Getting a bit too fond of this pink!!!

Evening all...........it's turned out pink.....erm I mean nice again.........lol!!!

I am so in danger of ruining my reputation with all this girly pink I am using lately but I must admit it does make a bit of a change from all the black and brown I usually use.

This card is one we will be making in the class tomorrow afternoon and I have used the Silken Mist technique for the background although I have given it slightly more texture by dabbing and dragging it through the H2O's rather than just swooshing it around.

The Magnolia stamp is by All Night Media and although I don't particularly like the real thing I really love this stamp as you can do so much with it.

Here I have stamped several images and painted them with H2O's. Then I have cut them as for decoupage but just glued the layers rather than using foam pads. I've started doing this quite a bit now due to the new postage thing....just to show that you can get as good an effect without the pads.

Gawd.....11.30pm and I still have several jobs to do before I can turn in and get some sleep. My own fault as I sat with DD and watched a film earlier while we ate tea and it has set me behind a bit.

Bless her....she came back from town this morning with the film of my favourite Maeve Binchy book......Tara Road. Not the best film I have ever seen seeing as how it starts about halfway through the book but it was OK for an early evening watch. Isn't she just so thoughtful though....ooooh I love her to bits my little angel.

Right...off for a shower and back to work. I daren't get in a bath as I think I would fall asleep and not wake up until morning.......eeeeeeeeewwwww imagine waking up in a cold bath!!!

Sleep tight peeps

Sheila-x-

Doing things by the book.

Well the ladies at the class this morning were suitably shocked at my very pink card and we had a very enjoyable morning....it must have been good as one Belle ended up legless......ha ha ha ha ha......or very nearly anyway. We did manage to locate the missing limb and re-attach it.

Two very gorgeous deliveries today....one containing my two new Cricut cartridges...Alphalicious and Going Places. They both look fab and according to a notice on the side of the boxes, each is capable of producing 5940 variations......phew....best get making then eh?

The other delivery had us swooning and slobbering all over the place........the patterned Bazzill has arrived.....OMG it is sooooooo gorgeous you could eat it. We just had two of the patterns in every colour so we got the spotty one for funky cardmaking and a more elegant one that looks like fabric. The black and white one looks very shabby chic.....I just gotta have some.

We have absolutely nowhere to put it on the paper stands and I (very kindly I thought) offered to bring it home and look after it.......nice try but no go on that one....lol!!!

Had to have a bit of a clear up in the workroom before starting anything tonight as I couldn't even find the desk let alone work on it and by the time I had done didn't feel in the least like making cards so decided to do an altered notebook instead. I want to make a load for the local shop to sell at Christmas and for the couple of fairs I do so I thought I might try and do a few a week and build my stock up that way.

It was lovely to do something different and here it is

I decided to do a mans book for someone who is maybe into DIY and found some fab paper in my stash by HOTP which had wood effects and hinges on it. I used that to cover the book and then used various Paper Artsy images to overstamp the paper. I cut an extra hinge and glued that on and then applied the letters which were also from a sheet by HOTP.
The red gaffer tape is by 7 Gypsies and after attaching a piece of that I grunged the whole front with a Timber Brown Stazon ink pad.
The metal saw embellishment is by Crafty Bitz and this has been glued on using Glossy Accents which I use for just about everything. It seems to be very well stuck but I am going to make myself a similar book to test whether or not it will stay put before letting them go public as it were.
I really loved doing it. It made a nice change from doing a card.
I forgot to mention in last nights posting that the Belle stamp is from Creative Expressions.
Thanks for stopping by.
Sheila-x-

Introducing Belle

If you're thinking........mmmmm I've seen that card somewhere before.....just scroll down and you will see that I have used the same layout as I used for the Oriental card I posted yesterday.

I needed to make a background for the image of Belle that was fairly quick to do as all of the work in this card is actually in the stamping and cutting out of various layers.

It started with stamping Belle onto a piece of flesh coloured card. I had to use Bazzill as it was the only card I had of the right colour but stamping on the textured side didn't work too well so I just flipped it over and stamped on the reverse. The stamping was done in brown as I thought black was a little harsh for the paper I was going to use to make her clothing.....Sari from the Basic Grey Perhaps range.

I stamped several images of Belle onto the Sari paper and began cutting the layers which I then glued to the base image as I didn't want a decoupaged look.

For the white pieces I just inked the top half of the stamped and stamped it onto the reverse of a scrap piece of the BG paper.

For a touch of bling I added a self adhesive jewel for an earring and a touch of silver Stickles to her bracelet.

The patterned paper used for the layering is BG, Perhaps, Julia. Both papers used are extremely lush and it nearly killed me to cut it......but hey ho....just means I'll have to buy some more.

I'm not sure what you would call this technique as it isn't strictly decoupage and I'm not sure that it is paper piecing either.Whatever it is I really enjoyed doing it.

The ladies who come to the shop for classes will be quite shocked that I have done a pink card and especially a pink card with bling.

I've got a feeling that this is one card I will become heartily sick of by the time I have done several classes with it.

How much spring cleaning did I get done today? I got absolutely nothing done......shame on me.

DD was going to be helping me as I have a bit of trouble lifting due to a back problem and also kneeling due to a strange lump that appeared on my kneecap a few months ago and I needed to do quite a bit of both.

