getting harder every month....

 The Chocolate Baroque alphatag swap is getting more difficult each month now - the problem is finding the stamps to match the ideas!
The L for lighthouse tag was very much an after thought - I spent ages trying to make my idea for Lace work, using the lovely new lace flower stamp, then gave up as time began to run out, and instead borrowed the lighthouse stamp from Moira (we had been using 2 other stamps from this set at craft club). Image stamped in versafine smoky grey ink, coloured with pencils and distress inks. The light effect was copied from Moira - use a brush to paint where where you want the light, then brush mica powder over it - it clings to the water and sparkles nicely!
The M for music was the easiest of the three, the music background was stamped in DI -old paper?- then more of the same colour sponged all over the tag, with a darker brown round the edges. the image was stamped once onto the tag and again onto white card, and both were coloured with pencils. The violin and some of the flowers were cut out and decoupaged over the original image, then the violin was given a coat of glossy accents. The small violin charm was  one in  a pack found when a heap of stuff collapsed and had to be tidied up.
 The N for night was also awkward - 1 spent ages fiddling around with numbers in one form or another and only succeeded in filling the bin up. in desperation I went for real simple - stamping the tree in black ink and clear embossing it before sponging various blue inks over the tag after adding a moon mask behind the tree. I also sponged the ground under the tree with black ink - the mask wasn't lined up very well, and left a little pale line, which fortunately resembled a moonshine effect - you have to be lucky some time!

 The last photo is of the lovely tags I received back last month - J for jewelled jars from Kathryn and K for Klimpt from Pat, both very glittery and opulent looking tags.
Am now waiting to see what delights turn up in the post next week!
Apologies for lack of posts recently, but OH has been in hospital, and posts - and crafting - are rather on hold until he is better.

black and yellow

 The challenge this week at Simplystampin is monochrome with a hint of colour - and that at Dynamic duos is black and daffodil delight, with optional dry embossing. I had intended to do 2 different cards, but am rapidly running out of time, (in fact, am sure that I am too late for dynamic duos already!) so one card that hopefully fits both challenges!
The black square base card is cut down from A4, and embossed along the bottom edge with a snowflake cuttlebug embossing folder, that just about shows up in the second photo.
The image from lovely as a tree was stamped in versamark and basic black ink and clear embossed. The sun was coloured with a marker pen, and the clouds sponged round the top from the cupcake punch with the basic black ink after dabbing most of it off onto scrap paper. I added shadows using

the blender pen, and also patches of sunlight on the hills with the daffodil marker. the trimmed image was matted onto a layer of daffodil delight before mounting onto the black card.
No sentiment yet, as haven't decided what to put on it!

white flower

This is the first time for ages that I have managed to take part in the Make My Monday challenge - this month the theme is florals, and this week they wanted lily of the valley or white flowers.
I don't have any lily of the valley stamps, but I do have this lovely lace flower from the new Chocolate Baroque lace fragments stamp set that I was itching to try out!
I also wanted to try the faux patina technique from Splitcoast Stampers, so got inky fingers and put them both together.
The flower was stamped in versamark and embossed in detail white onto SU crumb cake card, roughly torn out round the image and the edges inked with vintage photo DI - and I carefully added a very little ink onto the centre of the flower using a cotton bud.
The faux patina background starts out with an embossing folder - I tried several, and the ones that worked best were the cuttlebug harlequin pattern I used here and the SU vintage wallpaper, which both have smallish overall patterns that are fairly deeply embossed. The folder was inked with SU crumbcake ink before embossing, so you have an embossed white image on a pale background - I embossed twice to get a large enough piece of card. The card was then inked all over with distress inks, starting with tumbled glass and peeled paint, ending with vintage photo. After a few hours drying on a storage heater, I dabbed a versamark pad over the card, and embossed with detail gold EP - the random effect does mean that the background got a bit inked too, but it looked ok.
I used a white 5"x7" card blank, with a mat of SU chocolate chip card under the embossed panel.

joy and koi alphatags

 These are the latest for the alphatag swap over at Chocolate Baroque - it is getting harder to think of something for some letters now, something that I have a matching stamp for at least.
I couldn't find any stamps to match my first ideas for J - I even put some 'orphans' away whilst searching! - and then I had  a brainwave. This stamp was part of a set bought last year, and fitted beautifully - just hadn't thought of using a Christmas stamp. The white tag was stamped with black versafine and clear embossed, then sponged with distress inks, mostly tumbled glass, broken china and chipped

sapphire. I used white gel pen to outline the words and add detail to the holly border.
The K tag was easy, using one of my favourite stamps from years ago, the chinese-style koi carp. I used the faux pearl background, starting with tsukineko frost white shimmer ink and then mostly the same DIs used for the J tag, but more of the lighter colours. The image was  stamped in black versafine, grasses sponged over with shabby shutters DI before colouring the fish with watercolour pencils.The fish then got a coat of rock candy stickles, then one of clear crackle

accents, some stickles were smudged along the water as well, and a few highlights in white gel pen.
The final tags are the ones I received last month, the lovely golden H for happy hearts from Kathryn and the beautifully coloured  I for Ipomoea from Sarah - thanks ladies, two lovely additions to my growing collection

got there eventually!

 I had been meaning to do scrapbook pages for quite some time now - without getting around to actually doing it! Spurred on by the fact that many photos were on OH's computer, lost when the drive failed (and the back-up system also went down-grrr)  I was helped by the Stampin Up day organized by Sharon and Lisa last weekend, which was to feature scrapbooking - so I turned up clutching an assortment of cat photos.
The colours chosen fitted incredibly well with my photos, and I ended up with these two pages - I do need to redo one of the photos, as I cropped it too small - only 2 more cats to go until I get up-to-date on the cat front!

All in all, a very satisfying way to spend a very wet day - and here is a photo of our supervisor, one of the handsome pair owning Sharon.

perfect pairs?

The challenge theme this week at simplystampin is 'perfect pairs' - think I am pushing the edges of the box more than a little here though!
The 'pairs' are the ships, the sailing one is from the new Open Sea set in the summer mini, and the speedboat from Need for Speed - sort of old and new together - can I get away with it please?
The card started out as a 6" square white: the background on white card,  was randomly  stamped with the other images from Open Sea using a retired ink really rust, then sponged with early espresso ink round the edges. The ship images were stamped in black on scraps of white card, sponged with night of navy, crumb cake and early espresso inks.
For those interested, there is a summer mini blog hop starting tomorrow, with two separate groups - group 1 starts with Alison and group 2 with Emily

colour challenge

The challenge at Simply Stampin is a colour one this week - about the only colour I had was the marina mist, and that was a marker pen.................so after much turning out of drawers and head-scratching, this is what I came up with. The base card is crumb cake, cut down to a square from A4, with a pink layer, then white layer.
The stamps are all from Everything Eleanor, which I haven't used very much so far. The scroll was stamped with crumb cake, and the leaves were punched from the rest of the crumb cake card from the base.
The flowers were inked using markers - I matched the pink marker as well as I could to the card, and the blue was my marina mist pen from the starter kit. All the flowers were cut out, pink ones glued directly to the card, and the blue ones on dimensionals.
As I haven't been able to keep up with challenges for a while, I was determined I was going to manage one at least this week- especially as next week looks busy too...............