Flowers Galore

I hope you are all enjoying the weekend. I know the weather has been a bit wild and woolly for some of you, hopefully things are calmer today.

We have been quite lucky. It was breezy yesterday but quite bright and today has been absolutely lovely. I even got to spend the morning in the garden tidying up all the dead leaves and cutting things back ready for the spring and it felt almost hot in the sunshine!! I don't know about you, but I always feel so much better when I've managed to get some fresh air.

The challenge over at Tuesday Taggers this week is to create something without using patterned paper. Now this is right up my street as I don't tend to use a lot of patterned paper anyway on my cards.

After a long awaited visit to The Stampman a few weeks ago I treated myself to Kay Carley's Funky Flowers stamp set and at last I've managed to have a play with them. After watching Jill on C&C recently I had lots of new ideas to try out.


I stamped out the flowers and coloured round the edge of them with the Sakura stardust pens and then spread the colour with a water brush. It certainly makes your pens last longer and I love the soft effect. I then used one of the single flowers to stamp all round the edge in orange. This was then matted onto some printer paper that had Shabby Shutters Distress ink wiped all over and then stamped on in the same colour to create a background paper.


Around the main card I used a stalk and leaf stamp from the Funky flowers and stamped in Brilliance pearlescent rust and galaxy gold.


I made the flower embellishment by stamping two of the single flowers in different sizes and cutting them out. They were coloured with watercolour pencils and some stickles added. The leaves were punched out of the distress ink BP and I added some extra stamping to darken them.

Tiny jewels were added to the corners to finish things off.

I'm learning lots of techniques for card making from all your lovely blogs and am beginning to find putting them together much easier so a big thank you for all your inspiration.

Thank you as always for stopping by.

Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden

Week 2 of the Dragonsdream Tag It On challenge is Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden. Perfect for a family that share their home with so many fairies. No, I have not lost the plot, regular readers will know what I mean.

Anyway, I had a rough idea of what I was going to do and had a lovely afternoon just playing with lots of stamps and glimmer mists and this is what evolved.


I sprayed the tag with Cherry Blossom glimmer mist and let it dry and then Key Lime Pie. It was then stamped with Artylicious meadow flower stamps using green colorbox chalk ink for the background and then brighter pigment inks for the thistles. I coloured the flowers in gently with pencils to make them stronger.

The fairy was a stamp I have had for years and years. I stamped and cut her out and coloured her in with Sakura stardust pens but then spent ages trying to get her on the tag. She just wasn't right with the stamping. In the end I decided to hide her so stamped another stalk and leaves for the thistle and popped her behind it. I think this worked in the end.

The words were printed off the computer onto more glimmer misted paper and inked. The edges of the whole tag were then inked with green & chestnut whisper ink.

These tag challenges are becoming quickly addictive. I lost about 3 hours somewhere yesterday afternoon and still haven't found them!!!!

Tim Holtz Inspired

The weather has been lovely here for the last couple of days and today has been a Training Day so we have spent the whole day outside having a wonderful time. My daughter Freya, has been planting seeds and generally having a good time playing, and I have been trying to knock the garden into shape after the winter. I also managed to take some photos of the beautiful spring flowers. The daffodils are just beginning and we have a bit of blossom opening.

I have managed some crafting tonight and have been playing with tags. I discovered Tim Holtz's wonderful blog from a link from Glenda Waterworth at Christmas when he was doing his 12 Tags of Christmas project.

I have lots of inks and screens and stamps and have never used them properly and here was a way of trying out all sorts of things in a small way, perfect.



This was my first attempt.

The background was inked with a pale blue ink and then a small Tattered Angels glimmer screen was placed over and a green ink pad was wiped over the top with a Crafty Notions yellow ink sprayed over the top of that to build up some layers. The screen was removed and the text from the Artylicious Inspirations themeplate was stamped on in the same dark green ink and finally the border and corners were stamped in Brilliance Mediterranean Blue.

The dragonfly (Aspects of Design from The Stampman) was stamped in the same blue, cut out and coloured with an ink pad and coloured in with Sakura Starburst pens. Finally, green craft wire was curled and attached and then the whole thing was stuck on just by the body to give a 3d effect.

I had a lovely play, got thoroughly messy and ended up with something completely out of my usual style. It may not be quite up to Tim Holtz's standard but I shall hopefully use it on a scrapbook page in the future so that it doesn't just get put in a drawer and forgotten.