Hearts and Roses....

Hello everyone and welcome! Like usual, a specially warm welcome to my new followers!!
Today I am sharing two cards... It's not often these day that I make cards, and I don't consider myself a card making, but.... sometimes one just needs a card, so here goes, they each have a vague sort of Valentine's theme even though I did not specifically make them as Valentine's cards...

Card No 1:

My usual vintage romantic style, some layered papers, some layered Spellbinder dies, these are from the new release Imperial Gold dies, some roses, a ribbon and a little Prima wood ticket. The rose/heart in the center will come your way as a freebie tomorrow, though I altered it quite a bit with ink, paint and pencils for this project. Here are some close ups:

Card No 2

For this one I used some new stamps I picked up in my local Hobby Craft store, (as if I needed new stamps lol) the one in the middle was a Docraft stamp and the heart one a £1 clear stamp. The girl one is an old Prima stamp. The button I made from punched shrink plastic and the Love ticket will come your way with tomorrow's freebies again.

TWell, that's it, thank you for visiting and I'll see you tomorrow with the usual Friday Freebies.

Full Steam ahead

Sorry, this is a totally unsuitable title for this post, other than for the fact that it is a Steam Punk project created for Snazzys.

Here is a little sneak peek.

You can find full details HERE. Thank you so much for visiting today...

Notebook for Spellbinders

Hello everyone and thank you for visiting.

Today it is my turn to post on the Spellbinders Blog. I made a notebook using some of the dies in my collection and also using something from the new Media Mixage line.

To see the full project and how I made it, please click  here and I would love it if you leave me a comment there.
Thank you.

Mail Art fun

Hello everyone and happy Saturday. A very warm welcome to you all!

Today I am sharing a fun little project over at the Artistic Stamper, a little piece of mail art☺
If you want to be in with a chance to receive this envelope in the post, just hop over and leave a comment here and of course I will also tell you how I made it.
Thank you for visiting, Love you all
♥♥♥

Friday Freebie Valentines 2

Happy Friday everyone and welcome to this week's freebies. Well, with Valentines getting ever closer, I could not help myself but to make some further Valentine related freebies. This time a couple of bits that if printed on card and folded in the middle, will turn into a little 4 x 4" note card. I also made some little matching tags. Hope you like them .

Just for fun I also made a little sample card with one of the papers, here it is:

Printed on card then added some lace, stamping and a few flowers

I used the little heart tag to decorate the inside of the card

Thanks for visiting and see you next time.

What are you known for???

As many of you know, the theme at Simon Says Stamp this week is "what are you known for?"
Well to be honest, I think I am probably best known for my Friday Freebies.. but that is hardly something to show for a stamping challenge right?

So, I am perhaps also known for my vintage romantic style, therefore I am showing a little hanging I made in that style:

I created the background with the help of stencils and texture paste, covered it all with several layers of acrylic paints, a little bit of a paper napkin and some background stamping.

Now in my own mind I am also known for having entirely too much stash which gets used far too little, specially art materials and stamps. For that reason I set myself the challenge to use a stamp that hadn't been inked for years, the beautiful Ophelia from the Stampsmith. I also used some liquid pencil for shadows, again not used for ages... Both the butterfly from the Tim Holtz Papillion plate and Ophelia were stamped on specialty stamping paper in black archival, fussy cut and then I tried to blend them into the background as best as I could by colouring first with Distress inks and then layering a bit of paint over Ophelia and putting a bit of frayed thin gorse behind .

The shadows were created with said Liquid Pencil, - hard to see on the photos. Finally the raised bits were highlighted with several colours of Treasure Gold carefully blended with a little brush. Again, the photos just don't show this properly sadly..... The sentiment was computer generated.

Well, thank you for visiting and I will be back tomorrow with the usual Friday Freebie.

One large and two small

One large and two small? Like what? Well tags of course, you can never have too many tags right?

But before I tell you about the detail of these, I first want to say a very warm welcome to all of you but specially all of my new followers. I cannot believe how many of you have decided to follow this little blog and I just want to tell you how much I appreciate you all!

