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.

Fishing by the moonlight

Good Morning everyone, Saturday means time for a new challenge at Allsorts and this week Helene would love to see your cards for the guys.

I have had a inky dabble with my Stampscape images, all items are listed below. I stamped the mountains first, then covered with a mask and, another mask for the moon which I laid part way over the mountains to give the appearance it was just rising then brayered and sponged the sky. Next I stamped the trees and rocks, added the fisherman and some fauna at the front and a bit more sponging to create reflections.

Have a super weekend and thanks so much for calling by.

Floral Bloom

How's everyone's week going, well I hope ?

I'm back as promised with a couple more shares of samples I made for tomorrows Stamp Addicts programme on Create and Craft at Noon, this time using the Wildflowers stamp set and the Floral Bloom stamp which is a particular favourite of mine.

The top card was created by masking a piece of watercolour card, the shading the aperture with distress inks and ink dusters. The image was then stamped over, slightly off set with the masking tape still in place.

The second card was created with a mixture of different Spellbinders and the dandelion stamped onto a circle of shrink plastic.

Hope your day goes well.

Quintessentially British

Good Morning Peeps, hope you all are all having a lovely bank holiday weekend.

My new set of wheels got an outing Saturday when we spend a lovely couple of hours at a local garden centre, bought a few more shrubs for the garden..................it's a bit like Pandoras Box, we can always find a hole for a dozen or so and still there is room for more. 

I though I would share a couple of samples I made for Stamp Addicts new programme which you can see on Create and Craft this Thursday 10th May at Noon. I have been working with the Wildflower set and this new Time for Tea set, I will share a few from the wildflowers tomorrow.

You can find all the stamp sets on the What's New section of Stamp Addicts web site by clicking on the thumbnail links below.

Have a good day everyone and as always thank you so much for popping in to visit.

London 2012

A very Good Morning everyone, the first Sunday of the month means time for new challenges at Stampalot and Penny Black and More and at both we are celebrating the upcoming events here in the UK, the Olympics which is totally global and the Diamond Jubilee of our Queen.

Penny Black launched a great collection of stamps to commemorate the London events and all the stamps I have used for my DT pieces are from that collection.

To create the card at the top I masked a piece of Fabriano watercolour card top and bottom and used ink dusters to achieve the graduated colour and then simply stamped the image and picked out a couple of elements to colour with watercolour pencils.

For my second card I stamped the images and again used watercolour pencils and mounted the three panels onto some red bazzil. The base piece was embossed using coredinations, then sanded down , added some swirls and a flower I made from organza ribbon.

I'm not terrible happy with my third card because I found it so hard to depict the surroundings of St Paul's Cathedral. I looked at loads of pictures I took ages ago when we visited and yes it does have a tree to the left and yes, it does have a wall, but somehow it's not quite right and I have to admit I gave up after the fourth attempt. And of course whilst the spires and parapets are pretty accurate, the front door seems to be missing from the stamp, so this one is very much artistic licence.

I do hope you will join in the challenges this month and show us your version of the London events of Summer 2012.

I am entering the top card into this weeks:

Pans Pastels challenge with the theme Anything Goes

My new 'wheels'

It's Saturday morning which can mean only one thing, a new challenge at Allsorts and this week the lovely Jo would like to see 'Black and White' projects, so I am one happy bunny as I love working with that colour combo.

But first I want to share a picture of my new mobility scooter, is it neat or what ? Certainly not the cheapest on the market, but it's so natty as it folds into itself and fits my little boot a treat...............and there's still room from a bag or two shopping, so what more could a girl ask for.

Daisy seems to think it's a new play thing and had great fun chasing it up and down the path on it's test runs yesterday and took up her place as unofficial guardian of the scooter....or could be she's just a poser. But with her sitting next to it you can get a pretty good idea just how compact it is....................and take note no basket, those silly plastic things on most of the mobility scooters just freak me.

Now my DT card and unusually for me there's no stamping, instead quite a lot of die cuts. I started by sticking a piece of DP onto some white cardstock to give it more rigidity before cutting the aperture. I stuck pieces of very narrow black card onto the reverse to create a lattice effect and mounted onto a piece of white linen cardstock and the a black base card. I added leaves and swirls, a rose made from organza ribbon and stick pin, quite a simple card but quite effective I think.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Shabby Chic ?

Morning to you all, hows' your week going ? Mine seems to have been disappearing before I know it, I'm so behind with blogging, but promise I will be catching up with you all very shortly.

Some of you may have seen the fabulous card Ruth from A Passion for Stamps made at the weekend as her GDT piece for Allsorts challenge. I absolutely loved what she made, the colours and sheer originality and thought I would case the lacy mannequin principal as I knew two of the girls would love it. So I set about making two, a pink and a purple one in their favourite colours, but taking in some inking and stamping to create on of my favourite messy backgrounds.

Two cards finished I mailed them off to Ruth with the firm understanding that they were not for the gallery or blog use, just to say thank you for the inspiration. Ruth however wanted to add them to her gallery so we struck a deal and here I am blogging them.

Two along the same lines, using the same TH Papillion stamp set, distress inks and glimmers mist for the background, roses made using a five petal punch and copier paper and butterflies from the stamp set covered with glossy accents.

I've never been completely sure what fits the Shabby Chic category but thought these may be close, let me know. I am entering this into:

Simon Says Challenge - Anything goes
LEJ Designs - Anything goes

Have a good Wednesday everyone and I really hope those of you in the UK see a bit of sun for a change.