DD Alters A Tin

Evening lovely crafters. Are you all shivering in this chilly weather? I think we've all got used to the warm sunshine haven't we.


Just a quick post tonight to share with you an altered tin DD was asked to create for another GDT spot she was delighted to receive from the ladies at Try It On Tuesday this week. I'm finding it hard to keep up with her these days.


She decided to use some of the flowers she made at the Easter Lovin Ink workshop and coloured a Tilda to match using promarkers. We punched the butterfly out of the scrap paper the flowers were placed on to be sprayed. It's lovely and sparkly and of course the colours match perfectly.


The little ticket sentiment is from a Whimsy set that are fast becoming a favourite.

The Design Team have created some gorgeous tins too so it's definitely worth popping over for a look.

Thanks for stopping by and for all the lovely comments you leave, they are so much appreciated.

Happy Easter

I just popped on this morning to wish all my crafty blogging buddies a very Happy Easter and I hope you have all been left a little chocolatey goodness by the Easter Bunny.

I have been very lucky and have a nice little stash to keep me going in those busy crafty moments and DD was awake at 6.30 this morning wanting to see what she had been left. Anyone would have thought it was Christmas. Still, long may the excitement continue.


I thought I'd share with you my little Easter tree which I decorated with eggs inspired by two of the most generous and kindest blogging buddies I feel honoured to know.


The marble eggs were the inspiration of Jo and the stamped eggs from Michelle. Thank you both.

Thanks for stopping by as always and I hope whatever you are doing this Easter Sunday, you have a wonderful day.

A New Challenge at The Stampman

Is it really only Easter, it feels more like the height of July with this wonderful heatwave we are having. It's so hard to drag myself indoors to actually do a bit of crafting these days.

Over at The Stampman it's time for a new challenge and I have the honour of hosting this time and our theme is RESIST. Hubby quipped, "does that mean you have to resist chocolate?" He thinks he's hilarious!!

No, we want you to have a play with a resist technique and here's my design project.


There are so many variations, the possibilities are endless but to give you some ideas this is the resist technique I used and it's one of my favourites.

I learnt this from the main man of craft Sir Tim but it's very simple and uses white acrylic paint as the resist.


Liberally cover your stamp with white acrylic paint and stamp in the normal way. Please remember to wash the stamp straight away. If the paint dries you'll never get it off!!


Leave the stamped image to dry thoroughly. You can use a heat gun but don't heat too closely or the paint bubbles.


Rub over various colours of distress ink using cut and dry foam. Make sure you use a good depth of colour so that the resist shows up nicely on the finished project.


Buff the painted image with a soft cloth to wipe off any excess ink.


You can then decorate your background in any way you want to. I used a tag and over stamped the painted swirl with walnut stain distress ink before adding a dragonfly from Kay Carley's lovely Daisy Daydreams stamps, painted with Cosmic Shimmer watercolour paint and a Woodware gold curly clip.

I had a play with embossed resist some time ago and you can see the results here, with a link to the original tutorial.

The rest of the Design Team have created some wonderful projects and have links to other great tutorials too so pop over and have a look at some other ideas before you start playing with your paints, inks and powders.

Don't forget The Stampman offer a £10 voucher for the winner so don't resist our challenge and get entering.

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Easter Weekend. I hope the Easter bunny is very generous to you all.

Chocolate and Good Company

Evening lovely Crafters. I hope you are all well and happy in your crafting.

The nice weather has returned here again today after a few dull and dreary days and it's been so lovely to be outside again. I hope it lasts until the Easter weekend.

Yesterday, DD and I spent a brilliant day at an Easter workshop run by the Lovin Ink ladies, Michelle and Janet and this is what we created.


The eggs are a plastic mould and have a chocolate outside, yes, real chocolate, and then the inside is painted and decorated with handmade flowers. Michelle taught us how to make 3D flowers including Orchids and snapdragons and we had a brilliant promarker tutorial from Kerry before we coloured our Tilda.

This is mine

And this is DD's. She keeps asking when she can eat her egg, but hopefully it'll last until next weekend.



