Its all about flowers

This month at Stamping Sensations the challenge is Anything With Flowers so lots of scope  to burst into bloom !  We are sponsored this month by Crafty Individuals who are offering a fantastic prize of £35 to spend in their shop

Although I have to admit I have a drawer full of CI Stamps I was surprised to find I had very few flower ones but for my top card I used one of my favourites, such a pretty stamp. I stamped in Versafine over a piece of Oxide ink paper left over from another card,used a bit of bleach to lift the colour from some of the flowers and added a bit of colour.  For my second card I got a bit carried away with the background,distress inks,stencilling,stamping etc.The two flower pieces were stamped and embossed in black  and coloured with markers.

Thanks for looking and I hope to see you joining in with our challenge this month.

Christmas Ornament

Time for a new challenge at Sparkles Christmas and Mary has asked to see an ornament  either on a project or an actual ornament.  The Design team have some very different ideas to inspire you.  A few (or maybe quite a lot!) of years ago medallion stamps were all the rage and I made loads of cards with them.  This was always my favourite one and I found the ready made medallion in a box along with a few others in different colours. They were quite time consuming to make, five layers on this one,apart from the gold layer they are all  painted with Pearl Ex.  The background is an embossing folder ,no name on it but think it is creative expressions then mounted on a piece of blue pearlised card.  Hope you will join us in our challenge this month and add another Christmas card to your stash (less than six month to go you know ! )

On The Beach

Well it's been far from beach weather here today, rained continually now for two days and tonight was really windy too, rain beating on the windows, had to put the central heating back on, not flaming June for sure.  I made my little tag for Tag Tuesdays challenge of Seaside.  Sloshed (technical term!) on some Paperartsy acrylic paints quite thickly, adding bits of white for the breakers,added some Taupe frantage for the shingle. Don't know why they give the frantage colour names as everyone I have used just comes out gold despite shaking it up.  I don't know the name of the stamp of the children as it belongs to a friend and I had stamped a few up ages ago,coloured them with watercolour pencils and stamped the Inkilicious birds in the sky.

Tag Tuesday  -    The Beach

Snowy cottage in the woods

Just been playing with a, new to me, stamp from Crafty Individuals. Tried stamping it in various colours,this one is versafine smokey gray, just a few little touches of colour and lots of glitter,piece of star embossed blue card and a surround of silver glitter card, if I make more of these would probably add a sentiment.

This one actually looks a lot better in real life, stamped with encore blue ink, embossing folder inked with the same colour.  I like the top one better but the actual image stamped in blue is lovely, just needs a less busy background I think.

I'd like to enter the first card into Mo's June Rudolph challenge

Dressmakers Corner

Seem to be stuck in the doldrums again recently and even though I have lots of new stash I  can't get motivated.  To give myself a kick up the  ********  I thought I would try and enter a few challenges and this is my card for Cardz4galz challenge which is Sew and Sew.  Oxide ink background ,stamps from Inkylicious and Indigo blu,free border stamp with Card Making magazine,tape measure and cotton card a magazine freebie. The dressmakers corner stamp is from a very old SeeDees stamp set.anyone remember them. I had forgotten I had any until I unearthed a box full of them in the back of the cupboard, never know what else is hiding in there ! I'd also like to enter

Eclecticellapu challenge - Touch of pink and/purple

and 

Fashionable Stamping - Make it feminine

Letters/numbers or both

Woops ! forgot to publish my post for Try It On Tuesday challenge starting today, think the heat has addled my brain.  The challenge this time is Letters/Numbers or both.  For my card I have used one of my old Stampers Anonymous stamps which has both letters and numbers on it. Stamped it onto an oxide ink background. The base layer is anothe inky piece, some numbers stamped down one side and layered with some tissue paper,another couple of pieces of inky card, plasterers mesh and a couple of die cuts. Thanks for visiting and hope to see you on our challenge

Under the sea

I haven't made a tag for ages so it made a change to have a play, It's quite a small tag (3"x 6" ) The tag was a dark brown so I started by painting it with gesso ,first mistake as then of course it resisted the oxide inks I wanted to use. eventually with a bit of perserverance I got a decent coverage,I had not planned what I was making but the colours looked like the sea to me.I stamped the large seaweed and shells stamp from Kaisercraft and white embossed it. Next mistake was to stamp and white emboss a sea horse which looked awful,decided to cover  it up with frantage marine embossing powder,heated it up and embedded a white die cut sea horse,die cut the anchor and shells and coloured them with aquamarine treasure gold,added a few sequins for bubbles and a scrap of meshy stuff to finish. I'm entering these challenges

Go Tag Thursday  - Anything goes

Moo-mania - Under water

Tag Tuesday - Texture

and 

Sparkles Monthly challenge - embossing ( heat or dry)

Fairy Edna

A couple more cards for the charity box, I'm not doing very well with it this year so I need to get on and make some more.  I bought this Stamping Bella Edna stamp at Port Sunlight and this is her first outing, although she comes with a Martini stamp I decided she was drinking wine as our ladies in the village get out the wine at the slightest opportunity !

