Fairy Nuff

Good morning all you lovely peeps! I hope this here blog post finds you well and coping with staying home. 

I do hope that people take heed of the instructions to stay home as I really don't want to be on lockdown forever! 
Sadly some people seem to be taking the advice and ignoring it. They seem to think they are invincible and that they are immune from the virus. I suppose the sun coming out doesn't help but use your own outdoor space at your home and if you don't have one then it's tough! 

I had delved into past projects today that I know I haven't blogged so no step by step pictures but there are instructions of the way it was made. 

Ingredients.

Fairy with Toadstool  GRO-FY-41171-01

Woodland owl plate GRO-AN-41049-03

Scalloped Square extension GRO-WO-41166-15

Indian Summer parchment and paper

Pastel brads

1. On designer parchment  emboss  the smallest scalloped square and mark the corners of the central square. Change plates and position the fairy plate to fit in the centre. Emboss the design. Change the plate and emboss the outer lines of the owl plate.

2. Using perga colours add colour to the image as shown.

3. Using a bold 2 needle tool perforate around the lines and around the scalloped edge. Cut away waste.

4. Attach to the designer paper using pale purple brads.  Mount on a card blank.

I hope you like todays project and if you have a go at it post a pic on social media but tag me in so I can see how you got on.

Please leave me a comment below to say Hi!

Stay safe and Happy crafting 

When is a flower not a flower?

Afternoon all! 
How are you all doing? Keeping safe and well I hope. 
I really had to think what day it was today especially as we had no power this morning! Whole area had a big power cut. I lasted about an hour so then we had all alarms going off! Thankfully as people were home they didn't stay on for ages!
Did you watch Barbara on the telly yesterday using the new stamps by Tina Cox? They are really lovely. I decided to craft as I was watching the shows and as I had the floral stamps to hand I decided to use them. But I wanted to do something a bit different. I also had out the March NDC stamp. So that was used too. I also sneaked in one of Sam's Ovaly stamps. Such good fillers!

Here's the card I made.

So where are the flowers I here you ask. Well I used the filler in stamp from the poppy set. Tina's Poppy Spray Unmounted stamp set from Claritystamp.com STA-FL-10960-A5

Here is how I did it.

Take a piece of stencil card and the brayer. Ink the brayer with chipped sapphire distress oxide ink and blend it on the blending mat

Roll this lightly over the stencil card. Barbara calls it walking the brayer. 
Repeat this with scattered straw distress oxide ink. You want a very mottled look.

Now spritz the ink on the blending mat with water

Dip the edges of the card into the ink trying to get it all around the edges but leaving the middle free of the wet ink. Allow to dry or blast it with a heat tool.

Stamp the sentiment in versafine ink then use the filler in stamp in the yellow and blue oxide inks to stamp the circles randomly around the page.
I used two sizes of circles to do this.

Use the yellow and blue ink with a fine paintbrush to fill in the colour of the letters. Also use the dots from Sam's Ovaly stamps to add more texture.

Edge the card with a black sharpie pen and mount onto an 8x8 card blank.

I hope you like what I did.
If you want to have a go please feel free to try but if you do please acknowledge me if you post it on social media.

Stay safe and well. Happy Crafting. xx

A proper gem....or not!!

Hi all. Thanks for dropping by. I wish you could. I think that's the biggest thing I am missing with this stay at home malarkey...actually seeing people face to face. But As long as we do as we are told we will come through this and be able to venture out in good time. So for now make the most of being at home.....read a book, or write one! Be creative-draw, paint  doodle, make things. Whatever you do enjoy the moment and allow yourself to focus on the task in hand and not on what is going on out there. It will ease your anxiety and help you cope better. 
I am loving the doodle sessions that Barbara Gray is doing on the Claritystamp Facebook page. I even found a little journal in my crafty stash that I am doing the doodles in. It will be good to look back on and say this is what I did.
Anyway enough waffle for now. 
I posted a card showing faux Gems on Facebook the other day and a few people have asked me what I used and could I blog it. So here it is.

