Cor Blimey what happened to the last few days? Oh well I'm here now and what a gorgeous day we've had again. I even got a little bit of gardening done. Its not often I really feel up to doing it although I do really love gardening, even if I can only do it in small bite sized snapets. I should really have been doing some work for Barbara but unfortunately nothing arrived in the post so it will be all hands to the pumps when it does arrive.

I have a few more cards for you, the first one I had totally forgotten about.  It is a couple of years old now so I think I can be forgiven.

 Claritystamp xmas stamps and stencils. White embossing powder on velum and it could be white pen to colour the holly and ivy but the layer behind I did some gentle white work after running the mask and vellum through the Grand Calibur.

 Claritystamp Wee stamps and the new Alphabet.  I love these cute rabbits. When I do a painting project I will often slap any unused paint onto a piece of card or tag rather than waste it.  This was such a piece from my bits box.

 Polkadoodles Lavender Tea Stamp Soup for this one and good old watercolour paints with a few bits from the accompanying CD.  You can't really see it from the photo but all the flowers and leaves are decoupaged.

Arhh, Bertie Pug. This stamp is from a dog set from Oysterstamps that Ive had for years. You can't get them now but its such a handy set for dog lovers. I coloured him in with pencils.

Take care everyone, I'm off to bed now. Dee xxx

 

Hi everyone, I'm here with today's make for the Polkadoodles Sudio 12 blog post. I hope you are all looking forward to Christmas.  I have only just started shopping myself which is very late, but there's not much I can do about it now is there lol.  Anyway getting back on track I've made a real cute little wall plaque/tray/hanger/thingy! not really sure what to call it if I'm honest.  This was a little wooden box that had wooden embellishments in it, I've had it knocking round the work room for a couple of years now.  I always knew I would do something with it and inspiration hit yesterday.

I used a few different stamps from the studio 12 and Susan Weckesser studio 12 stamps, shrink plastic and Sakura Stardust and Wink of Stella pens.  I painted the box with mushroom and light blue acrylic paint then I used scraps of backing papers from the Studio 12 Collection 1 CD in each compartment.  I added a  few odds and ends from my stash to finish it off.

 I took this pic with it by a ruler so you cab see just how small and cute the shrunk elements are.  Each compartment is just a smidge over 3cms so that shows the scale for you.

Here are the remaining Creative Expressions TV samples from my last show.  The Creative Expressions DT have now been given these Henna stamps and are making some fabulous creations with them, you can check them out of the Creative Expressions Facebook page and on the team Blog.

If I don't get back before Christmas I hope you all have a wonderful time.

Hello everyone, I'm here at last with plenty of pics for you to see.  I really don't know what happened to March, so much work and it flashed past before I knew it.  April has been a little bit calmer, but only a bit. 

This last week I've been doing some artwork with paints and inks and having a whale of a time with it.  I do love paints and inks, maybe that's why I took to Faux painting/effects.  It's a real shame I don't have more time to do it more often, I do miss it.  I would have loved to work for National Heritage/Trust restoring the old big houses, but alas I needed a degree which entailed being at Uni 5 days a week and with a morgage to pay I just couldn't do it.  If only I'd found it when I was younger.  Our careers advisers at school never gave us any information on jobs like that, all they ever banged on about was shop, office and bank work, none of which was I the slightest bit interested in.  Had I known about restoration of faux painting it may have been a different story.

I had a 50th birthday pressie to make for our friend Jez, it took me a while to decide what to do for him as it had to be something special that he could keep.  Inspiration hit when I was sat in the Dr's surgery, not quite as strange as it seems.  They have a few shelves of second hand books that they sell for charity, so that was what got me thinking.  Below is what I made, I was quite pleased with it, but flip me did it take a long time to do, even after ripping out about a quarter of the pages.  I don't think I'll be doing another one anytime soon.

 

 

 

 

I've also done a couple of projects for the Polka Doodles Studio 12 blog since my last post, both use Studio 12 stamps.  Nikky has loads of new goodies added to the shop website, it's well worth having a gander.  The first project is a wooden sign I picked up in Wilkinson's for £3, it's about 14" long so it was a real bargain.

 

A bit late now, but here are the Clarity samples from the April shows.

 

 

 

 

 

That's it for now. Have fun creating till I'm back again.

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