Ribbons and lace

Good morning Peeps, hope everyone had a good weekend and those of you brave enough to attack Christmas shopping had a fruitful trip and didn't get too jostled around by the crowds.

I got a little news to share and you could call it another of my moments of madness, I know it does seem to happen quite often with me, but when Sarah from The Pretty Little Ribbons Shop asked me if I would join her design team it took me a nano second to say "oh yes please". I've always loved her products and buy far more ribbons than I ever need, but that's half the fun isn't it ? 

So today I'm sharing my first DT piece for this months Pretty Little Ribbons challenge where we have the totally seasonal theme of 'Christmas', along with my DT piece for this months FlonzCraft Vintage Stamping challenge where my lovely teamie Claire have chosen the theme of 'A Pocket Full of Poses', right up my street.

Despite working away at Christmas cards for what seemes like an eternity................ would you believe I started making them for Create and Craft for Stamp Addicts programmes in May.................... I still need one the two more, especially those special ones so the card at the top for Pretty Little Ribbons gave me the perfect opportunity to get another one made.

The main image is Penny Black but it's a quite small stamp so I stamped it once to the right and then lined it up and stamped half of it a second time to extend the scene if that makes sense. Simple colouring with Pans Pastels, a Stamp Addicts star and Lavinia stag and a couple more tiny trees. I'm not sure of the make of DP as it's a left over from last year, but I think it's BoBunny. The rich blue seam binding is of course from Pretty Little Ribbons as are the two pearl pins which I coloured with Copics. The pinecones and leaves are a TH alterations die.

My second card above is my Vintage offering using the gorgeous etched rose stamp from Flonz Craft which I coloured with distress markers and spitzed with water before stamping onto a piece of Fabriano watercolour card. The DP's are BoBunny, a piece of embossed coredinations for the base and Marianne die cut roses. The butterfly die is Magnolia and as I said last week as close as I get to a Tilda.

I really hope you'll be joining in with our challenges, there are some fabulous prizes to be won at both.

Advent

A very good morning to everyone, hope you all had a good week.

So so sorry I've been MIA most of the week, I've been right under the weather with this dreaded flu and as an added bonus it's thrown my sugar levels all over the place as infections tend to do and I've not felt up to doing much at all.

Thankfully most of this post was already scheduled to tell you about our new challenge at Allsorts which has been chosen by the lovely Jo who has selected the very fitting theme of 'Advent'.

My top card is another of the samples I made for a Stamp Addicts Create and Craft TV show. I really love working with the silhouette images, they need so little work apart from a little colour here and there which I added with Pan Pastels. 

My second share is using Christmas Winston from this weeks sponsor DigiStamp Boutique which I paper pieced using Kaiser Craft DP's and added some snow glitter here and there.

Have a lovely weekend everybody and I really hope you will be able to join in our challenges.

Flowers and Footie

Good Morning Peeps, hope you all had a good weekend. At least the rain stopped her for a couple of days but it's back to normal again now and been pouring since the middle of the night.

I had an eventful outing with my new mobility scooter yesterday, we decided it would be sensible to find out exactly how long the battery lasted, I had already used it for a couple of hours last weekend, so set off to Peterborough to do a bit of shopping, upgrade my phone and call into a certain craft shop to drop off some samples and have a coffee..............yes Sir Stampalot of course.

We spent an hour or so in Queensgate Shopping Centre, then headed off across town to the other M&S clothes store. Spent another hour there, hubby went off to another floor to get a couple of new cases and said he would meet me at the checkout. Silly idea, there are five checkouts on the two floors and despite trawling the whole store he was nowhere to be found, at which point the low batter signal came on, so I hastily paid for my goodies and went downstairs to see if he was waiting by the main doors..............sorry it's a long story, hope you are still with me. 

He was nowhere in sight, so next I went to check if he was on the seats outside but came to a halt on the pavement..................you got it, the battery expired. So a quick learning curve on the new phone and I got hold of him and I can only assume he turned into the invisible man as he maintains he was still waiting at a checkout.......in ladies lingerie no less !!!! So the upshot of the story is he had to push me back through M&S, two large cases in tow and leave me at the rear of the store whilst he went back to the other end of town to get the car. At least I know the batter lasts about five hours.

