Ink spot: April 2012

Monday, 30 April 2012

Special Packaging

Still trying to get to grips with blogger.....can't preview now...left and right came up for the pictures..but looking at the hmlt coding..it looks like they will still be centered...so I feel like I'm flying blind here...

My next door neighbours' daughter just turned 21 and is in her final year at uni studying fashion design specialising in corstets and bridal wear....I was going to buy her a bottle of champagne but at the last min I remembered her mum telling me that she could only drink vodka because of her allergies...so I made her a pin cushion that straps onto the back of your hand. Then the question was how to package it, so I made a box decorated using the bird stamps by Sam Poole from "Creative Expressions"

I guilded the box using the bird stamps and the flourish from Sam Poole's stylish Chirstmas set. The inside of the tag was coloured and stamped with distress ink.

I would like to enter this into the following challenges: "Bunny Zoe's Crafts - ribbon or twine" "Creative Mondays - Anything goes" "Amusing challenges - Anything goes" "Come and get it challenge - Anything but a card"

"Sunday Stampers - Red" (the box is dark red...hope that counts! "Alphabet Challenge - Feathered friends" "Crafty Catz - Anything goes" "Inspire me Fridays - Anything goes"

Sunday, 29 April 2012

Tatty Button

OK so Blogger has done it again....pulled the rug!!! So how do you position your pictures where you like now? Mine in this post will all be central...I like to offset left and right.

So this card was made for my nextdoor neighbour's birthday...lovely calm image..we can all do with that! Image coloured with copics.

I would like to enter this into the following challenges:
"Poodles Parlor - Anything goes"
"Wags and Whiskers - Distressing"
"Aud Sentiments - Anything goes"
"CRAFT - Animals"
"CCEE Stamps - Scallops, flowers and buttons" OK ao I've got scallops and flowers....hoping that Tatty Button counts for the button!
"Southern girls - get your girlie on"
"Creative Belli - Animals"
"Inky Impressions - anything goes"

Thursday, 26 April 2012

Time for Tea!

Over on the "Tanda Teaser blog" the current challenge is Drink Up! For my card I have used designer papers, ribbon and felt from the Treasury in Kidderminster. The stamp of course is from TandaStamps. I chose to use this paper because I liked the retro design which I thought went well with the 50's image

I would like to enter this into the following challenges:

"Card Makin Mamas - Make it Girlie"
"Fat pages with attitude - Anything goes/faces"
"Cheerful Stamp Pad - Time for Queens Tea" definitely tea going on here and don't you think she looks a bit like a young Queen Elizabeth II?
"Love to Create - Anything goes"
"Make it Monday - Anything goes"
"Victorine Originals - Anything goes"

Whooop, whooop....I just sussed the paragraphs....or at least I think I have...it works on the preview anyway!

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

Home Tweet Home

Hi there, just sharing my first project using Sam Poole's Bird stamps from Creative Expressions.

I decided to go down the clean and simple route with this card and created a scene around the bird house. I used a little cheat to stamp the bird house on the base card so that I could stamp a little bird inside. By taping the heart inking and then removing the tape before stamping the image you leave the centre open. I then stamped the bird house again, cutting out the box and the heart opening. This way I could have a little bird sitting inside. The box was coloured using bundled sage and weathered wood distress markers and then coated with glossy accents to give it more dimension. I doodled some grass at the foot of the bird house to ground it.

To make the birds look as though they were actually flying around the bird house I used the dotty flourish from the stylish christmas set, again by Sam Poole. This was stamped using weathered wood distress ink (second impression so as not to be too overpowering!) To finish off I distressed the edge of the card with weathered wood distress ink and then I added a line of faux stitching around the card using my bundled sage distress marker.

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges: "365 Cards = Black white and two others" "Art with no boundaries - Anything goes" "Love to create - Anything goes" "Victorine Originals - Anything goes" "Whoopsie Daisy Challenge - Use a flourish" "One Stitch at a time - Anything goes" "Opus Gluei - Use flourishes" "Make it Monday - Anything goes" "Alphabet Challenge - F is for Feathered friends" "Card Crafters Circle - In Stitches" wow...I think that's the record number of challenges I'm managed to enter in one go! Just hope all those links work! Just previewed this again before posting and I still cannot get paragraphs to separate etc....anyone got any ideas? Thanks!

Sunday, 22 April 2012

Just when you think you've got it sussed, and Thank you Janet!!

Help what happened here? Just when you think you know what you are doing someone goes and pulls the rug out from under you. I haven't really got the time to start finding my way around the new blogger layout, but I guess I have to. Just wondering what kind of mess I can make of my first post using the new system!

I'm blogging today to share a little something that I received from "Janet Baldwin" last weekend. I've only just got it photographed and I really wanted to say a big THANK YOU to Janet and to share it with anyone who likes to visit my blog. Zoe and I were hoping to meet up with Janet while she was over here from New Zealand, but we just didn't manage it. Janet sent Zoe and me a little book with pictures from when we met on her last visit to the UK, it was a lovely thought and much appreciated by both of us!

