Lacy Swallows

Good Morning

I thought that today I would share another of the cards from August 3rd ClarityStamp show

I started off by cutting a piece of theuva card to an oblong and stamping the Arty Heart in the centre.

I then stamped the large and small Lacy Swallow on either side so it looked like they were holding the heart in their beaks (I did just need to use my black micron pen). 

I then masked off the birds and using raspberry adirondack I brushed the bottom of the card fading it to the centre. I then switched to stonewashed blue and getting rid of a lot of ink I brushed the top of the card again fading it so the centre was hardly coloured.

I removed the masks and coloured the birds in using Spectrum Noir pencils. 

To colour the heart I found some pink papers in my stash and black embossed the heart onto 3 different designs. I cut these out then paper pieced the heart.

I drew a wiggly line round the edge twice so it over lapped and drew lines in these spaces then coloured them in pink and blue. I matted the image in pink and blue then onto a white card blank

And here is the finished card. Let me know what you think please!

Hope you have a nice day...its going sunny here!

Happy Crafting

Chase your Dreams

Good Morning to you and a fine one it is today!

Not long to go now and I will be back to it and the summer holidays will be a thing of the past!!! They have flown by but that's because they have been so busy. I suppose I have been Chasing my Dream. And I hope that very soon my dream will come true but for the time being work has to be something I do! What I have to remind myself is that without work I would have none of the things I love doing! So I suppose it is a necessary evil!

Anyway enough chatter... when I got this stencil in with the last lot of DT items I just had to use it! 

I ran it through the Grand Calibur to emboss it on a piece of Theuva card and then keeping the stencil in place I brushed it with butterscotch, mountain rose and juniper Adirondacks a bit randomly but the juniper I kept to the outer edges. I then dragged the colour in with a make-up sponge to get a more defined image. 

I then highlighted the words by edging the letters in black micron pen and adding a shadow to them with promarkers. 

I matted it on to black and then a mustard yellow card then a white card blank. I added some flowers in similar orange and yellow tones and that was it!

I hope that you are able to Chase your Dreams

Happy Crafting

Poppy heads and Moon!

Good Morning everyone and its typical Bank Holiday Weather...wet! But let's not get down hearted about the weather. We are so used to it that we just get on with it don't we. 

There are lots of open air festivals on this weekend around and about this area so it is a shame for them that the weather cannot be better but hey we are in the last week of August now with Autumn on its way and I don't think we've had a bad summer!

This morning Colin has gone out to a Bonsai show so I thought I would take time to update my blog and then settle down to make some more Christmas cards. 

From the Clarity stamp show on August 3rd my favourite set has to be the poppy head and leaves set. Its very funky and reminded me so much of wall paper I had as a teenager. First thing I did was cut out masks for the leaves and the seed heads. 

I then stamped the main image 3 times across the card. I used memento ink as I was using promarkers later. I had cut a piece of theuva card to 7" square. I then masked off the leaves and the seed heads. The next thing was to put the mask of the moon in place. I used the largest size as it was due to be a big moon around that time!

I then brayered the sky in juniper then denim then added a little black to darken it. I did this at an angle so I avoided the dreaded lines! I used the hills mask and a make up sponge to add some hills and mountains. I also used a piece of torn paper to do the ground around the base of the stalks!

The leaves I made my own ink pad for using the distress reinkers like we had been shown by Maria Simms at her workshop and then by Barbara Gray at the Clarity Retreat.

I added colour to the moon by taking off the mask and running my brayer over it without adding ink....its amazing how much it still holds. I then added the outtie mask and used a make up sponge to add moon shadows in blues and yellows....go easy here...you don't need a lot of colour!

I then used the custom ink pad to stamp the leaves around the base of the poppy stems and then 2 at the top into the moon. I used a white micron pen to add the stars. I then removed the masks from the seed heads and leaves and coloured these in with promarkers. I matted it onto black then gold mirri then onto an 8 x 8 card blank.

And here it is!

Please let me know what you think.

Oh and here is the other card made using the same set. Very different aren't they which shows how versatile the stamps are! This is just gold embossed on to centura pearl card...the white side then sprayed with orange yellow and brown dylusion inks. 

I hope you have a pleasant Bank Holiday Weekend!

Happy Crafting

Church and the Splats

Good Morning

Two more weeks and I will be back on the work seat but for now I can continue to do what I do. I thought today I would share one of my samples from the August 3rd show.

It is the one that I got asked the most questions about!

It was the Church with the splats around it!

