glowing like the moon at The StampMan

Or maybe that post title should be 'shining like a star' as my hands were certainly very shiny after playing with Starburst Stains at The StampMan today lol!  I've had a set of these for a while now so when I got the opportunity to spend the day with one of the Queens of stardust (well, at least two really!)  I jumped at the chance.

 The transformation of the powder (left) to ink (right) can be quite dramatic.

[Of course the most dramatic colour is the one I did before taking photos!!!]  These inks come in powder form then you top them up with hot tap water, stir and leave to stand.

Then you watch the lovely Vix paint one colour of ink onto a sheet of paper [action shot there of Vix shaking the jar of blue as the mica settles at the bottom after a while]...

... add drops of a couple of other colours, before folding the paper in half and scrunching it into a ball...

...which transforms it into this FaBuLouS piece of paper :)  SHiNY :)

You can make a paler piece by putting clean water onto the paper first instead of a colour stain.  I had a wonderful play with this technique and ended up with very blue hands, which Jill took photos of so I'm keeping an eye on her blog lol.

I then had a play in my journal, spraying one of the stains then stamping with paint dabbers before adding punched snowflakes and one of the images from the Butterfly Beauties plate.

Turning this butterfly beauty into a winter one was inspired by a card Vix had made [ok, ok, I nicked the idea off her, but with permission :)]  When I find my small snowflake punch I'm going to add more snowflakes to her hair!!  

The StampMan shop is always crammed with beautiful samples, so I took these photos with Julie in mind, as she'd have loved to have come and played!  Apologies to the other lovely ladies who were demoing, I didn't take any pics as I was distracted by my new inks, but you can find Michelle here and Jill B here.

ooo...ooo...ooo

I've got 50 followers!!!  Hee hee hee.  It's very, very nice to know that people like my blog enough to want to follow it and there's just something about having 50.  So thankyou all, and a special hello to the newbies :)

This is what I actually came to blog!!  Although the title still follows!! 

Jill's having a blog hop.  :) :) :)

I've only recently started doing these and they're great fun; you get to see loads of blogs you might never have found, and there are giveaways on the way.  Jill's treat is that this starts on the Sunday after Christmas so gives us all something to look forward to after the joy of Christmas. 

We'd love you to copy and paste the above image on your sidebar so we get lots of people joining in.  The more the merrier!  Visiting other people who leave comments is another way of finding new blogs to fall in love with :)

Now I can't say my sewing machine needle appreciated getting gunked up with embossing powder on occasion whilst getting these cards finished but it coped admirably.  I'm pleased with them.

Hope you can see these cards; sorry they're white on almost white!!

I woke to some amazement re the snow this am.  You saw the inch or so we had.  Well, it froze last night, so we woke to warnings on the radio from police and ambulance to only make essential journeys as the conditions were so treacherous.  But I guess ice is ice and it doesn't really matter if it's an inch thick or three inches thick, it's still nasty, nasty stuff.  And it was bad out there!  But the main roads improved throughout the day so driving was actually safer than walking!