Moving along with the times -  Embossing wet or dry
Watercooler challenges -           Feminine
  

Family Portrait

A just for fun card using Kevin's gang cats from Indigo Blu, I'm not sure what the background is as it's from "the stack" but I think its distress inks on glossy card, a couple of torn scraps across the bottom for the grass and the gang are coloured by dabbing with spiced marmalade and cracked Pistachio DI, made a mess of stamping the sentiment as I used versafine forgetting it doesn't dry on glossy card but it almost wiped off with a baby wipe and I re stamped with Memento.  I'd like to enter my card into

That's Crafty Challenges - Feline fine

and

Addicted To Stamps - Animals.

Happy Post

I'm delighted to be able to say that I have been invited to join the Design Team at Try It On Tuesday, well it took me all of 3 minutes to say yes !  I have followed this challenge ever since I began blogging so I was super excited to be asked.  The first challenge I was asked to join in with is right up my street , I love Steampunk but hadn't done any for ages so it was fun to dig out some old supplies and ideas.  My base card is a piece of Mirri card dabbed with alcohol inks and embossed with a cogs EF. The clock and the big cog die cuts are triple embossed with some very old metallic EP,some of the other cogs have gilding wax applied..The lady is a Hampton Art stamp and I glued watch parts to the cogs on her head.Big Sizzix butterfly and teeny tiny flowers and the word soar cut from a Adage tag.  Do pop over to the challenge site and see the fabulous examples by the design team

Favourite Stamp

This month at Stamping Sensations the challenge is to use your favourite stamp.

For my card I used quite muted colours for the background,oxide distress inks twisted citron and worn lipstick and a bit of text stamping. I love this poppy stamp from Carabelle Studio, whats not to love about a poppy stamp LOL. I had a bit of a problem painting the poppy head over the oxide inks,everything I used seemed to just disappear into the background, eventually used my very old charisma pencils.  Do hope you will join us in our challenge this month, we are a stamping challenge so your entry must have stamping as the focal point.

 

We are sponsored this month by Visible Image who are offering  a prize of £35  to  spend in their store

Pink Angel

This month at Sparkles Christmas , Helen has chosen the theme of Non Traditional colours. Struggled to think of what I could use for this as I must admit I'm very old fashioned regarding Christmas cards,however looking through my box of 12x12 Christmas papers I found several sheets of pink and green papers and remembered making cards years ago with them. A friend had borrowed my favourite angel stamp and brought it back last week so it was still on the table, found some pink Brilliance ink ( must say my Brilliance inks are very old but still stamp beautifully). I hope you will join us with this months challenge and add to your Christmas card stash.

Winter Wonderland

Time for a card for Mo's Rudolph challenge, always catches me by surprise as I can't believe it's already another month flown by.  This stamp is new to me, one of  several purchases from Crafty Individuals at Port Sunlight, haven't got round to using any of the others yet. The colours look a bit muted on here but are brighter in real life. Some papers from LOTV a couple of years ago , a die cut snowflake and some glamour dust glitter.I have several white pns and I could not get any of them to do white dots that showed up on the umbrella!

Magical Day

Well, tonight I should have been getting on with making a few cards to put in the box down at our local hairdressers who kindly sell my cards for me, all the money goes to a named charity ( this time its the Yorkshire Air Ambulance ) but couldn't really settle down to it, can't stop thinking of all those children and young people killed and injured in the Manchester terrorist atroctity.

Finally had a play with some free stamps from Creative Stamping Magazine, I do love unicorns and this one is a real beauty.  This card will probably go to one of the great grand daughters, a couple of birthdays coming up next month.  

There is still time to enter Stamping Sensations May challenge which is Butterflies,fairies and fantasy.

Favourite Stamp

My turn for mid month motivation at Stamping Sensations, we are asked to choose our favourite stamp, an impossible task for me as I love so many different ones but I do have a bit of an obsession with poppy stamps so I have used one on my favourite ones here. This one is Inkylicious Botantical Poppy which I have stamped onto an distress oxide background,added an embossed piece of oxide paper and a square of hessian, finished off with a hessian butterfly.