And there goes another month!!!

Hi everyone,

Well, somehow another month has slipped by without any posts from me.  Gosh where is this year going to?  How can it be almost May already?  I have been doing quite a bit of crafting (for me) especially considering I've been away from the craftroom a fair bit this month starting with a lovely two days in London with three wonderful friends and visiting the craft show at Alexandra Palace where lots of lovely new goodies were purchased to fill some of the space I'd made during my craftroom clearout, lol!  I've also been able to spend some precious time with our Son and Daughter's families.....the grandchildren are growing up far too fast for my liking.

Anyway, back to crafting.  I can't share the cards I've made because the birthdays are next week so hopefully that will be two cards to share soon but I also made a couple of tags.  They are totally different from each other but both started out with backgrounds from the old pile of stuff I made years ago.

Here's the first one.

 This tag started out with just two shades of Glimmer Mists to which I added the wildflower stamping using stamps from Chocolate Baroque.  I die cut the leafy spray from co-ordinating cardstock and stamped it with script before adding it to the tag.

The border along the bottom was a piece left from a long ago project which I painted and then added the Chit Chat sticker words to.

And here's the second tag in a totally different style.

Another ancient background which I think was PaperArtsy Fresco Finish paint mopped up from my craftmat was the base for this tag and the stylised flowers from Tracy Scott for PaperArtsy (one of my purchases from Ally Pally) were stamped onto other background pieces.

Originally, the background was quite a bit brighter but when I placed the flowers on it they got a little lost so I muted the background a bit with a watery wash of Fresco Finish Snowflake.  I stamped onto  old bookpage and a mix of old backgrounds which I think were done one with Moonglow Inks, another with Brusho powders and a final one which I think was another Moonglow test piece and I added some watered down Viva Precious Metal paint to co-ordinate it a bit more.  I painted in some areas with the Precious Metal Coral and the blue was from an really old set of ink nolonger available.  I did my usual cutting and layering to build up the flowers and then attached them to the tag.  I finished it off with Chit Chat sticker words again.

I am getting an awful lot of satisfaction using up the old backgrounds I found and figuring out what I can do to them to make them co-ordinate.  I was particularly pleased with the second one because it's quite funky compared to my usual style and I really enjoyed using Tracy's stamps.  I'm hoping to treat myself to at least one more set when I get to visit the PaperArtsy stand again at the StampMagic show at Doncaster Dome in June.

Righty Ho!  That's it for today but hopefully I'll be back next week with the two cards once they have been opened by the recipients.

Thanks for dropping by and have a wonderful long Bank Holiday weekend everyone here in the UK.  Lets hope it gets a tad warmer than it's been here today.  

Hugs

Lesley  Xx

First Birthday Card for this year.

Happy Monday All,

I hope this Monday is a good one for you.  It's rather cold here but nothing for us to complain about in this part of the Midlands.

Last week saw the birthday of Lin, one my lovely bunch of Twitter friends and it just happened to be the first birthday I had on my calendar for this year (I now have another that comes before it ready for next year ;D).  For the card I made her I used stamps from my Chocolate Baroque collection.

The main image is from Punky Romance and the butterfly/moth and the gears in the background on the base card are from Steampunk Butterfly.  The 'BE HAPPY' is from the Words of Wisdom A6 plate.  

The butterfly/moth (?) is stamped in Archival ink, coloured with Distress Ink, cut out and then embossed with clear EP before attaching by gluing just the body. The panel down the left side of the card is acetate coloured with alcohol inks and run through a cogs & gears embossing folder.  

The centre panel was stamped onto separate card (including the sentiment) with black Archival ink, coloured with Distress Ink then torn down either side before lightly inking with the same DI and attaching to the base card.

The large flower on the main image stamp does have a clock in the centre but I embellished it with a cute little clock charm to give a little more dimension.  I got the charm from a lovely bead shop in Harrogate where my Daughter lives, simply called BEAD ...... need another visit I think, lol!

That's it for today but I have another Birthday Girl in my diary for later in the week so hopefully if the postal service plays nicely again I will be able to blog her card by the weekend.  Until then .............

Hugs

Lesley  Xx

Back to my first love ................ Inks and rubber/polymer!

Goodmorning lovely visitors,

Sorry for this bit of English weather obsession but it looks like we have a day of very English rain here, soft, gentle and very persistent, lol!  I hope it's sunny wherever you may be.

For once I made time last week to make some cards for a couple of lovely friends I've made on Twitter.  I was surprised at how out of practice I am and yet I love making cards, especially when I start with blank pieces of card and just use inks and stamps i.e. no designer papers, etc.

The first one was a birthday card for lovely Helen.  As any visitor to my post HERE will have seen I received some fabulous Kaisercraft goodies to play with for this month's Snazzy's DT projects (do take a look at what my teamies have been up to). As well as the gorgeous Basecoat Collection papers there were also some really lovely stamps but fate intervened and I didn't get chance to show them off properly especially my favourite Texture Windsor so making Helen's card was the perfect excuse to get them out for a play.

 

I stamped the middle butterfly from the main image onto card a second time, cut it out, coloured it with Versacolour ink, shaped it and applied a light glaze over the top before attaching just the body to the main image.

