A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies

Good morning, today I am sharing our first post of November over at the Chocolate Baroque blog, full details of the stamps and how I made my pieces of artwork can found over there. The Hochanda shows were all about Butterflies and in this post I used stamps from Butterfly Daisy Collage, Harebell Butterfly, Brier Rose Butterfly, Artistic Affirmations.

I also have a few photos of our holiday, we had beautiful weather and it was something of a culture shock to come back to near freezing temperatures.

Our villa was beautiful, it sleeps twelve so four of us (plus two dogs) were spoilt for choice when it came to choosing bedrooms. It is situated way up in the hills above Sant Antoni de Calonge, very quiet and peaceful with views of the sea from the turret rooms. And the pool was heated!!

George loves the water and especially the sea so thoroughly enjoyed himself but takes a good bit of persuading to come out once he's in. Leia on the other hand despite her size doesn't venture beyond a paddle.

Now more crafty samples.

My thanks as always for popping in today.

 

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Always Beleive

Morning Peeps, time for our new Allsorts challenge and this week Wendy would like to see 'Pearls and Gems' on our artwork and she is kindly providing a lovely prize, do pop over to the challenge blog to see for yourselves.

Another scheduled post so fingers crossed Blogger is behaving. My top card used an Inkylicios stamp I received as a gift from a crafty friend, it has lovely detail and I kept this one fairly simple to allow the stamp to take centre stage. As is usual I stamped with Versafine black, coloured in with sparkle pens and added a Bee Crafty sentiment.

My second share uses a Penny Black image which I inked with Distress Markers and spritzed with water before stamping, I then masked off a section so that I could ink a frame around the bloom. The sentiment and Butterfly are also Penny Black.

And my entry for Mos' October Rudolph Day's challenge, all I need to do is remember to link it up when we get home from holiday and before the gates close for the month. I used this adorable stamp from Crafty Individuals which I stamped and masked, stamped the CB trees and added the background with Pan Pastels, removed the mask and coloured the images and finally some stamping around the borders and liquid pearl berries.

Happy weekend all.

 

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Robin red breast and more Butterfly Dresses

Morning Peeps, a scheduled post as we are on holiday and hopefully finding a bit of late Mediterranean sunshine and meeting up with our youngest son and girlfriend who are three months into their European road trip following the race calendar. He's already competed in a few races, including a marathon in the Pyrenees where we was placed 7th in a field of 1,000.

Our Allsorts challenge this week was selected by our Tracy and the theme is 'Traditional Christmas Colours'. We have a super prize on offer from Swedish House Crafts. Also I have my CB shares from the post I scheduled post over at the Chocolate Baroque blog which has all details.

Note added Thursday: I only just realised I forgot to post my mid month shares for Penny Black and More and Stamping Sensations challenges yesterday, so my apologies to my team mates, I don't have time to add them now so will share them when I do my post for the new monthly challenges.

My Allsorts share is a canvas with napkin art. My starting point was to cover the canvas with gesso, then an off white acrylic pain followed by some texture paste stippled around the edges using a piece of foam. Once dry I added some green DI to accentuate the texture and stencilled holly leaves using a Penny Black stencil and DI. It took a while to cut out the Robin and his foliage perch but worth the time as he is lovely, I then used dries clear glue beneath the area I was going to place him, gently teased in position and used the remaining glue on the brush to seal around the edges. The sentiment is also Penny Black.

Lesley launched these stamps on Hochanda last month, all details of how I made them can be found here and the stamps featured are the lovely Butterfly Dress, Floral Edges, Decorative Edges, Amazing Mackintosh Words and Lady's Slipper Orchid

Many thanks for your visit and kind words, I will be round to see you all soon.

 

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Chocolate Baroque mid month shares

Morning Peeps, today over at the Chocolate Baroque DT blog we are sharing some more 15 minute creations and here are mine.

Sunday was a Super day at Doncaster and although the journey shattered me and I was good for nothing yesterday and had no voice, all part of the MS scenario when I overdo it, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. 

It was so lovely to meet several new faces, Sandra from SS, Kath from Allsorts, Lorraine (Mrs B's blog) and her daughter Emma, Lesley and David from CB, SS's Sally and Lynne who I already know well and not forgetting Bev from Bee Crafty and Justin and Gordon plus Pete Simpson whose artwork is fabulous.

We are all ready for our holiday and some sunshine, unlikely to be bogging whilst away as find it difficult seeing and navigating my tablet keyboard, so see you all when we get home.

The following is a small box using the lovely Butterfly Dress stamp and four notelets which fit inside.

 

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The soft glow of Christmas

Morning Peeps, time for our new Allsorts challenge and this week Susan would like us to make a start on our 'Christmas' cards. We have a super prize from StickerYou of a $65 store voucher.

This is a sample I made for a recent Stamp Addicts Hochanda TV show using one of their new seasonal sentiments, a pretty simple design really, strips of DP which are all G45, the sentiment stamped in Versafine Toffee and cut out with a TL die. All placed into position and a seam binding bow and button.

