What's New ?

Good morning Peeps, Happy New Year and I hope everyone had a good Christmas.

Ours turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag, we spent a few lovely days with family at one of our son's and partners house, but things were a bit marred by the death of an Aunt just before Christmas then hubby's sister two days ago. And to top of all that I landed on the floor in a heap New Year's Eve when my back and legs gave out on me, so I'm pretty immobile again, high on pills so apologies in advance that I might not make it into blogland as much as I might wish.

Anyhow, it's time for our first Allsorts challenge of 2016 which is being hosted by Mervi who would love to see our new crafty stash in a 'What's New theme.  Our sponsors and DigiStamp Boutique and Sizzix. I have also managed a share for the current Butterfly Challenge which has reached the letter X which is for Xanthine, what clever thinking and I love working with shades of yellow.

It's some inky indulgence from my Allsorts share and I started with the reverse side of a piece of Centura Pearl and masking fluid to mask off a sun.............I find the easiest way to get a good circle is to punch or die cut a circle in a piece of card and use that as a mask to pain in the fluid.

Next I added Violet and Lime Green Brushos and let the colours run with the water, when dry I rubbed away the masking fluid and used a Sheena stencil and DI Dusky Concorde to add some interest to the top. The corner honeycombe pattern was achieved using a a Sizzix corner die, I do love how you can cut the pattern within the cardstock and keep the outer edges intact. I stamped Penny Black Blush twice onto the inked piece of card and again just the flower heards onto a snippet of card and heat embossed with purple powder, cut out and decoupaged. Before matting and layering and placing a piece of violet card behind the honeycomb pattern I stamped a new Visible Image sentiment.

Here is my Xanthine and a Butterfly share, it's one a did for Stampers Sampler which I am now safe to blog as it'e been published. I used a circle mask and inked DI through some of the apertures and stamped a Penny Black background stamp and Chrysanthamum through others. The sentiment is from Darkroom Door and the little Penny Black Butterflies were stamped coloured and cut out and little wire antennas added. As Valerie Anne said "simples".

Happy weekend all.

Happy Christmas

(In answer to lots of questions, yes this is a view across the paddocks taken when last we has snow. The hedgerows were planted with Whitethorn by my Dad many years ago and in the Spring are covered in blossom which looks and smells wonderful)

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and wonderful 2016

Grungy canvas

Good morning to you all it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and I also have my mid month card for Penny Black and More, fortunately I had schedules my Allsorts post but didn't quite get round to doing my Penny Black one for yesterday

By way of explanation of missing that post and also my lapse in visiting your blogs this week, I am knee deep in Tattered Lace samples for CHA in Anaheim early next month and my time seems to be evaporating. Scarily Christmas is just days away and then health permitting I will need to get myself organised to take off to the show as I am very lucky to be able to attend this year.

I am the host at Allsorts this week and would like to see 'Anything but Christmas'....................sorry if that's a bit Bah Humbug but I thought as we have all been making Christmas cards for what seems like forever, we were perhaps ready to move on to something different.

This challenge will run for two weeks to allow everyone to have a bit of a break and for those that celebrate Christmas to enjoy the festive season. As it's a two week challenge we have four lovely sponsors to help us celebrate.........Stamp Addicts, Deedee's Digis, Whimsy Stamps and DigiStamp Boutique.

So I have a canvas to share which is one I made recently for Stamp Addicts for one of their Hochanda TV shows. I started by giving the canvas a coat of gesso, although it was already primed I like to give them a bit more for the pains to bite into. I made a mask from Tattered Lace Byzantine Lattice die, fixed it to the right hand side of the canvas and spread pearl texture paste through the mask. Once dry I did some stamping using Stamp Addicts Grunge Flowers using acrylic paint instead of ink and also some small harlequins using another mask and gold texture paste.

While it all dried I stamped and embossed with gold detail powder Stamp Addicts Roman Clock and cut out the centre and outer edges. I then cut Tattered Lace Charisma Ivy several times and covered with gold acrylic pain, pouncing the top to give a textured finish. 

Finally I assembled the whole piece, added some flowers and two dragonflies and rubbed gold gilding wax round the edges of the canvas.

And above my Penny Black and More creation using Penny Black Awakening, inked with distress markers and stamped onto an inky background on which I used a variety of stamps and second and third generation stamping to achieve a faded effect.

Happy weekend all and I really hope you can find time to join in our challenge this time round and promise I will be round visiting as soon as my last box of samples is on it's way to TL Towers.

Snippets, Fairies and the naughty corner for me yet again

Good morning Peeps, how's your weather, we have had dully dreary days and nothing but rain for days now and I am well and truly fed up with it, although I guess I am not alone here. How nice it would be to see some frosty nights because that does tend to lead to some sunnier and brighter days.

I have a couple of shares today, those who know me are aware that I don't often enter challenges, mainly because my eyes won't let me spend ages doing all the linking up so I tend to save my screen time to dealing with the challenges I run. I know that sounds a bit churlish but sometimes you just have to prioritise. But there are one or two challenges that I do try and make an exception for and enter when time allows so here we go........................

