Gilded flowers and Poppies

There is a new challenge over at Allsorts today and this week Mervi would like to see Lots of Layers, our sponsor is Jiggery Makery and Sizzix. 

I have used lots of gilding wax on my the flowers, both gold and copper rubbed onto the Tattered Lace Emma flowers and Sophie leaves, all were cut with the dies, embossed with the matching folders and also stamped with the coordinating stamps although that seems to have got lost in the gilding. The pretty DP is Trimcraft and I did a bit of fancy machine stitching around the panel. The sentiment is Penny Black.

I also have a share for the current Butterfly Challenge where the theme is a Butterfly and an Archway and I just love this arch window stencil which I think is from Clarity...........as is par for the course with me I don't have the packaging any longer so can't be certain.

After inking through the stencil onto linen cardstock I stamped this gorgeous Poppy image which is part of one of the sets I recently received from Chocolate Baroque. I stamped a second image and heat embossed both with detail clear powder and cut out the butterflies and Poppy heads to decoupage although that's not very apparent from my photo. The colouring is all done with Specrtum pencils and I simply matted and layered in coordinating colours and stamped a sentiment...........you got it, no idea of the make as it's an unmounted one.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend. I'm off to the Sincerely Yours Paperctrafts show at Thetford tomorrow. It's a really nice friendly show and less than an hours drive so very convenient and as well as stocking up on things like cardstock, also gives me the opportunity to catch up with some of our challenge sponsors.

What a little angel

Good Morning Peeps, I am here with some more Nicecrane Design creations and also my mid month Penny Black and More card.

Thank you for your kind comments and messages. I am in a bit of a MS relapse at the moment and walking and standing is painful but now have some new meds although they are making me like a zombie....... but not too much new there I guess......... and nights are like a war zone with the hallucinatory affects of them. But there is of course a positive side, I am having to sit most of the time which means I can craft for England !

On to my work and I think lots of you will know what I mean when I say you see a stamp or image and can immediately visulise the card you are going to make, well the beautiful image on the top card was one of those, she is such a little angel. I could see her decoupaged and standing in an aperture with little added colour other than some gold glitter on the Christmas tree and some die cut stars, she is far too pretty to fuss with. She is one of the images from the Vintage Christmas saver pack, great value at $4.50 for about eighteen images.

I have used a new stamp for my Penny Black mid month card called Jubilant 40-286 stamped onto a 'splatter' background.....very technical term here aka messing about with Dylusions. I stamped it twice to decouapge the main flowers which are pained with Dylusions, the leaves have been coloured with Chamelion pens. The sentiment is from the Special Wishes set 30-229.

I absolutely adore this image, not only the colours but the little girls angelic face. She is from the Children in Victorian Age 111 design set. The frame is from Tonic which I randomly stamped with distress inks before making up and then rubbed over with a couple of colours of gilding wax. 

This card has one of the eight designs in the Adorable Christmas design set teamed up with Penny Black Reindeer dies and an embossed frame with I coloured with gilding waxes. The sentiment on this card and the one at the top is from All Occasion Dies, clever sets as the Happy comes in a set in two sizes and the Christmas in another sets again in two sizes and then there are also Birthday, Anniversary and so on and they all mix and match and at between £4.40 and £5.50 a set great value for money.

Hope you all have a good week.

Inky, Pinky Monday

Using: CLR001 Butterflies clear set, CLR015A Bobbly Flowers clear set, PPRSD015 Blobbly Flowers die set, EE0131 Flourish stamp and Cheery Lynn lattice die.

Note added - what are your dashboards up to this morning ? Mine will only show the very latest posting of those I follow and although there is a 'view more' button it won't actually show any more. Tried on another computer in the office and the same so unless I sit and watch it all the time no idea who has posted what. What's Blogger up to now I wonder ?

Morning Peeps, I hope you all had a good weekend.

Time to share my Monday morning Prickly Pear and Nicecrane Designs DT pieces. It's all rather inky as I am struggling mojo wise with all the medical issues and treatments and getting inky is what I have found I am most comfortable with lately so apologies if it's all rather samey recently.

