Another of my favourite stamps...

This Clarity stamp was on my wish list for ages, after seeing Maria Simms' and Jo Rice's cards made with it. When I finally got it I was not disappointed and this is the first card I made with it:

Again this is such an easy stamp to use as Barbara Gray has done the work putting the montage together. I stamped the butterfly montage stamp on some card, tore the edges and inked with antique linen distress ink. Then stamped it again and just cut around the butterfly tag and butterfly, to top it off I stamped the butterfly section twice on vellum, coloured from the back and decoupage them up. I saw that the tag had  a spriggy leaf design which I also had as a seperate stamp so I stamped with Perfect Medium added clear embossing powder & heated to make a subtle background. A bit of matting and layering and a button threaded with a bit of thin twine and it was done. I was quite pleased with the result ... bye for now Annie x

Ooh watch out for tomorrow's post ... I'm a little bit excited :)

Gift Bags

It's been a busy weekend, but I still found time to fit some crafting in,

 

 

 

 

Kate, my youngest grandaughter loves buying gifs for her friends' birthdays, she is very imaginative when it comes to buying gifts. Anyway she was staying with us over the weekend  so when  it came to discussing how she was going to pack them, I suddenly remembered the prototypes I had made for the Fussy & Fancy Challenge. These were two of the better ones, several others went into the bin. Main thing is Kate was pleased with them x

 

Hoping to get some crafting in this afternoon  I have a stamp that I really want to have a play with... it's not even a new one just one that was on my wish list for ages ...so that could be tomorrow's post.

Bye for now x

Indigoblu Challenge

Hey what an exciting day .. Thursday 21st Indigobu announce their new challenge 'Forever 21' and the 1st challenge is.... 'Blue' I'm off to look at my indigoblu stamps. Several attempts later this is what I came up with:

closeup of flowers

insert

 

I used the Blazing Poppies stamp for my topper, originally I had  stamped and coloured with promarkers then I decided to experiment with vellum stamped with Perfect Medium and embossed in silver, I coloured from the rear with oil pastel and white spirit, I snipped into the petals and shaped them gently. I diecut  my image with a lacey edged oval and pieced another oval behind it. Two tiny butterflies were stamped and cut out from Indigoblu stamp

I made my background by stamping various flowers from the 'Live, Laugh ,Love' set using perfect medium and embossed with clear powder, masked them added bits of honeycomb stamp then brayered with various blue distress inks. Parts of  Love, Laugh, Love sentiment were stamped and diecut. I finished off with a silver raffia bow and a gem.

Inside I stamped Blazing Poppies again and the full Live Laugh Love sentiment.

Think this is going to be  design for my Mum in Law's Mother's Day card

Hope you like it now to link it to the challenge page

Bye for now x Annie

A Little Gift Bag

 

Today's post is of a gift bag I made for the Fussy & Fancy Friday challenge, again I left it late but this is what I eventually came up with

 

 

 

 

The main body of the bag was made using Papermania's 'Vintage Notes' papers which has a lovely fabric texture and printed with various hearts in lovely subtle vintage colours.

 

I used this clever tutorial http://howaboutorange.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/how-to-make-gift-bags-from-newspaper.html their original was made using a newspaper which is quite fun

 

I cut the background mat  using  the largest of Spellbinders Resplendent Rectangles, I then stamped Indigoblu's Blazing Poppies on some cream card and cut it out using Xcut heart die, flowers were then coloured in using Distress Ink pens. The sentiment is from Creative Expressions cut out using  the slightly smaller X heart die. Flowers were made with Bitty Blossoms Spellbinder's dies.These elements were then attached using foam tape to give a bit of dimension. I kept the tag quite simple cutting a heart shape and stamping it with Clarity 'with love' stamp I then made a frame for it with cream card which I raised on foam pads before adding some pink gems.

 

 

 

 

 

Now I am going to enter it into the challenge @ http://fussyandfancychallenge.blogspot.co.uk

 

Aw I have lost a whole afternoon playing with this project ... it will be  a quick tea tonight

 

Right that's all for now Thanks for looking

Annie xx

 

Happy Birthdays ... all 5 of them !!