Thank you again Janet!

Well I just checked the preview before publishing....looks sort of OK, but can't see why I don't seem to have paragraphs? Ho Hum! Just need to experiment I guess!

Monday, 16 April 2012

Another Wendy Vecchi Tag

Another week flew by and so it's time for another make with the "fab Studio 490 Voice of Art stamps by Wendy Vecchi" available from "Creative Expressions" I used one of the tags that I painted the other week as my base and then layered up using images that I stamped onto vellum and onto cream card. The images were stamped using the masking technique and the vellum was reversed so that the ladies faced in the opposite direction. Lots of recycling involved in the tag too..the wings are juice cartons, the tag and the doily are mount board offcuts and the vellum was an advert wrapped around the newspaper.

I would like to enter this into the following challenges:
"Stamptacular Sunday - anything goes"

"That Craft Place - Anything but a square or rectangle"

"Clearly Inspired - go green"

"Inspire me Fridays - Anything goes"

"The Stampman - Vellum"

"Totally Papercrafts - things with wings"

"Wags and Whiskers - Anything goes"

"Simon says stamp and show - Anything goes"

The rest of the design team have been busy creating some fab projects with these stamps so be sure to go and check out their blogs too!

Monday, 9 April 2012

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours!

Hope you all had a great Easter break...done a bit of travelling up and down the country....Hubby has some serious brownie points from mum having trimmed her hedges! Dad was drifting in and out of sleep all the time we were there, this seems to be normal for him at the moment.

We wanted to have a cream tea before we came home...so I followed a Delia Smith recipe to the tee...and the scones came out of the oven like charcoal blocks!...I had to make a second batch... reducing the cooking time and the oven temp...they did rise and more or less worked! Still got ribbed seriously though!...really Em should have been doing the cooking she has got a lot to learn about looking after herself between now and September!

Mum is convinced her oven thermometer/thermostat is kaput and I think I agree with her..but you know what they say..bad workmen and all that...Have to put a word in here though, because mum is a very good cook! So I do think she needs a new cooker.

Enough of that...I should be showing you my next Dt piece for Creative Expressions using the new Wendy Vecchi stamps...By the way... Thank you sooo much, Wendy, for your very kind comments on my last piece, much appreciated! This next piece is not so Wendy Vecchi is style, but I love the text and the thought that it makes the perfect tag for a special present.

I used a fiskers template to cut a pillow box out of card that I had stamped using the background ledger stamp and the rubber stamp advert stamp.

I would like to enter this into the following challenges:

"ginger loft Challenge - Anything but a card"

"Craft us Crazy - Anything but a card/altered item"

"Crafty ribbons - Black and White plus one other colour" my other colour is silver

"Dutch dare challenge - fancy folds"

"For your inspiration - inspired by photo"

"Cooking it up with katie - Fun folds, flower"

Thursday, 5 April 2012

Happy Easter

I can't believe that it's Easter already! Where does the time go? Not just that though...the last few months have seen me taking my eldest daughter to her Uni interviews...She has got and accepted a conditional offer to study Graphics at Falmouth University...Unless something goes catastrophically wrong she will be leaving home in a few months time. How scary is that! Seems like only yesterday she was a babe in arms.

Enough of that....the next "Tanda Teaser" is Easter. So this is my Easter card...very simple, using the cross elements from Tanda Mack set 1.

I would like to enter this into the following challenges:

"My Mums Craft Shop - Easter/animals"

"Paper Pretties - Monochromatic"

"The Paper Shelter - Anything goes/Easter"

"Penny's Paper Crafty - Easter"

"Rubys Rainbow - Easter"

"The sisterhood of crafters - Easter"

Happy Easter everyone!!

Tuesday, 3 April 2012

Stand Up, Ladies, For Your Rights!

Time for another Creative Expressions creation....and this one is sooooo green....lots of recycling...and eco green paints!

The latest set of stamps from "Creative Expressions" are from Wendy Vecchi Studio 490...the voice of art...

The lady really put me in mind of the suffragette movement and I was instantly thinking of blue stockings and education for women..Hence the blue dress (couldn't see her stockings!)and physics/engineering theme.

So what are the green aspects....the cogs are all cut from fruit juice cartons...coloured with alcohol inks, the pin is from a white stuff garment I happened to buy, the chain is from a Christmas cracker that I inked with alcohol inks to make it a brassy colour. The tag and clock are all cut from mount board cut offs that I got free from the local picture framer.

I coloured the base tag with the Eco Green paints...using the crackle technique shown "here"

In case you haven't guessed it this is me...not quite a blue stocking...but graduated at York Uni in Chemistry in '87 now looking forward to a new career in 2012!