Let the bells ring out!

Hello, crafting friends!

 

I have returned to the land of the vaguely up and running just in time to join in with Christmas in July!

 

At the beginning of the year, I won a bumper prize at one of my favourite challenges The Snippets Playground which included an un-named Crafters Companion stamp set with ringing bells on it. That caught my eye and I had a little play with it today.

 

The stamp was quite small but I stamped it twice at the top of a 4" square card so that it could be the main feature of a CAS one layer card. I used pale brown ink to stamp the image and then coloured the bells with oil-based coloured pencils, including a metallic set for a lovely shine. The fade-out background was added with a brush and pale blue-grey waterbased ink and a brush and I added a bit of more intense colour at the top with a sponge.

 

Using a white acrylic paint pen, details were added to the bells and 'snow' to the background. The card was finished with a curvy sentiment which I thought went well with the ringing bells.

 

CHALLENGES

I'm joining in with Stamping Sensations where stamping is required and the optional theme is Christmas in July; The Daring Cardmakers also have a Christmas in July challenge with the option to use Christmas supplies to make a non-festive card; Peace on Earth which has a lovely mood board from which I chose my colours; and last but not least, I'm linking up with Rudolph Days which has us making festive cards on the 25th of each month (link up runs until the end of the month.)

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Here in the UK, we've all been yearning for a bit of sunshine as we has have an appalling grey summer so far, after a miserable wet winter. And now a heatwave has descended upon us! Lulu has embraced the paddling pool but has no notion of lying peacefully in it to cool off! It's hunting practice for her - and she likes to chase balls in there and murder them.

 

 

Here she is, my little huntress, swaggering out of the pool, leaving a trail of ball corpses in her wake!

Sending hugs,

Flying high in an ombre sky

Hello, crafting friends!

Welcome to the brand new challenge at Addicted to CAS! Barb is our hostess for the next two weeks and she has come up with a theme I think you'll love as much as I do:

It's such a great trend isn't it!

I started my card with a die cut square of card stock which was cut into three using one of Lawn Fawn's Puffy Cloudy border dies. I used blue ink and water to colour each section, decreasing the intensity of the colour each time. When they pieces were dry, I flattened them with my high tech flattener (a pile of books!) and used double sided tape to keep them in their square shape and to attach them to a square card base.

The swallow is a mini Xcut die. I cut it twice, coloured one of them with alcohol markers and glued them together. I set my swallow swooping upwards in my sky and added a sentiment from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks.

And now it's your turn! I know you'll want to see all the fabulous samples my teamies have made to inspire you - and we have the wonderfully talented Trina as our special guest. You can see everything on the Addicted to CAS blog and you'll be able to link up your own creation there too. Don't forget to keep it clean and simple!

CHALLENGES

The Tic Tac Toe challenge has a great board this week - I've chosen the top row: Wings, Sky, Squyare; I'm also linking up with Happy Little Stampers Dies challenge where Anything Goes; and Watercooler Wednesday where it's Cathy's turn to host the popular Occasions challenge.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I made this card for my daughter's wonderful partner who has just landed a great new job! I am such a proud Other Mother (which is what I get called!) Just off to pop some champagne corks!!

Sending hugs,

When life gives you eucalyptus leaves...

Hello, crafting friends!

I had a moment of inspiration today and made a quick card while the going was good! It's still pretty gloomy around here but I'm hanging on to my mediterranean dream with these oranges and lemons, tumbling past a sun-warmed terracotta wall...

... But wait, I don't have any oranges or lemon stamps in my stash! These citrus fruits are in fact eucalyptus leaves from Concord & 9th's Beautiful Branches. Honestly, this has to be one of the most versatile stamp sets I own - the eucalyptus leaves have also been lanterns (here) and sunflowers (here) and the rest of the set has worked very hard indeed too (here, and keep scrolling down for more.)

To make this card, I stamped two different shapes of the leaves onto a card panel and coloured them with coloured pencils. The stamps are textured which really helps give the effect of dimpled citrus skin. I added leaves from one of last year's Stampin' Up Sale-a-bration sets, and doodled stems in with a fineliner pen.

To finish, I scribbled in a loose watercolour background with a paintbrush and diluted ink. When it was dry, I added one of the sentiments from Beautiful Branches and a sprinkling of clear gems before attaching it to a card base with dimensional pads.

CHALLENGES

Inspired By has inspired me again with both the inspiration photo and the sketch! I'm also joining in with Happy Little Stampers' watercolour challenge.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

While our children were growing up, it was a family tradition to go out to a restaurant on birthdays - and the birthday boy or girl got to choose where. We have a wonderful Indian restaurant near to us which was a popular choice even when they were small, and they took to spicy dishes from a young age too! My youngest son used to love the lemon and orange sorbet there, served in the fruit itself and decorated with other fruits and cocktail umbrellas! He alternated them and could always remember which flavour he'd had the last time he was there!