The background is Dylusions Bubblegum Pink and Pomegranate Seed................don't you just love the names they give them.............and the requisite spritz of Pearl Glimmer Mist. Over this I inked Picked Raspberry DI through a mask to get the wavy pattern and added some Gilding Wax around the edges, then overlaid the lattice which I painted with chalk paint and randomly tore at the edges and finally some pink Sparkle Medium through another mask, a really useful Timmy one with tiny holes.

Finally after all that messiness I cut the flowers, over stamped them and also he butterfly, all cut from a piece of card sprayed with the same mediums.

I would like to enter this into the current Butterfly Challenge................I don't do challenges as a rule due to the need to minimise screen glare to my dodgy eyes but I do make an exception here as I love butterflies. The current theme is monochromatic.

My Nicecrane creation is also rather pink, I have used the really sweet Children and Birds by N Brisley design sheet which is a newly released one, there are five different deigns in the collection so plenty of scope for a variety of cards. I have teamed it up with Graphic 45 Botanical Tea DP's, no matter which Nicecrane design I use there is usually a G45 DP that matches, they seem made for each other with their Vintage feel. I did a bit of stitching around the edges using the new sewing machine hubby bought for my Birthday, it's not until Friday but I was allowed to have it a bit early to start playing with. Some bunting cut of the Cricut and die cut flowers and leaves.

Hope you all have a good week.

Birds and feathers, Nicecrane and Penny Black

It's time for a new challenge at Allsorts and this week Mervi would like to see Birds and Feathers, a perfect one for Spring and Easter cards. We welcome two new sponsors this week Marianne Designs and Buttons for Brains.

For the top creation I used a Tonic box card frame, spritzed with Dylusions and Glimmer Mist and then added texture with some stenciling and Grunge Paste, a Nicecrane image here which I printed out twice and decoupaged the two birds, a butterfly metal embellishment which I coated and embossed with copper and blue powder and a sentiment which I cut down into three pieces.

Also here are my Penny Black and More mid month shares which should have appeared yesterday but for some reason Blogger had other ideas, sorry teamies. The above card using a new Penny Black die called Bashful along with the lovely Helen Keller quote. And the one below, another beautiful Penny Black inspirational quote, hey do these so well, Graphic 45 DP's, roses and butterflies cut out from the reverse of the DP.

And just one more for Allsorts using another Nicecrane image and Marianne large oval die.

Wishing you all a Happy and Peaceful Easter.

Windows 8............arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Morning Peeps, well this really is going to be a short and sweet one, yep I have the new computer and yep I am hating it. Windows 8 seems a nightmare and all it's done for me thus far (despite my very fist job being to install AVG virus protection) is to infect everything including my old machine during file transfer. So I am somewhere in the wilderness and doing this on my tablet which I find very difficult for doing posts and comments because of my dexterity issues.

Using Large Calla Lily

So really quickly my DT pieces for FlonzCraft Vintage Stamping Challengese where our theme for this month is Anything Goes and my Monday shares for Prickly Pear where we welcome our new Design Team members. It's lovely to have the new girls on board and I am so thrilled to have a fellow Brit on the team who is my lovely friend Tracy Mouse.

Afraid I can't do the candy on the tablet so will do that as soon as I have a functioning computer.

Blossoms and Blooms and a little birdie

Today sees the start of our new monthly challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More where our themes are Dies and Punches and Blossoms and Blooms.

The new computer is up and running although I think it will take me some time to suss out Windows 8, it's so very different to Vista and so far it won't accept my e.mail account which is also my work one so need to get to grips with that today.

It's something other than a card for my Stamping Sensations piece, a chipboard flower lovingly inked with almost everything I could lay my hands on including gilding wax and crackle medium. I stamped and embossed around the edges with black and gold, I also added some text stamping but that seems to have disappeared, but that on the birdie does still show OK. Dies cut leaves and bird, the larger roses made with a punch, some ribbon and a little cameo which I also glitzed up with some gilding wax.

