Brosho's with a few Pan Pastels thrown in for good measure

Time for our monthly challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More where our themes at both are 'Anything Goes'.........that wasn't actually planned, it's just how it seems to have turned out !

For my Penny Black card it is my all time favourite inspirational quote 2696J Dance, Sing, Love along with Penny Black 2636K Scroll background around the edges, both are pretty old wood mounted stamps. I started with a Brusho background using Leaf Green, Violet and Cobalt Blue which gives out lovely hues of purple as the water shifts the powder and I also used the latter two to colour the flowers which I made using a Heartfelt die and stamp. Some grunge paste harlequins, a couple of die cut swirls cut on the cricut, seam binding and pearls to embellish.

The first of my Stamping Sensations pieces used Silhouette Elephants from our sponsor Little Claire in the foreground and in the background I repeat stamped a really old Judikins cube with the trees and Zebra, the word Serengeti is also part of the same cube. All colouring is Pan Pastels and of course a masked sun on the horizon.

Another Brusho background for my second Stamping Sensation piece, this time I used masking fluid to create a sun and a paper mask to separate the land area before spraying on yellow, orange and brilliant red. Next I rubbed away the sun mask.........I am presently using Pebeo masking fluid and I think it's the best yet. I used Pan Pastels for the land elements of the scene and a mixture of Stampscapes, Sutter, Art Impression and Chocolate Baroque stamps.

Hope you all have a good Sunday and keep warm in this cold and frosty weather.

White Christmas

Morning to you all, what a ridiculous week it's been with Blogger, apart from the silly word verification which luckily is an easy one to resolve, the others issues I've been having are not. I am unable to see photos on the vast majority of blogs I visit and then there is the infuriating issue of typing comments when the cursor moves but no typing appears. So what on earth is it all about, is Blogger just totally overwhelmed by the sheer volume of blogland activity and unable to handle it all ? Really makes you wonder.

Moan over and let me tell you about our Allsorts theme this week which is White Christmas as chosen by the lovely Jo and our sponsors are FlonzCraft and Scrappers Delight.

My card at the top is a recent DT creation I made for Stamp Addicts using the lovely White Christmas sentiment which you can find under New Products, the font is very elegant and it's a decent sizes stamp so needs little more than matting and layering, although I couldn't resist a poinsettia so may have gone a little outside the challenge brief.

This one however is totally white with the exception of the sentiment shadow and unusually for me no stamping. The Deer die is a new one from Penny Black and the stars are a Marianne die, an embossed background and an All Occasion Dies sentiment and card cut on the Cricut.

Today we are off out early for an pre Christmas family celebration so will try catching up with you all soon - dependent of course of the mood of Blogger.

Flowers all the way

Time for our monthly challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More where our themes are 'Warm Autumn Colours' and 'Get Ahead for Christmas'. Plus don't miss the news further down about a great Penny Black candy giveaway next week.

So onto my cards and this post is very much reflective on my Dad who always grew the most amazing Chrysanthemums and won many prizes with them. Gardening was his escape from daily farming and a whole section of the garden was dedicated to Chrysanthemums, as the blooms developed he lovingly covered each in a white bag to protect them from both early frost and rain. As an onlooker it must have been a strange sight but to us all totally normal. The blooms were always at their best in September and October so I always think of them as the Autum months arrive.

Although this Penny Black stamp 4237K Awakening is not actually Chrysanthemums it always reminds me of them.......call it artistic licence, I have used distress inks sage, tea dye and barn door to sponge the background through a honeycomb mask and used the same colour distress markers to repeat stamp the flowers.

And now for the lovely Penny Black Poinsettia stamp Christmas Star 4104K which I stamped and embossed in gold onto a background of Dylusions which I then bleached out and painted with Twinkling H2'0's. The sentiment randomly stamped is from the clear PB set called Christmas Cheer 30-140 and also in the background is some stenciling although I am far from impressed by the stencil. It's a music script stencil from Tando but to my mind it's back to front...........what I mean is the negative and positive elements should have been reversed as the notes just don't show up clearly, I even tried it on a full page and sprayed through it but all you really see are lines, so not convinced of it's usefulness as music !

I also have a second Autumnal card, this one a Chrysanthemum stencil from Imagination Crafts. The background has been randomly stamped with script and corners distressed, then copper paste added through the mask and after removing the mask I flicked gold perfect pearls over the wet paste and heat embossed. The paste resists the heat and makes it bubble and if you dab it lightly with your finger whilst still wet it gives a lovely mottled effect, when totally dry brush off the excess mica and gently buff up.