This one is my card for the new Butterfly Challenge, I really enjoy the challenge of incorporating the elements of the Butterfly wheel which this time gives us Baby Blue, Burnt Orange, Buff, Birthday's, Bows, Borders and the Butterfly. And I managed all elements, the stamps are all Chocolate Baroque stamped onto a brayered and stencilled background of blue, orange and buff. I first stamped the focal Poppy and Butterfly image and then stamped the bottom border, stamped the Butterflies a second time onto vellum and then coloured all in with Spectrum sparkle pens. Finally a CB sentiment and a small bow.

Another quick Christmas make using Toni's Stamps By Me Poinsettia, it was a playtime make testing out my new Versafine Clair inks, the sentiment is from the same set and the little berries from a CB set. 

Tomorrow I am off to Stamp Magic in Doncaster and more colours of those inks are on my ever growing list. It will be an early start as it's a good two hour journey from here, but it's going to be such fun meeting up with several of the Stamping Sensations girls, some I know already and some it will be a first meeting and also I will see our very own Allsorts Kath and Susan is hoping to find time to pop in as well.

I've been thinking about buying a light box for ages so when our Ellie told us how good her new one was I decided to go for it and went for a 16"x16" so it would accommodate my mixed media pieces and the larger cards for TV. But didn't leave it at that and bought a new camera as well. I've been using a little Canon Ixus for years so thought it was high time I upgraded to a 'grown up' camera and am really pleased with the Canon SX540 HS bridge camera which got the thumbs up from my crafty friend Sal and also my photographer boys. Obviously this one was taken with the Ixus but you can see from the card inside how good the light it.

Then later in the week we are off on holiday, I have a couple of scheduled posts and will see you all when we get home.

 

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Shades of Autumn and new Kim Moody stamps

It's time for our  new challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More where our themes are 'Shades of Autumn' and 'Autumn Splendour'.............I know, I know, not too much thinking went on there on my part but I adore crafting with the wonderful colours of the season and I know most of my team mates do as well as all their lovely samples show. As always there are wonderful prizes to be won at both. 

Lots of lovely warm Autumnal colours on this one, I first stamped the PB fence and masked it before stamping the tree inking the stamp with Distress Markers and using my Timmy stamping platform so I could build up the colours. Next I stamped the birdies, extending the wire with a black pen and adding another single bird.....Billy no mates.......leaves and flowers and the little Deer.

And that little fellow could be the one living in our paddocks, we often have Muntjac's crossing the paddocks but this year one seems to have taken up permanent residence and since mid August has been brave enough to come down from the hedgerows and feed on the windfalls in the orchard.

Hubby and I sat watching it the other day and were discussing how blessed we are to be able to watch wildlife from our own living room. We have so many different creatures within our grounds, Rabbits, Hares, Hedgehogs, Squirrels to name but a few and a wide variety of birds and always thank my dear Dad for teaching me an appreciation of all that Nature has to offer.

I always like a floral wreath and the Stamp Addicts leaves lend themselves to this very well. I cut a circle aperture and used foam pads to raise it and placed over the sentiment which is heat embossed with detail copper powder, then stamped the leaves onto card inked with Distress Oxides and again heat embossed. After cutting out I fixed around the aperture and added a bow if some Autumnal ribbon which I have had for years...........there's not much left on the reel now so I will go sparingly with it.

I also wanted to share one of my creations using the new Kim Moody stamps that Lesley launched on Hochanda TV this week. I was a lucky girl being sent the new stamps to play with and had such a fun time with them. Kim is an artist who sketches real life and puts his own slant on to images which as you can see gives a lovely quirky feel to them. His stamps are being made by Chocolate Baroque so are excellent quality and you can buy them now from Chocolate Baroque , they sold out very quickly on the launch show.

This one was a bit of inky indulgence, an Oxide background with some script from an old book, stamped the house and gave it a bit of a colour wash with DI's, stamped some CB fungi and sentiment, some random stencilling and a chipboard tree (gift from another treeaholic friend). Mounted onto corrugated, a couple of eyelets and some string to hang.

Lots of lovely prizes to be won again so please do come and join us.

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Butterfly Dress and Fantasy Woodland

Morning Peeps, time for our new Allsorts challenge and this week Mervi has a lovely seasonal theme of Leaves and Trees. Our sponsor is Marianne Designs. Lots of inspiration from my team mates so do pop over and take a peek.

Today I am also posting over at the Chocolate Baroque blog so have several shares from there including the lolly stick creation at the top which I realised as I added my CB artwork to this post fits our Allsorts theme very well. I used quite a selection of stamps on this batch of samples and all details can be found here.   

As you can see from the Butterfly Dress I stamped out lots of extra flowers and Butterflies to decoupage so my snippets of Fabriano came in very useful and I am popping over to the Snippets Playground with it. I am hoping that Parsnip's nose has not been put out of joint by the arrival of little Dudley.

So, the set above was my initial DP piece which were samples for a Chocolate Baroque Hochanda show a while back left sitting waiting in my file to be used and seemed a perfect choice for this weeks theme. They were a fairly quick make as I used DP's as my base to stamp trees from Tall Trees and Fantasy Woodland using Versafine Toffee and tied ribbon round each. For the box made using my score board, then cut strips to fit around the edge onto which I stamped leaves, did the same for the top ad stamped part of one of the trees around the edge and made some flowers to decorate along with some TL Ivy.

Have a good weekend and I hope you will joining in with our Allsorts theme this week.

 

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