It's Christmas Time over at Snazzys!

Good Morning Everyone,

It's my turn to post over on the Snazzys DT Blog and this month we have some lovely Christmassy goodies to play with.  Although it takes me a little while to get into the swing of Christmas makes I do love them once I get going as I love almost everything about Christmas.  I could do without the heavy handed commercialism ........ and the cooking which I totally hate, lol ............ but cards, decorations and twinkly lights make me feel really cheerful and best of all most people do seem more inclined to be nice to one another so I'll put up with the not so nice bits ;D.

Anyway, here is a sneaky peek of my first project this week.  As always, I do hope you have time to pop over to the DT Blog for a nosy and hopefully to leave me a little comment.  Remember, by leaving an extra comment HERE you can be in with a chance of winning some of the lovely items the DT have been using this month in the Snazzys monthly draw.

(sorry it's a bit blurry but it didn't like being cropped.......... don't think I would either ;D)


I'll be back later in the week with another Christmas project using these lovely papers, stamps and embellies.  Till then have a lovely week everyone and don't let the earlier dark nights get you down ...... that's a bit of pep talk for myself 'cos I hate 'em, lol!

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

A rare occurance ...... playtime!

Hi lovely visitors,

I hope you've all had the lovely autumnal weather we've had here in the Midlands today.  The wind was a bit 'fresh' but lots of sunshine which  made the golden trees look gorgeous.  A week ago only a few of the trees around here were starting to turn and yet today there were loads as well as lots of leaves on the ground.  I wish I'd taken my camera out with me. 

My Hubby and I decided to try a new carvery restaurant (well new to us anyway, lol) and for anyone who lives nearby I would certainly recommend it.  The carvery was pretty good but the starters and desserts were to die for ;0)  For anyone who lives in North Notts this is the web link  www.blackburn-house.co.uk.  It's a converted 107 yr old pumping station and Grade II listed so has lots of history too.

I've actually had a brilliant weekend altogether because yesterday I went to the new Big Stamping and Scrapbooking Show at Kettering Conference Centre with two of my crafting buddies, Jo and Judith.  Our other partner in crime, Elaine couldn't be with us and we did miss her but it was still a great show.  As you would expect very like the Ally Pally show but obviously without the atmosphere of Alexandra Palace.  The Conference Centre was really nice though and very light and spacious with lots of room between stands nice reasonably priced food and a lovely area to eat it in or just to sit for a chat and a drink and best of all it was easily do-able there and back in one day.  Ally Pally is lovely but I always feel the distance warrants an overnight stay which makes it expensive.  There were a few of the usual exhibitors missing but there are so many shows on this month it's not surprising but I was a happy bunny because most of my favourites were there.  My lovely 'Bosses', ;D, Don and Val from Snazzys were there and also two of my Snazzy team mates, Gillian and Hels were both demoing on the Creative Expressions stand.  I also got to watch the fabulously talented Leandra (Mrs PaperArtsy) producing wonderful little pieces of art.  I could have stood there all day! Two other lovely and very talented ladies I got to watch and chat to were Sue Wilson (on the Rubbernecker stand) and Claire Charvil (on the Ali-Craft stand).  All in all a day in my crafting heaven!  Er, I didn't tell you I spent loads of dosh did I!  Good job it's only the second show I've been to this year, lol!  I do hope this show takes off as people get to know about it as there was such a good mix of exhibitors and it's nice to have a show of this calibre for us Midland Crafters.

Anyway, in my last post I showed you two background pieces of card I'd made playing with my new Metallic Distress Stains and I actually got a bit more playtime before going to the show and turned the tag background into this .........(this pic shows the truest colours)

Sorry the pics aren't too great but I took them in a hurry before taking the tag with me to give to Snazzys at the show.  The background was made by putting pools of two Distress Stain colours and the Gold Distress Stain onto my craftsheet and then spritzing with water before swiping my tag through the puddles.  I did this several times, drying with the heat gun between layers, until I was happy.  I also flicked some spots of water onto the surface and then dabbed off with paper towel.

I stamped various images with Distress Inks from different sets of Tim Holtz stamps most notably the skull from Halloween Blueprints and then shadow stamped this image with the Gold Metallic Distress Stain.  The last bit of stamping was the random flourish stamped in Black Archival Ink.

I die cut three of the Alterations/Sizzix tattered pine cones and made them into roses dabbing the edges with the gold Distress Stain and filling the centres with black Stickles.  I then cut several of the pine leaves on the same die and dabbed these with the gold also before arranging all these on the tag.  I changed the colour of a silver skull charm using peel off pens and added a touch of the gold Distress Stain and added this to the tag together with a little spider sticker from the Carta Bella All Hallow's Eve collection.  Everything I used to make this tag, except the pine cone die,  can be purchased from the lovely Snazzys shop.

