Welcome to the Second Annual Blog Hop and Awards Event by The StampMan!

Welcome to the second annual blog awards event at The StampMan!  This is such a fun and popular event at this time of year, especially since it doesn't require you to make anything!  We just want you to choose your favourite/best project from 2010 and enter it on our challenge blog, and if you'd like to be eligible to win a prize too just

• Join in the actual challenge with your best/favourite projected linked with Inlinkz
• Follow your way around the blog hop collecting all the letters you will find on each blog. Write these down then work out the answer when the hop is finished.
• Leave a comment on ALL the blogs you visit in the blog hop 
• Post our event blinkie onto your blogs or a post about the event with your best/favourite project
• Take your award blinkie with pride
• Email the answer to: thestampman@btconnect.com by 9pm (GMT) on Thursday 13th January 2011.  Please put bloghop answer as the title

You should have come to my blog via Kay Carley's over at Kay's Crafty Corner.  There's a bit of a blip near the beginning of the hop, you start at The StampMan with Jill, hop a little until you reach Vix.  From there you should visit Frankie but her post has gone awol so make a note of the letter 'a' and head on to Michelle.  Then it's Brenda followed by the ATC swap, then more hopping until you get to meeeeeeeee!


I had a bit of a tough time choosing my favourite project from this year but eventually chose this collection of canvases as it signified a major change in my work.

I'd wanted to produce a piece of wall art for a long time now, but it took me ages to be able to settle to doing what I do in my journals on a canvas.  Somehow putting my work on canvas was a major, major step.  In the end, I chose one of my favourite journal pages and translated it onto a canvas.  After this it was a lot easier to work, imagining I was just working in my journal!

Next year I have four pieces of work in an exhibition at The Mustard Tree, Ancoats, Manchester in April, and my first solo exhibition (how scary THaT sounds!!!) in June at The Cubby Hole, Crewe.

My 'letter' to be collected is

!

If you've visited all the blogs on the hop, you should now have 13 'letters'.  

Unscramble the phrase

 and email it to 

thestampman@btconnect.com

 by 9pm (GMT) on Thursday 13th January 2011.  Please put bloghop answer as the title.  

And don't forget, you need to have commented on each of the blogs to be eligible for a prize (and yes, Jill has us all checking ;)  ) and have our challenge blinkie on your sidebar.

PDCC62 time for a bit of journaling :)

I have enjoyed getting my journal out for this week's play date cafe challenge.  It feels ages since I did any journaling!  I got out a small Daler Rowney 148x130cm sketchbook out to do this piece in.  Julie's chosen this week's wonderfully soft and romantic colours of warm red, taupe and hot pink...

I've been wanting to do some pale beige/pink pages for a while :)  so I started with a taupe background, adding some stamping and stencilling in a warm reddish pink.

I used my Martha Stewart 'hydrangea' punch, and my Claudine Hellmuth stamps [which I got from Jennie in October but you can get them now with 20% off!) alongside some stitching.

I free machine stitched around the larger flowers...

The design team have yet again come up with some amazing projects, as have our design team in waiting!  They start officially on 13th January but we've all been having fun getting to know each other over the past week or so ;)

Andrea Ewen
Savannah O'Gwynn
Ruby 2 Shoes

Julie Ranae - senior designer

Fabulous Christmas presents :)

I hope you all had a great Christmas!  I did - full of family fun, pressies and food.  We had a great time, and Santa, family and friends all brought me some great gifts so I thought it would be fun to share some of my favourites although be warned, it does show what a weird mind I have!!!  

I am a very lucky girl in that Santa still visits me...twice!  He fills a pillowcase in my own house and at my Mums's!!!  And he knows I love picture books :)  I have some that are just ace stories (I just love the Aliens in Underpants stories) and some for their illustrations

I AdORe Angie Lewin's prints so was thrilled to find this book in my pillowcase :)

It has some great images of pages from her sketchbooks...

and I can feel some eraser carving coming on. although how Angie gets such tremendous detail I do not know!

Santa also brought me a new Martha Stewart punch :)

My Mum and sister both got me a cushion from BHS (I always forget about the new section of The Trafford Centre where they've put all the home shops!)  

Wendy at The Stamp Attic knows me well, I love this pencil case with these gorgeous flower images on

and she also understands my love for corrugated card lol

And how fantastic is this mouse from my friend Tracy?

