WOYWW - 8 September ............... drat, missed it !!!!!!!

Hello Everyone,

If I'm quick I might just make this post while it's still Wednesday.

I was on a fabulous Graphicus Crafters' Paradise Retreat last weekend and you can see some of my incomplete projects on my desk.  I only managed to complete one of the six brilliant projects during the Retreat but I will be completing them at home.  They are too good to leave unfinished.

This was my only finished piece and I love it.
                                                
                                                      

And this one is almost complete.  It just needs a few finishing touches.
                                                           

Oh well, it looks like I'm a few minutes late but I hope you'll let me off.  I've been trying to do this post nearly all day but life sure do get in the way sometimes even at this time of night, Lol!

If you want to check out the rest of the WOYWWers click here to go to Julia's blog where all will be revealed.

Nite all,

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

                                       

Fabulous Friday Frames

Happy Sunday Evening Everyone,

I'm being a bit naughty at the moment because I really should be getting on with some Design Team projects.  However, although I'm itching to get cracking with the latest pack of Elusive Images stamps and papers I just couldn't settle until I'd finished the lovely project I started on Friday.  I went up to Graphicus for another brilliant workshop with Lynn Robinson-Hunter.  You already know that I always enjoy them but this one was tip-top!  We made a triple hanging piece of artwork, with the top and bottom ones being shallow 4" x 4" frames and the centre one a 4" x 4" piece of greyboard.  One of the beauties of this workshop was that Lynn gave us the basic materials and a few ready diecut embellishments, told us about the materials and mediums we could use with advice on the 'how to' and off we went.  Lynn gave us lots of tips and any assistance we needed throughout the day but we each put our own  ideas and designs into decorating the base pieces.  I shared the workshop with 7 lovely ladies most of whom I already knew from the Graphicus Guild and they were all fab company and we shared many laughs throughout the day.  As always on this type of workshop, it's quite surprising to see how 8 people given the same basic things to work with plus a selection of stamps, inks and paints can each come up with something totally different at the end.

As usual, I had nowhere near finished my project but knew exactly where I was going with it by the end of the workshop so last night I just had to finish it before I could concentrate on my Design Team projects.  Right, here we go with the photos (quite a few I'm afraid).
 

Because it's such a loooonnnngggg piece of artwork at over 16" it's difficult to photograph the details showing it all at once so here comes the breakdown.  First of all, I chose a Lumiere metallic paint to cover my frames and when this was dry, I covered it with Ranger Crackle Paint.

We were given the Sizzix die cut flower in Grungepaper to make our rose and I decided to use a Wendy Vecchi background stamp on mine.  I also used a WV leaf stamp and quote and an Elusive Images butterfly stamp.  I used Distress Inks to colour all my Grungepaper pieces.

The greyboard was used for the centre panel and we placed a die cut heart onto the panel and then covered it with a page from an old dictionery,  We used a Golden Matte Gel as adhesive and then to paint over the top of the newsprint, finally inking the piece with Distress Inks.  I used Elusive Images stamps again for the flower, inking both sides with contrasting DIs and added some blobs of Glossy Accents in the middle with micro beads sprinkled on.  I used Rub n Buff to colour the key.

The bottom frame was done in the same way as the top one using different embellishments.  I also used some Old Gold Rub n Buff over the Crackle Paint on both the frames but I'm afraid it doesn't show in the photos.

Finally the Tim Holtz/Sizzix Caged Bird - I love this die!!!   I painted my little bird with Lumiere paints and applied Viva Ferro to the cage.

I had so much fun making this and sharing the day with a lovely group.  I just have to find somewhere suitable to hang it now.

I hope you've all had a really good weekend and had the same gorgeous weather that we've had here in Nottinghamshire to set you up for the week ahead.

As always, thankyou for visiting my blog and leaving a comment if you have time.  I always appreciate and read every one as well as visiting you back.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

PS   Just a little note to let you know that I have posted my latest Craft Stamping Quartet project today over on my shared blog if you'd like to have a look.  Here's a taster

Xx

Jo's Birthday Card

About a week ago it was my lovely buddy Jo's birthday.  As she is also a crafting buddy and one quarter of our Craft Stamping Quartet this card needed to be special.

Sometime ago Jo had admired a couple of cards I made using masking and blended Distress Inks together with overstamping so I decided to use this technique for her card.  I chose to use the Heidi Swapp hibiscus masks because I know they are one of Jo's favourite flowers.  Over the masked circle area I lightly overstamped with a beautiful script stamp from Elusive Images Antiquities plate.  I'd had this for ages and never realised how lovely and fine it is.