I have been so busy over the last couple of weeks as I have 5 birthdays to make cards for 3 for the 14th 1for 15th and 1 for  16th.  As my mojo has up and left me I was very thankful to have found Papermania Vintage Notes . .a lovely kit  especially for ladies of a certain age. So Happy Birthday to all the recipients of these cards hope you like them
The  first card to be made was for my Mother in Law who was 92 today. As her eyesight is not to good I wanted to make quite a 'touchy feely' sort of card and here it is, a few spellbinders later and I was done. Mum in Law has phoned to say she has received her card and she loved it and knew immediately who it was from !!

Having completed this one I was on a bit of a roll and I batch made three smaller variations on a theme for 3 of my ladies cards:

 

 

My next door neighbour seemed well pleased with hers when she caught me popping it through her letterbox this morning.

The last one is a complete contrast ... a card for my sport mad grandson Sion, I really thought hard about this one and when I saw this kanban background paper had orange & turquoise splodges on it  I knew I had to use it because he has a fave tshirt in those colours!!
So Happy Birthday Sion for your birthday on Saturday:

 

So that's that panic over for a few weeks, phew thank goodness i can get back to crafting playtime....

Annie

My Granddaughter's Primark Pumps!!

Sorry I haven't posted for a couple of days but February is a very busy time as I have 5 birthdays on the 14th, 15th & 16th .. I finally completed the last card today, just in the nick of time. Right back to business ...you may think what's that title all about?
Well last night my eldest granddaughter, Rhiannon who is studying illustration at Hereford College of Arts posted a photo on FaceBook of a little doodling project she had started as a bit of fun ..nothing  to do with her coursework. Because she had used a form of doodling called Zentangle I asked if I could share the photo with some of my crafty friends on Facebook many of whom are fans of Barbara Gray who first introduced us to zentagling on one of her tv shows on Create & Craft. Barbara had explained she used to doodle to relieve stress headaches and had been surprised to find that these doodles were called Zentangles and popular worldwide & on the Web.
Well as a result of putting the original pics out there Rhiannon was so chuffed to recieve over 50 likes and many lovely comments including a couple from Barbara Gray herself.

Tonight the project was completed and I am posting the pictures up here because I think the end result is pretty amazing,  I know I am biased .... but that's how nana's are xx  Already these last pics have resulted in a flurry of  Likes and Comments, its good to encourage talent in young people so very many thanks to everyone who took the time to do so ...when I spoke to her yesterday she was so encouraged that she said she was going to go back to Primark to buy some more pumps  I had also advised her not to wear these works of art ... especially in the rain!! :) thanks for allowing me to be a doting Nana, that's all for now ..xx Annie

Tick Tock (IndigoBlu)

This is my second IndigoBlu project.

Ever since I can remember I have been fascinated by clocks  probably something to do with the fact that as a child I spent hours watching my dear Taid (Welsh for Grandfather) pulling clocks apart and then putting them back together again. So when Kay Halliwell Sutton launched this clock kit at the CHA in America I was thrilled at the idea that I could make my own clock ... and here it is...not perfect but all my own work and it keeps good time.

The demo Kay did was excellent she explained that it was well worth making  cardboard templates for positioning the figures and the rings and this did make everything so much easier.

Having primed the MDF cog with gessso and painted it with acrylic paint, the fun bit was the actual stamping. The rose and the cogs were stamped first and having masked them I drew the inner rings in place with a fineline marker. The Roman Numerals for 12 , 6, 3 & 9 were stamped with IndigoBlu Flitter glue and gilding flakes applied ...it looked a bit of a mess until I buffed off the final bits of flake and then wow what a buzz !! finally added the marker stamp instead of the other figures and a bit of stamping with the crackle stamp. Then added the mechanism, fingers & batteries and I had my own clock.

I have to admit this has been one of the most satisfying projects to do and it is much easier than it looks.
That's it for today time to go and make some tea ...till next time xx Annie