Such Dark Weather

I'm glad to see from your comments I'm not totally nuts and lots of other people have embossed in funny places!!

Is it dark and dull where you are or are you lucky enough to be having some sunshine?

I've had to have a light on all week and it's been impossible to take any decent photos of anything so I'm going to have to show you a card I made for a friend's birthday ages ago and it's similar to ones you've seen before so apologises for that. I am working on something at the moment but it's not finished yet!!


I made this card for one of our lovely neighbours whose well into her seventies but is so active and always on the go she puts me to shame. She loves flowers but hates pink so I had to try using colours that are totally different for me. I quite like them now though. The stamps were Elusive Images Wildflowers and the inks were colourbox pigments.


While I had my stamps out I did another strip in different colours and layered it up with some cuttlebugging.

I hope your week is going well and thank you for taking the time to stop by.

For The Love Of Grunge!!

What a week.

People always say to me, oh you must have so much free time now you don't go out to work!! If only they knew. I think I'm far busier now than when I did work everyday and you don't clock off and relax at 5pm either. Not that I'm complaining, I love being at home, but this week has been mad.

I was a parent helper on Wednesday taking 50 children to the theatre in Bradford to see The Gruffolo which was fantastic. The kids loved it and joined in heartily and I think the grown ups enjoyed it just as much. It was so cleverly done, full of humour and catchy songs. We then went to the park for a picnic and a walk. The weather was cloudy but it stayed fine so was a lovely day out and the kids are great fun. I love helping out but it's really tiring. I was asleep in front of the telly by 8pm!!!!

Yesterday was a visit to the dentist, shopping and Parents Evening. I'm glad all thats over. Teachers (apologises to all you teachers out there) have a knack at making you feel inadequate as a parent sometimes. It may be partly down to the fact that Freya goes to the same school as I did many moons ago and some of the same teachers are still there. You never loose that feeling of being a lesser being I suppose.

Then to cap it all, we had to call the TV repair man out, we have a very fetching pink line down the middle of our TV and when he came this morning he said it has to be taken away to see if they can repair it which means we're back to watching a portable for a week. We don't watch it that much but I love my Strictly Come Dancing and it'll be weird to watch it on a a little TV. Still we'll manage, it's hardly a problem in the scheme of things.

Oh dear, I do seem to have had a moan this morning, I'm so sorry, some of you are having really difficult days I know so I have nothing to complain about.

So down to crafty things!! I've just discovered the fantastic grungeboard. What wonderful stuff. There is no limit to what you can do with it and it feels and smells just like leather.

I've started off with having a go at making some jewellery with it, inspired by the watch straps Sheena Douglas made on Create and Craft some weeks ago and these are the results.


The circles were cut using Nestabilities. They didn't cut right through so I finished off with a craft knife but you still end up with a perfect circle which is impossible to get with scissors. I embossed them with the swirls folder and then spritzed with glimmer mist and over sprayed with gold spray to get a lovely sheen. The swirls were highlighted with a matching gel pen. You can play to your hearts content, it was great fun. I punched a hole with a crop o dile and attached a brad to strengthen the hole.


For this one I drew round one of the leaf designs on the Elusive Images Diamante Delights sheet, cut it out, embossed and sprayed it in the same way.


The last ones were stamped with the same stamp and then inked with distress ink. I then overstamped the design and embossed to get a bit of a shine. The green one had copper cosmic shimmer sprayed on it.

I like the rougher surface of these, they look like leather in real life.

I have played with other things but I'll save these for another day. I've rambled on enough today and I don't want to bore you to tears.

Thanks as always for visiting and have a great weekend whatever you are doing.

Beautiful Autumn Colours

I hope your weekend was a good one and the weather was kind to you. It was glorious here. I just had to take some photos of this lovely new rose I planted a few months ago. It was from the bargain basket of our local DIY store and when I went out yesterday it was looking lovely in the late afternoon sunshine. Just shows you don't have to spend a fortune to get beautiful flowers.

The Autumn colours are beginning to look their best at the moment here, although it'll be a few more weeks before the trees provide that dazzling display that sets this time of the year alive and the lovely weather we've been having helps to make up for the dismal Summer. I love the mellowness of Autumn although I don't like the nights drawing in and the cold mornings!!

So many challenges seem to have an Autumn theme at the minute so I thought I'd get two in in one go again with another tag. Tuesday Taggers have the theme of "Shades of Autumn" and By The Cute and Girly's theme is "Autumn Glory".


My resolution of not buying craft things and using what I have seems to have slipped rather badly at the minute and I just had to give in and buy the beautiful Diamante Delights Elusive Images themeplate I've had my eye on for years, which is what I've used for this tag.


The flower was stamped out three times and painted with H20's, glitter was added and then it was decoupaged. I blended various colours of ink onto the tag and randomly stamped with various Heidi Grace stamps to create a background and then drew on the stitches with a brown gel pen.

Thank you for visiting and I hope your Monday is going well. I must apologise for not visiting all your lovely blogs lately. Spare time just seems incredibly short at the minute. I will try and get round them in the next few days. I don't want to miss out on anything!!

Texting In Purple

The theme for this week's Tag It On challenge is a purple tag with lots of text.

I had a lovely play last night, not really knowing what I was going to do just getting some inks and stamps out and seeing what happened. I had the idea of books and letters unlocking all sorts of things and was going to include a key and key hole but decided in the end to just add the key hole as the key was too big.

The only ink used was Dusty Concord distress ink. I added lots of water for the pale background and then went over a tattered angels mask with it at full strength. I stamped an Elusive images stamp that had very ornate writing on around the edges and then a Crafty Individuals stamp in the centre in black. The key hole was also from Crafty Individuals and I darkened it with more distress ink to make it stand out a bit.

For once I was quite pleased with the results and knew when to stop adding things, a rare event for me.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope your Tuesday has gone well.

Craft at Last

It's taken awhile but at last I did some crafting today.

We came back from hols last Wednesday feeling full of life and brimming with good health and by Friday my lovely hubby was struck down with a horrible cold and decided to share it with me over the bank holiday so although the creative juices were flowing the body wasn't willing. Thankfully we are both much better now and something has been created. Goodness I've missed my stash.


This weeks Tag It On challenge was to create a bookmark with any theme but using at least one stamp and I've just managed to scrape in. I really enjoyed doing this and will use it now instead of the old plant labels and shopping receipts I usually use.


I cut the bookmark from an old cereal packet so painted it with olive green acrylic paint to get a good base to stamp on. The swirls were from creative expressions and were stamped in both white brilliance and peeled paint distress ink. The quote was from my old faithful elusive images inspiration themeplate and the flowers were petaloo foam flowers that had a bit of a swirl stamped on them in crimson brilliance.


I must also say a big thank you to Anne who has a lovely blog well worth a look. I won her 100th post blog candy while I was on holiday and she has been very patient with me, for which I shall be eternally grateful. Anyway, her candy arrived this morning, which was a beautiful handmade notebook and I shall certainly make very good use of it. Thank you again Anne, I love it.

Summer Days

I have not been a good blogger this week. I've been fighting with Google. For some reason it wouldn't let me access anything on blogland yesterday but thankfully seems ok today so I'm going to get this post done quickly in case it changes it's mind.

I hope you are all enjoying the sunshine. It seems like summer has come back again for the time being, lets hope it lasts.


Because it's been so nice I thought I'd show you a couple of cards I made playing with my favourite Elusive Designs Wildflower stamps that feel really summery. This set of stamps are the ones I reach for the most and are so versatile, I just love them.


These were simple cards. I just used two stamps and some coordinating chalk inks to create a scene and then matted them onto plain card and added a silver peel off edging. I shall add a greeting later when I know who I'm going to send them too. I shall definitely be making these again in different colours.

Thank you so much for looking.

Experimenting

We've had a lovely sunny couple of days here, after a wet wet Saturday so it's been nice to get back in the garden although I have a real slug problem this year. All my seed grown Cosmos and Dahlias have been eaten to stalks so the colour that should be in the border now is sadly lacking. I will have to have a rethink for next year, but that is gardening for you, nothing stands still and there is always something to do.

We are on countdown for our Holidays now. I am not a clever blogger and don't yet know how to schedule posts to appear when I am not here, note to self to learn this for next time, so when my blog goes quiet, you will know what has happened.


I thought I would should you a card I made last week experimenting with moonglow mica powder. I saw Dawn Bibby do this technique on QVC recently and wanted to give it a go.

Versmark was applied to the whole piece of dark card and the powder randomly applied and then my stamp, Autumn Leaves Fine and Dandy again, was inked with versamark and stamped onto the powder removing it to create a negative.

The background card was stamped with the same image and pigment powder was applied to cuttlebugged embossed card and I used this for the strip at each side. The words were from Elusive Images.

Thank you for visiting.