Humming Bird

It has taken me ages to manage to get a halfway decent photo of this card and I,m quite disappointed at how it looks on here, the blues are much more vibrant and the white is whiter !  My lovely sister has sent me a whole bunch of lovely Stampin Up stamps,plus a SU punch and other goodies for my birthday (which is actually not until next Friday) The parcel arrived on Tuesday and there was no way I could wait for nearly two weeks to open it !!!  This card is made with stamps from the Elements of Style set , the flower stamp is gorgeous and makes beautiful backgrounds as well as a focal point, this card is not for anything in particular,just wanted to play.

Less is more tall card

I seemed to have a block about making the Less Is More card this week, although I have so many stamps nothing seemed appropriate to use for the sketch, finally decided to use these flower stamps from Hero Arts,stamped,inked and layered and button added, sentiment by Penny Black. I'm not happy with the amount of white space at the top of the card, seems out of balance and I may trim it down a bit.

By The Sea

Last week I decided to have a go at making one of the Crafty Individual frames. I loved the one in Craft Stamper last month that Jean Hardy had done and I'm afraid mine is a very poor sample but I had fun doing it, the squares are all from CI's seaside papers,the seahorse is a Oxford Impressions stamp and the shells are made with paperclay, I still think it needs something adding but after looking at it all week I couldn't think of anything else to do so will hang it on the wall for now and maybe something will come to me at a later date.
I spent a couple of hours yesterday trying to do the layered stamping that Shari Caroll is demonstrating on the Hero blog but each time I got to the final stamping I made a mess of it so decided I had wasted enough time and watercolour paper for now, will maybe try again another day.

inchie hanger

Not done much crafting this week as I've been trying to take advantage of the fine weather to get some work done in the garden.  This panel of inchies has been throwing around for quite a long time, after I had made it I couldn't think what to do with it, anyhow tonight I put it together with an embossed panel also in the same pile of bits and pieces,cut out the hoyse shape from an old piece of mountboard which I covered with a bit of DP from the scrap box so its a sort of recycled piece . I saw that Try It On Tuesday have a challenge for inchies so will post it on there.

atcs

A bunch of alcohol ink atcs I made last weekend, they have all been dispatched to recipients who should have received them by now so can post them on here now.  Its ages since I played about with alcohol inks and I spent a lovely messy few hours creating the backgrouund papers ,most of the stamps are Crafty Individuals and with a nice background there is virtually nothing needed to enhance the images. I love the stamp with the girls running into the sea, must be one of  my favourites( at the moments anyhow) 

What was I thinking ?

Don't quite know what I was thinking about when I got these stamps, they are certainly noy my usual style!
I have a feeling this card may be a one and only with this set. I did get another of the sets which has beach huts and I think I may use that one a bit more. Thought this card would do for one of the older Grandsons maybe.

Label 5 Stamps

The Stampman has brought out some new stamps that have been designed so that they fit on nestabilities,this is one of the stamps that fit the Labels 5 set.  I stamped onto some inked paper that came out of the folder full that never gets any emptier! not sure what I have used but it looks like sprayed ink with a bit of glimmer mist too, the butterflies were stamped on some bits left over from alcohol paper I had been using to make atcs, the stamps do not have the wording on so you can add what ever words you like, the Thinking of you is from an Inkadinkado set. I'm posting this on Lets Ink It Up challenge which this week is die cuts.

Masculine 2

This is the first card that I have made for

Less Is More challenge that I have really liked and wouldn't you know I can't get a decent picture of it. This

is a photo and its not good but the scan was even worse.  Its a lot deeper blue in real life. This is one of a set of Artemio stamps that I got yesterday at Harrogate Papercraft Show, also got the nestabilty set too. We had a great day and came home with all sorts of new stuff ( and empty purses too ! ) I was very careful doing this card as distress inks and clean spaces can be a bit of risky job !  After I had inked the nestabilty shape I had to have a clean up of my work space before I went any further and then I went and got a dirty mark from my cutter, luckily it did come off with a soft pencil rubber and the cutter has been cleaned up as well.

haven't had time to get round to looking at any other entries yet, don't know how Chrissie and Mandi manage to comment on everyones as it is very time consuming but as I love getting comments I do try to comment on as many others as I can.

Masculine

This is the second card I made today, again I,m disappointed at how it looks on here, the blue is a lot deeper really, this photo is the best of a bad bunch and the scanner washed it out even more and although its a 6" square card it looks oblong on here, Oh well I like it "in the flesh" so to speak.

Not less is more anymore !

This was originally a card I made a couple of weeks ago for the Less is more challenge(original post 20th Feb) it  has been throwing about on the dresser since I made it and as I didn't really like it when I made it and I have liked it less every time I looked at it,today I dismantled the original and remade it into an anniversary card, just added the spotty DP and some punched lace and the wishy washy card turned into something I will be happy to send to someone. Mojo has gone walk about again and other than make a couple of cut and stick cards with some free papers in a magazine I haven't done anything.