For the background layer I repeat stamped the Texture Laugh stamp using Versamark ink and embossed with WOW brilliant white EP before blending three shades of Versacolour ink over the top and buffing with a soft cloth to bring back the whiteness of the EP.

The quote is from the Tim Holtz Urban Chic stamp set and is a longtime favourite of mine.  The flowers were made with a set of punches that have been long neglected in a cupboard (no name on them) and a Crealies die for the leaves.  I am so glad Helen had a birthday this week to give me chance to kill two birds with one stone ....... mainly to send her my love and good wishes and secondly to showcase these lovely stamps.  There are many more in the Kaisercraft collection that I really 'need' over on the Snazzy's website.

My second card was a 'friendly hello' to Jacqui included with something I needed to post to her.  Apologies in advance for the iffy photos as I took them in a rush because I didn't want to miss the post.

This time I went quite simple and started by streaking a Distress Inkpad across part of my base cards (not done half as well as the brilliant Paula has done it in the past), stamped a flower image from Chocolate Baroque's Punky Flowers set using black Archival Ink.  I painted the image with various Distress Inks and added a teensy touch of sparkle with a Sakura jellyroll pen.  The sentiment is from a Hero Arts clear stamp set called Live Life which again, I've had for ages but never used :-(.  I wish I'd used my favourite Versafine black ink as I think I might have got a denser black on the solid part of the image but I still like the stamp so will try again sometime, lol!

I really enjoyed getting back to card making with these and must try harder to do more, after all it is what got me into this crafting lark in the first place, lol!

Till next time..............

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

Whoohoo!!!! I have something to blog and it fits a challenge!

Hello lovely visitors,

Well, are you all ready for Christmas?  Actually, never mind ready, have you made all your cards?  You have!  Er........ well, you're 100% better than me because I've only made TWO and confess I've had to resort to (whisper) buying mine this year.  I'm not going to beat myself up about it though because I really have had a lot on my plate this year and if it wasn't my time flying out the window it was my mojo, lol!  Never mind, it'll soon be a brand new year and I am determined to believe 2013 will be better, as far as crafting is concerned anyway.

However,  today I have got a make to show you.  It was my lovely buddy (and wonderful crafter), Judith's birthday at the end of last week and I struggled all week to make her a card and I'm sorry to say, I had to send her an apologetic message saying it was going to be late.  Late!  It nearly didn't get made at all but I was determined so I stuck at it until I got something I was relatively happy with and Judith finally got her card yesterday. 

 Unfortunately, I really struggled to capture the true colours of this card on my photos.  On here it looks a tad too blue and as I used Tumbled Glass and Broken China Distress Inks, you'll know it should look more turquoise(y).

I started out with a 21cm square card base and stamped an Artemio wildflower image at random with Versamark ink, heat embossed with clear embossing powder and then blended the two Distress Inks mentioned together with Vintage Photo.  When I had the effect I wanted I covered the card with paper kitchen towel and ironed over the top to remove the embossing.

I then took a large tag, spritzed it with water and then put some Tumbled Glass and Picket Fence Distress Stain on my craft mat, spritzed that with water and swiped my tag through it.  I repeated this several times, drying with my heat gun between each layer and finally flicking some water from my fingers and blotting it off to create the bleached effect here and there.  I then stamped images from PaperArtsy and Indigoblu using Distress Inks and Coffee Archival, spritzed with Gold Glimmer Mist and then edged with Vintage Photo DI.  I used a mask at the top of the tag and applied Golden Texture Paste coloured with a little Broken China DI through the mask.  I left it to cure overnight and then touched it with Viva Inca Gold to highlight the texture.

(this photo shows the nearest to true colours)

I stamped the lovely Stampendous bird image onto ivory card and added the word Dream which is a Chocolate Baroque stamp.  I coloured with DIs and added a little Derwent Coloursoft pencil before cutting out with a Nestie label and lightly blended DI's around the edge before removing the die.  I took some Prima flowers and touched them lightly with DI's and spritzed with Gold GM's.  I also die cut the leafy sprays with a Marianne die from some fibrous handmade paper.   I arranged all the elements onto the card before adhering them.  Oooh, nearly forgot the cute little wooden bird.  He came from The Stamp Connection and I tapped him with the Versamark inkpad before sprinkling him with Judi-Kins Rustique Bent Nail embossing powder (from my lovely candy win the other week).

I'm so glad I persevered because in the end I was quite pleased with this card and Judith said she liked it too.  Not only that, I realised that it fits with Hels Sheridan's Sunday Stampers Challenge 234 this week where the theme is tags!  I hardly ever enter challenges because I forget to look if my project fits any themes, lol, so I'm really pleased that finally I have an entry for Hels' Challenge which I've wanted to join in with for an absolute age.

Well I hope you're all set for a good weekend.  I'm finally putting our tree up tomorrow, something else that is a week late being done, ;D.  Stay warm and cosy everyone.  I'm dreading the temperatures we are supposed to have in store for us next week, Brrrr!  Till next time ..............

Hugs

Lesley  Xx