spring into summer....

Hobby Art workshop with Moira Walters and the usual crowd of suspects at Costessey yesterday - we sweltered despite the air conditioning, but all survived , and at some point we all actually produced something resembling a sample !!

Spring card first , using the wren stamps. The trio of birds was stamped in grey, the stump and large bird in black versafine, with the bird stamped again onto spare card. Coloured with koh-i-noor watercolours, and the spare bird coloured and cut out, then glued over the original stamping - saves cutting out the fiddly feathers.....
background pattern by stamping the leaves from the set in various greens then sponging over with the lightest green

 Front of the 8"x8" card was cut in half to stamp onto, and I left the back half intact to add the kids and a greeting. Fence and stone stamped in grey, goat in black, once onto spare card and once onto card base. Watercolours again, and the goat stuck over the stmaped one again.

I used a circle mask and brushed blue distress ink lightly across to create the sea and sky. The houses and sea wall were stamped onto spare card, coloured ,cut out and glued in place  after stamping the yacht.  The yacht was stamped onto spare card and colopured in, then the hull and sails cut out and glued into place.  seagulls in the sky to finish.

I used the card circle I was meant to use for the first card to make another card, stamping the houses in grey ink onto the circle and brushing some watercolour roughly around to create the sky and sea. Seagull in black, and the wall and yacht stamped onto spare card in black and coloured with watercolours . The background uses the small stamps stamped in distress oxides and sponged round the edges, circvle edged by running over a versafine ink pad.

rose candle set

 For my second post for Chocolate Baroque
this  month i am back to playing with another favourite, a decorated candle.

I used the small rose from the rose set  - you don't necessarily have to use the larger images to create an impressive effect.....

I stamped the rose three times onto white tissue paper and coloured on the reverse with marker pens. Paint with a wet paint brush round the edges of the design and tear out carefully.  Lay the images one at a time onto the candle, wrap a sheet of copy paper firmly round to hold in place and heat with a heat gun on a low setting to set the image into the candle (I use a very old hairdryer type gun that has a fairly low setting anyway). Repeat placing the other images equally around the candle - the eagle eyed will have spotted that I reversed one image, purely accidental as I dropped it and didn't notice the mistake until too late!

The box was made using an envelope board, with the rose stamped onto the sides before assembling it, and again onto matching card to make a closure using velcro dots.

I added a set of notelet cards using 4" square card blanks using a yellow mat to pick up the cololur of the rose. The back flap of the envelope was also stmaped with the same image, using second generation stamping for a fainter image.

brusho roses

 The lovely flower stamps from Chocolate Baroque on last month's tv shows were perfect to use with my favourite brusho powders - promise my next post doesn't have brusho in it!
The first card uses the rose panel stamp, from the rose and thistle set, simply stamped with versafine black ink and clear embossed onto a piece of papwer coloured with brusho powders. Trimmed to leave a border around the stamp, then matted onto first white card and then black card before mounting onto a white card blank.

 The other cards were done the other way around, stamping and embossing first onto white card, then colouring with the brusho powders.
For this one I used grey and yellow powders - i had a sympathy card in mind, but it would also be suitable for a man. The stamp is the large rose from the rose  set, which was used for both cards.

This one was coloured with red, yellow and turquoise powders - the turquoise got a bit too far up on the top left, and I ended up with a rather strange coloured  rosebud! Once dry, it was trimmed right down to just the rose, then cut into four pieces, which were glued onto black card.
The stamp was stamped without reinking  onto the outside edge of the square card blank to make a faint background (my ink pad had been reinked recently, so was quite juicy so the ink had stayed fairly wet on the stamp)

Hope at Bawburgh

 Had a lovely day yesterday with Janet Pring at Bawburgh when everyone got pretty inky.
We used the 'Hope' stamp set for All and Create designed by Tracy Evans, which has been added to my wants list....never seems to get any shorter, that one!

Being me, I did a load of extra toppers, and put them together last night while watching Tracy of FB live.

 The first card is sort of what Janet hoped we would make....well, it used the same stamp and the die cuts..... the second one is is the first of my extras, inked and stamped staight onto the same piece of card

 Top one here is the original version, in the second one I used the stem of one of the flowers to create the ground for the flowers

 Two very similar ones, we used a background stamp as well as stencils to create the background



The last three are what I came up with playing with the other stamps on the plate