Giveaway - Paint Fusion DVD & Stamp Set

Afternoon Everyone,

The craft room sort out is still ongoing - I have way too much stuff that I don't want anymore. This Sheena Douglas Paint Fusion DVD and a Simply Sweet stamp set - unused - are among that stuff.

The video contains 3 hours of step-by-step projects and inspiration and the stamp set includes a practice guide for the painting technique.

I'd like to give it away so if you fancy trying out this stamping and painting technique, or you know someone who might like to give it a try, then simply leave a comment to let me know.

In the event of more than one person showing interest, I'll do a draw to decide who will be the lucky recipient.

The giveaway will be up for a week, closing on Tuesday, 23 May 2017.

I look forward to receiving your comment(s).

Rudolph Day Cards

Hello Everyone,

Here we are starting the 2017 Rudolph Day Challenge, hosted by our lovely ScrappyMo over on Scraps of Life.  The whole idea of this challenge is to make Christmas cards/projects throughout the year thereby taking the pressure away from finding time to make them at the last minute - like I did last year! That being so here's my entry for January.

The beautiful illustration of Christmas Roses is recycled from a card received in 2016. All I did to make the card was trim the image to size, mat it on to satin finished gold card and then adhere it to a white card base measuring 5¾"x 4". Next, I stamped a greeting from the Christmas Visitors set, from Sheena Douglass' A Little Bit Festive collection, on a scrap of white card using Tim Holtz Tumbled Glass distress ink, trimmed it down to size and matted it on to the gold card, and then adhered it to the top left corner of the card with dimensional adhesive pads. The final touch is the three aqua coloured dew drops.

As you can see there's not much to making a recycled card. Often the image says it all, as is the case with the following three cards.

I can't resist images of kittens and this one was no exception. All I did was trim the image down to size, mat it on to red card and add two groups of red dew drops. The greeting was already on the image, as was the silver sequins you can just about see in the photo.

The same was true of this image too, greeting and glitter already done for me. I simply cut it to size and adhered it to a black 5" square card base and then added a group of silver enamel dots, from Simple Stories' The Story of Us collection, to the top right and bottom left corners.

Finally, this beautiful scene of a shepherd bringing in the sheep. This image also had the greeting already printed on it so, like the previous card, I trimmed it to size, adhered it to the black card base, and added a group of black enamel dots, Echo Park's Petticoats & Pinstripes collection, to the top left and bottom right corners.

So there we are, four Christmas cards made in absolutely no time and all recycling favourite illustrations from Christmas 2016. I've deliberately kept them as flat as possible to help save on postage - always a consideration for us pensioners, as I suspect it is for everyone in these expensive times!

Hope you are all enjoying a wonderful weekend wherever you are.

Fir Branches Snippet Card ... plus a few Sunday photos

Hello Everyone,

I hope you have all had a happy Sunday. It's not been a bad day at all here - chilly but sunny enough to lure me out for a Sunday walk ... more about that later.

First, here's a card for Pixie's Crafty Snippets Playground - Week 67.

Materials used:

• a 4"square white card base
• a strip of white card approximately 4" x 17/8". I used a Big and Juicy ink pad, Spice, and an ink duster to colour the background - keeping mostly to the green end of the pad but finishing with a dusting around the edges from the brown end. 
• the fir branches are from Sheena Douglass A Little Bit Sketchy 2, Faith - the bare branches were stamped first using a mid-green from the Big and Juicy ink pad and then the fir leaves were stamped over that using a darker green, Tim Holtz distress marker, Peeled Paint. 
• a scrap of mid-green Core'dinations for matting - cut slightly wider than the stamped panel
• the greeting, stamped using the distress marker, is from Sheena Douglass A Little Bit Sketchy, Poppies and Daisies - love the font.

This card was a really simple one to make. Getting the greeting in the right place was the most difficult part ... I've tried one of those stampamajig gadgety thingies and still find it easier to do it by eye! Sigh! There's no hope for me. Even the strip of white card was cut from a spoiled card blank ... with all the mistakes I make, I have a goodly few of them in the snippets pile.

As promised, I'll finish with a few photos from our walk today.

The beach at Ayr, looking south towards the Heads of Ayr - it was much busier on the promenade than down on the sands. After visiting the beach we drove down the coast to Dunure - we love the harbour there. 

This boat is somewhat inappropriately named Sea Hunter - judging by the peeling paint it's hunting days are over. Great colours though, and the peeling paint is so tactile ... I couldn't resist running my hand over it :)

Dunure's harbour is a 200 year old though there are far fewer fishing boats there than in days gone by. However, it's very popular with visitors, especially at the weekends, and today it was particularly busy. There was a Subaru 'convention' going on down there this afternoon - lots of souped up sporty numbers with drivers who mistook our quiet country roads for Brands Hatch chose Dunure as a 'pit stop' - sadly, a photo that got away ... I was too slow and missed a golden opportunity!!!

Finally, I'll leave you with a bit of a tease.

Can you guess what it is? I can't wait to read your comments :))

Well, that's it for this evening - time I was thinking of bed :)

Hope you've all had a lovely weekend.

Take care and happy crafting,

Thinking of You

Evening Folks

I hope you are all well and looking forward to the coming weekend, even though for many of us in the UK it's going to be a cold one.

I'm looking forward to it even though I haven't planned to be doing much more than staying in and keeping warm :)

Sadly, the EM's sister's husband, Cyril, who had been ill for some time, passed away in hospital yesterday. The two quick and easy cards below were hastily made and sent to the EM's sister and Cyril's son and their families.

The photo strip was a leftover from an A4 sheet of photographs ... Foto Finesse Floral Toppers from Handy Hippo. I did hesitate to use the strip because of the splash of red from the poppies, but then I thought of what poppies represent - remembrance - and decided to go ahead with it. I'm glad I did because the EM loved the card and thought his sister would too.

It's matted on to a strip of blue Papermania textured cardstock from the snippet box which has been edged with a scalloped punch. The background stamping consists of various fern stamps from Sheena Douglass' A Little Bit Sketchy 2 Optimism set in Tim Holtz DI Stormy Sky. After stamping, I used a damp brush to 'paint' the fronds of the ferns to give a watercolour effect.

The stamping was carried through on to the inside and the back.

The second card, made with a much more subdued mix of blues and silver, uses the last of the photos - a lovely close-up of some fluffy seed heads. The base is a Kanban embossed card in silver and pale blue, the belly band and photo mat are from a scrap of navy blue Double Dot Cardstock from Bo Bunny.

 
A simple trim made from a strip of the card was added to the inside and back.

Once again my ribbon filing system proved to be a boon - I was able to find the perfect shade of satin ribbon   to trim this card very quickly. And even though I'm hardly half way through putting the stamp catalogue together locating the 'thinking of you' stamp was a doddle! It's not an exaggeration to say that Di of Pixie's Crafty Workshop has my undying gratitude for showing me her system ... it works a treat :)

And talking of Di reminds me that with all the snippets, leftovers and scraps that went into the making of these cards they can be submitted to Pixies Crafty Snippets Playground - Week 63

No materials used list tonight - it's been a busy day and I'm too tired. So, if you have any questions about the materials, please feel free to ask.

See you all tomorrow, hopefully :)

Take care and happy crafting,

WOYWW 165 - messing with watercolours and crochet update

Morning WOYWWers, Followers, and all,

Reasons to celebrate - it's the first of August, it's Lunch Lady Jan's birthday ... Happy Birthday to you, Jan :) ... and it's What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday! Want to celebrate along - pop over to our Head Keeper of the Linky, Mrs D's at the Stamping Ground and join in the weekly massive bloghop around the workdesks of some of the most interesting, funny, creative, sometimes messy, and always talented, peeps in blogland!

Here's my desk as it was all day yesterday, Monday and much of Sunday. Yes, I've been MIA, but with good reason - more of later. First let's go through what I had on my desk before it was abandoned.

Most noticeably, there's this month's Craft Stamper - I've had a quick flick through and, before I go any further, I have just got to congratulate our Asia King, aka Joanna, Under A Creative Spell for doing so well in the Stamper of the Year competition - her fabulous creation got her short-listed in the first round  ... well done Joanna :)  Also Sarah of La-De-Dah is in the mag with her beautiful creations, and the free stamp is extra special because it was designed by Chrissie Stokes of Simply One of Kind ... I did say that WOYWWers are a talented bunch, did I not :)

But I digress, back to the desk ... Aquamarkers, paints, some new Sheena stamps, and  leaning nonchalantly on a box of pens, Bogdan, the schoolboy meerkat, my new crafting companion, sporting my treasured WOYWW badge, and generally, the usual detritus of my crafting life - water, mica powder embossing powder, a bingo pen - don't ask, I have no idea!

The last item is a pile of water-colour backgrounds ... I've been experimenting again :)

For this technique I scribbled with the Aquamarkers on to a stamping block, spritzed with water and then stamped the resulting water-colour soup onto card. I varied the colours and even painted some of the shimmer paints on to the block too - with varying degrees of success!

Here's a card I made with the piece you can see top row, centre.

