Something a Little Bit Cute

Although I have quite a few 'cute' stamps from Whiff of Joy, Magnolia and Sugar Nellie plus a few others, I don't use them very often so I decided it was about time I got them out. These are a couple of 'semi-cute' cards I've made this week while I've been nursing my injured knee and foot.

I've used the same Sitting Gorguss Girl for both cards. I stamped a coloured them and then cut them out before sticking them to the edge of the aperture. The stamping inside the arched aperture on this one is done with a set of Tapestry stamps. Something else I've had for ages and hardly used and yet there are so many things you can do with them! I've used Distress Inks to colour the Gorguss Girl and also to stamp the background. The sentiment is from a Whiff of Joy set. The little flowers are all made using various punches and scraps of paper from my bit box and a little blob of Stickles in the centres. I got the little heart button from a market stall in Nottingham on a day there with my friend Jo a couple of weeks ago.


I got the inspiration for these cards from a card designed by Judith, one of my crafting friends from our joint blog, Craft Stamping Quartet. She makes some beautiful things so please pop over to her blog and have a look.


For this second card, I blended Distress Inks behind the aperture and then used stamps from the Elusive Images Eastern Grasses plate to stamp the background. I think the sentiment was from an Elusive Images plate too. I coloured the Gorguss Girl with pencil crayons (just a cheap set because I still haven't got my good ones back from my lovely son!!!!) and Sansodor.


Again the flowers and leaf sprays were punched from scraps, layered and a little blob of glitter glue added to the centres.


Both of the Gorguss Girls were stamped on the same card but it wasn't until I used the pencils and Sansodor that I realised there was a slight linen effect to the card. I quite like it for her dress.

I really enjoyed the change making these cards. Hope you like them and thanks for visiting.

Hugs
Lesley Xx

What a Surprise and Honour (plus a little edited addition)

I had a lovely surprise yesterday and was extremely honoured to be given a blog award by a lovely young person called Rachel. I was quite surprised at how much this meant to me because I am fast approaching 'old' age and Rachel is 14 years old. It just goes to show that craft/art/creativity bridges the generations and I'm so glad.



I only found Rachel's blog recently after clicking a link on another blog and immediately joined her followers, she is just sooooo talented and has a very mature attitude. Her blog is wonderful and her creations are just stunning. She has even done a tutorial on making the most beautiful flowers which I'm itching to try. My crafting buddy Jo told me she has made one following the instructions and it worked out perfectly. Please give her blog a visit, you definitely won't be disappointed!

Now down to the business side of things. I have to list my 10 most favourite things so here goes:-

• Being a Mum
• Being a Mamma
• Good Friends
• Crafting
• Craft Shopping
• Blogging
• My four pawed Friend
• Dark Chocolate
• My New Craftroom
• Spring and Autumn Sunshine

As usual, I am now supposed to pick some lovely people to pass this award on to but choosing a few from my lovely blogging buddies would just be impossible. I find this craft blogging community so inspiring and supportive and every single person who takes the time to visit is very much appreciated. You all add so much pleasure to my day so this award is for all of you with my love.

Just a little add-on. If you have time, please pop over to my shared blog Craft Stamping Quartet, as today is my turn to post my creation for our first month's project. Here's a little sneak peek at one of the pieces on my project.


Hope you like it!



Hugs
Lesley Xx

PS I drafted this post first thing this morning ready to post this evening, but in the meantime, I took Snoopy out for a walk at lunchtime and ................................ slipped on the slush, ice and sludge and ended up hobbling back with a twisted knee but even worse a quite badly swollen and painful foot. I'm keeping my fingers crossed it's only a bad sprain but I have a feeling a visit to A&E might be on the cards tonight when Hubby gets home so I'm publishing the post a bit earlier than I intended.

More of the BLOOMING WHITE STUFF

Happy Sunday morning everyone. Couldn't resist a few photos of what we woke up to this morning!

When I went to bed about 1.45 am we had an extremely heavy frost but when I got up 6 hours later this was the scene from our bedroom window.


and from the kitchen door


My poor little car which I lazilly parked on the front last night


At 9.15 this was Hubby coming back from fetching his newspapers with our little Snoopy. Snoopy loves the snow and he's skitting about in front of John's feet waiting for the snow to be kicked in the air for him to jump and catch. He tired himself out and is now curled up on his cushion fast asleep, Lol!