And just the one more for Penny Black and More using two Penny Black Twirls 40-282 and A Wonderful Christmas 4116H and a Nicecrane Robin for the Victorian Birds collection to which I added some glossy accents to the wing and his red breast ad corners cut on the Cricut. I just wanted to show how these pre coloured images will work alongside favourite stamps for a really quick and easy card.

Finally and at the risk of you all getting bored to tears I would like to very quickly tell you that later this month we are having a great candy giveaway over at Penny Black and More with prizes from Penny Black as well as other goodies to be won. Here is the logo and I would be so happy if you would share it on your own blogs to help us spread the word. And of course join in our challenges this month !

Happy Sunday all.

Sporting ladies

Morning all, today sees the start of our new challenge at Allsorts and Wendy would like to see Sport inspired creations. Our sponsors are Crafty Devils and Scrapper Delight.

Now this theme gave me a bit of a headache I can tell you because apart from a fisherman I don't really have any sport orientated stamps. But I mentioned my dilemma to the lovely Ignacio and he came to my rescue and designed some wonderful women sport images. They are such fun images and I loved them the moment I saw them, so thank you so much Ignacio and I have two cards to share using two of the designs. There are thumbnail links to them below.

For the top card I printed off the image and distressed he edges, did some machine stitching round the base piece of DP, found and old ladies football flyer on the internet and cut some bunting on the Cricut, oh yes and made a little rosette.

My second one using the tennis woman was printed off and mounted onto a Nestie, some large banners using some DP offcuts, roses, die cut leaves and a bow.

Happy weekend all.

Nicecrane

S/binders

Tonic Rose

Craft Fairy

Cricut

InLinkz.com

Monday Prickly Pear and Nicecrane shares

Photo beautifully enhanced by Ignacio

Good morning Peeps, hope you all had a good weekend.

As it's Monday it's my day to share this weeks DT piece for Prickly Pear and Nicecrane Designs and also one using the Cricut Mini which I confess I have rather neglected recently.

Lots of you have asked how things are health wise, well it's limbo land time at the moment, I now have to wait four week to see if the treatment did what they hoped or find out what comes next, so still a waiting game. No fun, but not a lot I can do about it.

So now for my cards, I have been such a lucky girl getting to play with Ignacio's new Spring designs and it's been a real treat as I love this time of year and never fail to be amazed by Nature and how everything bursts into life as if by magic. And in stark contract to last year when everything was very late, this year looks like being ahead of itself. You really do need to check out the new designs here.

For the top one I printed one of the Nicecrane Vintage Flowers images twice, cut out and decoupaged, cut a fancy oval with a die, placed some cord inside the oval and layered over a stamped sentiment, the backing DP is BoBunny..

My Prickly Pear piece uses Graphic 45 DP's,  I stamped three small panels using just the floral section of the Boot Flower stamp and coloured in, the sentiment is also from the Spring releases and some ribbons and lace to finish. All the Spring release stamps are available on the store website and extremely good value for money.

I love this bird and blossom image also one of the new Nicecrane Spring designs, teamed it up with an embossed and gilded background, a Penny Black sentiment and some added blossoms and ribbon to compliment the ones on the image.

My final card has a base created with the clever cut and weld facility on the Cricut Mini which allows you to make custom borders such as this one and your imagination is the only restriction. It's still available at lots of places for £99 so a great deal. I kept the card fairly simple, punching the corners of the image with a butterfly punch and matting onto coordinating cardstock. The border butterflies and dragonflies are shaded with Pan Pastels plus a couple of die cut ones.

Hope you all have a good week, scary to think we will be into March in a few days but hopefully Spring will be close behind.

Nicecrane

Nicecrane

Pan Pastels

Cricut

Craft Fairy

InLinkz.com

Early Valentine

Morning all you lovely Peeps, hope everyone had a good weekend.

We have still got dodgy phone lines but at least the Internet is working so I am taking the opportunity to post a couple of cards I made for Ignacio from Nicecrane Designs using some of his new Valentine designs. They really are so pretty and have drawn out the less inky side of me to create something girly for a change.

I also want to say a big thank you to Rachel as I won her candy which is a fabulous voucher for Imagination Crafts, how lucky am I as I love their products. And as I said to her I am hoping that's an omen for later in the week, up till now I have tried to keep it all in a box but over the weekend reality dawned and I am feeling a little pessimistic about what lies ahead of me this week, but I guess what will be will be and not a lot I can do to change that.