Now onto the tags, this weekend I had a small window of play time and decided I wanted to do something  colourful. I took inspiration from an article by the talented Kate Crane in the latest issue of The Craft Stamper for the colour choice and the technique, which is originally by Tim Holtz. Basically it is wrinkle free distress with a few drops of re-inker. I used Pickled Rasberry and Peacock Feather Distress Inks and then I used Brushed Corduroy re-inker as unfortunately I don't have the Walnut Stain one, which was the one Kate used. In addition I added some texture with the help of embossing folders, stamping (Tim Holtz and La Blanche mostly), some Prima embellies and a little Paper Whimsy image to add a vocal point to one of the tags. Here are some details still.

Thank you so much for visiting and stay warm and safe!

Friday freebie Valentine 1

Hello everyone and a very warm welcome to this week's freebie!! Thank you for all your lovely comments last week, I hope you like this week's freebie too. I received various requests last week, so I hope that over the coming weeks I hope to do justice to them. One of the requests I received was for purple roses, well here you go and I hope you like it. I decided that with Valentines not too far away, I would do some Valentines sheets in the next few weeks, so here is one with purple roses and another one in some more traditional colours, - here's hoping you like them....

And like always, here are some individual pngs

Running behind myself....

Hello everyone and thank you so much for visiting.
All of this month I have been meaning to make a calendar for myself, and every time I get side tracked into other projects, but finally I have completed at least my page for January.....

The paper and image I used are from the Graphics 45 Place in Time 12 x 12 collection, but then I  added stamping, inking and embossing to make it more my own. The actual calendar bit was down loaded from
Call Me Victorian
Here is another photo and I will add more pages as I finish them....what with work and DT stuff I have not nearly as much time to just make things for myself as I would like sadly.....still, no use complaining.

I put the side and bottom through a little embossing folder that came as a freebie with a card making magazine. I highlighted the raised bits with some Treasure Gold in Pewter.The stamped snowflakes are from Our Daily Bread designs and I embossed them with Wow powder in white. The other stamps (script and clock) I have had in my stash for ages and I have no idea anymore where they came from, all the edges were inked with Vintage Photo and Chipped Sapphire Distress Inks.

Happy Memories tag book

Hello everyone and a very warm welcome to you all and specially my new followers also!

Today it is my turn to show a project over at the Artistic Stamper Creative Team blog

I decided to make a tag book with added little pockets to keep memories of a special journey or other event.
To see the full project and how I made it, just click here, and I would of course love it if you leave me a comment there

Friday Freebie 1#

Hello everyone and a warm welcome to the first freebie of 2013.
I am very aware that these freebies are not everyone's thing, but I receive many emails from people who tell me how much they like them and as I enjoy creating them, I will continue to post them more or less on a weekly basis. This weeks images are nothing terribly special I'm afraid. If you have any wishes for particular images or themes, please be in touch and I will see what I can do. Also, what kind of things do you like, tags, papers, envelopes? Just let me know.

small ribbon spool

Note card sized to fit envelope

large ribbonspool

envelope

Thanks for visiting and until next time!

Believe in Fairies canvas

Hello everyone, and I have to say it again, a warm welcome to you all and especially my new followers!
One of my New Years resolutions was to participate in some more challenges, so here is a project just for that.

I decided that the first challenge I would enter would be the Frilly and Funkie one, where the theme right now is "Follow your Muse", - how fun is that?
Yesterday I was in a playful mood  and my Muse decided to do something I have not done in ages, namely play with some digital collage images and integrate them into a little 6 x 6 canvas. So hey-ho, that's what I did. I created my fairy with a body from Hidden Vintage Studios, a sweet little face from Paper Whimsy and some wings from Lisa's Altered Arts. in Photoshop Elements. I then printed her out, fussy cut her and then had the most wonderful time creating a fairy background for her with the help of paint, sprays, some paper napkin scraps, stamping and embossing. I also did some hand doodling here and there and added some shadows around the image and the text which was created with the help of a wonderful journaling font that my dear blogging friend Heather Jacobs sent me.

Well, I hope you like it. Here are some more detailed picks still.

I will also enter this for Simon Says Stamp and Show where the theme is Something Old. Well this is an old technique for me which I haven't used in ages, and like usual it's rather vintage in style.

I'll be back on Friday with my first freebie for 2013:o)