So a few quick shares and I thought I would enter a few challenges for a change. The card at the top is a nice bit of inky indulgence, a mixture of stamps........all listed below, ink dusting for the background and some seam binding. This card is my entry for the following challenges:

Pretty Little Ribbons - Blossoms and Butterflies

Craft a Scene - Spring Flowers
Paper Sundaes - Things with Wings
By the Cute and Girlie - Spring is in the Air

I think the expression on the image of my second card just about sums up our season, somewhat frustrating, but at least we won the Carling Cup so have some silverware on the cabinet and will be in Europe next season. It's one of my recent DT cards for Stamp Addicts using their fun sportsmen stamps. I thought it would be perfect for this challenge:

Pan Pastels - Sports

And finally, one of the sample I dropped into Stampalot yesterday using some lovely new dies and matching stamps which I have been very lucky to be working with the last week, thanks Janice. The stamps are sized to fit the arch doors perfectly, then there is the larger Chateau Gate stamps which also coordinates with the dies, I will share some using that shortly. The vine also come in the set of dies and I made the tiny roses with a punch. I would like to enter this card for the following challenge:

Order of the Opus Gluie - Beyond the Garden Gate

Have a lovely day everyone and thanks so much for visiting me.

Meet Pixie and a bit more Penny Black

Happy Monday Peeps, hope you all had a good weekend and those of you in the UK enjoying this lovely weather.

The little lady above is Pixie, a ten week old Jack Russell who joined the family gang this weekend. She's such a tiny little thing but seems quite capable of giving the large dogs a run for their money and has already sussed that if big guys play gets a bit too rough for her she can slide into spaces they can't. I will do my best to get a picture of the whole gang one day soon, but it's easier said than done keeping them all still for long enough.

I am still loving the new Penny Black 4237K Awakening so here's another share of another card I made with it. Again I inked the stamp direct, this time with Aquamarkers, spritzed with water and stamped onto Fabriano watercour card, inked the edges with TH tumbled glass and sponged through some sequin waster to give a bit of background interest.  The DP is Bo Bunny, some embossed and sanded Coredinations and a piece of cheescloth in the background and ribbon.

Have a good day everyone and as always thanks so much for popping in.

Star and Engraved flowers

Good morning Peeps, I hope everyone is OK.

I thought I would share a few more of the samples I made for Stamp Addicts new TV show which is scheduled on Create and Craft this Friday, 9th March at 1pm.

This is the front cover of the tri fold card at the top

The Star and Engraved Flower stamp sheets which you will find here are right up my street and I thoroughly enjoyed working with them along with the new sentiment sheet which is really useful to have in your stash.

To create the above card I inked the stamps with Aquamarkers and spritzed with water before stamping on to Fabriano watercolour card, cur with Go Create dies and mounted onto some October Afternoon DP.

For the above card I simply stamped the flower image onto a piece of DP which I think was Kaiser, cut out and placed on a circle of sanded and embossed coredinations. The background DP is the reverse side of the sheet.

The stamp sheets are great value at £12.99 as both have several large flower stamps on them as well as some greetings on one of them.

I am entering the top card into this months Pretty Little Ribbons challenge who have the theme Spring colours and blossoms.

Floral delight to kick start the New Year

Happy New Year everyone.

And what better start than our first Allsorts challenge of 2011 and it's my turn to host the theme which  is "Paper Piecing".

Lots of you will know it's a technique I rather like and lends itself so well to Ruth's flower images over at A Passion for Stamps........................you MUST pop over to the blog as Ruth has a giveaway at the moment of some images and Promarkers.

The image I have used here is the Acidanthera printed onto Nitwits DP which is a fabulous weight for running through the printer, plus it's A4 in size so perfect. I created the square effect by placing a post it note on the centre of the main piece and inking the edges with TH Victorian Velvet. The background is a piece of Coredinations embossed with a Cuttlebug folder and sanded down a little. The sentiment is Penny Black 3419D.

Ooooops, nearly forgot, here is the lucky winner of the Nitwits DP giveaway I posted the other day..............

Kizzy 

Unfortunately the link to your blog seems to be blocked Kissy, so I can't add the link or mail you, so I hope you see this and mail me brenda@ibas.co.uk with your full postal so I can post them off it you. If I don't hear from you by 10th January I will re-draw the candy.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Hero 2012 debut stamps hit town

Hello peeps, time for a new challenge at Allsorts and this week Fleur is our host and it will be a two week challenge to tide us over the Christmas holiday period. The theme is 'Blue and Brown' a really lovely colour combo which I love working with, so afraid this post is a bit picture heavy.

