Sunday at Gissing

 another Sunday afternoon at Gissing with Moira, Janet, Jill and Barbara in a toasty warm hall despite the dull weather outside.
Moira had a Christmas version of this owl card, which involved using practically every Christmassy Hobby Art stamp set she could lay her hands on, and a heck of a lot of cutting out. I thought I had a bright idea using different stamps, then found I didn't have them with me...............but I did have the set of leaf stamps.
I stamped the leaf onto green and orange card, added more colouring using sponges and distress inks and cut them out.
Moira had kindly provided the embossed square and its backing card, so I just added the owls in the hole and scattered the leaves down the left hand side. The white base card was randomly stamped with the leaf stamp in greens and sponged over with vintage photo distress inks.
 Janet's sample card was very simple, with the Claritystamp tree stamped in black and decorated with dots of  Paper Artsy fresco paint added with an embossing tool. Background layer was  from an old paper pad.
I had a quick play with the new stamp of the month from Hobby Art before packing up - a very quick card, took longer to finish up at home than to do! Masked off the central stripe with paper, brushed blue and green distress inks across it, then stamped the seed heads twice down the left and coloured the leaves in with marker pen.
Sentiment added later from some magazine freebie stamps, and base black card.
The random grey splodges are from the scanner, which obviously needs a good clean again!

Diva Red Saturday

I  had a lovely day crafting on Saturday with Janet and Moira, don't often get to the Saturday workshops, but managed this one at the last minute.
The cards are not in the order we did them, and a couple got finished off at home the next day.
Janet brought some of her collection of Claritystamps and stencils, and the owls were a recent addition. We stamped the owl in place first, then brushed ink through the stencil - Janet had traced round all the letters with a fine line pen, carefully making some lie over/under others, but I thought it looked ok without, so left it as it was.
The owl was stamped onto 3 different coloured papers and paper pieced over the stamped image, and I coloured his beak and legs in with marker pens. The greeting from the word chain series was stamped onto a separate bit of white card, sponged round the edges and fitted under the tail of the owl.
A mat of black card finished it off.
I had originally done two different colourways to see which I liked better, so finished the second one off later. this time I did go round the edges of the letters, rather wobbly effect on some of them!
The owl was coloured with pencils, and I had to cut round his tail to slip the greeting underneath. This time I trimmed the stencil right to the edges, matted onto brown card and onto a smaller plain square card.

 We also used the other stamp in the set - again stamped first, then the background inks brushed through the arch stencil before colouring the owls in with pencils. A double mat, this time orange and brown.









Moira used her favourite Hobby Art stamps, and started with a small card with a fancy fold out insert spotted on facebook.
The insert had to be made first from a square of patterned paper, as the finished size of this decided the size of the finished card.
I found a sheet with a calligraphy design that I rather liked, but it looked very dull once folded, so I started to brighten it up........
                                                                                     I stamped a leaf four times into the centre, and four small butterflies directly onto the paper, then two large butterflies onto card, which I cut out once coloured with pens and glued over leaves.I think I have worked out how to add them dangling from acetate if i try this again.....
I cut a base card from black card, added red mats to the inside before gluing the folded paper in.
For the cover I stamped a script stamp and the same leaf stamp using distress ink (wild honey?) , added another cut out butterfly and the word stamp - red mat was hand cut, and not very accurately as it turned out!

I was much happier with the last card we did, using brushos - the first time I hadn't taken my brushos with me, too! Base card and the main mat were stamped with a script stamp using broken china distress ink, then brushed with peeled paint and more broken china - the narrow mats are black.
The last one was finished off today, I made a brusho background onto water colour paper, trying to remember which blue I had used - I knew the green was leaf , and finally went for prussian blue instead of the cobalt I normally use. Mat in this case is dark green.

