Hi there, it seems I'm having a bit of an issue with stupid finger syndrome. I had this post almost done and then bam, one press of a button and its all gone, disappeared never to be retrieved! well not that I can find anyway. I am  bit miffed it has to be said, but what can you do once its done? not a lot.

Anyway, thank you to everyone that came to my demo day at Emerald Crafts, it really was a lovely day talking to like minded people. I am really grateful to everyone that came along and supported the day. And what better could you get than being in the New Forrest? Such a beautiful place.

The first card is from Saturdays Demo and was probably the most popular sample. White on white is always popular though, but a pig to photograph. Especially when you don't have much skill in that department.

 

Sue Wilson Dies and Embossing Folder. John Lockwood sentiment stamps. Creative Expressions embellishments, ribbon and lace.  All available from Emerald Crafts.

 Sue Wilson Dies and paper pad. Creative Expressions Singles stamp. Cosmic Shimmer pastel watercolour palette, Creative Expressions Ribbon and Embellie.  All available form Emerald Crafts. 

 Sorry its a winter card, but I love this card I really do, so you'll have to let me indulge.

Claritystamp stamps, ink and Stickles, quite simple really.  All available for Claritystamp LTD

 A Groovi card from the weekends TV shows. Quite a funky one and bright and cheerful.  Claritystamp Groovi plates, coloured parchment and pens to colour the flowers and butterfly.

  And the last one today A Polkadoodles Stamp Soup Sample. I think this is a Lavender Tea one but I might be wrong, and if I'm honest I'm too tired to go and look, sorry. Yes I know, I'm a lazy mare. There I said it for you lol. 

Black card, clear embossing powder with Versamark inkpad and Cosmic Shimmer watercolour paints.

See you soon, thank you for visiting my blog, its very much appreciated. Take care.

p.s. it seems the spellcheck has decided to stop working so please forgive any bad spelling, its really not my thing. good job I can craft!

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

 

What a beautiful day it is today. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the bees are buzzing about and I've got washing on the line.  That last bit is a sure fire way of making the weather change, but I had to take the chance.  Washing smells so much nicer for being out in the fresh air, and its less creased.  Not that I iron either way, such a waste of time when it goes straight back in the wash after a day or so.  In fact the only time I do pick up an iron is when I need it for a crafty technique, it's definitely a handy tool then.

I have a few offerings for you again today, both old and new.

 A nice bright and cheerful one to start with seeing as its such a lovely day. I used mowed lawn, spiced marmalade, squeezed lemonade and picked raspberries distress inkpads and blending tools to colour the background piece. I dripped some water over and blotted with kitchen roll to take the colour out a bit.  The flower and dragonfly is stamped with Archival ink and Polkadoodles Lemonade Fizz Stamp Soup stamp set which I coloured with pencils to match the background.

 I made this card for an Emerald Crafts demonstration for Creative Expressions. Just Right stamps and dies, Spellbinders embossing folder (I think)! and a floral and dotty mask. 

I have to tell you I love this bricks and mortar shop. It is stacked full of crafty goodies, and if you like die cutting it has a really comprehensive range to choose from. I spend a fortune every time I go there. Sush, don't tell Colin!

 Claritystamp wordchain and funky leaves stamps with black sparkle embossing powder on an alcohol ink marbled background using the shaving foam technique. All the products can be bought form Clarity apart from the shaving foam lol.

A Claritystamp stencil and stamped card. I used both the internal and external parts of the stencil brushing ink through and around with Clarity blending brushes. Then I stamped the animals and lineart sentiment with black Archival ink.

I hope you like today's offerings, my tummy is rumbling so I'm off to forage in the kitchen for some lunch. Take care, 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

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, 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.

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.