I had my DT cards all done ages ago, but then the Hero Art 2012 Debut stamps hit Sir Stampalot a couple of days ago so of course I was straight into demo samples and had to share a couple of the gorgeous new images...........doesn't take a lot to get me excited. They are already shipping from the shop so you can go here and be amongst the first in the UK to get your hands on them.

So first off with the card at the top of this post which uses Hero Arts K5576 Newspaper Tulips. I inked the stamp with Aquamarkers, spritzed with water and stamped onto a piece of Fabriano watercolour card and lightly distressed the edges with TH broken china and tea dye. The DP is Kaiser.

My second card used another of the newbies, Hero Arts K5540 Spring Dream this time inked with hero Hues Latte. The frame cut with Nesties and the background DP are all Bo Bunny. The border are corners are Spellbinders Parisien Accents, plus some flowers and leaves cut from a Marianne die and a piece of cheesecloth which I inked with TH broken china to tone down the colour.

Next up my original DT cards, the one above uses the beautiful Hero Arts S5362 Dogwood stamp which I stamped onto a base piece using versafine sepia and embossed with detail clear, then stamped a second time onto some DP from stash to cut out and decoupage. The sentiment is a section on Penny Black 2695J  and lots of pearls to embellish.

And finally, my fourth card uses a quite old stamp from Penny Black which I always think makes a perfect male card. I masked a piece of Fabrinao watercolour card round the edges and two central section to create three panels. With the masking in place I sponged the panels with TH broken china, then stamped stamped Hero Arts S5364 Antique flower background using Hero chalk ink latte. I then removed the two centre piece of masking tape and stamped  Penny Black 2827K  using versafine sepia and embossed with detail clear before removing the remainder of the masking tape. I embossed a piece of Coredinations with a Cuttlebug embossing folder and sanded lightly to use as a background piece.

Have a good weekend peeps and hope you all get you final Christmas preparations done and dusted in time to enjoy a wonderful Christmas.

A little bit Vintage DT challenge

A very Good Morning to you all.

Now this is a tad different but has been real fun and we want to share it with you all. To celebrate the changes we are making at Penny Black and More Challenge, I decided to set the Design Team a challenge of their own. A couple of weeks ago I sent them all two kits with separate themes and asked them to come up with a project for each.

Today we are sharing the 'A Little Bit Vintage' challenge, you can see them all over at the challenge blog here. Above you can see my take on it along with the kit I sent to the DT. I was thrilled to see all the variations they came up with and next month we will share the second challenge.

Each kit contained 3 sheets Basic Grey DP (all slightly different but from the same family), 3m white seam binding, TH clock and hinges cut on Coredinations, 2 white flowers.

In additional to the items from the kit, I used the following stamps..............Penny Black 4040K Sparklers, 3860 Pointella, 4857 Footnote and Hero Arts 3316 Harlequin Background, plus brads and a chain embellishment.

Hairy bikers meet the secret garden

Morning folks, hope your week is going well.

Play here was interrupted by bad light yesterday when my vision went AWAL for a couple of hours, happened before but still scary stuff, but seems to be back to normal this morning, so will share what I intended to yesterday.

I was totally certain after seeing a lovely card Janice made last week that I definitely needed the TH fence and chains, although I am yet to be convinced that heavy grunge fits with my floral style.................so lets pretend the chain open the door to the Secret Garden.................well there has to be a bit of fantasy in there !!

The image is one of the gorgeous new La Blanch stamps called Wild Flowers which I stamped onto Fabriano watecolour card and coloured with Aquamarkers. I cut the fence and lock from Coredinations purple cardstock, inked with versamark and embossed with TH distress powder milled lavender..................after recovering the contents of the pot from my trouser legs and desk........no idea how that happened.

My second share is another Stampalot sample using one of the new Christmas stamps from Hero K5524 Winter Scene. I brayered through an oval aperture using the Speedball and Adirondack denim dye ink, then stamped the scene in black archival ink and added corners and border punched with Spellbinders Parisian Accents.

All of the new Christmas stamps and goodies will be on sale for the Christmas launch over the Bank Holiday weekend, lots of demos lined up including Lindsay Mason on Sunday 28th August.