And now we get to the reason I've been MIA. My lovely sister, Margaret, an MS sufferer, was suddenly taken desperately ill on Friday last week and had to be admitted to hospital. Since then there's been no improvement, if anything her condition deteriorated and she is now on oxygen to help her breath - the doctors know she has an infection, they just can't find the right treatment for it. They've performed umpteen tests and now she is to have an MRI scan in the hope that that will give an indication of the cause - in the meantime we all wait and worry.

 In three days, this is the only card I've found time to make.

On a happier note, I had a visit from Grandson, No.2, and we had a great time, catching up on family news, his news,  sorting through my seed box ... I know, come to Gran's and leave with packets of salad seeds to grow ... and, finally, in the kitchen cooking up a storm - well, he is a chef :))

Oh, and before I forget, a crochet update.

The completed throw for my great-granddaughter.  I found instructions for a decorative trim which finished it off very nicely.

I actually crocheted too many squares, got quite carried away, so with the leftovers I'm making a wee blanket to fit my great-niece's buggy.

Oh dear, I am going to be in trouble with Julia :( Keep it brief she asks, and what do I do, witter on for ages ... sorry Julia.

As usual, I did not visit as many of you as I would have liked, other preoccupations, and if you don't get a visit from me this week, it will be for much the same reasons.

Take care all of you, and have a good week wherever you are and whatever you're doing, and happy crafting.

Happy WOYWW,

The Busy Little Girl Card

Hi again,

 

 

Two posts in one day - for me that's quite an accomplishment : ) I thought I'd just get this card posted tonight because we are going off on a jaunt tomorrow - the weather forecast is good.

 

So here she is, and yes, Julia, I went with the pink but teamed it up with the pale coffee colour which seemed in keeping with the vintage theme.

 

 

 

I found some card candy that picked up the colours of the dress and, another first for me, I spritzed the coffee coloured seam binding, tinted it a little with pink distressed ink, and left it trendily crinkled.

 

 

 

The matting layers are made up of a coffee & cream card, design paper covered in tiny pink, cream & coffee daisies, and cream pearlescent card, all matted on to a Kraft base.  The very pretty DP is punched along the edge on the front, the inside and also on the back.

 

 

 

And that is it - I almost put a flower on the bottom left corner but decided against it because I like the simplicity of the card as it is.

 

Materials used:

• Cardstock: Kraft card for base; cream/coffee gingham patterned card & cream pearlescent card for matting; Daler & Rowney watercolour card for stamped image
• Design Paper: Flutterbyes, Small Daisies All Over paper, edge punched with a Woodware edge punch
• Stamp: Sheena Douglass' Busy Doing Nothing coloured with Aquamarkers and sentiment stamped in Memento ink pad Rich Cocoa and the edges distressed with TH's Spun Sugar ink pad
• Embellishments: Seam binding, Camels Hair from The Ribbon Girl; Card candy in coffee and pink/white polka dots

 

That's me for tonight - time for bed, methinks.

 

Happy crafting,

 

Brother's Tartan Birthday Card

Good evening everyone,

My second card of the day and it's a card for my brother, Douglas, who loves all things Scottish and who, although brought up in a city, is very much a country boy at heart so I thought he would appreciate this Sheena Douglass stamp, 'Nature'.

I stamped it onto watercolour paper with Tim Holtz Black Soot distress ink and following Sheena's instructions dried the image off with the heat gun then went over the image with a damp paintbrush - a scary new technique for me. I let it dry then, because I wanted a real wintery scene, used a Versamarker pen to pick out the hilltops and spots where I thought snow would lie and embossed those areas with Seafoam White powder from Papermania.  I frosted the picture using a glue pen and white irridescent glitter.

I hope you can see that the frosting sparkles in blues and greens. Because my brother's health has not been so good over the last year but is improving the 'Nature' sentiment seemed to strike just the right note.

Other materials used: tartan patterned paper for background, blue and green card for matting and punched trim, and silver/black peel-off trims were from my stash; black stitched ribbon (all three rows of it), and silver snowflake trim were from Funky Farm Scrapbook Barn.

For the inside I designed a matching digi sentiment on my computer by scanning the tartan paper and using the digital punch feature to cut out a centre square and a frame and added the 'Happy Birthday' text.

Douglas lives in a small village in the Scottish Borders. Up until a few years ago he and his wife owned and ran the local village shop which served the community. A local artist, Lucille M Fenton, spotted him in his kilt and asked if she he would let her do a painting of him - here is a photograph of the painting:

He is wearing the tartan of the 1st Battalion of the Cameronians, (Scottish Rifles) the regiment he served with until, sadly, it was disbanded in 1968. The beauty spot he is posing on is somewhere in Berwickshire. I think he looks like a man in his element.

Hope you liked my card and the painting. Feel free to comment on either or both.

Bye for now
Elizabeth