E is for Eyelet over on the Alphabet Challenge

This is my first card using my new Paperbag Studio stamp, 'Forever Young', purchased on my trip to Wantage. I thought that the stamp would be perfect for Anniversary cards and so it is!

I stamped the image in Archival black ink and then made an elaborate mask from Eclipse tape. This allowed me to colour the image selectively with distress inks before adding colour to the children using copic markers. all the time leaving a nice clean inner frame. The main image was then matted and layered with My Mind's Eye, Wild Asparagus papers. I stitched around the edge of the main image and made a border and flowers from the same set of papers. Before adding the Tag I spritzed the whole card with a fine mist of gold glimmer mist. This gave the card a lovely subtle shimmer, without being totally in your face!



The tag was made out of the same paper and was fitted with an eyelet to give it some strength. Thanks to this eyelet I'm very pleased to be able to take part in the alphabet challenge "here"

I had better go now as we have visitors! Hope you are all enjoying your bank holiday weekend!

Sue
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Xtra Large!

This week's Tanda Teaser has been set by Wendy and she has decided to challenge us to do an extra large card....not really my forte....bit of a petite is beautiful girl me so totally out of my comfort zone. I even had to go and buy some extra large card to do the challenge. I found some A4 cards in The Range, but totally panicked on the way to the checkout and just had to put them back on the shelf! Then I found some 8 x 8 cards in my fav stationary store in Worcester...This is the second 8 x 8 card that I have made...you will have seen my first in Wendy's last teaser a couple of weeks back. For this card the main image was Agapanthus Cluster by Stampendous stamped in Impress Ultramarine and then the stems were coloured using Copic Markers. The background panel, main card, tag and edges of the main image were stamped using Agapanthus Bloom again with Impress but also with Weathered Wood Distress Ink..A water colour effect was obtained on the main image by just brushing the blooms with a damp paintbrush to move the ink to fill in the petals. The edges were distressed using Distress Inks.

I hope if you are reading this you can find the time to take part over on the Tanda Blog! Wendy and I look forward to seeing your art work over there!

Sue

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Meet Peggy!

Hi, I just thought that I would share what I was up to last night.

As you will know from my last post Zoe gave me a peg to decorate.....so that is what I got up to last night. It was the perfect excuse to open some Clearly Impressed stamps that I bought at the Stamp Attic on Saturday. I've been thinking about making some art dolls and the Botanical Illustration set seemed like the perfect place to start.

One of the stamps in the set seemed to be the perfect size for the peg so I stamped it out in Stazon onto white card and onto white tissue paper. I watercoloured the skin, wings, bodice and flowers with pearlised watercolours from the works. When this was dry I cut out the tissue paper face, shoulders and bust and used modge podge to stick them onto the head of the peg. I then cut out the tissue paper wings, sandwiched them between two layers of fantasy film, ironed and then trimmed. (I didn't want to risk stamping and ironing direct onto my nice new stamp as it isn't rubber!). I cut out the bodice, arms and garland from the card image and left these on one side.

Using the bodice I worked out where Peggy's skirt would start and then stuck white feathers around the peg to form her underskirt....then I stuck lavender skeleton leaves on top of the feathers to make her over skirt. I used a tiny piece of lace on top of this to neaten it off. Once this was done I stuck the bodice onto the front of the peg and the wings onto the back. Some flower soft and glitter finished the Peggy's garland, hair and dress. I added some more feathers at the back to give her a really floaty look.

As those of you who came to Wantage will know, I do not have my own dedicated craft space so all crafting tends to take place on the kitchen counter. When I had finished Peggie I sat her on top of the Modge Podge bottle to dry. It was only then that I saw that she made quite a funny picture infront of the rice snaps packet my husband had left out on the counter:) Looks like Peggie is about to become a tasty snack!

I hope Zoe likes her....I think that I might just have to make a few more for our Christmas tree!

Just a bit tardy!

Ok so I had a day out...just about caught up on washing, ironing, etc, etc, etc....so feel like I can justify blogging now!

It was a beautiful day...not sure what was going on...a bit surreal really... normally at this time of year a forcast for good weather means that the M5 is totally jammed on a Saturday, especially going south as I was...it was soooo quiet....petrol prices maybe? I don't care...it meant that I had a really nice drive down to Wantage to visit The Stamp Attic and meet up with Tanda Forum friends! Wendy was the perfect hostess and we all had a lovely day playing with Copics, chatting and sharing ideas. Here's the gang....left to right Zoe, Lucy, Janet and me....