John made it home just in time because 15 minutes later we had this


Thank goodness, it has now stopped and appears to be thawing. Like most people I've had enough of it's prettiness for this year but I've just been watching pictures of the awful floods in Madeira so I've made a decision to look at with a child's eyes and get out there and help John clear the drive!

I hope you're all keeping warm and dry today.

Hugs
Lesley Xx

Mother's Day Card (I think)

Hi everyone,

How quickly it's come round to another weekend. This week has flown for me because my daughter Jenna and her daughter, our beautiful Isabella came to stay for a few days. We also had our lovely Alexa pop in to play with her cousin. As there is only 3 months age difference it's lovely to see them together but typically they both want to play with the same toy and they both want 'Mamma cuggles' at the same time, Lol! By the time Jenna and Izzy went home Wednesday evening I was pretty tired but it is far too quiet around here now. It's either all or nothing, Ha! Ha!


Anyway, this is a card I made before our visitors came and I think it will be for my Mum for Mother's Day unless I come up with something I like better.

It's an A4 card base and I've used my Heidi Swapp Mega Circle Masks and Butterfly masks and then blended Distress Inks in Peeled Paint, Tattered Rose (a little editing here because it was Worn Lipstick, Lol) and (I think) Antique Linen. Before I removed the circle mask I stamped a leafy branch by Impression Obsession and using Peeled Paint DI.


After removing the circle mask I repositioned the butterfly one and blended more ink down into the right bottom corner and then stamped and embossed a couple of butterflies from Elusive Images Butterfly Daisy Collage Themeplate, coloured them with DIs, cut them out and attached them to the card leaving the wings free. I used a layered silk Prima flower and some punched fern fronds for the top left corner and decided to add a bit of Stickles to it and to the tips of the butterflies wings.

Finally I blended some of the DIs onto a piece of card, stamped the Irish blessing (another EI stamp) and cut it out using one of my Nestie labels sets together with a co-ordinating matt.


The only items not bought from Graphicus are the card and the Impression Obsession stamp which I've had for ages and can't remember where I got it from. BTW have you checked out Graphicus' bright shiny new website which is only a week old?

I'm meeting my friend, Jo in Nottingham tomorrow for a bit of retail therapy (the crafty type, of course) and lunch. I hope the sun shines for us like it has here today and I hope it shines on all you lovely visitors too. Whatever the weather though, have a really good weekend.

Hugs
Lesley Xx

Yay, No Butterflies!

Welcome to the weekend everyone!


I thought it was about time I posted something that didn't have butterflies on, lol, (although there will probably be more in a day or two) so these two cards a recent ones made for men. They are both made in more or less the same way, except for the first one I stamped the main image once on card and once onto masking paper, cut the mask out and covered the card image before creating the background.


On the second card I stamped the main image onto Stampbord on which I had first blended inks.


I decided to give the second card to my brother for his birthday at the beginning of February. It's nice making cards for Steve because he is a talented watercolour artist and always appreciates the effort and thought I put into a card for him.



Thanks for stopping by.

Ingredients :

• All stamps except for the galleon - Elusive Images Edwardian Gentleman and Artylicious Designer Paper available from Graphicus
• Galleon - Aspects of Design Nautical Themeplate available from The Stampman.
  

Ta rah tah tah!!!

Finally, after a week of sorting stash my craft room is ready for me to create in. Just one small detail missing now - I still need a chair! Mind you, I tend to do a lot of crafting standing up anyway so it won't hold me up completely but I am searching for just the right 'sit upon' to park my 'sit upon'. Now I've got everything else sorted out I shall concentrate on getting a chair sorted out.

So, are you ready to be bored?!? Here goes with the piccies.

Here's the start of the units for the long wall being built.


and here they are in position


And this is that area finished with all my stuff in place.