So easy to do great splats but you really need the Tim Holtz Distress Stains. They are the same colours as the inks and re inkers etc but really liquid and have a spongy dispenser on the bottle. I was put onto these by the lovely Eileen Godwin a couple of years ago

I really like using them. 

So all I did was cut a piece of centura pearl card to A5 size and create the background. The distress stains can also be dragged along the page where you want the colour as well as splat. 

So I did the sky area then added splats. I dried it off with the heat gun and then added the yellow splat for the sun.

I added purple and green and yellow at the sides to look like bushes.

I dried this off and then stamped and embossed the church and the lampposts in black then added the colour to the church and the yellow for the lamp light. 

I added some hills using distress inks and a makeup sponge then used black soot distress ink at the bottom of the picture to ground the Church and the lampposts.

I darkened the edges of the picture too using a blending tool and black soot distress ink. The whole thing was then matted onto a piece of silver mirri card then on to a white card blank.

Here is the finished card. Let me know what you think!

Now I am off to find something to do! 

Happy Crafting

A 'so sorry' moment

Good Morning to you all!

I have to apologise for being such a bad blogger but I have been really busy...and that's without being at work! I sometimes wonder how I fit that in!! 
Anyway this past week has been mine and Colin's annual holiday week and although we haven't gone away we have tried to make the most of the week and go out to places. We have had a lovely week and many of you have been following our week on facebook.
We also celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary with a lovely meal out.

Anyway another week ahead and I want to try and get done what I need to do for work this week but I will try and get on here to share things with you!

Today I want to share one of the cards I did for the August 3rd Claritystamps Show. This one used one of the stencils and the church stamp along with the 'so sorry' line sentiment. These sentiments are great as you can bend them to the shape you want.

I started off inking the stencil all over in black soot distress ink and then running it through my grand caliber to get the ink off the stencil and onto the card. It was'n't quite as black as I had hoped but I went with it.
I then cleaned off the stencil and replaced it over the card and stamped the church over the girl so it looked like she was standing in front. I masked the church off and then spritzed the whole thing with dylusion sprays. I then carefully lifted the stencil off and the mask and dried the whole thing off. There seemed to be a white echo around the whole black area so this I used a yellow spectrum noir pencil to fill in. I used the SN pencils to add colour to the church and then the sentiment was added to fit under the branch. I think it had a spooky look to it and suddenly the white patches on the black looked right so I was glad I persevered with it! 
Here is the card....let me know what you think!

Have a good day whatever you are doing

Happy Crafting 

Pretty in Pink

Good Morning to you all.
I think that most of you by now will realise that one of my favourite colours is PINK.
So I thought I would use it when I did my card for this months new Challenge.
But before we look at it I want to say  ow marvellous all the entries for the last challenge were. Well done to the winner and to the top five...it was very hard to choose as there were so many who deserved to be up there. Lets hope that this months challenge is as well received!

So for our challenge this month we have the topic FEMININE. I wanted to do something a bit different and so I decided not to use one of the lady stamps but look for something that would be delicate so I chose the large and small PALM LEAF stamps that I have just bought after seeing them used on Barbara Gray's blog.

I also wanted to use my gelli plate and decided to have a go at inking on it for a change. I started off by selecting my colours for the project and I thought that yellow and pink would go right together. I got out my raspberry and butterscotch adirondack ink pads. 

I used my blending mat to ink up my brayer in yellow and then brayered over half the gelli. You can hardly see the ink on the gelli. I then did the same with the pink. I left the ink on the blending mat for later. 

Using the large palm leaf I inked it up in yellow and being careful not to slide I stamped it on my gelli plate in the pink side then added two more in yellow then repeated in pink. 
I then took a print off this on a piece of the square gelli card. 
I also got another print off on a piece of copy paper ...note to self....do two prints next time!
It is amazing how there seems to be nothing on the gelli yet the print is so well defined.

I then got the egg plant ink pad out and stamped the verse in the top right hand corner and the smaller palm leaf twice in the bottom left hand corner out of the print in places. I drew the lines in purple fine liner.

I then spritzed my blending mat with water and used a piece of copy paper to clean it up so creating my backing paper. All I had to do was dry it off then cut it to size to cover an 8 x 8 card blank and mount the topper I had created onto it.

I hope you like it.

Please have a go at creating your own FEMININE card...You can find more inspiration on the Clarity Challenge blog from the rest of the Design team and you can visit their blogs to find out how they made their fab projects.

Hope you have a good weekend...Barbara will be back on the TV this Sunday at 9am-11am...well worth popping along to Create and Craft for a nosey at what she has to offer this month....they are fabulous new stamps.

Happy Crafting