Normal Service Resumed ?!?

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are all feeling fine and dandy .......... 'cos I'm not, lol!  No seriously,  I have been a bit under the weather since just before our big day last Saturday.  I caught some sort of virus from one of the little ones and have had a really nasty sore throat and chest.  My voice virtually disappeared, which our granddaughters thought was hilarious and they took great delight in getting me to sing to them with my squeak, Ha! Ha!  Lullabies have never sounded so truly awful.  Things are finally settling down a bit so I'm hoping the weekend to come will get rid of the bugs completely.

I thought I'd just pop in a quick post to say hello while I'm waiting to get the photos of Jenna's wedding.  They should have the cd very shortly and as they will own the copyright I will be able to share some of them with you.  Much better than our amateur snaps!  As my only makes other than wedding stuff have been for design team work I haven't anything to show you just yet so I'm going to show you the wedding invites I made plus some postcards.

This is actually a picture of the 'prototype' as the photo of the final article seems to have gone missing.  The only difference though was a natural shell button with a tiny bow made from thread in the centre of the rosette and there were four sets of colours, dusky pink, dusky mauve, pale blue and a pale greeny yellow.  The reason for the sweetpeas was because when Jenna was little, every week through the summer my late Mother-in-Law used to send her home with a lovely posy of sweetpeas from her garden for me so this was Jenna's way of including her in the wedding.

This was a 'poster' which Jenna asked me to make to put up in her office at work to save me doing about 20 separate invites.

and these were a few of the 80 odd 'postcards' I and my lovely Craft Stamping Quartet buddies made.  Thankyou girls!  Jenna borrowed a vintage suitcase from a friend for guests to deposit their cards, etc., in and we scattered the postcards around the case and asked people to choose one and write a message to the Newleyweds on the back instead of a guest book.  Everyone thought it was a lovely idea.

We had a wonderful day but I'm not going to say anymore until I have some proper pics to show you.

Hopefully I'll be back very soon either with the wedding photos or something I've made.

Have a lovely bank holiday weekend everyone.

Love and Hugs
Lesley  Xx

Gothic Arches Diptych.

Hi Everyone,

I hope today finds you all well and maybe feeling a little more cheerful now we have slightly more daylight each day.  I must say it does me a power of good not having to switch lights on before 5 pm because I hate the short days.  I'd certainly be no good for anything if I lived where they have 24 hour darkness in winter and the reverse in summer, Lol!

Anyway, today I want to share a piece I made last year using at least four sets of lovely Crafty Individuals stamps.  One set in particular struck a chord with me because they are of a place called Fountains Abbey which is just about my favourite place to spend the day.  If you go here and here you will find a couple of posts I did after visits there and lots of lovely photos of the place.  It's a good job I didn't blog all the ones I took because I have at least 200, Ha! Ha!  For my diptych I thought the Gothic Arch shape was very apt and I used lots of Distress Inks with masks, punches and dies and mixed some of my photographs with the stamped images.

This is the front cover.
                                                

and the inside pages

and finally the back cover

For the front and back covers I also used some background papers from an Artylicious pack with lots of overstamping.  These will probably be available in a different format from Glenda's new company, Chocolate Baroque, which will be opening it's virtual doors very soon (watch this space or the Chocolate Baroque blog).

In case you hadn't already noticed Crafty Individuals have just started a new blog and it's already full of fabulous inspiration for using their products.  I think nobody does 'small but beautiful' like the lovely Jean Hardy and have you seen April's issue of the Craft Stamper mag?  Mine dropped through the letterbox this morning and Jean has the most adorable little birdhouse on the front cover.  There are also lots of projects throughout the mag using CI products and (close to my own crafty heart) the free stamp is a beautiful butterfly design by Chocolate Baroque and there is a lovely two page spread showing projects using this stamp and others which I and my fellow DT teamies are working with at the moment.

Well, that's it from me tonight.  As always I love to read any comments you have time to leave and really appreciate them all.  Have a warm and cosy evening.

Love and hugs
Lesley  Xx

A Bit of Sparkle and Shine

Hi Everyone,

I hope you're managing to keep warm and safe in this horrible freezing weather.  We and our neighbours have spent the weekend shovelling snow and chopping out ice to try and make our cul-de-sac accessible so that those of us who have to go to work could get out this morning.  I'm not one of those thank goodness but my Hubby is.  With great trepidation I took the dog to the park for the first time in a week today and came back having made my mind up that for once I'm going to be making a strong complaint with the high ups on our local council.  Apart from the main bus routes, hardly any roads and no pavements at all have seen a snowplough or a handful of grit!  The 5 inch thick ice is lethal to try and walk on and having injured a tendon slipping on ice at the beginning of the year I was petrified of doing a repeat performance.  Okay, sorry about the little rant but now I've got that off my chest I'll get down to more important matters like crafting, Lol!

My first make today uses one of the latest Crafty Individuals stamps which combines two of my favourite types of image - trees and swirls!  The card is made using simple stamping and matting and layering with just a couple of swirls cut with a Marianne Creatable die.

I stamped the main image and the single swallow on the background using Coffee Archival ink and just added Sakura Sparkle pen to the swirls and the swallows on the main image.

This next card uses an image from the Elusive Images Damask Reindeer set (UA4SP0263). I stamped the image with Onyx Black Versafine and then colours with Copics.  I added some ultrafine glitter which was very difficult to show on the photo and then layered it onto a piece of green mirri card run through my Big Shot in a Tim Holtz/Sizzix embossing folder.

It's very rare I use mirri card or glitter but the mirri does show off embossing really well.

This final card (3 in one post!!!!!!) was one I made recently for the Elusive Images Design Team using their lovely new stamp set called Family Christmas.  I kept almost to a monochrome colour theme using black, white and gold.

I stamped a holly sprig with Versamark and clear embossed on the black card layer and then stamped the main image using Onyx Black Versafine and touched in certain areas with a very fine paintbrush and Ecoline Gold.  That waterbased ink is absolutely gorgeous and looks like real molten gold in the bottle.  I was really pleased with the classy look of this card (even though I say so myself, Lol) so I decided to make it again this weekend as my Christmas card for my Mum.

Details of any of the Elusive Images stamps can be found by clicking on the Design Team logo in my sidebar and the Crafty Individuals stamps and the swirl die (which is from a set) and any of the inks used are also available at Graphicus.

As always, thank you for your visit and any comments you have time to leave so that I know you have stopped by and I can visit you back.  I've had a lovely time this past few days catching up with all the lovely creations my blogging friends have been posting recently.

Warm hugs to you all,
Lesley  Xx

PS   I keep forgetting to remind everyone that the photos are clickable if you wish to see a closeup.