                                                     

The moths/butterflies were stamped onto acetate and heat embossed, cut out and attached just by their bodies which I decorated with sticky backed pearls.  These came from the EI Butterfly Poppy Collage plate and I love them stamped on acetate because they are so delicate.  The sentiment is from another EI plate called Birthday Words.  The only thing I used which wasn't from Graphicus was the hanging vine stamp which is a Lavinia stamp.
                                                                           

I've shown you two shots of the full card because I did this card the night before I had to post it (talk about by the skin of my teeth) so I took the pics in a hurry the early next morning before dashing to the post office.  Now I can't make up my mind which is the better shot so I've included both, Lol!

Thank you for visiting and commenting if you have time.  Have a good week everyone.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

A Little Bit of This and ................. A Little Bit of That!

Hello Everyone,

Well, I've had a lovely 3.5 days with my daughter and granddaughter and I'm absolutely pooped, Lol!  Little Izzy at 2 years 8 months is a proper livewire and just doesn't stop.  She's also a total chatterbox and talks away ten to the dozen from waking up.  Still, there's nothing better than her waking you up by patting your face saying 'Want a Mamma cuddle' and then wrapping her arms round your neck and say 'I love you Mamma!' ................ immediately followed by ' You need to get up and get my breakfast Mamma', Lol!  Here she is straight afterwards grinning like a cheshire cat whilst she sits on Mamma's worktop waiting for her cornflakes.

This is a photo of my other little granddaughter Alexa which I meant to share a couple of weeks ago when she still had her pot on her foot/leg.  As you can see she loved showing it off because it had some of her Daddy's artwork on.

Would you believe that huge pot was for a tiny broken bone in her foot?

The next thing I want to share is another of my Elusive Images DT application makes.  This one had a brief of using their signature colours of  Teal and Brown and I decided to try something using one of my favourite techniques of masking with some stamping over the top.

I love blending the colours to get a soft effect over the masks and then finish off with some stamping.  I used Heidi Swapp masks, first the circle with the butterflies over the top and then I removed the circle, put the butterflies back and finished the blending,  If I remember correctly I used Adirondack Espresso and Broken China Distress Inks.  For the overstamping in the corner I think I used Versafine inks.

To finish the card and balance the design I stamped a butterfly from the Elusive Images Patchwork Butterfly plate, cut it out and coloured the image with Distress Inks.  I then shaped the wings a little with my fingers and attached it to the card with just the body flat to the surface and the wings with a little silicone glue to support the shaping.

I'm off up to Graphicus, home of Elusive Images, in Barnard Castle for one of their fab Open Days tomorrow.  Lots of lovely crafting goodies to buy and wonderful demos to watch.  Glenda is doing special 'back to basics' demos for those new stampers who might be a bit daunted by the more advanced techniques.  She is an excellent teacher as are the other demonstrators and no question is ever too trivial for them to answer so don't be put off if you are new to this creative hobby.  We all had to learn once and this is the way to do it.  I still learn something new every time I go.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend too and hope the weather improves upon today.  I have to say it's been pretty miserable here all morning but with our weather it could well be glorious tomorrow, Lol!  As always, I love to read your comments if you have time to leave one as well as return the visit.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

Perfumed Peacock Lady.

As promised yesterday, I'm back today to show you another of my cards for the Elusive Images Design Team application.  I particularly wanted to use a set of stamps which was only released just before our applications had to be in but they were something a bit different for me so presented a bit of a challenge as to what to do with them.  I do hope you like the end result.

I decided to create what could perhaps be part of a lady's dressing room with the table holding my lady's perfume bottles and a mirror and with shelves either side on the 'wall'.

To keep everything in proportion, I wanted the perfume bottles smaller so I stamped and coloured them onto shrink plastic and was really pleased when they shrank to the perfect size.

I stamped one of the bottles onto card and deliberately cut the stopper off when I cut it out so that I could use it as a vase on the floor and I took a peacock feather stamp from one of the peacock sets and cut the image out to place in the vase.  I attached some of the images with foam pads to give some added dimension.  The partial quote in the mirror is from another Elusive Images set of stamps. One of the things I like about EI stamps is their ability to mix from one set to another.  I used 'wallpaper' from my Graphicus Guild pack (but it's also on the Artylicious Peacock Summer Party cds).
 

I had used an 8" x 8" card base but folded the front back before fixing the actual front of the card.  I then needed a lady for the dressing room and the perfect one is to be found on another of the EI Peacock range of stamp sets.  I coloured her in tones to match the lovely Artylicious paper and layered her onto matching card before fixing her on the inside of the card.

