evening trees

I tried just using one ink pad with these lovely stamps from the trees a crowd set . I used chipped sapphire distress oxide as i wanted a night-time scene, with the traditional torn paper to create the landscape. I stamped the trees first and did the landscape around them for the first card - the birds were drawn in using a waterbrush.
Sentiment is a favourite of mine and comes from the words of inspiration set

 The second card has the same colour scheme, but with the landscape done first and the trees added afterwards.




I used the same colour scheme for another stamp, which I used on the lid of the box I made to hold a set of coasters featuring different stamps from the set.





The coasters were originally beermats which were coated with white gesso before they were stamped and coloured. It doesn't show in the scans but they were finished with a very thin  coat of crackle medium to seal them.

Hobby Art playday

 had a lovely relaxing day at Costessey yesterday with Moira Walters and most of the usual crowd.


We started using the lovely hummingbirds stamps set, and created a this card. It took a fair bit to do, first making the distress oxide background panel and leaving it to dry.
The birds were stamped onto the spare watercolour card using black versafine ink, coloured with inktense pencils and a waterbrush and then cut out.
The flowers were stamped  onto the dry panels and coloured with inktense pencils and koh-i-noor watercolor paints.
The backing card for the panels was painted using the same colour as the larger flowers.

The first bird was was glued to the front of the card, and the second was glued to the back of the front panel, matching the beaks as closely as possible.








The second card used stamps from the
 bee friendly set, and also had a distress oxide background. The frame was diecut from cream card, and the cutout coloured with distress inks and using a woodgrain stencil once the first layer was dry.
The daisies were stamped onto the background, and again onto spare cream card. The spares were coloured with inktense pencils and the flower heads cut out . The large bee was stamped onto the background and again onto spare card, whcih was coloured and the body and wings cut out after colouring.  Sentiment added , then the card assembled onto a 7" square blank card, with stickles glitter added to the bees wings.

 The last one uses stamps from the same set, stamped omto another distress oxide background. The flowers were coloured with amixture of watercolour pencils and distress markers. The large bee was stamped onto spare card, coloured and cut out, and glitter added to all the bee wings.
Marker pen round the edges, and a toning red card mat.

quirky designer houses

 Good morning everyone, today I am sharing my samples of the gorgeous quirky houses from Chocolate Baroque - definitely something different for new home cards!
The stamps are book mark sized, but easily make larger cards...
The card on the left is 8" square, just to prove it can be done.  I started out with scraps of bleeding art tissue laid onto white card to create the background and brushed with water. Once dry, the tree house was stamped using black versafine ink and coloured with watercolour pencils. A narrow black mat, then glued to the card at an angle. The sentiment is from punky expressions





The next ones are both on diffent size card blanks, the left is 5"x7", the right DL. The one on the left has a distress oxide background for a night effect, while the one on the right is just stamped onto white card  and then edged with different coloured marker pens. they are both coloured with watercolour pencils

 The Heath Robinson house stamp was stamped onto grey card using black versafine ink and coloured with a mix of brusho powders and watercolour pencils. I cut it out into a sort of bubble shape to echo the bubbles, then cut the same shape out in black as a mat and orangy red to match the colours of the house. The sentiment was also cut into a shape and given a black mat, then glued at an angle

 The last one is simply stamped onto grey card  and coloured with brusho powders, mounted onto a DL card blank.

I loved these quirky houses, especially the tree house, and can see them getting quite a bit of use - the tree house would make a great halloween card.......

just playing...

 Sunday was the regular get-together craft afternoon at Wacton, and we all had a lovely afternoon playing with Tonic dies and Hobby Art stamps.

Being my usual awkward self I raided the stamp box and proceeded to get very inky - it is a good idea not to accidentally put your hand onto a koh-i-nor watercolour palette you have just used, the bright blue paint took forever to scrub off!


The first two used the garden wonder set of stamps and also the dragonfly, both designed by Janie Burnett-Bleach.  Distress oxide backgrounds, images watercoloured with clear glitter for the small dragonfly and  blue, green and purple glitters for the large one. The frog and snail were both stamped again onto spare card, coloured and cut out and glued in place.











This last card is the one i was supposed to have been doing all along.
 I liked the Tonic corner die but not the diecut flowers and butterflies the others used, so I added stamps instead, another Hobby Art set featuring bees. It did mean there wasn't such a queue for the die cutter!