Stampman ATC Swap

Evening lovely Bloggers from a very windy Yorkshire. We've been battered about over the last two days. I think the weathermen were kidding when they said it was going to be the warmest day of the year today. Perhaps is was an April Fool's joke!!!

It's been a very busy week here and I'm absolutely delighted to tell you that I sold every single one of the 30 bookmarks I made. The children loved them and when it's all for such a good cause as school funds I'm thrilled. Roll on the Easter Fair on Easter Saturday although that will be hopefully for my crafty funds as well as helping the school of course.

As it's the first of the month, that must mean it's the start of a new theme over at The Stampman's ATC swap and this time it's birds.

ATC's are still something very new to me and I'm not sure they've hooked me like tags have but here is my effort for my design piece this time.


I had another go at the resist technique everyone was playing with a week or so ago but this time tried watercolour paper. All the stamps I've used are from the Urban Chic stamp set from Tim Holtz. The script was clear embossed and then Antique Linen distress ink put on an acrylic block and spritzed with water before being stamped onto the paper. I over stamped with another script using Brushed Corduroy and the scroll at the top used Aged Mahogany and was spritzed with water before being stamped

Lastly the bird and little sentiment was added in Forest Moss.

Thanks for stopping by and for the lovely comments you always leave. I appreciate them so much.

Wishing you a lovely weekend.

Just Playing.

Evening lovely Bloggers. I hope you have all been blessed with the beautiful sunshine we have had in Yorkshire today. It's been wonderful and I have spent most of it in the garden so am one happy bunny tonight.

I don't know whether any of you have been watching Sheena Douglass on Create and Craft this week. She had a Pick Of The Week with her new Paint Fusion last Friday which was a run away success and had completely sold out within 48 hours, which I have never heard happening before.

It's a new painting technique and she makes it look very easy. The DT were lucky enough to receive all the goodies to have a play with along with Sheena's new DVD which explains everything in great detail and is a brilliant watch. Some of the techniques are incredibly easy and so effective but others take a bit of practice and my hand eye co-ordination is not quite getting it yet. Still that means lots more playing time for me!!


I thought I would share a card I made yesterday with the daisy stamps which are my favourite at the minute and I'm entering it into the Try It On Tuesday challenge which this week is a card Inspired by a song. If you haven't worked it out mine is "Daisy Daisy give me your answer do" I'll stop singing now, it's not pretty.


I embossed the flowers first with the Platinum sparkle WOW embossing powder so that you can just see it once they are painted. My technique is still not quite right, I'm being a bit stingy with the paint on my brush but if you want to see how it should be done, have a look at the gorgeous samples on Sheena's blog.


I've had another first this week, my first ever ATC which was for The Stampman's ATC swap. You won't believe how long this took me as I had to look up what size to make it. I kept it simple and made a distress ink background with faded jeans and peeled paint wiped over and then sprayed with water and blotted to make it really pale. The script was stamped in peeled paint and then the text in broken china as was my lovely Umbrella Man. I clear embossed him and stuck him on with foam pads. The DT have made some far more detailed and gorgeous examples so if you're into ATC's why not pop over and have a look.

Thanks for stopping by.

The Stampman's Swirls and Curls

Morning lovely Bloggers. It's nearly the weekend again. Where do these weeks go too?

It's time for a new challenge over at The Stampman and this time our lovely team mate Sue has set the theme of Swirls and Curls. Bet that got you all excited didn't it. Who can resist swirls, I know I can't. I have to have them on everything.


Here's what I came up with and I made all the paper on it myself and had a lovely, messy time.

Making your own backgrounds is so much fun and also so much cheaper because you already have all the stuff and I generally use cheap printer paper unless it's for the main body of the card when I use either stiffer card or in this case some watercolour paper.

Here's the original sheets for all the things I used on my card.


The first is the watercolour paper sprayed with moonshadow mist Treasure Island Aqua (don't you just love that name). It had a few swirls stamped all over it from Kay Carley's Funky Flowers stamps and I then used a Tim Holtz mask and sponged over it with Spun Sugar and Worn Lipstick Distress Inks.


There is a lovely shimmer from the Moonshadow mist.


The die cut swirls where cut from a sheet of printer paper that had been liberally splattered with French Country Starburst stains and then scrunched up, carefully opened and left to dry. The colours all blend and go soft and the creases have a beautiful shimmer.


For the flower I used another sheet of printer paper. Put some distress ink on my craft mat sprayed with water and then swiped the paper over it. When it was dry, the Tim Holtz swirls were stamped all over with perfect medium and heat embossed with Cosmic Shimmer gold powder.


I cut up the whole sheet and die cut some Tattered Flowers, the extras will come in handy in the future.

The piece of matting was card with bundled sage DI rubbed round the edge and I used the same colour to stamp the swirls on the main card.


Lastly, I didn't have any gold brads so I used some purple ones, dipped them in gold EP and this is the result.

A few liquid pearls were added for a bit more swirl effect, well you can never have enough can you?

All the things I used can be bought from The Stampman so come on show us your Swirls and Curls, the Stampman have a £10 voucher on offer as the first prize.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend whatever you are doing.

More Funky Flowers

It's perfect weather for crafting here, damp, breezy and cool. I've spent the morning making stuffed felt birds at school as Christmas decorations and now it's back to the paper!


I've managed another card with the Funky Flowers stamps. This one was coloured with watercolour pencils and then stickles added for the bling factor. Dusty Concord distress ink was wiped around the edge and used to make the matting paper. I also used silver mirri board for matting.


I had a go at the background that Jill demonstrated recently, although I didn't have the patience to make masks, but I think it worked ok. The ink was brushed into the flowers with a water brush.

The greeting is from Crafty Individuals.

Short and sweet I'm afraid today. I've got that many ideas flying around my head at the minute that I must get back to the crafting table, well after Neighbours anyway, yes, I know I'm sad!!

Thank you for stopping by and I hope your week is going well so far.

Flowers Galore

I hope you are all enjoying the weekend. I know the weather has been a bit wild and woolly for some of you, hopefully things are calmer today.

We have been quite lucky. It was breezy yesterday but quite bright and today has been absolutely lovely. I even got to spend the morning in the garden tidying up all the dead leaves and cutting things back ready for the spring and it felt almost hot in the sunshine!! I don't know about you, but I always feel so much better when I've managed to get some fresh air.

The challenge over at Tuesday Taggers this week is to create something without using patterned paper. Now this is right up my street as I don't tend to use a lot of patterned paper anyway on my cards.

After a long awaited visit to The Stampman a few weeks ago I treated myself to Kay Carley's Funky Flowers stamp set and at last I've managed to have a play with them. After watching Jill on C&C recently I had lots of new ideas to try out.


I stamped out the flowers and coloured round the edge of them with the Sakura stardust pens and then spread the colour with a water brush. It certainly makes your pens last longer and I love the soft effect. I then used one of the single flowers to stamp all round the edge in orange. This was then matted onto some printer paper that had Shabby Shutters Distress ink wiped all over and then stamped on in the same colour to create a background paper.


Around the main card I used a stalk and leaf stamp from the Funky flowers and stamped in Brilliance pearlescent rust and galaxy gold.


I made the flower embellishment by stamping two of the single flowers in different sizes and cutting them out. They were coloured with watercolour pencils and some stickles added. The leaves were punched out of the distress ink BP and I added some extra stamping to darken them.

Tiny jewels were added to the corners to finish things off.

I'm learning lots of techniques for card making from all your lovely blogs and am beginning to find putting them together much easier so a big thank you for all your inspiration.

Thank you as always for stopping by.