For my first Penny Black piece I have used several stamps from the new Happy Everything range, Penny Black 3737K Red Tango, 4383K First Dance, 4378K Hollyhocks, 40-282 Twirls and 30-229 Special Wishes. I created the four way card base on the Cricut and spellbinder for the handing elements........I have since found a Sizzix die that does it all for you so between them gives a shape option.

And I had to do an inky one using Dylusions Lemon Zest, Squeezed Orange and Cut Grass. I then used a stencil to create the distressed sun rays, applied distress markers to the Penny Black Daffodils stamping several times, used archival coffee to stamp the Penny Black Wordsworth poem and finally some random stamping with textured background stamps and two butterflies which are also Penny Black.

I do hope you will join in with our challenges this month, as always we have some awesome prizes to be won.

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.

Midnight cats

Monday means time for this weeks Prickly Pear DT piece which this week is Halloween, one that always comes a bit hard to me.

I started with creating my background with Dylusions and a TH clock as a mask, then liberal helpings of Frantage. The Midnight Cats were stamped with versamark and embossed with detail white onto black cardstock and yet more Frantage and purple gilding wax, the I stamped Shawn of the Dead with black archival ink and rubbbed more of the gilding wax to add a bit of shimmer.

Happy Monday to you all.

Vintage transport

A post at last but no blogging I'm afraid !

Never gone so long without posting, but it's been a rotten week, first the eye which is hopefully now fixed and just needs rest and avoiding computer glare. But things can't be simple with me and at hospital Tuesday they were concerned about an infection in my eye as well as the other problem so did a scan and discovered the source of infection on the right side of my face were abscesses beneath two crowns......can't be normal and have one.......so I had to have both teeth out yesterday. Not feeling great and being immune compromised am up against the normal problems I always face, but hopefully headed the right direction now.

On to Allsorts's where it's Wendy's turn to host the theme and she would like to see some form of 'Vintage Transport' on our work. Our sponsors this week are The Ribbon Girl and FlonzCraft.

My top card uses an image from FlonzCraft called Etched Sailship which I stamped and embossed with copper embossing powder and added some sky and a sun with Pan Pastels. A porthole effect using nesties, some gilding wax spread randomly over that and the embossed frame and finally some calico dyed in tea to age it and some shells..................fresh from the shores of Majorca.

My second card uses a Visible Image vintage car stamped onto a background of Glimmer Mists and then sections beached out to highlight it. For the base of the card I embossed a piece of card with a cog embossing folder and spritzed with the same Glimmer Mists, added some hessian and twine and some little cog embellishments.

Hope you all have a great weekend and I remain hopeful that I will feel up to getting a bit of blogging in soon.

Am I in Aussie ?

The title says's it all about one of the cards I designed for tomorrows Stamp Addicts programme at 2pm on Create and Craft........................I made it upsidedown ! 

I didn't actually realise until I saw a photo of it on Sarah's blog showing it opening from the left and initially thought it had come adrift in the post, but no I added that gorgeous Noel sentiment upside down so am totally mortified as there's not time to get another one to her. If she decides it's worth using it on the show they will all be having a laugh at my expense, but I've a good sense of humour so will laugh with them for being such an ninny.

So here it is.....card the right way up, sentiment upside down and what miffs me the most is that this is probably my favourite card from all the samples I made for this show.

The backing panel was embossed with a swirl folder and them lots of lovely gilding wax in gold and red, the sentiment stamped onto black gloss cardstock and old gold perfect pearls dusted over.

And here is the left handed photo with the sentiment the right way up.

Bodge up apart, I really love this sentiment, it's so elegant and I think it will get lots of use........hopefully the right way up.

The card at the top uses the tree stamp from the Holly Christmas stamp sheet, stamped with black archival ink and then brayered to create the sky and foreground.

Have a good evening everyone, I've not managed to get into blogland today as it's been busy at work, but hopefully I will find some time later.