So first thing this morning she said she needed to nip into town first to pay a bill.........an hour at the most ....or so I thought.

Three hours later she returned laden down with shopping by which time it was too late really to think about starting anything major.

I couldn't be mad at her though as she came back with some goodies for me too in the shape of a few sheets of All My Memories Herbanella paper in the most gorgeous green and navy and a new mug which is so big I could use it as a foot bath. I may have to use it as a soup bowl as drinking tea out of it would cause me slight problems IYSWIM.

So instead of actually doing today we sat with a pot of tea and had a long discussion about what wants doing and made a plan of action which makes such scary reading that I am thinking of taking my vows and entering a closed order for the rest of my life.

Well best go and catch some ZZZZZZZZZ's as I have work tomorrow and we have two classes booked in.

Bye for now

Sheila-x-

Manicstamper goes East

Being a cardmaking tutor I often get asked where I get my inspiration from to come up with new card designs all the time. The short answer is that I don't know. Much of the time they just happen which is good because if they didn't......I'd be out of a job.

The longer answer....and the one that most people want to hear is that sometimes I lack imagination to use materials that I already have to produce something new and then an explanation of how I overcome this.

What works for me is sorting and tidying.........and it works just about every time.

So I'll get up in the morning and think that I maybe don't feel like making cards today but will decide to tidy my paper storage or sort through one of my jars of ribbons and what happens is that two pieces of paper will be lying on the desk that I would never have chosen to put together but somehow they work. Or I'll discover a length of ribbon buried at the bottom of a jar that I had completely forgotten.

Whatever........it gets my creative juices flowing and off I go for a few more weeks until the 'I don't wanna's' hit me again.

I had a touch of it this morning as I was up until the early hours and didn't get much sleep so I decided to attack the drawer where I keep all my experimental background pieces and have a really good sort out.

I came across a pack full of pieces of card that I had used for some bleaching experiments last year. Fed up of just stamping and then painting with bleach or just stamping with bleach I decided to try applying the bleach with different tools to see what effects I could produce.

A lot of the pieces had been lightly sponged with neat bleach and looked really nice so for todays card I used two of the sponged pieces in a slightly unusual combination of colours for this Oriental card made using stamps from TandaStamps Far East Set 3.

The burgundy card bleached beautifully to give the mottled effect and the yellow card started it's life as a lovely olive green.

I repeat stamped the text stamp onto the burgundy card using Versamark and then embossed in gold and then used the same to stamp the image onto the yellow card.

The image was then bleached some more until the card became a smoother yellow.

Both were mounted onto black card and then attached to the card. The yellow layer is on foam pads.

The black strips are cut from leftover card and attached with DS tape.

Well I think I am going to have a slightly earlier night tonight as tomorrow is the start of my big spring clean and I am off upstairs armed with bin bags and a grim determination to declutter and clear up some jobs that have needed doing for a while........like getting rid of the box full of a 1970's DIY part work that hubby collected and has never even looked at which is why to this day his solution for any DIY job is a hammer and a six inch nail........bless him.

Bye for now

Sheila-x-

Yesterday Mono, Today....Colour with bells on!!!

Hi.........I hope you are all having a fabulous weekend.

Mine is going off with a bang after the postie delivered the latest TandaStamps sets this morning. I had to stop myself from dancing around the house when I saw the set of Paisley stamps........they are divine and I am so happy because I have had a set of stamps of this design on my wish list for so long.

Once I had got over that excitement I checked out the other stamps and there are three sets.......butterflies, leaves and zodiac inchie stamps.

Just had to start with the Paisley stamps and what better to go with them than the India set.....also from TandaStamps.

After the Mono dare from DCM I was ready for a bit of colour and I started this card by taking a piece of paper from the Dovecraft Designer Paper pad......gorgeous hot and spicy colours which are just right for the images.

I took the largest and most ornate Paisley stamp and using Stazon in Blazing Red stamped the image all over the paper and then highlighted parts of the design with a copper coloured Stardust gel pen.

I wanted some gold dots on the background but I'm not very good with those bottles of Liquid Pearls so went for some peeloff dots instead.

The India images have been stamped onto some red mottled card and I bleached out a few small areas and filled back in with the Stardust pen.

All three images have been attached with foam pads.

There are still loads of Paisley stamps to play with so I will probably have a play with those tomorrow after I have made a few more cards for the local shop.

I did really well today and made 12 A5 anniversary cards which I know they are short of so I'm pretty pleased with myself.

DD came back from town today with a party bag from Au Natural which cost £1. Most of the contents ended up in the bin.........I just can't see me wearing a purple spiky fur scrunchie in my hair somehow.......lol.

However we did manage to salvage 18 two and a quarter inch gingham fabric blooms from a bracelet plus 19 really pretty beads, four pony tail bands....two with red glittery lips and two with pink sparkly hearts plus two hair slides with two silver and pink metal daisies on each. I think that little lot is well worth the pound.

It's amazing what you can find to use as embellishments on cards.

Well it's just gone 3am so I suppose I ought to go and get some sleep. I'd love to stay and stamp some more but I have visions of me falling asleep with the heat gun still running or something.

Night night

Sheila-x-