Diva Red at gissing

 had a great day at Gissing last Saturday with Moira and Janet, mostly playing with Moira's new Hobby Art stamps.
The first one was based on one of Jenny's samples for the recent show on C&C, which I missed. The reed image was stamped in chocolate ink onto a piece of cream card, coloured with pencils, and I sponged the same ink  round the edges rather than matt it onto more card. I stamped and masked the bird onto the circular piece of white card, then stamped the reed stamp again - also sponged round the edges with the chocolate ink as well as a little blue behind the bird. The circle was then lined up over the first image and glued down with pinflair  glue gel to give a slightly raised image.
I couldn't find a backing paper I liked from the pile available, so made my own - the feathery grass stamp was stamped with versamark onto the card blank, then green and brown inks sponged over for a shadowy effect, then the same stamp in chocolate ink in the front.
I also tried playing with the teasel stamp, similar technique but a square centre - the bird and the teasel it is sitting on also got a coat of glitter glue to make it stand out a bit more, as it looked very dark and dreary.
Moira also had the birds on a wire a stamp, I wasn't too keen on these, but they do grow on you!
 Here we used fusible fibres for the birds - remember those from years back? I liked the idea, but wasn't too keen on how mine turned out colour-wise - maybe I need to borrow the stamp and have another go! (am sure I have some of this stuff lying around somewhere)

The last card was Janet's, using Clarity stamps and the Paper Artsy fresco finish paints. Being Janet, she has the complete set, so plenty of colour options!
We used the paints to create the background, splodging them onto the wrong side of a  piece of cut'n'dry foam and dabbing randomly onto the white card.I know I used a lot of the colours, and I think they were smurf, guacamole, hey pesto, autumn fire and a yellow - we then covered most of the card with snowflake, which really toned the colours down and made a fantastic difference. The small grasses were stamped with brilliance ink, which didn't work too well as it came out grey rather than black - I decided I rather liked this in the end as it looked more distant than a black would have.
I added a bit of pansy paint to the remaining piece of coloured card, stamped the butterflies in black archival, added the lovely metallic glaze paint, then cut out the butterflies and used glue gel after shaping them.

Friends

 Friends is appropriate, as it is not only applies to  the sentiment but to Moira and Janet who provided the inspiration and the stamps!
The first card is loosely based on two cards Moira did for her workshop yesterday - Janet has blogged her versions here, so you can see the differences!
I used 3 different sizes of the Spellbinders peony dies to cut the aperture masks just to see if |I could make more of an arrangement of flowers rather than single ones. Did work, but got very fiddly using both  the apertures and the diecut shapes as masks.
Background done with distress inks in peacock feathers and picked raspberry  - Moira's version of the bleeding tissue technique for this involved lots of water and kitchen roll, and definitely needed bright ink colours to start with, subtle just doesn't work.
 Distress inks brushed and sponged through the masks, mostly using spiced marmalade and fired brick, leaf shape mask cut by hand and sponged with peeled paint ink. The stamps are by Hobby Art, using archival black for the flower centres and peeled paint for the swirls. Card cut down to 5.5" square and matted onto nearest pink card I could find to the background colour, then onto a 6x6" square white card blank.

Janet had been playing with the bokeh technique, using pan pastels and a Clarity moon mask set. My version used distress inks in wild honey, spiced marmalade and fired brick, with the white circles in brilliance moonlight white. Greeting is a Claritystamp, stamped on vellum using archival black - vellum secured on the back of the inked strip using redline tape, and the brad holding the paper flowers together goes through both the vellum and the card as well. Flowers were white, inked with spiced marmalade distress ink and impress chocolate. Matt is orange card, card blank is 5"x7".

Gissing Sunday

 A happy afternoon with Moira and Janet at Gissing yesterday - especially so as I hadn't been able to touch my craft stuff since the Clarity workshop last month, due to daughter reclaiming her old bedroom temporarily. There was a benefit in that everything was already packed up and ready to go..........
It took a long time to do the first card, using some of Moira's favourite Hobby Art stamps, as everyone wanted to use the farmhouse stamp, so we had to wait patiently for our turn. I did manage to stamp out loads of penguins while I waited ready for the WI meeting next week, when we will be making Christmas cards, so didn't mind being last in the queue! (thanks for the stamps, Moira).
Everything was stamped with versafine, coloured with a mix of distress inks and watercolour pencils - the sky was brayered with broken china and stormy sky inks, the sprinkled with a mix of glitter and white embossing powder to give a snowy effect , which doesn't really show up on the scan.

Janet's quick card really was just that - same two inks brushed through a circle mask before stamping the Clarity santa and sleigh and the greeting across the circle. Two  snowflake stamps in the corners and on the edges of the base card, and a quick brush of ink round the edges and that was it! There is a little bit of clear glitter on the tree and the snowflakes, which again isn't obvious on the scan.
Just need to sort everything out now and put it all back before I can get back to playing work again....

