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

 

Hello there. Sorry for the delay but I've had a little blip, but that's life is it not?

Anyway here are a few more samples for you.

 Claritystamp wee stamps and the new alphabet set.  The background was done on the Gelly Plate with green and blue inks and torn paper.

 A sample from the newest Groovi plate release. Coloured with pencils.

 A Polkadoodles sample from Lemonade Fizz CD and Stamp combo. The umbrella is a template on the CD. Flower and leaves were coloured in with Copic markers.

Catch you all again soon, Dee xxx

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

Well look at me, two tutorials in a row. This time its pen storage, so all you penholics this is for you. It's another make for Studio 12 so you'll have to hop over to the Studio12 Blog for the instructions on how to make it. Its a great little box, you can fix several together this way up or lay it on it's side and stack more on top, perfect for your desk and making it easy to select and use your pens.

I used papers from the Polkadoodles Studio12 Picnix collection 1 CD and Studio12 Stamps

Have you visited the Polkadoodles shop recently, there is a fab new collection of cute characters, Work and Play collection 1.  There will be more to follow too so eventually there will be something for everyone and every occasion.  What more could you ask for?

If you like entering challenges don't forget the Polkadoodles Challenge Blog with a new challenge every Friday, and the Digi Choosday blog with a new challenge every Tuesday. 

Here are a couple of Cards I've made recently using papers from Heartfelt Creations. The pads are so beautiful you really don't want to use them unless you have a duplicate you can keep and stroke. It brought tears to eyes just pulling the sheets out the pad, and when I started cutting them .......... well you can imagine how I felt if you like me are a paper hoarder. Still it's done now, there really isn't any point in buying them if I'm never going to use them, right?

That's it for now. I shall return at some point in the not too distant with more papercraft makes for you to see.

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.

Hi everyone, where does the time go? I'll be on Create and Craft TV Monday 11th Nov at 9am and 4pm.  I have some lovely new Creative expressions stamps, masks, texture paste, gilding flakes and much more so please join me.

Have you seen the Dottie Hearts design gifts yet? just the perfect personalised high quality Christmas gift ideas.  Gorgeous designs all created by Nikky Hall, no stock pictures here they are original NH images and while some items are printed some are hand pained especially for you exactly to your requirements, what more could you want.  You can find them here

It was my partners birthday last week and I wanted to make him a card that wasn't too slushy but said what I thought of him (only good things).  I looked through my rather large stamp collection but nothing jumped out at me till I got to the Polkadoodles Studio 12 stamps, and there I found the perfect stamps for what I wanted.  The circle and heart stamps are firm favourites of mine and the sentiment was just perfect because he is incredible (well most of the time lol).  I also used 2 of the faux stitching stamps and the distressed dogs-tooth stamp which are very useful stamps indeedy.  Red, black and white inkpads with some white embossing powder and kraft card and voila, a special card is created.  As this card was made with Studio 12 stamps it is also my project for the Polkadoodles and Studio 12 blog.

Nicky has been working really hard and filled the Polkadoodles shop with loads of gorgeous new goodies, so many in fact that I cant possibly mention them all or I'll be here all night.  Check out the digi section as there are new digi stamps being added daily, don't worry if you are not a digi fan though as there is plenty fantastic stash such as stamps, stencils/masks, alterable objects, metallic Pan Pastels and so much more.  If you are quick you may even catch one of her special offers.

And at last here are the samples from my last Create and Craft show for Creative Expressions.

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.