter in laws who celebrated her Birthday this week, she loves Autumnal colours.

Anysia decided the Horses needed new facial fly protection, left it with her to choose and this is what we ended up with, not sure they are impressed? Left to right, my big boy Heskey, Merlin and Penelope.

The first Oriental Poppies came into bloom this week, heres one of them....

Have a good weekend everyone.

Luka on the lookout

Morning everyone, time for new challenges at We Love Stamping and Stamping Sensations where our themes are Fabulous Florals as selected my me (transparent as ever) and a Mood Board along with the usual option of AG with your stamped element. 

At We Love Stamping we have a whole host of prizes to give away as we celebrate 15 years of the challenge blog, it's changed names along the way but still dedicated to stamping and even one or two original DT's. At Stamping Sensations there are some recent Lavinia releases to be won.

Above I've used stamps from this months Lavinia release along with several others and a first outing for some of the new Versafine Clair colours. It's the colours and Digitalis that I have take from the mood board at SS to build up my scene.

My WLS card using one of AALL and Creates DL border stamps, I really like the size of these and it's rather a shame they no longer produce this size and the one I have used here now sold out. An Oxide background, colour to the stamped image, some twine and words from Power of the Word (754).

And this has to be a first, I've actually got the right day to share my May exchange in the Card Chain Challeng following the colours of gold, raspberry and blueberry along with the added stencil option. I used Lavinia's new large Pixie Boot stamp along with lots of smaller worker stamps, my card went to Jo. By sheer coincidence the colours also fit rather nicely with our mood board at Stamping Sensations.

Really hope you will join us this month.

Lots of layers

Morning everyone, a new challenge at Allsorts where Sarah would like to see 'Lots of layers'. Our prize for this week is a bundle of Christmas items, stamps, DP's and stickers.

I did warn there were more AALL and Create washi tape cards in the pipeline, this one uses Sunflower and Hare (102). There are twelve (at the moment) in the layering collection which come in different widths, I'm not sure how many projects you could make with each roll, but I've made five with this roll as they sell well at the RSPCA shop and theres still plenty left for more.

My trusty Tattered Lace hexagonal dies were used on both of these, sentiments on the first form one of my upcoming sentiment sets and on the other is I believe, an old Penny Black.

I've also got one for the current Snippets Playground, not my norm at all but I've been crafting in a bedroom the last couple of weeks as my craft room is under renovation/redecoration so it's been a matter of what I can create where and stamping's defo not been an option. 

Was going to be a straightforward redecoration, until hubby decided to remove the false ceiling to reveal the original Victorian vaulted one, the room's 20' long so really open's it up and makes it much lighter, but also means lots more work ensued.

 

Lots of snippets, Personal Impressions dies along with an embossed panel using an 8x8 folder and guess what, I remembered to take a photo.

Hope everyone has a good weekend and thanks as always for your visits.