Happy Friday, enjoy your weekend!

Rabbits and tulips

Hello, crafting friends!

Watercolouring has become more and more appealing to me, especially now I've found that I can paint directly on the card bases I bought from Hobbycraft recently, without any bleed through! I had so much fun making this simple daffodil card a week or two ago I decided to CASE my own card and give it a different look.

I masked off the edges of the card base and stencilled in some grass from Funky Fossil's Scenic Border stencil as I had done before. Instead of the daffs, I chose another Clearly Besotted set, Spring Tulips, stamping them in the green ink. I quickly gave them a lick of watercolour and left the card to dry.

Meanwhile, I stamped two of the bunnies from The Craft Consortium's English Garden stamp set and watercoloured them. When they were dry, I added detail with a fineliner and painted fluffy white tails with some white acrylic paint (sorry the texture doesn't show in the photos but they do actually have the floof factor in real life!) To finish the card, I removed the masks from the now dry card base, stamped a sentiment on it and attached the bunnies.

CHALLENGES

I'm linking up with Happy Little Stampers Watercolour challenge where anything goes; also The Rainbow Challenge where the colour this month is Definitely Daffodil; The theme at The Sisterhood of Crafters is Easter/Spring and at Try it on Tuesday it's Hello Spring, so I'm playing along there too.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I spent a few productive hours sorting out my airing cupboard last week. I store my bed linen there and there is quite a lot of it! While folding the sheets I remembered a time my youngest son made me laugh while helping me bring the laundry in from the line. He was supposed to be handing me the bed linen in size order. "That's a King," I pointed out when he was supposed to be passing me a Double. He reverently put the sheet down, bowed low and made a flourish with his hand. "My Liege," he said solemnly.

Wishing you a very happy weekend,

Goodbye old friend

Hello, crafting friends!

It's time for one of those hard-to-make sympathy cards today. 

I've gone for a one layer card, using masking and sponging techniques to create a sky and ground off the edge of a thick card base. Trees were stamped along the ground line using a little stamp from Stampin' Up's Holiday Home (retired.) The scene was spritzed with water and left to dry. 

A spritzed card will usually warp as it dries but I find a visit to the bottom of a large pile of heavy books sorts that out! I know, I know, it's hard to keep up with my cutting edge technology! The card was finished with stamped birds from Take Flight 2 by Inkylicious, some detailing on the scene with a marker, and a heat-embossed sentiment from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks.

CHALLENGES

I'm linking this card up with CAS Mix Up where they theme is Off the Edge and they want watercolour to be the main feature. Helen is hosting Watercooler Wednesday's Occasions challenge this week and I'm entering my sympathy card there. I'm also joining in with Stamplorations CAS challenge where I'm sticking with the Anything Goes option.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

The card is on its way to the owners of The Baroness who has come to the end of a long and happy life at the grand old age of 16. Regular readers will remember her as one of Eva's pals, a dignified boxer dog.  She stayed with us often and was such a character. She would pretend to be above Eva's fun and games but would often join in despite herself and every now and again she would turn herself over for a tummy rub which always made me laugh. I especially loved collecting her from her house for walks: I would usually find her asleep on the sofa and would sit next to her and gently stroke her head until she woke, took one look at me and leapt up wagging madly with her whole body. I enjoyed watching the dogs running shoulder to shoulder ahead of me on our long country walks, Eva with her fluffy trousers and The Baroness with her smooth black leggings. As she got older and began to lose her sight, The Baroness relied on Eva to show her the way, but they would still sniff the hedgerows together and The Baroness would still kick up her heels and frolic with Eva despite her arthritis. Last winter I started to see a change in our old friend. She started to have seizures and became increasingly frail. She struggled to climb the stairs where she'd always slept alongside Eva at the foot of the bed. I couldn't bear to leave her downstairs on her own, so I would carry her up, and down again in the morning. It was such a privilege to know her and I can say, with absolute certainty, that we were friends.

Sending hugs,

Card versus crafter

Hello crafting friends!

Does anyone know that scenario where you have an idea for a card and think to yourself 'I'll just quickly make that' only to find it's like a battle to do the simplest thing and hours go by as you keep having to start again? That's today's card for you. Come and see:

It's such a simple little card but my goodness it fought me! I thought I'd have a circle of inky sky and stencil clouds in it... but no. The card was having none of that and, after several tries, I topped my circle with the curly clouds from Paper Smooches' Sunny Side Up - which I ended up preferring anyway. I stamped the cloud outlines on scrap card stock, heat embossed them, added a touch of watercolour and cut them out with paper snips.

