Hip Hip....... Ive made it to another post, that's a 50% improvement on last time lol.

 Clarity stamps, stencils and blending brushes with die based inks. Sue Wilson dies. 

To make this one I placed the house stencil down first and brushed blue and yellow ink through the design. 

I removed the stencil then placed the inner stencil in place and lightly brushed black ink around it. 

Removed that stencil then placed the inner stencil from the countryside landscape in place and brushed more black ink round it. 

Lastly I stamped the animals in place.

 I used the ever popular Clarity Groovi system for this one. Such a clever system and so easy. It's opened up parchment craft to so many people who previously didn't think they could do it, didn't have time or had no interest because it always seemed old fashioned and not for them. Clarity have made the designs modern and funky and so interchangeable. And its speeded up tracing your design no end.  There's a growing number of children grooving away now too, it cant be a bad thing can it? I have discovered that Kuretake Zig Brushable pens work pretty well on the parchment. Alcohol pens tend to go streaky, and water-based pens take ages to dry so you smudge them if your not really careful, but the brushables are permanent and fast drying even though they are water-based ink. A great discovery for me and that's what I used on this sample because I wanted strong colours to show through the parchment. It works well I think.

This was a card I made with Polkadoodles stamp soup sets. Its a bit of a mixture of Lavender Tea and Lemonade Fizz. If you haven't seen these yet and you are a stamper its well worth checking them out. its all elements, such as leaves and petals etc and you make up your own designs as you like.  I stamped these with versamark ink and clear embossing ink onto black card.  Then I used Cosmic Shimmer watercolour paints over the top.  I love this technique, you can get such fantastic and bold results. The background mounted layer is a Cosmic Shimmer spritzer on white card. 

That's it for this post, thank you for popping by xxx

Ta Dah, fanfare please, I'm here and do I have a project for you.  Three words 'Ink Pad Storage', oh yes indeedy, we all need it and I've done a tutorial for them on the Studio 12 Blog.  So if you want to have a go at making one get on over there.  Its not hard to make I promise. I used the Studio 12 picknix collections 1 and 2 CD's for this project and I have to admit I'm pretty chuffed with it. I've made several since this one and I now have my most used ink pads at hand on my desk instead of in the drawers (which drove me crazy).

The challenges over on the Polkadoodle blog are now open for two weeks, plenty of time for entries now.  Give it a try if you've never entered before, fabby prizes and loads of inspiration from the uber talented Design Team.

Thats it for today. I do have other stuff for you to see but it's late and my eyes are about to jump out and scurry off to bed without the rest of me!  I will be back soon but in the mean time have fun crafting.

Phew got here at last, better late than never eh.  And what a week, snow snow and more snow. Well that depends where you are, we got rain for a couple of days too.  The snow did scupper my trip up to Peterborough last Friday, it came down so hard and fast the grit and salt didn't have a chance to work and the roads down here turned into a complete nightmare, Colin got as far as Emsworth and turned back after taking an hour and a half to get about 15 miles. There wasn't much point in me trying to attempt 180 odd miles. That meant getting up at silly o'clock on Saturday to be in Peterborough by 1pm. Not knowing what the roads would be like I had to leave a lot of extra time to get up there.  As it turned out I actually made quite good time considering.  The A3 had snow on the road and I did a little bit of graceful skating, but pretty much all the other roads were snow free.  Coming home was a tad dodgy on the A1 and A1M, snow on the road and really stupid drivers thinking they were immune to the conditions.  It snowed all the way home which did make for pretty scenery but it wasn't really much fun to drive in. Despite all that I still love the snow and I'd rather have snow than wind and rain any day.

Thank you to everyone who watched the show last Saturday If there's anything you'd like shown or explained better in the next show let me know.  If I can do it I will.

I made a little canvas for Polkadoodles Studio 12 blog this week. Canvasses are fun and quick to do if you have all your ingredients to hand, it makes a change from making cards and scrapbook layouts. You can keep them simple or really go to town on them, plus it gives me an excuse to get the paints out. I really don't use them as much as I would like to. All the paper elements are from the Studio 12 Heavenly Garden collection, you will also find buttons and bakers twine on the Polkadoodles webshop.

Here are the samples and some odds and sods form the deColourant show last Saturday.  Spritzing the decolourant and d-plus misters onto cut and dry foam makes an excellent stamp pad and gives really good detail.

 

Fabric and inked card.  the top images are stamped with the misters and the bottom images are stamped with the cream

 

 Arashi Shibori technique on these. It does give beautiful pleats and patternation

Happy New year everybody. I know it's a bit late, but what can I say, I've been very distracted and busy, plus I've dreaded doing a post after seeing so many comments about blogger not letting you load pictures.  But I'm here now and it's 9am Monday morning so we'll see what happens and what time I finally publish this post! If you heard a loud scream about 9.15, that was me lol.

I'll be on Create and Craft TV next Saturday 19th at 3pm, I'm hoping to do some Arashi Shibori for a demo, but it really depends on if I can get the right size pipe in time, If I cant do it this time I'll do it next time though.  We have the mister now so that's what I'll be mainly demoing.

Lots of Polka Doodles and Studio 12 news for you.  Firstly the Studio 12 blog has been merged with the Polka Doodles blog so there will  now be S12 posts on Tues, Thurs and Sun, and the Polka Doodles challenge will still remain on the Friday, so lots more inspiration for you all in one place.  Next, and I'm a bit late with this one (haha who am I kidding, I'm late with it all), Nicky has launched her Digiworld Downloadables shop within the Polka Doodles shop, loads of fabby downloads to be had at very reasonable prices, you can't fail to be inspired by all the lurverly images and papers.

Also check out the Feb issue of Making Cards, I have a set of cards in there made from HOTP Colour Me papers which I bought from Stamps Addicts, I loved using them and they made some gorgeous cards.  Full details of how to make them and stockists for the stash are in the magazine, along with other gorgeous projects by all the other designers, Emma Williams has a really beautiful project this month. The lady is someone from the family although I'm not entirely sure who it is. It does have my grandmother written on the back but really not sure that it's correct.

 

And late again here are the Clarity Stamp show samples from the beginning of the month.

There is watermark stamping on this card, but you can't really see it in the photo.

As soon as I saw these house stamps, I knew I had to give them the 'Nikky Hall treatment'. Thanks for the inspiration Nikky.

 UTEE lollipops, made by pouring molten UTEE into a small cookie cutter placed over the stamped image

 

 Hmm, well they all loaded so I hope that means it will publish now.