Snippets Playground, we've been having rehearsals for the Nativity Play and are all hoping for a part, but Miss Di has not been in touch so I am guessing sneaking in the mulled wine and bottles of white (that was Kath's fault, not mine, honest) means I've not got a part and will have to spend time in the naughty corner...............again, either that or I will have to wear that awful donkey outfit yet again. And for those of you reading this who don't have a clue what I am rabbiting on about and just might...........quite understandably..........think I have totally lost the plot, why not head over to the playground and join in the fun.

Butterfly Challenge where for this one Christmas challenge would like to see Fairies instead of Butterflies so was an easy ask.

Fashionable Stamping Challenges where the theme is to create your own backgrounds, I've never joined in this one before but my teami Shirl from Vintage Stamping Challenges left me a message on my Allsorts post saying why not join in with that card. Unfortunately that was posted a day before FSC's challenge was posted so I thought it only right as I love inkiness to find another card to enter.

And I had better add a bit of an explanation about which is for which and how I made them. The top card has a background cared using an acrylic block, inked with distress inks, spritzed with water and stamped directly onto a piece of 600gsm Fabriano card. There really is no right or wrong way to do this, simply repeat stamp with the black until you have a pattern that you are happy with.

I then stamped the Penny Black stamp over the background and again twice onto some offcuts of Be Creative Vintage Collage papers and paper, cut out and pieced adding two layers to decoupage. The sentiment is also Penny Black and I would like to enter this into FSC and Snippets Playground.

My second card uses Lavinia stamps, stamped with archival black onto a background of Pan Pastels and a rather over sized masked sun. Some glitter here and there and of course on the Fairy wings and some organza ribbon to finish. I would like to enter this one into the Butterfly Challenge.

I am bust working away on Tattered Lace samples ready for CHA early in the New Year and there are some scrumy new products but not able to share them until closer to the time, but I do have some using the new hexagon box are dies which launched last week I will try and post as soon as.

Have a good week all.

Winter Trees

We have a new challenge starting today over at FlonzCraft Vintage Stamping Challenges, the them this month is Winter Trees. As always there is a very generous $20 voucher to be won from FlonzCraft.

This started out as a bit of an experiment and I wasn't sure at first but I think it's actually grown on me. I was playing around with Brushos.......as you do.......using up bits of card to try different effects and had a new set of TL diamond dies sitting on my desk so decided to make a sort of mosaic pattern as the base of my card. I also added some circles using embossing powder and paint lids tapped into inkpads.

From there on it was simply a matter of stamping FlonzCraft Birch Tree in Winter in black archival ink and cut with an TL oval die which followed the shape of the stamp quite well. Then a scallop layer from a piece of silver linen mirri........it's got a hole in the middle so another snippet leftover from an earlier card.........this frugal style of mine is becoming quite a worry. I carried the silver to the trees and coloured the trunks with a fineline silver leaf pen and some colour to the scene using a small circle mask and Pan Pastels and the burlap strip is one of several in a pack I picked up in one of those £1 stores.

I so want to join in the Christmas party at the Playground this week so am going to link up there in a moment........somebody said to bring mince pies but I was thinking something more like mulled wine (or stronger as need to keep the cold out of these creaky bones) if that's OK with Mistress Di and 'that other one' who always encourages me to do naughty things ?

Bunnies and birdies in the sun

Time for our monthly challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More and our themes are Anything Goes with a stamp and a Ribbon and Anything Goes with a stamp, so pretty much it's Anything Goes as we know how busy you all are so have tried to keep things simple.

My Stamping Sensations piece started with a background of Pan Pastles and sponged sun rays using DI Dusky Concorde. All stamps are Chocolate Baroque and stamped with black archival. I cut the finished piece into two, matted and layered with coordinating card and added some organza ribbon and a bow.

My Penny Black piece uses a new stamp set called Happy Notes 30-300, I have gone with a wintery look but I think with different colours it could easily be used for any season of the year...............it was my intention to make another with Spring colours but time got the better of me. I stamped both of the main stamps and leaves across the top with black archival ink, then used masks for the sun and hills and again used my colouring medium of choice, Pan Pastels for the background and shading plus glitter to highlight the hills and branches. As well as the three stamps I have used here, the set also has two useful sentiments.

I know it's a mega busy time of year for so many of you but I do hope you find time to join in our challenges as we have some fabulous prizes to be won.

Happy weekend all.

CAS at Allsorts

Good morning to you all, it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts where this week I am the host and would like to see CAS style cards. Our sponsor is Scrapper Delight. 

I don't think I am alone when it comes to making CAS style cards and I hope I've not overdone it on these two, but to me they are fairly minimalistic.  The card at the top uses an image from our sponsor called Fairy Wishes and have to confess it was a really quick and easy card to make. I printed the image onto white linen cardstock, used Wink of Stella pens to add some colour and sparkle to the fairies wings and bubbles and gently shaded the edges with distress ink. The sentiment is a stamp from Lavinia and one I do rather like and seem to use quite a lot.

The starting point for my second card was to mask a section on the card and apply Pan Pastels, then remove the masks before stamping the Penny Black bloom and sentiment. I matter the piece onto some coordinating card and black base card. I have to say these cards were both really quick and easy to make and ideal if you need lots in a hurry.

Happy weekend all and I hope you will join in our challenge this week.