Here are some of the flowers we made sprayed with various inks and mists. They are curled with a ball tool and layered up. Can you guess whose is who? I'll give a clue. I'm the conservative one!!


It was a lovely day with very good company and as always we learnt so much. Thank you ladies, we both thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to the next one.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

WOYWW

Morning lovely Crafters and Happy WOYWW. I can't believe I'm actually posting my desk early for once. Wonders will never cease. We are nearly at the end of our Easter Hols here and DD has been spending a few days with her Grandma. She came home last night and is this morning soaking in the bath. She's been there for an hour so far, you'd have thought the water would've gone cold by now.

Anyway, I thought I'd grab a few minutes and get my desk posted. It's also raining in our little bit of Yorkshire, good for the garden but not for my piccies!!


I have lots on my desk this week. There are two scrapbook layouts waiting to be worked on. The photos are printed and papers chosen and I've got lots of ideas for them, hence the Cuttlebug sitting waiting patiently to cut some tattered flowers out.

I've also been playing with different colours for the Lavinia card I made for Mothers Day. It's nice and quick, when I find a design I like I tend to stick to it until I get fed up with it!! You can see the piece of scrap paper where I've been trying out my promarkers for matting the stamped designs onto. I always think the colours look different to the actually pen label and need to try them out first for the colour I want. Playing with different inks has been good fun and I think I like these two best.

If you want to join in the fun and share your desk with the world pop over to see Julia at Stamping Ground and start browsing.

On Saturday we made the most of the fantastic weather and had our first trip of the year to Ambleside in The Lake District. It's been hard to believe it's only early April with temperatures over 20C hasn't it. I could get used to it.

Up at the crack of dawn, we stopped for bacon butties on the way and were parked up enjoying ourselves by 10am. If I could live anywhere in the UK this would be where I'd choose, how about you?

Thanks for stopping by and I apologise if I haven't visited you for awhile. My blogging time has been limited during the holidays but normal service will resume shortly so please bear with me. I need to catch up on all the lovely things I've been missing.

The Stampman Challenge-Embossing

Evening lovely Crafters. Summer has arrived, that must have been the shortest Spring on record, Shhh don't say that tooo loudly, I want this wonderful weather to last.

I was complaining last week about the fact that our Easter school holidays are so early this year, but with the weather being so glorious we are having a great time and have been out and about everyday and when at home we've been in the garden, so apologises for my lack of blogging activity, it is just too nice to be indoors!!

Saying that I did manage to get my DT piece done for The Stampman's new challenge this week which is Embossing. We were very sad to say cheerio to our lovely team mate Sarah, who is off on new and exciting adventures, but on a positive note we can say hello to Neil who hopefully will keep all us Ladies in order. He creates some gorgeous projects so pop over and take a look at his blog if you've got a minute.


Back to my project. I wanted to play with UTEE again but couldn't think where to start until I was watching the Clarity programme on C&C last weekend and saw a lovely card that gave me the inspiration to start. I thought the card was made by my blogging buddy Emma, but she hasn't shown it amongst her samples this week so I'm not so sure now. If it's not one of yours Emma, I apologise, but go and check out Emma's cards anyway, you won't be disappointed.

All the stamps I've used are from a Non Sequitur stamp sheet called Italy and it was in The Stampman's sale section in the shop.


The border was stamped and embossed with Moonglow Midnight Emerald Obsidian, which is the same powder I used for the central UTEE disc. The main piece of UTEE was done with Cosmic Shimmer Lapis Azure and dusted with a mica powder to highlight the texture.


I brushed some Starburst Stain over the Cuttlebug Script embossed background and added a bead to the UTEE piece.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend, whatever you get up too and enjoy the sunshine.

WOYWW-A Few Sweetpeas

Afternoon lovely Bloggers and happy WOYWW. I hope the weather has been as gorgeous in your little part of the World as it's been here in Yorkshire today. Warm sunshine, perfect.


