The Best of Friends.

Morning All!

It's another glorious day here and I am so grateful for the very strong breeze keeping the temperature manageable.......for now!  My craftroom is out of bounds though because we have a chappie demolishing our pergola (the wood has rotted) right outside so I can't open the doors and it's unbearably hot in there.  So, I thought I'd catch up with recording a recent make on here which I shared on social media a couple of weeks ago.

I created a card using two more of Darcy's new fun characters for PaperArtsy.  This time Cedric and Lola are two BFFs going for a walk amongst the flowers.

Once again I have been good and used up a previously made Distress Oxide background.  I stamped Cedric and Lola first using black Archival then stamped the other images around them using Distress Oxides.  I just love that I can get a beautifully stamped image with the oxides.

I used Polychromos pencils to colour Cedric and Lola and the flower centres and was delighted when I realised lots of the words from Darcy's two new sets fit perfectly into the centres.  I added a bit of white doodling and two more words from the new sets before edging the card with more Oxide ink and matting it onto the card base.

It was lots of fun to create this and I do love to be able to use my pencils on these quirky images.

Thanks for dropping by.

Hugs

Lesley  Xx

Practice makes perfect!

Hi Everyone!

One of the gorgeous AALL & Create stamps I purchased recently was this beautiful butterfly collage image by Olga Heldwein.  I've only used it once before and not as a complete image but just to cut out a couple of the butterflies to add as embellishments.   I had the stamp out on my desk last week and wanted to try stamping the whole image.  I tried a couple of times with a block with poor results so decided to use my Be Creative stamp press so that I could reapply ink and restamp several times if necessary.  I found it best to prime the stamp, first with Versamark then clean with a wet wipe followed by Archival which I let sit for a while.  I think I wiped mine off with a rag but you can just leave it to dry.  I finally used Versafine to actually stamp the image and I only had to repeat stamp once to get a pretty good image.  What I didn't realise at the time was that the card I had picked up has a slightly shimmery, pearlescent surface so I think had it been proper stamping card it might have stamped well the first inking, lol.  Never mind, all's well that ends well!

The stamped image sat on my desk for a few days until I caught sight of Jenny Marples' beautiful DT card using the same stamp on the AALL & Create FB group which lit the inspiration fuse and today's card is the result.

After stamping the main image I stamped and cut out a mask for the large butterfly then I put some Amsterdam Acrylic Inks onto my craftmat and spritzed with water to thin them a little before picking the colour up on a brayer and very randomly brayering over the whole surface.  I deliberately missed areas here and there.  I blended a little black Archival around the edges

I stamped the big butterfly again onto a piece of card and fussy cut it then adhered it to the main piece just by the body leaving the wings free for dimension.  I trapped some thread beneath the butterfly at the same time.  The finishing touches were some beads of Ranger black enamel accents and the little quote from one of Tracy Evans sets for AALL&C

Once I sussed out the stamping of the main image this was quite a simple card to create and yet I think it's very effective.  

Have a lovely sunny day everyone and see you soon.

Hugs

Lesley  Xx

I'm a little bit dotty about Poppie!

Hi everyone,

Last Sunday saw me at Doncaster Dome for the Stampmagic Craft Show, my favourite not least because it's just up the road, lol.  A few nice goodies might have found their way home with me 😉 and hopefully you will gradually see more of them over the coming weeks but tonight I have a cute little tag to share using a fun character designed by the lovely Darcy for PaperArtsy.

Darcy was demoing for Stampers Grove and  they had special permission to sell Darcy's new stamps a week before their official release but we were sworn to secrecy, lol.  Well, tonight the stamps were released over on the PaperArtsy blog so I'm free to share this little creation.  I bought Darcy's two new sets EDY22 and EDY23.  Poppie is on EDY23 together with the heart circles.  The arrow and words come from EDY 22.  Both these sets have loads of individual words from which it is easy to create your own phrases.....soooo useful and I love that simple, easy to read font to.

The tag was already lying around on my desk from a previous play session and if I remember rightly I used Distress Oxides picked up from my craft mat and through a stencil.  I stamped Poppie using a nifty little trick Lauren apparently demoed at Ally Pally in April (unfortunately I didn't get to see it irl).  I used my stamping platform to stamp the original image, made sure I kept the stamp and the tag in place while I painted the image with Fresco Finish Acrylics and when it was dry I restamped.  Brilliant!  Absolutely no problem now painting images with acrylics, especially the opaque ones.  All the lovely details are back nice and sharp!

I stamped the rest of the images and painted them.  I didn't bother with the stamping platform again as I was using transluscents this time.  I stamped the words I wanted onto separate card cut them out and positioned them on the tag then backed it with co-ordinating card.  Finally I used Glossy Accents on her bow and heart and added some fibre.

There are several more fun characters on the new sets as well as other fun and useful imagery.  There's a fab cat with attitude on EDY22 so do pop over to the PaperArtsy Blog and see the rest of Darcy's stamp sets which are now available at all PaperArtsy stockists.   

Hugs

Lesley  Xx

New Stamps in my stash from Lynne Moncrieff.

Morning All,

It's a bit grey here today and cool but it's dry and breezy so I think it will dry my washing and I do like the cool 😄, it makes my craftroom more accessible for a start, lol!  Anyway, after watching a That's Crafty show on a craft TV channel (I record so I can fast forward through all the spiel, lol, and then order from source where ever possible) I couldn't wait to order some gorgeous stamp sets by the very talented Lynne Moncrieff (her blog is simply beautiful).  I got 3 of her Affirmations sets and this card was my first make using Set 9.

I already had the background piece lying on my desk as I had attempted to create a piece for the PaperArtsy Challenge of neutrals but I didn't get it done in time.  It's a piece of acrylic paper on which I blended Fresco Finish paints in Nougat, Vintage Lace (discontinued Boo! Hoo!) and Blush, and on top I did some random stamping in a mix of Mushroom and London Night FF, using a fab script stamp from a Scrapcosy set for PaperArtsy.  There's also a bit of a take on a Seth Apter technique of painting a piece of card (in this case a piece of the slightly textured acrylic paper) and pressing it to my main piece using the Mushroom.  It creates a lovely bit of texture.

 

 Next I stencilled some leaves using Sage FF then bumped the stencil slightly and went over with Nougat.  The final part of my background was to stencil some Prima (Finnabair) clear texture paste and when this was dry I touched it with a watery mix of Mushroom and London Night FF.  I really liked the way the texture paste grabbed it and it soaked into the tiny cracks but didn't spread beyond the stencilling. .....very happy accident, lol!

I stamped the lovely sunflower onto separate card, coloured it with Polychromos pencils and then fussy cut it.  I even got my craft knife out and cut the teeny bits out.... something I usually avoid!  I tinted a piece of binding and a scrap of gauzy stuff with FF, stripped a piece of corrugated card and added a bit of paint and then found a piece of lace to cut up (from an old bra I was throwing out 😁).  I layered everything up and finally stamped the lovely phrases from Lynne's set to cut out and add as the finishing touch.

These are lovely quality clear stamps and they stamp beautifully.  I can't wait to use the other two sets I bought and all those wonderful phrases will be so useful on all sorts of projects.

Now I have to figure out why I've lost the ability to pin my makes to Pinterest from my blog....is it something to do with the shenanigans on 25th May or the mega cleanup our lovely 'puter expert did last week???

See you again soon.

Hugs

Lesley Xx