I just LoVe his legs made of nails, and his safety pin arms.  He is now living in my attic :)  

My 'main' present this year was an embellisher, for needle felting, which was immediately ambushed by my daughter and youngest son!  Sophie made a fantastic mouse (it was going to be an owl but ended up more mouse like so Tom made it a tail!)

then went into production making flowers for brooches.  These feel soooooooooooooo yummy and warm when held together in your hand

Tom had a play with different fabrics and fibres

And once I made it onto the machine I too had a play

I'd love to see what you got for Christmas...great books?  fun gifts?  handmade items?  If you'd like to share them, please link them on my sidebar so we can all go and take a look.  :)

tagging along in the Play Date Cafe

This fabric tag came about because I knew I had a piece of wool felt in the exact beige I needed for this week's challenge and I'm still loving making tags :)

I'm afraid I don't know where I found this wonderful vintage Christmas image, but I just LoVe it!  I'm not sure, but I'm assuming it's from a Christmas card from the fifties, a time in design I just adore.

I was intrigued by the use of the bright blue.  The bit of something that was hanging around my craft room in this particular shade of blue was a piece of sequin waste.  I wasn't sure my sewing machine would like it but it was fine, and it's certainly something I'd never normally have thought to include.  That's what I love about this colour challenge, it makes me put colours and materials together that I wouldn't use normally.

With my tag display in mind, I went for a buttons theme, cos I just LoVe buttons :)  

I free machined the word button repeatedly along one of the long edges on my tag, felted and sewed scraps of fabric to it and added the buttons last - and very relaxing it was too, just what I needed!

I'm afraid I didn't make it round you all with comments this week, really sorry!  I'd like to wish all of our play date cafe visitors a wonderful Christmas. If you haven't made it over to the cafe, there's a treat in store as Julie introduced our new design team members each day this week.  Whilst you're there, check out our design team's projects with this week's colours, there are some great ideas!  

WOYWW and a Merry Christmas everyone!

Ok, how did this happen?  It was so tidy and organised last Wednesday!

My excuse?  Squeezing time into the day to make tags, when I've already been squeezing in tiling the bathroom, reorganising the boys' rooms (including moving wardrobes!) and Christmas present shopping.  Hence, tidying got squeezed out!  Got to do it now though, need my desk to make some pressies!  If you need reassurance that most of us are all in a similar fog of 'so much to do before Christmas', head over to see the lovely Julia at The Stamping Ground and check out everyone else's desk this Wednesday :)

On another note:
[sorry, just noticed the pun there but I'm leaving it in :)]



I'd love to have been there!  Love this piece of music.  And how fun to be involved in one of these flash mobs!!  Great idea, they certainly make people smile :)

a great excuse for more tags!

Back in June I had a wonderful time at the  Manchester School of Art degree show.    One of the displays from the foundation art degree area featured a collection of tags at the top of the board and it's something I've been wanting to do since.  I love the layers of different sized tags.

My initial idea was to hang them on a metal mannequin but I don't own one, and the idea never got off the ground.  But up in my new craft room the other day I realised I could hang tags around the room on nails, just like in the photograph!  Tags here I come :)

I love how quickly a tag comes together, especially if you use bits n pieces you've made and not used for other projects.  Now a tag a day I could manage!!!  Minxy's been doing some gorgeous tags daily, take a look here.  And of course the current StampMan challenge is all about tags too, and Jennie's on a roll with them over at The Artistic Stamper.

These silver foil embossed stars were going on pegs, to make fridge magnets, but I have more ideas than time so...

Brrrrrrrrr!

It's very, very pretty outside today, with stunning frost and snow, but it's flippin cold!!!  -8c is far too cold for me, so I'm putting off going to the post office (much of the post is delayed anyway!!) and doing jobs in the house to keep warm.

I did venture out earlier to take the kids to school, and came back a bit of a nervous wreck after sitting at the top of my road giving way to a car which then slid towards me on the ice.  Fortunately it stopped a few inches from my bumper.  I hate driving in this weather, I did a graceful slide in the same spot on Saturday. 

This is one of the views from my attic bedroom window on Saturday morning.  I'd been really looking forward to the Christmas party at the Cubby Hole and although they'd had very little snow in Crewe, we'd had enough to make the drive a bit dodgy, especially in Malc's little car.  I can't wait to get mine replaced!