Well, that's it from me today.  I hope you didn't mind my chat at the beginning of the post but for anyone living fairly close to me I thought the restaurant and the Kettering show might be of interest.  I hope to be back later this week if I get chance to play with some of my new goodies.  Till then have a lovely week everyone and take care.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

A Special Someone's Birthday Card

Last week saw the 32nd birthday of our lovely Daughter, Jenna.........my, how time flies!  This is one of those occasions when I wish I had scanned some of our old photos onto the computer but ....... they are still in boxes up in the loft and haven't seen the light of day for ages.  Hmmm, wonder if I can get OH interested in that task when he retires next year.  All efforts to get him interested in a hobby have failed miserably so far ;D.

Anyway, today I have the card I made for Jenna to share with you.

I started with my favourite 21 cm x 21 cm card base and blended a very light background of Pan Pastels  (from Snazzys).  I then used a lovely mask I bought at least a couple of years ago from Chocolate Baroque when it was still Graphicus (Elusive Images stamps) and blended Bundled Sage Distress Ink through the mask which I moved around at random till I had covered the background.

You can just see some of the masking here in the background.

I followed this with stamping the beautiful corner scroll from Indigo Blu using a Versamark inkpad and dabbed Pan Pastels over the stamped image before gently dusting away the excess from the surface.

I stamped the quote from a Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous set and then cut it out and layered it using Nestabilities before mounting onto my card with 3D foam pads. The leaves are die cut using the Alterations Tattered Florals Garland die and the spiral flower are handcut from co-ordinating scraps of papers from my rather large box of said scraps (I am soooooo baaaaaddd for not getting more of them used up).

Once I had spiralled the flowers I inked the edges with Distress Inks and then used a Zig broad nibbed two way glue pen to to add glue to the edges before dipping them into Glamour Dust fine glitter.  I arranged the flowers and leaves on my card before sticking them down and finally added a couple of little bird charms.

I didn't get to see Jenna until yesterday when OH and I went up to Harrogate to take her and her family out for a meal.  It was a little frantic as we have Izzy at 4.5 yrs and little Charlie at 10 months.  They were very good but Charlie is an early walker and having become totally confident on his feet 3 weeks ago does not like sitting down for  more than two minutes.  No wonder Jenna says she feels as though her bum never meets a chair, lol!  It's easy for me to laugh though.

I have one last photo for you today because on Saturday postie delivered my lovely Metallic Distress Stains from Snazzys and I managed a little play yesterday morning.  The sun was shining very brightly so  I took these to show the fabulous shine of the gold one.

The first one is on matte coated cardstock and the second one is on a Ranger manilla tag.  Now need to turn them into something, lol!

Have a good week friends.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

DT project #2 for Snazzys September products.

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick post (honestly) to let you know I managed to get a second project done for Snazzys this week.  It was looking a bit touch and go for the last few days.................. family stuff and all that!  Anyway, here's a sneak peek at what I made and you can see it in it's entirety here on the Snazzy DT blog.  Do hope you have time to pop across to see the whole thing.

That's it from me for now but just to say I hope everyone has a lovely weekend whatever you are doing.  I'm looking forward to a fairly quiet one as the last few weekends have been very busy with family stuff.  Lovely but a quiet one is nice once in a while, lol!  I hope the weather picks up a bit especially for any poor folks who are mopping up after floods.

Till next time,

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

Snazzys Spooky DT month!

Hello and welcome lovely visitors.  It's good of you to drop by and I do hope that wherever you are the weather is not treating you as badly as the forecasters have predicted.  As I am preparing this post late on Sunday evening it is lashing down with rain here in the Midlands and looks set to continue for the next 24 hours at least :(.  At least we don't have to worry about flooding as we are in an elevated position but I do feel so sorry for anyone who's going to have those concerns going to bed tonight.

Anyway, it's my turn to post on the Snazzy DT blog this week and my teamies and I have been sent some awesome goodies to play with (when are they not awesome, lol).  Val and Don (the Bosses) do stock the most brilliant products ever and more and more of them are being added to the Snazzy Online Shop each week.  However, if you don't see what you want online, they are only a quick phonecall away.

This month we had a set of the new Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous Halloween Blueprint stamps and also a set of the Carta Bella All Hallow's Eve papers and stickers to work with and here are a couple of sneak peeks of my first project.  I hope you have time to drop by the Snazzy DT blog to see the whole thing (and leave a little comment if you can  ;D).