The metal wall decoration was something I picked up from TK Maxx clearance section a couple of weeks ago and I thought it would be nice to hang pieces of artwork on. I shall rotate them fairly regularly though because they will fade pretty quickly in the sunny days otherwise and the works of art on there are quite precious to me. There are some ATCs from from various people, several of them from members of the Graphicus Guild and a few by yours truly. The blue piece using the Elusive Images Edwardian Gentleman plate is my own but I messed up the card (can't remember how) so cut the front off 'cos I liked it. There are no less than 5 wonderful works of art by an extremely talented lady, Paula Whittaker. She was having a clear out and was going to 'dispose' of these if no one wanted them. Guess who really wanted to give them a good home - ME! They are gorgeous and if you haven't visited Paula's new blog please follow the link because her work is stunning. There is also a beautiful card and an ATC with a pair of lovely earings attached from another lovely talented lady called Lynne and her blog is also well worth a visit too. Lynne was offering the earings on her blog a couple of weeks ago and I was really lucky to be drawn by the random number generator thingy and received them yesterday. I'm hoping to meet her and her friend Sally (another blogging talent) at Easter. And last but definitely not least, there is a gorgeous tag from Michelle, another wonderful blogger not to be missed. I won the tag by getting the nearest answer to a question Michelle posed. I think that's a first for me - winning a question answering competition, Lol!

These are some more pictures of my inspiration wall.


I love my candle holder thingy. I suppose it's really made to go on the floor but I haven't anywhere to put it where my little granddaughters can't knock it over and maybe get hurt and I love it too much to hide it away so I think it looks quite good up there on the worktop.




This is my main work area, a lovely big island that just about fills the middle of the conservatory. It has cupboards on 3 sides and you can just about see the kneehole on the fourth side. You might be able to see several boxes and little sets of drawers in the photos and most of them I got from TKMaxx clearance section and they are all waiting to be given a makeover - hopefully this will be sometime soon as I really want to have a play at altering them.


Finally, I just thought I'd show you a couple of close ups of some of my treasures. This is the card and earings I received from Lynn yesterday. Aren't they lovely?



and this is the tag I won from Michelle. Another beauty!


I hope I didn't bore you all to tears and that you managed to stick with me to the end. I'm really pleased with my new space and it will be lovely not to have to do battle for the dining table. I just hope my mojo doesn't take a hike now, Lol! I'll hopefully be back with a couple of cards in a day or two.

Take care everyone.

Hugs
Lesley Xx

PS Don't forget to check out our Craft Stamping Quartet blog once in a while. We'll soon be starting to post the finished projects for this month.

My First Attempt with Copics and a card!

I know, I know, it's ANOTHER butterfly card but................. I LIKE THEM (butterflies that is)!



This one is using the Butterfly Daisy Collage stamp plate from Elusive Images again and the same two stamps as in my previous post. This time the butterfly is stamped twice onto vellum and clear embossed before being cut out and attached. I curved the wings, attached the bodies flat to the card but put blobs of silicone glue underneath the wings so that they kept their shape.


This is really a standard card inside a gatefold card. I wanted to use the beautiful designer paper without cutting any of it away so just stamped the lovely scroll corner over it. The designs in the paper pack Echos of Italy from Artylicious are really gorgeous and as you can see the colours of the two sheets I have used here match perfectly.



Finally I stamped the butterfly again on the inside of the card using two different colours of ink as I did on the vellum and then just added a touch of ink blended with Cut'n'Dry around it.

Finally, this is my first attempt at colouring with my Copics that I got from my Hubby for Christmas. I realise now that I used the wrong card. It was quite smooth and must have had some sort of coating which stopped the Copics from soaking in. As a result when I tried to create depth or shadows the second or third layers kept removing the previous layers of ink to some extent. Having said that I was quite chuffed with my first try. The gorgeous butterfly is from one of Elusive Images most recent plates - Patchwork Butterfly - and there are some fabulous images on there but this one is HUUUGGGEE and as it didn't turn out half bad it now resides on the wall inside my conservatory.



Speaking of my conservatory, last week I had a lovely young man working in there to create my dedicated CRAFT ROOM. Bless Richard, he patiently listened to what I wanted and adapted some Wicks kitchen units to make me a lovely space to call my own. I now have a range of lovely units and a long worktop together with an 'island' of units with a big square worktop. I'm in the process of sorting all my stash (and there's a lot as you may have seen a few posts ago) and putting everything away tidily before I allow myself to do any crafting in there, otherwise I know it won't get done. It will be so lovely not to be hanging about waiting for the dining table to be vacated or clearing away completely after every crafting session. I will, of course, be boring you all with some photos once I have my stuff put away, Lol!

I hope everyone has had a lovely weekend and more cheerful weather than us. It's been so damp and dark here nearly all week.

Hugs
Lesley Xx

Ingredients : EI Stamps, Echos of Italy DPs, Copics - all from Graphicus