A Personal Challenge for Me!

A very happy Friday to all you lovely people,

I hope the sun is shining as brightly for you as it is here.  It's absolutely perishing though with a thick white frost on everything and my little water feature in the garden is frozen solid.  I bet it ends up cracked when it thaws out.  Oh well, these things don't last for ever do they and I was amazed it survived last winter's hard weather.

Over on the Chocolate Baroque Guild Forum (link in my sidebar) a lovely lady called Margaret has organised an Alphabet Tag Swap for Guild members this year.  I've only entered a couple of one off swaps in the past and this one is going to be hard for me to keep up for a whole year.  Obviously it's not compulsory to do the tags every month but now I've started I really want a full alphabet so I'm going to do my best.  Today I'm going to share the first two tags I made.

Here is A for Asia

I used the Paisley Elephant set of Chocolate Baroque stamps to make this tag with a Distress Ink blended background using (I think) Dusty Concord, Rusty Hinge and Bundled Sage.  I can't remember what I stamped the background with because like a numpty I forgot to jot some notes down before I sent the tags off, Doh!!! but I think it was the Dusty Concord and Bundled Sage.  I stamped the lovely fan onto Shrink Plastic for an embellishment and the elephants were stamped with Flitterglu before applying Crafty Notions gilding flakes.  I have to say that Flitterglu does give you all the nice fine detail of the image but I need to get some of the proper cleaning stuff from IndigoBlu because it's a b.....r to get every last bit off the stamps and I'm a bit fussy about cleaning my stamps, lol!

My second tag is B for Bottle

My immediate thoughts for the letter B were either butterfly or bird as I have loads of Chocolate Baroque stamps to fit but I wanted to find something a little out of the norm for me and then remembered these little used bottle stamps.  For this tag I built up layers of Distress Inks on the background by pressing the inkpads on my craft mat and spritzing with water before wiping the tag through and after drying between layers I finally tapped the tag onto the ink globules to create little spots.  Again, I think the colours were Pumice Stone, Spun Sugar and Victorian Velvet.  I stamped the shelf and the table directly onto the tag using black Versafine and then the table again onto card, cut it out and applied it with 3D foam.  Some of the bottles were stamped directly onto the tag and coloured and some were stamped onto card, cut out and coloured before attaching with 3D foam.

All the images came from either The Dressing Room set or My Lady's Boudoir set of stamps from Chocolate Baroque, of course.

Once I got into them I really enjoyed doing these tags but I have a feeling a few letters of the alphabet are going to be a bit brain teasing to find a subject let alone one I have Chocolate Baroque stamps to fit (even though I have hundreds of CB stamps, lol).

REMINDER !!!

Before I finish today (to get on with some h.......k, lol) I just wanted to remind you that over on the Snazzy's DT Blog there is still a week or so left for joining in with our first ever challenge.  There's a lovely prize up for grabs and the theme is 'Love/Romance'.  If you're not into the slushy Valentines type of creation, there's always the love we have for our family and special friends or even beloved pets.  We'd love you to join in and add to the lovely gallery some of our visitors have already started.  Hope to see you there so I can visit you back!

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you again soon.  I'll show you the gorgeous tags I received yesterday when I've had time to take pics.  Thanks for popping by today and keeping me company.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

My Buddy's had another Celebration!

Hi Everyone,

After my friend Judith's Silver Wedding Anniversary a couple of weeks ago, she got to celebrate again last week because it was her birthday.  I would have shared the card I made for her before now but for the past 8 days we have had our Daughter Jenna and Granddaughter Isabella staying with us.  As quite a few of you will know Jenna is expecting our first Grandson who was due to be born yesterday but as we all know babies come in their own good time don't they and, inspite of a couple of false alarms this week, so far he's not deigned to join us.  However, as our Son-in-Law was away on a training course last week we thought it would be wise if Jenna and Izzy stayed here. 

Even though baby didn't arrive it turned out to be a wise decision because Jenna had a very scary episode on Wednesday with symptoms which appeared very like a stroke!!!  Our local hospital were excellent and after a chat to a midwife on the phone we were told to take her in for tests to make sure it was the migraine we suspected and not something sinister.  Luckily we were right and although Jenna felt very poorly for a couple of days I was able to look after Izzy and let her rest more than she would at home.  Her Hubby came back on Friday night and they were supposed to go home yesterday but Jenna ended up awake at 3 am convinced the birth was imminent ............................... wrong!!!!  The little monkey kept her awake all night only for everything to settle down again by lunchtime but they decided to delay going home for another day just in case.  As nothing else has happened and Jenna says she feels he's going to stay put for at least another week (hmmmm???) they went home after lunch today.  I now have to catch up on all my chores (nothing got done while they were here, lol) hopefully before I get a call to say baby is on his way for real.

Tonight though I am allowing myself a little playtime starting with showing you Judith's card.  I started with a white 21 cm square base card and adhered a slightly smaller square of purple pearlescent card.

Using a Heidi Swapp butterfly mask I blended Versamagic ink over a 19 cm square piece of white card moving the mask around at random.  I then stamped the beautiful Anemone corner from IndigoBlu in the bottom right and I used a lovely swirl from Chocolate Baroque (formerly Elusive Images) in the top left to create another corner image, using Archival ink.  Before adhering this square to the card base I stamped the quote using Versafine Onyx Black ink.  Using the Archival ink I stamped the Anemone Corner once more onto white card, coloured the anemones with Coloursoft pencils and then cut them out.  I shaped them a little before adhering them to the main image with Pinflair glue.  I  then put some Stickles onto my craft mat and used a damp brush to apply this to the anemones and highlights on the corner images.

Finally, I die cut and embossed two butterflies from old book pages using a Cuttlebug duo set, lightly inked the raised areas and then heat embossed with clear EP before adhering to the card leaving the wings free.

I really enjoyed making this card as, like Judith, I love anything with butterflies and anyway, it's always such a pleasure making something for a person who has become such a close and very dear friend as well as someone who you know will appreciate a handmade card.

Well that's my share for today and if I don't get to post anything or make any blog visits for a couple of weeks you'll know it's because my crafting activities have been severely curtailed by a little bundle of joy, lol!  I'm off to get my feet up for an hour (oooh, I have missed my l0 minute afternoon cat naps, he! he!) and then maybe I might get a Christmas card or two made ................. you've guessed it ........... I haven't made one yet.  I have a feeling most of my cards this year are going to be bought ones!

Take care all and I'll be back as soon as I can.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx