butterflies

I had trouble with this month's quintiles - too much choice! The theme was 'anything goes' , and I have a LOT of Chocolate Baroque stamps - in the end, as I was also supposed to be making ATCs I used the one theme for both sets 'Things that fly'. To my surprise I found that I only had one teeny tiny dragonfly stamp, so that ruled out using my gelli plate background using a dragonfly mask, so butterflies it was. Almost too much choice there, but I eventually found 2 matching butterflies in differing sizes, and used those for the quintiles.
The first one had a stippled background of distress inks, then the stamp from wild meadow repeat stamped to form the meadow effect - can never remember what sort this is, but it must be one of the most-used stamps from this set. The butterflies themselves were stamped n embossed in black, coloured with very ancient H2Os, cut out and glued on.

 The second tile I stamped the butterflies first, coloured with H2Os again, then went over them with a versamark pen and clear embossed them. The background uses distress inks and leaves from the garden as explained by Elaine. This gives a lovely effect, and is quite addictive - also works with die cut leaves.

 I used the same techniques for the ATCs, and the smaller of the butterfly stamps, with the addition of a punky flower stamp from a grab bag of stamps.

Clarity east

 Yesterday was a Clarity East workshop run by Janet - I think this was about the fourth one Janet has run, but the first that I was able to go to, and these are the card we made. As there was quite a lot of us, we split into 2 groups - one doing birdhouse cards, one Christmas with the holly tree. The Christmas ones were the more complicated, and I don't think anyone actually finished both cards in the time we had...........
My group started with the birdhouse stamp and the matching set of small stamps, and a rather nice floral stencil for the background (so nice one came home with me). We had a large selection of distress and adirondack inkpads to choose from, and I lazily used mostly the nearest ones, so my stencil background was mainly done in frayed burlap distress ink, with a dash of spiced marigold and and stonewashed. We cut the stencil down slightly, mounted it on black card, then on pearlescent white card base.

 The scene was stamped in black archival ink across a strip of white card before we added a moon and sky - sky was lake mist, tattered rose and mountain rose, with a bit of olive and peeled paint for the ground. Strip again on a thin mount of black card, trimmed at the sides to match the background layer.
Second card is all masked, and looks surprisingly dimensional when done................ We cut a mask for the centre first, and stamped the border around the edges using the leafy stamp from the set - I used frayed burlap again, with tattered rose and lake mist. Then we masked the border off and created our central scene - i used the same colours again, plus some mustard seed for the sun. I did the background first, using torn copy paper to make the hills, then put my birdhouse dead centre just to see if it would work.

 As some people didn't make it, I was one of the lucky ones to have a set of stamps to myself, so I had time to stamp another scene before lunch, and this is it.......using the leafy stamp to create tree branches, with stonewashed and mountain rose for the sky and lake mist for the ground. I put the cat in front of the birdhouse, as I thought he was a bit out of proportion anywhere else - when I got home I mounted this onto a 5.5" square of black card, then onto a 6x6" white card base.
In the afternoon we finished one card completely using the holly tree stamp, and most of the second card.

We stamped the holly tree onto white card, gold embossed it, coloured with perfect pearls, then cut it out. The background card was brayed in the corners with bottle and cranberry inks, then the holly sprays were stamped with versamark ink and dusted with perfect pearls. Holly tree stamped and embossed again in the centre, trunk painted then the cutout tree glued on top before mounting onto red card mat and a white card base.
The second card is still in pieces - hopefully Janet will have blogged it as it should have looked - mine is awaiting a nicer stamp to use in the centre of the two embossed and resist panels of holly at the sides ----------sorry, I really don't like the holly tree, so am still looking for a similar size replacement.................

canada goose

 Another card using the wetlands stamp set, and the same technique as the last post - on a bit of a roll here!
This time I added the canada goose (identification courtesy of ancient bird-spotters guide) which has been coloured using a water brush and baked brown sugar inkpad, with some wild wasabi marker pen over the rushes that he's standing in.
Both these cards are A6 landscape, and deliberately left without a greeting, as they are headed for my spares box...........

As the male room challenge is still open, I'm adding this one too

wetlands

There is a new challenge blog around this week -The Male Room, cards for men (obviously), and I thought I would try out my new stamps, a present from my daughter.
Base card is 6x6 pearlescent, and I started by masking off a stripe across the card and brushing it with coastal cabana and pistachio pudding inks from Stampin Up. I brushed some more ink on after removing the masking - just wondered what it would look like if I needed to cover up any stray ink once the masks got a bit tatty (have been making quite a lot of this style card lately using the same masking pieces), and decided I liked the effect!
The small wading birds were stamped in smoky slate ink, reeds and greeting in basic black -am not impressed with this inkpad, doesn't seem to have much depth of blackness, so will be back to versafine- then the tops of the reeds coloured with a wild wasabi marker pen.
Am entering this card to 2 challenges, both anything goes this week
 The Male Room
 Addicted to stamps 

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

faux chalkboard

 Faux chalkboard is this month's technique on Techniquetime Tuesday - one I saw quite a bit of a few months ago, but never got around to trying until last week.
The first card is following Mynette's video instructions (just to prove I can do as I am told) using my new raindrops stamp by Ryn, and a dirt cheap clear stamp I found in Hobbycraft on Saturday while waiting for the queue at the hairdressers to reduce to sensible proportions. Considering the weather we have had recently, thought this combination was quite apppropriate...................                                            
Moira and Janet can now relax, as I then reverted to normal and started playing around (didn't last long, did it?)
The next two both had the raindrops background again , this time on grey card - you can tell I like this stamp - and sneak peeks of 2 new sets from Stampin Up. the small flower border across the base is from Best of Flowers and the flower and sentiment from Simply Sketched, which is a new hostess set.

After stamping the raindrops and the border, I stamped the flower 3 times, using a post-it note mask and embossed with white EP. Then I went off-course and painted the flowers with a waterbrush and white Stazon reinker, gave it a quick blast with a heat gun to stop it smudging and left it overnight to dry properly. The next day I painted the flowers with a waterbrush again and primrose petals and raspberry ripple SU inks, with a bit of green marker pen on the stalks.

One I just mounted straight onto a raspberry base card, the other I cut out using a topnote Sizzix die.