I hope you like this card and as always, thankyou for visiting.  Please leave a comment if you have time as I really appreciate them and love to visit everyone back.

WOYWW - #61

Sorry I've let the side down for the last three Wednesdays but I've either been mega busy or away.  I've been to 3 workshops at Graphicus up in Teesdale for a start and had a really great time (I'll show the works in progress some other time) especially the one I shared with my Daughter and blogging buddy, Judith.

Anyway, without further ado, this is my desk as of 9.00 am today.

Now that doesn't look too bad does it?  A tad boring I'm afraid as everything I'm working on at the moment can't be revealed for another couple of weeks.  There's a piece of Artylicious paper left over from the face down card and there's a set of the new Elusive Images cottage stamps that were released this month.  I'm going to be working with those later today.

Now this pic of the whole work area looks a whole lot messier and I have, in fact, tidied up quite a bit since last night.  I can't work if I have loads of stuff left on the desk from previous projects and it had got to the point where I just had to get rid of some of the leftover bits.  Again, there's not much of what I'm working on that can be shown yet but you can just see some new stamps peeking out from under the black craft mat on the righthand side and also a corner of my CSQ project for this month which is using Linda Elbourne's fab project from the August issue of Craft Stamper for inspiration.  There's also a mag at the top of the desk which I keep glancing at to try and get into Christmas mode, Lol!

Well, if any of my visitors don't know yet what WOYWW is all about, click on this link to hop on over to Julia's blog where she can tell you all about it far better than I and you can also get to go visit some wonderful, inspirational blogs from there too.

I'll be back tomorrow with some pics of another of my submissions for a place on the Elusive Images DT and I still can't believe I made it even though the 'hard' work has started ;o).

Have a really good day all and thanks for visiting!

Hugs

Lesley  Xx

Yipee, My Photos are Back ........(er, I'd get a cuppa if I were you, Lol)

'Morning Everyone,

I hope you have all had a lovely weekend and not had it blighted by the weather which I know has been a bit mixed.  I had a great weekend because on Saturday I went to another workshop at Graphicus with the wonderful Lynn making a fab Fabric Journal.  It was something quite different for me and I had a lovely day getting inky and painty.  It's a project that will be ongoing for quite sometime but the best thing about the day was I got to share it with my lovely Daughter, Jenna.  I introduced her to journalling a few months ago so thought this particular workshop would be a nice treat for her as she works very hard and doesn't get much leisure time.  She thoroughly enjoyed her day and little break from being a Mum and said the only thing wrong was that it went too fast but she was amazed at how relaxing the day was.  Another special bit of the day for me was being able to introduce Jenna to one of my very special Craft Stamping Quartet friends, Judith, who was also on the workshop with us along with 4 other lovely ladies.

Now, the best thing about this Monday morning is that I can once again post photos to my blog.  Actually, I never lost the ability to post them, it was just me being a blogging numpty who didn't notice a setting had changed.  So, I can now share pics of one of the cards I submitted with my DT application to Elusive Images. If you click on the button in my sidebar you will go straight to the EI DT blog.

I made a pocket on the inside of the card with a matching tag.  The techniques I used are some of my favourites - blending Distress Inks, overstamping onto Artylicious dp and making paper roses, again using Artylicious dp and spritzing them with gold mica spray.  I'll let you all into a secret now - the piece of torn dp on the tag was the result of a boob!  I was stamping onto the dp to make the triangle for the inner pocket and had almost finished it.  I then went and stamped the very last text image UPSIDE DOWN!!!! 

The stamps are all from the Elusive Images Paris themeplates except for one which is one of my favourite stamps to use on backgrounds and is a beautiful script stamp from Elusive Images Eccentric Edwardian themeplate.  I finished the card off with some lace from my stash, some gorgeous dark grey pearls for the centre of the roses and some Tim Holtz Ideology.

This next card is completely different from the one above and was made for my lovely friend Jo (another CSQ buddy) and her husband for their 25th Wedding Anniversary last week

This card has no stamping at all as I relied solely on Cuttlebug embossing folders, two sets of Nellie Snellen flower punches and an L-Em leaf spray punch.  Oh yes, and peeloffs for the sentiment and the number 25 on the little tag.

I also made a matching box.

 I used pearl card for the base and the box with pearl paper, embossed foiled paper and vellum to make the flowers and thin black card for the leaves.

Although these two cards are very different I thoroughly enjoyed making them both and was pleased with them when finished.  Hope you like them too.

Have a good Monday everyone and I'll hopefully get to do a WOYWW post again this week so speak to you then.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx