Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone.

BIrthday Card

This is for my special forum friend Audrey who had her birthday is recently. Hope you had a good day. :o)
Unfortunately the scanner has muted the colours.

Burning Ambition

I've always wanted to have a try at doing this, then last week at the NEC I had a go and made my daughter Chloé a small keyfob. I'm so lucky as Chloé and my husband both liked it so much they bought me a machine for my birthday. I'm really pleased how these two have turned out both were firstly stamped then burnt.

Peter & Paul

The challenge on Craftaway a Sunday is sweet and that is the first thought I had when I saw this owl stamp.

Anniversary card

After a day of so many things going wrong, it was pointed out to me that my wedding anniversary is in fact tomorrow and not on Thursday which I thought was the 29th. My original project wasn't going to dry in time, it will do for another occasion. Then I remembered I had this wonderful stamp from Elusive images which is perfect for my husband.
This also fits the theme for Wednesday stamper which is open this week.

Birthday card

Rainbow card

This is for a card swap with the theme being rainbow. The colours have been a little muted in scanning and it looks like I need to try and realign my panels.

Materials:

UTEE

Pearlex

Mountboard

Embossing powders in gold, silver, copper & clear.

Workshop projects

These are from the workshop I did with Linda from LB Crafts yesterday. I had a brilliant time playing with some of my favourite materials. Sorry the pictures aren't straight, the glare from the metal was making it difficult to get a good photo.

Hallowe'en ATC

There's a new challenge blog called Craft Away A Sunday .
Every Sunday will bring a new challenge and in many
different styles as it is made up of a design team with
varied styles of crafting.. The first theme is 'Halloween'.

Pink Lady

Had another little play with Tyvek.

Butterfly moos

The theme on Make a Moo or two is butterflies, this also fits a forum challenge of making a set.
Background is sprayed with a variety of inks and stamped. Not sure if the shimmer will show from the scanning.

Stamps: Elusive Images

Wedding Card and Award

I needed to make a quick wedding card last night. This has been a very popular design which I've made several times over the years. It's difficult to get a photo to show the effect but the butterfly is stamped onto pearlscent vellum and embossed using a Glittered powder.

I have been given this award by Ann, it really means so much to me, that it comes from a friend who visits my blog often. Thank you Ann I'm sending this back to you too :o)

My nominations are for sites that I go to for inspiration. Some most probably have been inundated with nominations, whilst others should be.

This also goes to All my forum friends who offer encouragement but are too numerous to mention individually - if you don't have this award and want it I'm giving it to you now.

Karen for her inspirational artwork, constant encouragement and for being one of the best friends a girl could have.

Carrie for trying out and sharing different techniques and her stunning work.

Gillian for being able to take part in so many challenges and produce amazing artwork for them.

Glenda for sharing so much of her knowledge and always willing to help.

Deby I've only just found her blog but she has some amazing work in there.

Roni truly inspirational and shares so many techniques on her blog.

Tim for sharing so many wonderful techniques and doing them on video too, Brilliant!

Beautiful Faux Rust

My friend Gillian is guest designer on MMM this week. Her chosen theme is rust.

I've created my piece on sandpaper and thrown a variety of paints, inks, ink pads etc. at it, far too many to list.

I also think this fits the theme for thisthursday



Stamps: Innovative Stamp Creations

Rub ons: Basic Grey
German scraps

Hanging in blue

I made this for my friend Gillian's birthday. Sorry no camera about so just a quick scan.



Stamps: Paperbag Studio, Prima & HOTP



Materials: Tyvek, Acetate, starburst ink stains, Brilliance ink pad, Adironack Ink pad, Stazon

& Rub-ons.

Birthday card

Tyvek - first play

My first play with Tyvek not sure what I'll be doing with these pieces yet. I firstly painted the Starburst inkstains on and left to dry. I found with the inkstains that it was better to have the painted side down.

Birthday card

I made this card for my forum friend Jackie. The first card went missing in the post so I needed to do a quick replacement.

Sunshine and Flowers

This is a quick card for a couple of forum challenges one from a sketch and another using the theme sunshine and flowers.

Etched tree birthday card

From one of my first metal etchings. If you click on the picture you'll get a clearer view of the etching. I had a bit of a problem trying to cut the metal sheet straight not the easiest of things to do.

Copper etchings in progress

The tree was left in the etching fluid over night.
The Oriental Poppy had around 8 hours in the sun.

These aren't as dark as the scan shows - I've just discovered that I need to buy a new blowtorch so not sure when I'll get these pieces finished. I'll update when I've done the next stage.

Metal etching - work in progress

I'm still playing with these so it's just a quick scan. I first saw metal etching on a visit to my friend Carrie's blog so if you want to see some awe inspiring work pop over to her blog.
I love the top one but I think the tree should have been etched a bit deeper.

Collage Pendant

This pendant was made for a forum swap.

I really enjoyed making my very first pendant. LOL you should have seen me with the soldering iron, I kept picking it up in the wrong place wanting to use it like a pen.

Materials:- Microscope slides, copper tape, plain paper, glimmer mists, ribbon, lace, distress ink, dried rosebud, swirl clip & solder.
Stamps:- Tim Holtz

Smile Scrapbook Page

The forum challenge was to make a scrapbook page that would invoke a smile and had some stamping on it.

I love this picture my daughter when she was just 3 years old and a bridemaid at her cousins wedding but she wouldn't smile for the photographer. What you don't see is me running around like a lunatic with a massive bunch of ballons getting her to chase me much more fun than a boring photo session. :o)

I've only made a couple of kit type pages before for my mum so this was a bit of a challenge for me. I've got a few 12x12 books that need filling so kept to that size. Not sure if the metallic gold rubons really show up properly but thats what I used for the shaded area, the only stamp I used was the Inka confetti waste stamp embossed, the rest was gold embossing freehand.

Notebook

The forum challenge was to make/alter a notebook which has the name of the person who is going to receive it, as it so happens I also needed to send my friend Gillian a gift too, so I made her a notebook twinset with a bit of help from my Bind-it-all.

Materials:-

Stamps Paperbag Studios

Starburst ink stainstains

Flora Doodles flowers

Shoes

Backgrounds created using Distress ink pads, distress inks Perfect Pearls and HOTP stamp.

Main image Bravura Stamps.

As the theme on Arty Girlz is free I'm using this as my entry.

Happy Birthday Jo

I kept it quiet that I had Erica (Inka stamp) to keep the girls guessing :o) She is coloured using a watered flesh soufle pen and her dress with starburst ink stains, her painting is clipart with a little extra colour added. I used Distressed inks and pearl ex then overstamped the torn blotting paper. I couldn't find a paintbrush the right size but thought a little applicator with green chalk would do the job.

Sorry about the scan my husband had gone off fishing with the camera.

Altered tin

Mixed Media Monday's theme this week is Paris ...well I'm a little late.
This started off it's life as a Maya Road tin I started altering it earlier this year and usually every time I started to put the finishing touches on it some went terribly wrong it has been striped back down so many times now that it's also naturally distressed.

Backgrounds

I've been playing around making a few of my own background papers trying out different techniques using inks, inkpads & Paints. I'll be doing a few more of these of the coming weeks as I've so enjoyed doing this.

Middle Ages

The challenge this week on TMTA is:

"This week we’d like to take you on a trip to the Middle Ages. I think this era is absolutely fascinating.We’re curious to see how your ancient ATCs look like. - Have fun!!!!!"

Stamps:- Rubbadubbadoo

Swirls & flourishes moo

The theme this week one Make a moo or two is Swirls & flourishes.

Rubbers stamp:- HOTP

Spring

I made this for a forum Spring challenge.

The background is made from acrylic paints, gesso & inks.

Stamps: various.

Random placement of words by Wordsworth

Bird Inchies

My friend Joanne holds a monthly inchie swap. The theme set this month by guest artist Kaz is birds.

Stamps: Crafty secrets

Wings

This is for a Fatbook page swap.

Blue moo

This weeks challenge on Make a moo or two is:

"This week Hermine hosts “make a moo”. She made these gorgeous moos. The theme she chose is “favourite colour”. Don’t think that needs a lot of explanation, so come on show us your gorgeous moos in you own favourite colour this week!"

I found this really hard as I like so many different colours but went with blue today.

Stamps: rubbadubbadoo

Inks: starburst ink stains, brilliance ink pad & chalk inks

Spring Inchies

The theme Joanne has chosen for this month's Inchie swap is spring with a twist.

I've used some Mimosa that I dried last spring and used a crackle stamp on the base card.

Travel

The theme on Make a moo or two this week is Travel
"You can interpret this theme in so many ways, cities, countries, means of transport etc. Even on a little Moo you can travel around the world. So show us, what’s the destination of your journey this week?"

Stamps:- Crafty Secrets

Dragonfly

The challenge this week on TMTA is insects.

Materials
Stamps:- Rubber Stampede and Aspects of Design
Gold Mirri card
Acetate
Alcohol inks
Starburst ink stains
Stazon & versamark
Detailed and tinzel embossing powders

Happy Valentines Day

This hanging was made for a secret valentine swap.