Clarity on Saturday

 These are the cards I made on Saturday at the Clarity East workshop with Janet - of course, after 3 days of lousy weather, Saturday was lovely and sunny, and even quite warm.............
Still, we had a good time getting inky!
For the first card we used distress inks and glimmer spray mixed on a craft mat and dabbed on with a sponge to create the background - I actually used blue inks, but they turned green as the glimmer spray was a gold one.
The reindeer was stamped on a separate piece of card and glued behind the aperture, mounted onto a green mat and then onto a card blank which had the treestamp stamped randomly round the edges.  Fir trees in front were stamped and cut out, and a bit of glitter added.

The second card used the same stamps - the sky was dabbed with white acrylic paint using the sponge again before brushing with stormy sky distress ink. reindeer and trees were stamped with chipped sapphire, mats are blue card.
This one was my favourite, and I have several spare bits to make more cards.

The final card was based on a design by Lynne Hammond, and used the sweater set of stamps - it was actually easier to do than it looked, but it did take all the afternoon...............and no-one needed the valium!
We cut masks to help with stamping the designs onto the sweater, which were stamped in versamark and white embossed, and used masking tape to help line up the stamps for the background (would have been a lot easier with a stamp positioner..............)

April tags

 The Chocolate Baroque technique tag challenge for April was to use stencils, and these are the two I finally decided on.
The first one was a variation of the tag I did for the Chocolate Baroque birthday colour challenge. This one had a base of distress inks  - wild honey and spiced marmalade - stamped with stamps from wild meadow in the marmalade and tea dye inks. I sponged the edges with vintage photo, then sponged versamark  through the sweet poppy stencil before embossing with a copper EP. The small flowers on the cow parsley stamp were coloured with a white gel pen.
I have loads of various masks, but none that seemed to fit a tag, so resorted to the Clarity tree stencil. The tag was coloured with distress inks again, this time using the ink stamped onto a craft mat, spraying with water and mopping up the ink with the tag - this particular one was done some time ago, and I can't remember which inks I used now. The stencil was the wrong way round for the effect I wanted, and I didn't fancy sponging versamark through the stencil, so decided to try a technique I saw Sheena Douglas using on tv recently.
I brushed the glycerine over the stencil, then added clear embossing powder, heated it while keeping two fingers firmly crossed -and it worked, although the glycerine did creep until the stencil round the edges. I sponged chipped sapphire over the tag to darken the trees then wiped it off the embossing, so I got my darker trees against a sky. The wise  owl was stamped over another inked tag with versamark and embossing with lava black EP , cut out and sat onto punched branches.

catching up

There was a very select group at Moira's  last Sunday - even so, we didn't get very much done! Moira had had a bright idea while stripping wallpaper (possibly pain-killer inspired) - what if there was another world under the paper? The top card is based on the ones she showed us, using some of her Hobby Art stamps and an embossing folder (Sheena?). Basically, the scene was stamped, then partially covered by the torn embossed paper and matted onto a card blank. I'm not really into fairies, so went for scenery instead - it was Moira's idea to ink the torn paper to look like wood, which really improved the effect.
The little scene with the poppies was what I did while waiting for  the others to catch up- there would have been far more poppies if I had had any post-its with me to make masks! I just had to stamp a couple of extra poppies and decoupage them in the gaps instead. I also found out that I don't like prismacolour pencils, much prefer watercolour ones, and switched to promarkers for the poppies after trying the pencils in the background.
Janet had brought along a card she had done as a DT card for Clarity Stamps using journalling and cherry blossom stamps and distress inks - definitely my favourite of the the day. I plan to filch this idea using some Chocolate Baroque stamps over the weekend, without the rather heavy-hand with the brown inks though, which made it very hard to see the cherry blossom.

 The tags were done earlier in the month - Glenda set 3 colour challenges as part of the Chocolate Baroque birthday, and these were my efforts. First uses stamps from poppy meadow and a stencil from Sweet poppy -I didn't have any yellow inks, but did have yellow card I could use as a background.
Both the  next tags stretch the colors a bit, and use a stamp from patchwork landscapes. the first was coloured with distress inks, second just stamped faintly in the background. The girl was from a grab bag of odd stamps, and is from an old discontinued Elusive Images set,words are a partly-inked stamp from artistic affirmations.
There was  fourth challenge that I didn't get around to doing, but I enjoyed doing these