4th of July

4th of July was the theme for this month's quintiles - as usual, the one you think will be so easy turns out to be anything but!
My first thought was to do a scrapbook-type page using a photo of son in his American Football gear with a stars n stripes background - after hours spent trawling computer files, came to sad conclusion that it was one of the photos lost when a hard drive failed some time ago (not only that drive, but the backup failed too.....)
I couldn't get any vague ideas using said stars n stripes to work, then I found the file box with the Choc Baroque townhouses and cottages sets of stamps, which had seen vary little use so far. Some of the buildings looked vaguely American to me, so decided to use them. I brushed distress inks in shabby shutters and broken china over the edges of the card first, then stamped the houses and trees. Everything was coloured with inktense pencils, and a banner added with foam pads - pennants were just strips of card cut into rough triangles. White card with red promarker stripes and blue card with white stars drawn on with gel pen.
Sentiment is from SU, and believe me I held my breathe when I stamped it !
Tiles now in the post to Margaret - all I need to catch up with now is the ATC swap..............

craft club

 Sunday afternoon at Moira's was a very lazy one - think we were all too hot, although the day was much cooler than it has been.
Moira will probably post the details of the card we were supposed to make - as usual, I did something slightly different; am sure she would think I was ill if I didn't!
She found a bargain roll of wrapping 'paper' that inspired the fishy theme, plus some old peeloffs and created an underwater scene.
I couldn't find a bit of the paper that I liked -typical- so made my own background using markers scribbled onto an acrylic block and spritzed with water (have become quite addicted to this, sorry). I stamped the sea bubbles by Ryn, the water weed by Chocolate Baroque and the Coral by Stampin Up in smoky grey versafine ink to create my background scene, then the seahorses by Chocolate Baroque in black. I coloured the seahorses, water weed and shells with markers with markers

and added a few streaks of pink to the coral. Matting was actually as instructed, then I added dazzling diamonds from SU  to the seahorses.
As I had a piece of the wrapping, I felt that I ought to use it, so did another card, this time  with SU stamps - the new ' by the tide' set. The coral was stamped on white card using crumb cake and baked brown sugar inks, the the card covered with the wrapping paper. The shells were stamped on cream card using the brown sugar ink and cut out.The fish were stamped on the same card that had actually been gellied, though it doesn't show really as this was a second print, and embossed with copper EP, then cut out and stuck on with foam pads. After I'd put it together,I felt that it could really have done with some seabubbles, but the wrapping is too plasticky to stamp on, so it stayed as it was. Backing card and matting is actually more of a  greeny colour than the scan shows - I haven't worked out how to adjust the colour balance on my new printer yet