The sentiment, from the same set, was stamped in coral ink on a strip of vellum and heat embossed. The first one tore in my trimmer, much to the delight of my naughty card, but the successful second one was wrapped around the card panel and secured at the back with tape. I then debossed the edges of the panel using my scoreboard.

There is a sun in the Paper Smooches set but I wanted something smaller so I reached for my Hello Sunshine turnabout set from Concorde and 9th. I stamped it in yellow ink, heat embossed it and then cut it out. I had to use a circle punch and a pair of paper snips for this because I don't have the dies, and the card watched smugly. I popped the sun up on a dimensional, added a few enamel dots and then looked for a matching yellow card stock to mount the panel on...

... but the cupboard was bare! I could not be beaten at this point though, and sassily matched the colour to an alcohol marker which coloured the edges of the mount nicely. The card knew it was beaten and backed down, muttering resentfully.

EDITED TO ADD AN AWARD
So pleased to say this card was chosen as the winner at CAS on Friday!

CHALLENGES
The starter for this card was the sketch at CAS(E) This Sketch, so I'll link up there; I'm joining in with CAS on Friday where the theme is Sunshine and Allsorts where the challenge is Embossing - Wet or Dry; the colours I've used are Mint, Lagoon, Smoothie with additional Lemonade, which are
from Color My Heart Color Dare challenge 398.

AND IN OTHER NEWS
My youngest son and I went on a trip to a local garden centre today and I've realised that one thing about the virus is that every small outing seems SO exciting these days. The sun is back out here and it is very hot and humid, but my son appeared wearing a hoodie. "It's pretty hot," I told him. "You may not need the hoodie." He gave me a measured look. "Your comments have been noted," he said in a deadpan voice, "and will be processed within three to five working days." 

Hope you've had a great weekend!

Hugs,

Christmas stamp sets - not just for Christmas!

Hello crafting friends!

I loved all the festive cards I saw people making with the  Stampin' Up stamp set From Our House To Yours. I've only just got my set (due to my own incompetence!) so I've missed the Christmas boat, but it's come in very handy for making a new home card AND a valentine!

CARD ONE
The new home card was so much fun to make.

I used my new Lawn Fawn Puffy Cloud Border dies to make clouds and bushes and the Wavy Border dies to make hills, and stamped trees as a background. The house was stamped on a scrap of card stock and fussy cut, and I stamped the tiny heart over the window below the roof, before tucking it into my scene.

I added a sentiment from Holiday Home (retired) before mounting the scene on a card base I'd splattered with pink ink. That was a bit too much fun and had to restrain myself from looking for other things to splatter ink on!

CARD TWO
My second card is a simple one layer card that uses the same tiny heart as the first card as well as the larger heart that comes with From Our House To Yours. Two hearts for the price of one!

Using Calypso Coral and Cherry Cobbler inks, I stamped a patterned on the edge of the card base with the hearts. I didn't use my stamping platform for this, I just 'used the force Luke' - that's a Star Wars reference that we say in my family when we just busk it!

The sentiment is from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks II which I stamped and cut out, then attached to the card. To give the card a touch of unexpected colour, I finished the card with gems I'd coloured purple with an alcohol marker.

Two card designs, different occasions, same stamp!

CHALLENGES
I'm linking Card One up with CAS(E) This Sketch - I LOVED the retro sketch there this week! Card Two will be my second entry into both Less is More's One Layer Card challenge with the theme 'Offset' and Perfectly CAS's One Layer Card, using one third of the card or less; I was totally inspired by Just Us Girls this week too with their Red Pink and Purple colour challenge.

Both cards will be my entry for the Twofer challenge which is celebrating its second anniversary with a Hearts challenge! The stamp both of my cards have in common is the small heart. Congratulations on two years of fun and jollifications ladies!

AND IN OTHER NEWS
Near where I live there are some large fishing ponds and yesterday afternoon, Eva and I went for a walk there. We are used to the natural beauty of the area and were quite sad to find that a brutal, prison style fence had been put up round the ponds. I stopped to talk to some men who were working in there and they told me the fence had been put up to keep otters out - apparently they eat the fish. As I walked on I came to the part where a stream flows out of the ponds and was surprised to find there was no fence there. Now, correct me if I'm wrong but I have always believed that otters are intelligent little creatures who enjoy a romp about on land but who are also keen swimmers. I wondered in what way the prison fences were going to prevent the otters from casually back-stroking in, dining on some plump fish and then leaving the way they came in. There's something a bit er... fishy going here I think!

It's okay, you carry on being on the computer, I'll just wait here...

Right, I'm off out into the sunshine with a very patient little pupper who's only had one walk today and is feeling a little bit disappointed about it!

Hope the sun is shining on you today!