Ingredients

Diagonal Bold grid A5 square GRO-GG-40201-12

A4sq Framework Squares GRO-PA-40721-15

A4sq Framework Circles GRO-PA-40722-15

A5 nested Rectangles GRO-PA-40524-04

Celtic Numbers GRO-WO-41241-XX

Celtic Corners GRO-PA-40872-03

Pink parchment

1.Using the square framework plate emboss the three squares then use the circles to add the frames and gem circles inside the squares. Emboss the smaller numbers and the sentiment in the centre one.

2 Use the rectangle plate to create the outer border. Use designs off the Celtic plate to fill this border in randomly.

3. Colour the gems in the top and bottom circles.

4. Emboss the grid pattern then turn over and perforate in the grid design. Perforate around the outer border.

5. Cut around the outer edge and within the grid design.

6. Mount onto pink paper attaching with mini brads. Add to a card blank.

7. Add the white highlights to the gems using a white pen and add the flowers to the centre.

Please leave me a comment below to let me know what you think...or just to say hello.

Stay safe and happy crafting xxx

A much needed mindful day!

Good afternoon all. I hope you are all OK and coping with this lockdown as well as possible. I know it is hard to do sometimes but if we are to get through this we must stay at home and not venture out where at all possible. I think it would be much easier to do for everyone if there was something visible that we could actually see like the sky turning purple and big black spots floating about! But this virus is not something we can see so thats what makes it so hard to avoid! So stay at home and keep cleaning and washing and we will beat it eventually.

Did you manage to catch Barbara doing her first ever FB live on the Claritystamp page? For some time now Barbara has talked about the need for mindfulness and I think it is important for us all to do some of this and todays doodling session is a perfect thing for all of us to do even if you're not a crafter. Pick up a pen and a piece of paper and have a go. I have found a little book that I am going to use. The ones I did along with Barbara have been transferred into my book now.

One thing that is very mindful is doing Groovi and parchment craft. This is something I did ages ago but I never blogged it. Please forgive me for dipping into past projects... I just had to do other things today rather than concentrate on doing a new step by step project.
Anyway here is the project. I have also given the ingredients and a brief description of how it was done below.

Ingredients.

Z floral letter GRO-FL-40269-01

Nested Heart plate GRO-PA-40094-03

Netting Pattern plate GRO-PA-40040-03

Perga Colours

Pale green parchment

Brighton Rock paper

Kraft card blank

1. Working on pale green parchment emboss the Z. Emboss the heart frame around the letter. Emboss the netting pattern.
2. Emboss white work on the design as shown.
3. Using perga colours add colour on the reverse to the flowers, letter and frame.  
4. Perforate around the heart with a 2 needle bold tool and cut away waste.
5. Attach to a piece of designer paper with brads. Mat and layer onto cream then green card stock then Mount on a 7x7 Kraft card blank.

I hope you like it.
Please let me know what you think in the comments below

Happy crafting

GCASAH....Can you work that out?

Good Afternoon all
Well it's been ages since I blogged but life was just so busy and my blog just had to wait. But now I have a little more time on my hands so I thought I would start it up again! I don't think I will be blogging every day but we will see what happens.
Have you worked out the title yet?
Get Crafting And Stay At Home. Good advice I think if we are to beat this virus and save lives. That's what its all about. So I thought I would share with you a project and do a step by step of how it is made.

So here's the Project

It is done with the City of London stencil by Claritystamp and was on Hochanda TV on March 11th with Maria. I did a sample similar to this but on black card stock instead of the Kraft card.

Any way here is how I did it.

Get the stencil, Kraft card, a sponge and white gesso.

Cut the piece of Kraft card to 7"x7" and attach the stencil to it with low tack tape and sponge the gesso through the stencil.

Check you have enough gesso and add more if needed. 

Leave to dry.