In celebration of all this white stuff, and in an attempt to put off the many jobs I have to do today, I made a tag!

I have a little packet of flowers I crocheted in the summer :)

I layered the flower with bits of lace and organza ribbon, having collaged a plain manilla tag with stamping, dabbing and some music paper (7 gypsies, Paddington paper from The Stamp Attic)   :)

I'm going to post this on Jennie's blog as she's been suffering from tag withdrawal symptoms!  

Oh and ps, we're introducing our new designers over at The Play Date Cafe this week.  We'd love you to stop by and meet them :)

decorate a tag with The Stampman Challenge#12

I'm still in Christmas mode at my making table, I don't give up on snowflakes that easily, and I'm a bit of a last minuter so still have cards and gifts to make before the big day :)  Of Tim's tags my favourite was day 9; I just loved that colour combo so decided to use something similar for mine.

[apologies for the shadows, the sun was out when I took these!]

I stamped this gorgeous Big Snowflake from Hero Arts [on offer now over at The Stampman!] with white acrylic paint, then used Starburst Stains and my Mica Paint palette to add a shimmery, watercolour background.

Moonglow embossing powder around the edge of the tag adds some more dimension.  I used the same powder to stamp and emboss the snowflake on some dark brown card followed by lots of fussy cutting!  That's only one snowflake on there so not too much cutting out.

Check out the rest of The StampMan DT tags

HERE

and don't forget to make and add yours :)

I just wanted to say THaNK You to my new followers - there's something so nice about crossing the 200 boundary of followers - I truly, truly appreciate it!

On a different note entirely - anyone had side effects from a Ventolin inhaler?  I've had the flu this week (swine or not we neither know or care, it was just nasty!) and I've been left with an annoying cough.  The doctor gave me an inhaler yesterday which worked wonders, but then I couldn't get to sleep and have been jittery ever since.  Aaaaagh, I just need to be well to get on with stuff!!!

Sorry, thanks for listening ;)

EDIT:  It's snowing :) :) :)

bring on the sunshine... it's a play date colour splash!

Colour splash challenges are our most popular and Julie's chosen us a great colour to work with in these dark wintry days - YeLLoW!  

I had a lovely surprise when I picked up the 7 gypsies music paper [Kilburn] from the Paddington range - it's black and white with a splash of yellow :) [Available in the UK at The Stamp Attic].  I used my new die by Joy, from a new little craft shop I found in Chorlton, to cut the butterflies on a paper ribbon.

A rectangle of cuttlebugged paper, some lace and pearls and my card was done!  One of the quickest I've made but I'm really pleased with it!  Don't forget to check out the inspiration from the rest of our design team

Andrea Ewen
Savannah O'Gwynn
Ruby 2 Shoes

Julie Ranae - senior designer

and head over to the Play Date Cafe  for info on the announcement of our new design team - woo hoo!  It was so, so hard to choose just 6 of you, we were inundated with fantastic submissions.  Thankyou to everyone who applied, and congratulations to our new team :)  We will be introducing them to you in the run up to Christmas next week :)

WOYWW? - the results of a Christmas gift idea!

This is the elegant, posed shot of the project ;)

Whilst this is what is underneath that calm exterior - I put some white paper on top of a box of inks to take the pic above!

I've had the idea in my head for this project for ages!  Lots of ink, snowflakes and glue later it's finally finished :)  Although I'm going to need a lie down now, I'm worn out.  Anyone else suffering with this nasty cough?  I spent all day Sunday and Monday asleep, and Tuesday am.  Not good when you've still got tonnes to do for Christmas!

I made this wintry piece as part of my design team brief over at The Stamp Attic (more photos and details over there) using Tim's filmstrip alteration die by Sizzix.  I love the versatility of this die, and it also punches great weeny rectangles which you can use on tags or cards :)

I was asked last week on WOYWW what was in my drawers [??!!] - nothing exciting I'm afraid, but here's a pic for the curious.  The plan is to store inkpads etc in there that are best kept at hand...

The trouble is, my distress inks and stazon are in separate boxes cos there's too many to go in a tray, and I keep losing my versamark pad and black memories pads.  Hopefully, with a home they'll stay put!

Happy Wednesday everyone :)