So onto my cards, you will find thumbnail links below to the Nicecrane Designes used in these two cards, along with the Spellbinders and Graphic 45 DP's which always lend themselves so well to Ignacios's design's. I made the rose on the top card is made from the same ribbon as the bow and the flowers on the second card were cut on the Cricut.

Have a good week everyone and catch up with you all again soon I hope.

A prowling fox

Happy Saturday everyone, it' my turn to host the them at Allsorts this week and it's going to be a two week challenge to let us all have a bit of a break over the Christmas period so the next one will be on 4th January. 

I have chose the theme of 'Brown/blue/aqua'. It's a colour palette that I love working with and I hope lots of you will enjoy the combo as well. Lots of prizes up for grabs this time as well from Crimson Cloud, DigiDarla and Whiff of Joy plus everyone who enters this fortnights challenge can collect a free design sheet from Nicecrane Designs blog here.

I did say it was a colour combo I liked so I have three cards to share, the one right at the top uses a mixture of Sutter, Lavinia and Stampscaspes stamps. The fox is actually part of a whole scene but I inked just the small section where he is and cut him out to stand at the fore of my scene. All colouring is Pan Pastels and some snow glitter added to give a frosty feel.

The second card is one of the beautiful butterfly Nicecrane images which needs little adnorment, so just a TH butterfly border, die cut leaves and a flower made usin one of Ruth's Tonic stamp and punch sets.

And for the third one I created a background using this gorgeous rose embossing folder to which I applied Gilding Wax, an Artistic Outpost sentiment and roses created on the Cricut to which I added some gold embossing powder round the edges.

Hope you all have a good weekend and if you are one of those doing a last minute rush to the stores keep a look out for some bargains as my daughter found lots of early sale goodies in M&S today.

Clever Cricut plus horses and dogs

Using Cindo Loo cartridge for the border welded onto a basic square, flowers using Close to my Heart Art Philosophy and sentiment from Birthdays

My Cricut machine has come in useful for a quick Birthday make and some Christmas gift envelopes, perfect for money or vouchers and they can be prettied up to make them a bit special as well all using the machine.

Envelopes made using Over the Hills, Spring Holiday and Christmas Cards, Poinsettia from Joys of the Season and Christmas Tree from Paper Dolls Dress Up cartridge

And a couple of photos of the boys and girls I have been meaning to share............

The 'spotty gang' patiently waiting to get back into their stables. Anysia decided they needed matching coats this winter - they 'need' new coats much the same as we 'need' crating goodies, I think we could open a tack shop with what's cluttering the tack room.

A hard days work for all in my craft room, Daisy left, devil eyed Holly on the right and Poppy conveniently located in the middle....such a tough life being a 'working' dog

Thanks for popping in to take a peek, hope to see you all again soon.

Yet more Christmas and Cricut

Morning Peeps, just popping in with a couple of shares of cards I have created using new Vintage Christmas releases from Nicecrane Designs.

Tomorrow I am off to then NEC, I was given some complimentary tickets so it would be rude not to, so I have my 'need', 'want' and 'must have' lists ready and so looking forward to catching up with one or two friendly faces. I don't actually need anything but I am thinking I won't come home empty handed because even if crafting is difficult I can still wield a debit card quite efficiently !

And here's one I made with the Cricut using Animal Kingdom and Celebrations cartridges and some Pan Pastel clouds and below another from the Nicecrane Vintage Christmas images. Links to all below

Have a good Wednesday all.

Traditional Christmas

Today sees our new challenge over at FlonzCraft Vintage Stamping Challenges where as usual there is a fab $20 voucher to spend on FlonzCraft stamps so every reason to join in with this months theme of Traditional Christmas Time.

I have used this pretty little girl and paper pieced her, added some holly leaves, poinsettia and Christmas trees which were cut on the Cricut. I would like to enter this into............

Christmas card challenge - Dimension
Heck of a challenge - In the frame

It's also the day to share this weeks DT piece for Prickly Pear and it's another comfort zone Autumnal one for me using the lovely matching leaf dies and stamps which were cut from a piece of card sprayed with Dylusions. Don't forget we also have a sketch competition going on with some yummy goodies up for grabs, there is a direct link on my sidebar. I would like to enter this into..........

Amusing challenges - Autumn colours
Glitter n Sparkle - Leaves

I hope you will join our FVS challenge this month and also our sketch competition over at PPRS.