Once completely dry use blendable pencils (I used my cheap ones) and dorso oil on a blending nib to add colour to the white gesso areas. Don't do it all.

Trim the edges of the Kraft card then mat onto dark brown card then onto a Kraft card blank. Add a sentiment sticker.

Here is the black card version ....slightly different colours in the sky.

I hope you like the project. If you have a go plese let me see your work but all I ask is that you give me some credit for the inspiration.

Please let me know here what you think.

Stay safe and craft away.

Lots of Love xxx 

J is for......

Hello bloggers....I know I haven't seen you all for a good long while but I have been pretty busy with lots of stuff so unfortunately I just haven't even given my blog a thought! But as I have been asked to explain how I made a sample for the recent Claritystamp Birthday weekend I thought I would do it on here.
Did any of you see all the shows on Hochanda? They are really good weren't they! And covered all the bases! Brilliant.

Anyway this is one of the samples I made for the shows.

I made this using the J from the alphabet set and the Jayne Nesterenko frame. I also used one of the butterflies from the Jayne Nesterenko sets.
I also used the artistry inks to colour it.

1. Stamp the frame into the middle of a piece of 7x7 stencil card using black archival ink.
2. Stamp the J in the centre of the aperture and stamp it again on a spare piece of stencil card along with the butterfly.
3. Now use low tack tape to mask off the areas of the frame you want the flowers in and use the J stamp to fill these areas. Do one at a time until all 4 sides are stamped. Give this a quick blast with the heat tool to dry the ink.
4. Mask off the outside edge of the frame and then brush yellow ink over the stamped flowers and in the aperture around the J leaving the centre white.
Remove the masking tape.
5. Use the artistry inks to colour the flowers on the spare J and also on the butterfly. Leave to dry.
6. Use a fine paintbrush and artistry ink to add colour to the flower border, frame and to the main image.
7. Trim back the card so there is an even white border around the frame. 
8. Mat this on a piece of green card then onto a 6x6 card blank. 
9. Fussy cut out the spare flowers and decoupage onto the J and fussy cut out the butterfly and stick on to one corner of the card.

I hope you can follow these instructions.
Remember that if you change the colours of ink you use it will look very different. And you could use any of the letters like this.


Have a great day 
Happy Crafting 

Pink Painted Butterflies

Good morning all and I hope you are having a good Good Friday! It is actually nice to have some lovely weather on a bank holiday too I cant quite remember when that happened!

Whatever you do and however you choose to spend the day, enjoy it and kick back a little if you can!.

I have a few jobs I need to do but then I can get on with some crafting and who knows I may sit outside for a while...wasps and bugs allowing. That's the downside of being extremely allergic to things....I need to cover up which seems to defeat the object of sitting out! But it's nice to see sunshine.

I was looking through my projects and I found this one I had made in March in preparation for the live shows from the NEC and thought it looks perfect for a day like today. As usual the ingredients and instructions are below.

Ingredients.

Oval  Picot Die and matching plate

Rectangle  Picot Die and matching plate

Linda's Butterfly Plate. GRO-AN-40817-03

Wing Tool

Drop tool

Perga Liners

Fine Paintbrush

Indian summer  designer card

Pastel brads

1. Working on plain parchment, cut an oval using the 5th die and the rectangle using the 4th die.

2. on the rectangle emboss the double lines. IN each corner use the drop tool to make the little flowers . Emboss white work in them. Put to one side.
3. On the oval emboss the 5th and 6th double lines.  Semi perforate around the insides of each double circle using the wing tool and emboss the lines around the perforations.
4. Emboss the flower and butterflies in the inner oval avoiding the perforations. Add colour to the flowers on the reverse then paint the butterflies on the front using Pergaliners. Re-perforate using the wing tool.
5. Cut the designer card with the 2nd picot die. Layer up the two pieces of parchment and attach to the card with brads.

6. Mount on a card blank.

Have a great day everyone

Happy Crafting