Papercraft Essentials and Lavinia Stamps

I have a handful of pieces in Papercraft Essentials, published today!  Off to the shops to take a look :)

And if you didn't know, Lavinia Stamps are launching their latest release on Hochanda today at 8am and 2pm, and there's a fern stamp :) I love ferns!!

Anyone for stickers?

I've always LoVeD stickers!  I had sticker books as a child, and occasionally as an adult (my latest is the Minions one but don't tell anyone!)

There's something very satisfying about stickers, and the planner craze gives adult sticker lovers a legitimate excuse to use them :)  I don't have a planner as such; I have two moleskines, one to keep a diary and one as a diary so I know where I'm supposed to be etc.

But that didn't stop me from creating some stickers from blank labels using many of the tiny Lavinia Stamps.  You'll find my step by step over here - http://laviniastamps.com/making-stickers/

celtic dreams of brusho and pixies!

Last weekend saw the release of the new dies 'Celtic Dreams' from Lavinia Stamps and Imagination Crafts. These dies are a brilliant size for card making and using on tags, 11.5cm,  ...  just love them!

Whilst waiting for the dies to arrive I made myself a stack of papers using my brusho inks.  My idea was to use the dies to cut black paper and lay the cutout against the colourful papers.

The dies are so beautifully designed they are exquisite just as they are, but they also look stunning against the strong colours of brusho.

I also used the dies to cut out some of the papers ... love 'em :)  Now you know me, when I make cards I usually end up having to add extra elements to cover up the inky splodges that are an inevitable part of my card making ...

... not anymore!!  With these dies I just used a spray adhesive to attach them to the brusho paper and card and hey presto, quick, easy, clean but very pleasing cards!

Of all of them the above is my favourite but I did enjoy enhancing the brusho papers with embossing powders and stamping for this one ...

I will definitely be making more of these cards!

and have plenty more ideas for using them (watch this space!!).    I particularly love that the little tiny fairies ( small pixies or three dancing fairies) fit behind the windows of the toadstool so they look like they are busy in their little houses.  I've put mine on the front of one of my sketchbooks and will share a tag tomorrow :)

I'd love you to let me know you visited by leaving a comment below, it's a great way to 'meet' people!!

autumn colours in fairyland

I have been suffering from a very nasty chest infection, with a dreadful sore throat :(  Haven't been able to do much so this journal page has come together over a week, just little bits at a time.  

This month's Lavinia Stamps challenge is to use autumn colours so I decided to have a go with my new Brusho inks.  We have had these in the art cupboard of every school I've ever taught in, but I'd rarely used them ...til now!  

I'm still getting to know them really, but for this project just sprinkled the pages with a variety of autumn colours, sprayed with water, then blotted it off a little with some spare paper.  I have to say, I'm loving the blotting sheets often more than the original!

I've added some 'ink caps', 'dandelions', 'zen plant' and 'angelic words' in the background, and borrowed the windows off the silhouette house pods to  transform the 'spotty toadstools' into fairy dwellings.

I'm particularly pleased with the washing line suspended between the toadstools :)

And whilst they wait for their wings to dry, the fairies are catching dandelion clocks floating on the wind.

Lavinia Stamps have a very exciting new product launch tomorrow - that should cheer me up!!

a handful of cards

I've been playing with some new Lavinia Stamps and my gelli plate ... I really love using the Adirondack inks with the gelli plate.  

I rarely make cards but had decided to enter this month's Lavinia Stamps challenge which was 'birthday girl' so ended up making a couple.

I know I've said it before but I love adding splashes of water to the inks, and also painting in stamped areas with the inks or water.

Despite having made a couple of cards I still needed to make another one as my niece was one at the weekend.  I was pleased with this quick card using a Mabel Lucie Attwell image from the Artistic Stamper :)

lavinia stamps challenge #5

It's my husband's cousin's fiftieth birthday on Saturday so he asked me to make a card and, although I've made a couple of others (which I'll share soon), I decided to enter this one into this month's Lavinia Stamps challenge as this really is a card for a 'birthday girl'.

I added some more layers to a gelli printed piece of card then cut the numerals '5' and '0' from it.  I knew I wanted to add some flowers but it took me ages to work out an effective background.  This one is adirondack stream sponged over white card, french verse 2 stamped in stream, then splashes of water to give texture.  This was my third attempt at a background; I recycled one of the others into two tags...

..I decided to be a bit brave and use some different coloured inks to stamp the flowers.  This proved a bit busy for the background of my 50th birthday card but worked perfectly with some fairy silhouettes on my tags.

I particularly liked using some of my newest Lavinia stamps, the zen blossoms, around the edge of the tags.

adirondack inks and the gelli plate

It was the Happy Stampers rubber stamping festival yesterday and I had a fabulous time meeting up with loads of stamping friends (with no local stamp store anymore it's our twice yearly chance to touch base, other than on the internet) ...

... and shopping of course!  I also learnt a new technique.  It had never occurred to me to use my gelli plate with inks so I couldn't wait to try it out at home after Tracey, from Lavinia Stamps, had shown me.  She has made a youtube video, which you can watch here and I took some step by step photos for my third tag.

I apologise for the light, I took these photos this evening.  The beauty of the gelli plate is that you can see through it, so place a tag underneath and use this as a template for where to brayer and stamp.

After brayering with adirondack inks I stamped some Lavinia stamp images, using the same ink pads, then lined my tag up with the tag underneath the gelli plate.

Using a gelli plate gives a different texture to the stamped images.  I'm still learning about how much ink etc to apply so added some more colour using a sponge.

I used my spun sugar distress ink pad to add a pale pink to my tag as I wanted to enter this month's Lavinia Stamps challenge where the theme is 'add some pink'.  Since I'd used some distress ink I splashed some water on in order to lift some ink off.  The 'water' I used was from my water jar on the table, which I'd used to rinse my brushes off, so had effectively turned into watered down acrylic paint, but I do like the effect it gave!!

Tracey's new zen line of stamps are gorgeous and I bought a fair few with my birthday money!!  

I stamped the teasels onto the tag then stamped them onto some white paper so I could paper piece them......

....I just LoVe black and white imagery against a coloured background.

Thanks so, so much for sharing this technique with me Tracey, I just LoVe it!!  I'm entering this tag in this month's Lavinia Stamps Challenge, 'Add something pink'.