Ladybird Parade

Earlier this year I mentioned three NBUS stamp and die sets that I'd had for a while and not touched - you've seen the bees and the gnomes, and here is my first make with the final set, ladybirds.

I wet a scrap of watercolour paper and sprinkled it with Brushos, then when it was dry stamped and diecut the ladybirds. Up close you can see the lovely random patterns created by the Brushos. I stamped the sentiment on the card then used foam pads to attach the ladybirds.

I am sharing this with

Less is More - Less (tiny and few) 


CAS on Friday - Love 

CAS Watercolour - Red and Black 

Is it a fruit or is it a veg?

I'm sure we've all heard the saying "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad". But then the same could be said about many of the plants we treat as vegetables; in terms of meal planning, an aubergine, a pepper or a tomato all count as vegetables. 

These juicy tomatoes are stamped with a stamp set from the Sheena Douglass Kitchen Garden range and coloured with Promarkers. If you think the colour of the inside looks a bit odd, it's actually EXACTLY like the inside of the out-of-season supermarket tomato I had sliced open beside me to copy. If it had been a warm summer day and I had a home grown, sun ripened one posing for me I'm sure the result would have been much redder.

I am sharing this with
Alphabet Challenge - V is for Vegetables 

Creative with stamps - Red


Country View Challenges - Splashes, Spatters and drips 

Pearly Sparkles - Include some red 

Embossing with water

Inspired by a post on the WOW embossing powder blog I decided to  try what they call the crackle embossing technique which uses water in  place of ink.

I brushed heavyweight watercolour paper with water then sprinkled embossing powder over it - my powder is a very old one called Wild Tiger which is a blend of orange, brown and red. After heating, I didn't get the crackle finish that the people at WOW got, instead I got a matte, slightly rough surface  that, as you can see, die cut beautifully to give a really textured finish to my hearts.

To keep it as CAS as possible I simply attached it to a die cut stitched square then stamped the single word Love into the largest heart.

I am sharing this with:

AAA Cards - up to one third + optional hearts  (have you any idea how much you need to exercise your rusty brain cells to calculate the length of side of a square to make sure it is one third the area of a larger square? And I used to teach maths and physics! *sigh*)


Make My Monday - I heart you 

Tales from the Craft Room - Love is in the air

Carfty Calendar - die cuts or punches

Pocket Watches and Penny Farthing

The other day I was trying to make a completely different card (depicting the story of Peter Pan) but it went all wrong and I was left with a card blank that I'd randomly stamped pocket watches all over. Here's  how I rescued it:

I cut masks for the watches then inked the surrounding area. I Die cut the Penny farthing bicycle and then cut a square of card slightly larger than it (large enough to cover the failed attempt at Tinkerbelle that's sitting in the middle of the background)  and stamped the Gentlemen definition repeatedly over it, then inked the edges.

The pirates that were meant for the Peter Pan card went onto yesterday's card, the crocodile is wating for future use. So nothing from my failure is wasted.

I am sharing this with:

Little Red Wagon - Aw, Man !

Allsorts Challenge - Vintage

A Place to start - masculine 

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of.... Vimto?

Well these cute little pirates are far too young to drink rum, but Vimto's about the same colour as the dark rum I imagine pirates choose!

To make the background I die cut the pirate ship using an old X-cut build a scene set (this set was discontinued, probably because there was a large "Ahoy there" sentiment die that was made back to front!) and assembled it, complete with puffy white cloud, onto blue card. Then I cut a scrap of sand coloured card into dunes and used it as a foreground, and then used a stitched square die to cut the whole thing out.

The pirate children, from a set of Clearly Besotted stamps, are coloured with Promarkers then hand cut because I don't have the matching die set. I used 3-d adhesive to attach the children and sails to give the card a little dimension.

I am sharing this with

Passion for Promarkers - For a child/Children images 

Sweet Stampin - Books   - despite being an avid reader I have absolutely no book related stamps or embellishments, and when I get my old Bookatrix scoring board out, all my inspiration flies out of the window, so instead of showing a book on my card I have represented the book "Treasure Island". Hope that's OK!

Anything goes at CD Sunday Plus

It's time for our fortnightly Anything Goes challenge at CD Sunday Plus.  Don't forget our rule that whatever you make it must include something from a CD, a download or a USB.

Today I've used the "Tools of the Trade" Shabby Chic CD from Debbi Moore. I think my little granddaughter would love this card. She lives in France and has seen the Gilets Jaunes protesting on the TV news and decided it was a fashion statement rather than a political one, so she persuaded mummy and daddy to buy her a gilet jaune of her very own.

Ornaments at Sparkles Christmas

This month's challenge at Sparkles Christmas is Ornaments.

I'm afraid I can't remember the make of this stamp set. I stamped each bauble in two tones,  first of all using the Misti to stamp the whole bauble with the lighter ink and then without cleaning or moving the stamp adding the darker shade to the top and bottom of the bauble and stamping again. Then I used a silver sparkle gel pen to draw in the threads and finished each one with a tiny silver bow.

I am sharing this with

Fab'n'Funky - Christmas 

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Quick and easy

Jingle Belles - Three