We have made the most of it and spent the morning at Harewood House where little people can run off lots of energy and then in the garden this afternoon, so my desk is just as I left it after I had cleared up last night. I had a very satisfying few hours with Sheena's Paint Fusion Sweetpeas. You can see the scrap paper with all the practising on, so it wasn't instant, but I got there in the end and for once I'm very happy with the results.


I've made this little hanger for my kitchen. It still needs putting together but the messy paint bit is finished.


And just to send you a little cheer if the weather hasn't been as good as ours or if you just need a smile sending your way, here's one of my beautiful Tulips in the garden being visited by a little buggy friend.

If you want to share your crafty space or just want to be nosey, then pop over to see our esteemed leader, Julia at Stamping Ground and prepare to be wowed by what you find.

Thanks for stopping by.

Stampman Blogcandy and A Card For My Mum

Afternoon Crafters, how's your Monday going? It's the first day of the Easter holidays here and as the weather has been a bit chilly and damp we've spent the day having a blitz on DD's bedroom, well it had to be done!!!! You can now actually see the colour of the floor again and I know that all the clothes in the wardrobe do actually fit. Would you believe at nearly 10 she still had clothes sizes age 4-5 in her drawer. To be fair, they did still fit last Summer but she's had a bit of a growth spurt over the last year.


To get your week off to a good start The Stampman are offering some scrummy blog candy in the form of Tim Holtz loveliness. Jill has put together a collection of new products and some from way back to the value of £60 so if you want to be in with a chance to get her hands on it, all you have to do is put the above photo on your sidebar with a link back to Jill's blog and make sure you add your name to her post. The candy is open until 9pm (GMT) on Tuesday 26th April so what are you waiting for!!

Here in the UK it was Mother's Day yesterday and I hope all you Mums had a lovely, relaxing day and were spoilt rotten. Did you see that advert that was on yesterday that said "she is just an arm, a leg" etc and was dedicated to Mums. I blubbed my eyes out when I saw it. Daft or what. It just caught a spot!!

Here is the card I made for my Mum with some of the lovely new Lavinia stamps I bought from Harrogate a few weeks back.


I used distress inks for all the stamping, starting with Antique Linen. The words are Brushed Corduroy which I also added around the edges . The leaves are Rusty Hinge and Bundled Sage and the little mushrooms are Aged Mahogany. I always seem to struggle to get a good dark image for silhouette images but with this one, after stamping it, I used the fine liner that comes in the promarker sets to darken it up which seemed to work well.


The whole thing was finally sprayed with gold glimmer mist to add a bit of shimmer. Mum was thrilled with it, but I did have a head start because I know how much she loves Lavinia stamps!!!

Well, I need to go and get tea out so thanks for stopping by and enjoy your evening.

Stampman ATC Swap

Evening lovely Bloggers from a very windy Yorkshire. We've been battered about over the last two days. I think the weathermen were kidding when they said it was going to be the warmest day of the year today. Perhaps is was an April Fool's joke!!!

It's been a very busy week here and I'm absolutely delighted to tell you that I sold every single one of the 30 bookmarks I made. The children loved them and when it's all for such a good cause as school funds I'm thrilled. Roll on the Easter Fair on Easter Saturday although that will be hopefully for my crafty funds as well as helping the school of course.

As it's the first of the month, that must mean it's the start of a new theme over at The Stampman's ATC swap and this time it's birds.

ATC's are still something very new to me and I'm not sure they've hooked me like tags have but here is my effort for my design piece this time.


I had another go at the resist technique everyone was playing with a week or so ago but this time tried watercolour paper. All the stamps I've used are from the Urban Chic stamp set from Tim Holtz. The script was clear embossed and then Antique Linen distress ink put on an acrylic block and spritzed with water before being stamped onto the paper. I over stamped with another script using Brushed Corduroy and the scroll at the top used Aged Mahogany and was spritzed with water before being stamped

Lastly the bird and little sentiment was added in Forest Moss.

Thanks for stopping by and for the lovely comments you always leave. I appreciate them so much.

Wishing you a lovely weekend.