Slapping on the paint

Hello again - I've been missing you! I've been away to visit my Mum, although you may not have realised I was away as I left so many scheduled posts. I managed a tiny bit of commenting, but not very much as I can only connect to the internet through a portable hot spot on my phone when I'm there, and the mobile signal is terrible!

Mum's 90 now and getting very frail, but still insists on living alone in her own home and refuses any help we try to organise for her, so it's very hard work when we're there and it's been a real treat to me to be able to spend a few hours crafting today.

Here's the first of several cards I have made this morning, inspired by the photo inspiration at Just Add Ink.

I liked all the paintbrushes with the different coloured paints on them, which lead me to make a DIY themed card.

I'm also sharing this with Watercooler Wednesday - Masculine - this is a new challenge to me so it's my first time playing along.

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers #73 UFO

It's time for our new challenge at the Sisterhood of the Snarky Stampers and this time Edna has chosen U is for UFO.

No, not flying saucers filled with little green men, but Un Finished Objects.

I really didn't think I HAD any UFOs, I tell myself that I always finish everything I start. But I had a look in the box I keep at the side of my craft table, where I slip anything that makes me think "I'll deal with that later" and this is what I found.......

Erm, well perhaps I don't always finish everything I start (except a bottle of wine, but that's another matter) . What a jumble of stuff though - I thought it would be impossible to work out where to start. 

However one of the encaustic wax frames I'd made some time ago had a very underwatery look to it, and one of the stamped images is this gorgeous Katzelcraft seahorse.... an idea started to form.

I cut one of the encaustic pieces into a frame and mounted it over a piece of shell-patterned paper then coloured the seahorse to match both frame and paper.

Now I'm trying to think of a suitable snarky sentiment to use on the inside! Meanwhile, I am sharing it with
Addicted to stamps and more - Anything Goes

November's Rudolph Day

It's the 25th of the month and time for Rudolph Day again, the last of 2016 since on the 25th of next month we'll probably all be otherwise occupied!

For this card I've used the very last few snippets of a pad of papers and punch-out decoupage that was free with a magazine several years ago. In fact some of the snippets weren't even really big enough to make the layers I wanted, so I had to arrange them VERY carefully in order not to show the missing parts! But now the pad is completely used up, and isn't it satisfying to know that you have made 100% use of something (and were therefore fully justified in buying the magazine!).  The only element that didn't come from the pad is the adhesive foam snowflake border.

I'm sharing this with
Rudolph Day at Scrappymo's
Pixie's Snippets Playground

Guest Designer at Retro Rubber

I am absolutely delighted to have been asked to be guest designer at Retro Rubber again. This time the challenge is a sketch

A super versatile sketch too, that would lend itself to any style of cardmaking. The only constraint is that you must use at least one stamp that is over a year old, and tell us what the stamp is and roughly how old.

I've chosen to dig out some of my old Oriental stamps, mostly from not last time it was a fashionable these, but the time before. Eschewing the popular red/black/gold colour scheme for Oriental cards, I decided on a cooler green/black/gold one.

All the stamping is done in black Versamark and heat embossed with clear powder. The background for the topper panel is made by randomly sponging inks from the lighter end of a Kaleidacolour soft greens pad over white card. The gold edging is made using a tonertext pen and gold foil from Foilplay.
Stamps used are:
Topper - Tandastamps (no longer available) - around 12 years old
Vertical panel - unknown UM, possibly All Night Media, given to me around 15 years ago but not new then
Characters used for sentiment - Raindrops on Roses, around 15 years old
 Dragonfly - Hampton Arts "Dragonfly Background" - 7-8 years old.

I'm afraid I don't know what the writing says - I can identify a few of the characters in the background panel from my years of living in Hong Kong, but not the ones for the sentiment. I hope it's nothing rude! I used to laugh, in Hong Kong, as there was a fashion at the time for clothing, stationery and fashion accessories bearing apparently random English words, and often we thought the wearers must be completely unaware of the meaning. Once in quite a smart restaurant we saw a man wearing a t-shirt that said "The harder you pull, the harder it gets." I really HOPE he didn't go out to lunch fully aware of what his t-shirt said! But then for all I know, my card might say "I hope your mother in law gets bludgeoned to death with a wet guinea fowl" and I'll never be any the wiser.

Snowman at Cardz 4 Guyz

It's my turn to choose the challenge at Cardz 4 Guyz and this week we would like to see a snowman on your card.

I chose the theme because I had a snowman image I particularly wanted to use, however once I'd made the background I realised the image didn't look right with it so it was back to the drawing stamping board.

I made the background using a technique I've seen around a lot in blogland recently, double embossed foil. I swiped a Versamark pad over the "inny" side of the embossing folder, then embossed my piece of foil, then quickly threw pinches of embossing powder in dark and light blue, sparkle blue and clear hologram all over the foil and heat embossed it. I have to say it looks MUCH more effective in real life than in the photo!

I stamped the snowman - a very old but NBUS stamp from Dimension 4th - and coloured him with Promarkers and a hint of watercolour for the sky. The tag and sentiment are stamped with a magazine freebie set from a few years ago, with a Kaleidacolour stamp used for the sentiment to pick up the range of blues in the background. I used a staple to attach the ribbon because a staple adds a touch of "butchness" to what might otherwise be a rather girly bit of ribbon.

I am sharing this with
A Bit More Time To Craft - Anything Goes
Stamping Sensations - Christmas Greetings
Little Red Wagon - It's Embossable
Sparkles Monthly Challenge - Christmas is Coming
CRAFT challenge - Christmas   

Birthday Celebrations at Ooh la la Creations

It's time for our final challenge of 2016 at Ooh La La Creations, and our theme is Birthday Celebrations.

I've used a pyramage topper, insert and backing paper from the Paula Oakley Collection CD which you can buy here. Anyone who knows how much I love agapanthus flowers won't be surprised by my choice of image.

I decided to make a gate fold card and used part of the insert to cover the back panel, stamping a sentiment onto it. The rest of the insert paper I used for the outer front panels, as it was a bolder design than that on the matching backing paper, which I used ion the inside.

I assembled the card before adding the layers of pyramage. This way I could check after each layer that the card stood stably - a gatefold card is easily toppled over if one panel is heavier than the other panel and the back added together. Luckily the number of layers I'd used meant the back and right hand panel were quite heavy, and I was able to use all the layers, but if it had shown any sign of toppling over I would have stopped after 3 layers.

Penny Farthing bicycle

The first time I referred to a "Penny Farthing" on my blog, I was surprised that many of my American friends didn't know what I was talking about - but then, not having our coins, how would they have known that this style of bicycle  was named after the old penny and farthing coins, one very big and one very small, that were in circulation in Britain when these bikes were first fashionable?

I've never tried riding one - they look awfully uncomfortable - but I do love images of them, so it was natural that I would use one for this week's challenge at Less is More, which is Vintage. It's quite hard for me to get my mind around vintage done in a CAS way - I tend to think of it as lots of layers of ribbon, lace, patterned paper and flowers or a masculine melange of cogs, gears and machinery, steampunk-style. Well, I still have my cogs and gears, but I've kept them to a simple-ish border, part obscured by the penny-farthing in order to leave as much "white" space as possible.