Hopefully, I'll be back later this week with another Snazzy DT project for you, next time concentrating on the Carta Bella papers.  Until then I hope you all have a good week and don't get too waterlogged.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

PS  I DO NOT LIKE THIS NEW BLOGGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The scheduled bit didn't work for a start! 

YAY! It's not a DT piece or an Alphatag!

Hi Lovely Visitors,

Thank you for dropping by and I'm really pleased that for once I have something to show you other than a DT piece or an alphatag, lol!

This week has seen the birthday of one of my very special crafting friends.  Oooh, this crafting/blogging lark has such a lot to answer for and in my opinion, all of it good!  The friend I'm talking about is Elaine, one quarter of the Craft Stamping Quartet (our poor neglected little blog ;( ) and also one of my ex Chocolate Baroque DT buddies.  As lots of you will know, because we live such a distance apart we rarely manage a get together but it's all down to the wonderful technology most of us have that I feel she has been in my life a lot longer than she really has.  She's a very special lady so I was glad I managed to make time for her card.  A bought one just wouldn't have been good enough, lol!

I apologise for this first photo being at a slightly odd angle but it was the one which most closely showed the true background colour.  I started with a 21 cm square base card and then cut the same size square from a sheet of beautiful Mariposa paper (DCWV).  Cutting into papers from this gorgeous collection is soooooo difficult ;D!  I then blended Bundled Sage Distress Ink over an individual Heidi Swapp butterfly mask moving it around randomly and a Tim Holtz swirl mask and then inked all round the edges with the same Distress Ink.  I followed this with randomly stamping script over the page, again using Bundled Sage DI.  I then attached this to the front of the basecard.

I then created the arrangement of embellishments for the top right corner.  I used my new Spellbinders Venetian Motifs dies to cut the decorative circle and the flourishes from white card which I then coloured with Broken China DI and the fancy motif which I used as leaves which I coloured with Bundled Sage DI.  The sentiment stamped in the circle is from a Kaisercraft clear stamp set called appropriately 'Friendship Sentiments', lol!  The roses were left over from one of my Snazzy DT pieces using EDIT : Graphic 45 Olde  Curiosity Shoppe (sorry to earlier visitors this morning as I forgot to add this after I'd double checked ;D) papers, the blue butterflies were cut out from the left over piece of Mariposa paper and the metal butterfly was from a dismantled necklace.  I used my round nosed pliers to shape the metal butterfly.

Somehow I felt the card wasn't quite 'balanced' so I put the pretty and very delicate Memory Box die cut (
a gift from another dear CSQ buddy, Judith) on the top left corner to finish it off. 

I finished the card off with an all over misting of Dew Drop Glimmer Mist.  The inspiration for this card came from the work of the very talented Anna Dabrowska, aka Finnabair (check out her fab blog).  I can't wait to have another go at something similar but adding more random bits and bobs and more mica sprays as Anna does.  I daren't try it on Elaine's card as I didn't have time to do another one if it went wrong, lol!

I hope you enjoyed looking at something other than DT work or another alphatag and speaking of alphatags ......... I failed miserably for August :(.  This time it wasn't because I couldn't think of a subject/theme for the letters Q and R but purely that I ran out of time.  I did get Q finished so I am going to do R as well and keep them for myself so that I will still have the full alphabet and I'll show them as soon as I can.

Thank you for dropping by and I hope you're having some of the glorious Autumn weather we've been having this week.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

Steampunk Style the Snazzys DT way!

Hello Everyone,

I hope by the time you read this scheduled post the sun is shining as brightly as it is at this moment!  Yesterday the forecast said it was going to rain most of  today here but I woke up to lovely sunshine and the forecast now says it should stay dry until this evening ........ lovely stuff ........ as long as it doesn't get too hot.  I'm never happy with the weather am I, lol!

Anyway,  it's time to reveal my project for Snazzys this month using the quirky Steampunkery stamp set from Chocolate Baroque and thereby also reveal the winner of my little prize of metal stuff.

So Paula was spot on with her guess of an altered book.  I might have known you would recognise a book in whatever form Paula, lol!  Well done my friend!  Please email  your address to me at lesleye38@hotmail.co.uk  and I will get your goodies posted out to you later in the week.

Don't forget to pop over to the Snazzys DT Blog to see the rest of my altered book and all the details and let me know what you think.  It was certainly a fun project to do.

I have another busy couple of weeks coming up with my lovely family before school starts back.  I bet there are a few more of you doing the same thing?  Have fun and I'll be back as soon as I can!

Big Hugs
Lesley  Xx