One of our lovely forum ladies was visiting all the way from New Zealand so we decided to organise a meet...Wantage and the Stamp Attic seemed like the perfect place! Thanks to Wendy it was perfect! She let us use her studio and even delivered cakes complete with mini smarties! Have to admit we did spend some money....here's my stash...

guess I went a bit mad and totally spent all my pennies! I was hoping to get some of Tim's Dies, especially the flourish but when I saw it I realised that it would not work with the Wizard so I am now feeling a little miffed as I don't want to splash out on the Big shot!





We all made little pressies to exhange at the meet, you may have seen them over on Zoe and Janet's blogs, but just in case you haven't, these are the presents that I received....


Firstly Lucy's Alice in Wonderland chess board which she explains "here"
Having all seen the Tim Burton film recently, my youngest has fallen in love with it and has claimed it for her bedroom wall!












Next, Donna had made us some tissue holders and sent them over from Texas...She may not have been there in real life but she was there in spirit so to speak. We got to choose which tissue holders and I chose the one with blue lupins as I remembered the wonderful photographs on Donna's blog of lupins growing wild in Texas! Donna calls them blue bonnets and you can see them "here"







Zoe had been busy drawing so that she could ask Andrew at Tanda to make some custom stamps for us....She took her inspiration from the current trend in Steampunk and from some of the machinery that she saw in the boat yard where she was working...I think I got this right? Zoe used one of her stamps to take part in the Tanda Teaser this week and you can see it "here"

Zoe also gave us one of her twinchies and a peg to alter and send back to her.




Then lastly but certainly not least Janet brought us some gifts in a lovely personalised bag all the way from New Zealand, we each received a notebook and pen, a stamp (mine was of a hybiscus drawn in a traditional style), some shapes cut using the Circut, a phone charm, a plant stick and a napkin with the paula shell pattern all over it, some paula shell fragments and paper. Our challenge is to make something using the napkin and blog it....so watch this space....I'm still thinking though.....








It was a great day everyone, Thank you all for the great company and the presents!

Right I'm posting this mammoth post now...my battery is about to die!!!!

Sue
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Prom Dress Blues!

S***, S***, S***!!!


DD1's Prom dress almost finished...yes darling...the boning will keep the dress up!....oh no it won't...oh yes it will....oh no it won't..whoops oh no it doesn't!!!... doesn't matter how tight it is, it's still not staying up...so we need straps....but MuuuuMMMM! I soooo don't want straps!...









Need to be a bit creative here....she wants to wear pearls...so I think we are going to make the straps from pearls and integrate the straps with a pearl necklace....from I'm not wearing that she's a bit more interested ....watch this space!








At least the tiara is made!......










And the hand bag is sorted














as are the shoes















the shoes were one on the biggest headaches...super wide feet are not conducive to pretty shoes, but I think we hit the jackpot with these!

Fingers crossed for the pearl strap route!!
Sue
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Wantage Here We Come!

Looking forward to the Tanda Forum meet at the Stamp Attic in Wantage..Got my bag packed and ready to go....just look at all those lovely Copics just waiting for a day out!

I'm bringing some distress inks too so we can have a good play! Wendy stocks loads of Distress Inks so I think we are in for a good day!

Can't wait till Saturday!

See you there!

Sue

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Toddler Times!

Where did that week go! Can't believe it's my turn to set the Tanda Teaser already!

We have had rather a lot of under 5's birthday's in our family recently so I've been making a lot of toddler themed cards recently. The Tanda stamps that I designed work perfectly for these cards and you may have noticed quite a few creeping into the Teasers over recent months! Well here is another one!

I have coloured my images with, you guessed it, Copic markers. The background papers are from my stash..think they might be K&Co, but not sure!

I hope that you can find time to visit the Tanda Blog and join in with our Teaser this week!

Sue

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Wheel Thing!

Over on the Tanda Blog, Wendy's teaser this week is to use wheels somewhere on your card. I've had the bicycle stamp from Flower Soft for ages and so far hadn't used it....so this was the perfect excuse to get it out! It is a huge stamp so in turn calls for a large card...something I'm not really accustomed to..I tend to prefer smaller, daintier cards, so this was quite a challenge for me.

I stamped the bicycle in Coffee Archival Ink and then water coloured the image, on the metal parts of the bike I used pearlised watercolour to give a metallic sheen, the rest is just conventional watercolour.

The base card has been distressed with Distress Ink and wheels (from the Tanda penny farthing stamp on Transport set 1) were stamped around the edge in the same ink.