Brown

I was just finishing off this pair of atcs when I had a little thunk and thought maybe I could put these on the Sunday Stamper challenge which this week is "brown". The base is kraft card which is brown or sort of and the inking is done with brushed corduroy DI altho it looks a bit yellowy on here . The background is randomly stamped with Artistic Outpost stamps ,the wording is Paperartsy and the images are from the Graphicfairy (I think)

one layer........

Well I finally made a card for Less is more challenge which this week is for a one layer card and image off the edge, I had several disastrous attempts last night which all went in the bin, I,m a very grubby stamper,seem to get ink all over which is fine when I,m in grungy,messy mode but doesn't go down well with lots of white space.  I don't think I really like one layer cards, probably because it takes me back to my first stamped cards about 20 years ago, things have certainly moved on since then and there are some stunning examples on Less is More. Now as the sun is actually shining here this afternoon I though I would take a photo instead of scanning, however the result wasn't very good, the colours looked orange so I was back to my scanner again and got a much truer colour. A big thank you to everyone who commented on my card last week, I do appreciate each and everyone. Referring to critisism, I am quite happy to receive constructive
critisism if its kindly meant !I,m just going to add this to Onestopcraftcraft challenge which asks for clean and simple

Techniques ????

Its been "One of those days" everything I've done has gone wrong. I thought I would have a nice afternoon trying out  a technique from the Hero Blog "layered stamped backgrounds", I have done quite a lot of layered stamping but this technique gives a lovely watercoloured effect (when it works !)  Everything went well until I got to stamping the flowers on top of all the layers and they just wouldn't play properly, I finally realised it was because the stamp I was using was not "solid" enough, I couldn't find a suitable flower stamp so went off at a tangent not wanting to waste what I had already done , I would probably have been better just binning it and starting again but I got out some silkie paints and tried using them with a flower stencil,they are there if you look closely, then I again tried to stamp some flowers using purple chalk ink but they still didn't really show up so in the end I just stamped a big flower and stencilled that with the silkies, my "ribbon" is seam binding coloured with alcohol inks,came out much darker than I really wanted but by now I was losing the will to live! anyhow I'm putting in the Just For Fun ????? challenge so here goes.

Not over the hill !

Well I've been feeling well and truly over the hill for the last 24 hours struggling with the computer ! Don't have anyone with any computer knowledge to help me out either.  Made this card for a birthday next week.The old crock car is a stamp from Butterfly Kisses which belongs to a friend, coloured with watercolour paints, ,lots of cogs and gears and plenty of distressing too. Just realised this card will fit in with Lets Ink It Up challenge which is embossing. The car is embossed and two of the background cards are dry embossed too, the cogs are embossed with ultra thick ep too.

Discover2

A card for a family member next week, this beautiful stamp from Crafty Individuals doesn't need much but a little bit of water colour on the background and sails, the background piece is nautical stamps from another of their sets stamped on a piece of card coloured with distress inks , kraft card base is also stamped with some of the same images with versamark ink and just a bit of string tied round it.

Owl choir

Well I finally found an answer to the problem on the google help forum, I wish blogger would tell people when they alter things !  Anyhow here is one of the cards I have been trying to post, I have to say that I got the idea for this card from a card on a stamping up blog and now I can't find the blog again. The one on there was done with stamps and mine is done with a stampin up punch that my sister sent me for Christmas,think its out here in April. The musical birthday stamp is from Butterfly Kisses.

Discovery

Well I did have some cards to post on here tonight but for some reason I can't upload them, anyone else having blogger problems tonight ?

Wild flowers

A card for Less Is More which this week asks for Pastel colours, I'm not a pastel fan but thats what challenges are all about doing something outside your comfort zone .I had been playing about with the Hero Wildflower garden stamp earlier in the week so decided to have another play with it. Its stamped with Versamark and coloured with Pearl Ex powders. It was a dreadful card to scan . I will have to start and use my camera but as I almost always craft and post late at night its hard to get a decent photo without a flash and if I use the flash it seems to spoil the colours and also I get a lot of shadows.

Shall We Dance ?

Since I've had the song "Shall we dance" trolling around in my head all evening,  thats the title of my card. I couldn't think of a song title with Tango in it except for "Never do a Tango with an Eskimo" which is a  very old song and didn't seem very appropriate either! this is quite a difficult stamp to use as parts of the image are just not there like the back of the guy's leg, I did try stamping it on distress coloured paper but that didn't look right either, havn't done this collagy type of card for a while and  enjoyed  making it. Although its a bit late in the week I'm putting it on Try It Out Tuesday challenge which is "inspired by a song" The challenge is sponsored by One Stop Card Craft

Ancestors

Don't know where this week has gone, I just don't seem to have got around to doing anything, just managed to make this atc last night for Theme Thursday's Men or boys theme and it will also fit in with 3 Muses ancestors theme. When I saw the ancestor theme my first thought was to get out the old family photos but if I do that I just spend hours going through them and don't get down to doing anything!  This atc is just made with Stamp Attack stamps and distress inks background. I have spent most of today trying to clear out the conservatory, it is too cold in there in winter and I'm afraid it just turns into a dumping ground , cleaned all the windows and managed to find homes for most of the clutter, hopefully we will be using it again soon.
ps: after looking at all the fab entries on The Three Muses I wish I had got the family photos out !