yummy colours in pdcc#33, and a fab prize

How cool is this stamp set?  It's from Practicing Creativity, our sponsors at The Play Date Cafe this week.  I just LoVe that tree, and you could make a flip flop tree and flip flop flowers with this set - FaB!!  If you want a chance of winning these stamps, you just need to enter our colour challenge this week using Mona's yummy colours:

I've just bought a peg bag in these colours funnily enough, and with wooden pegs it matches the challenge perfectly lol! 

I got out my kraft envelopes when I saw these colours though...I just LoVe working with brown paper, and once found some cardstock this colour too - that didn't last long!

I nearly missed an appointment I was so engrossed in this project - I just LoVe this colour combo :)  In fact, there's a lot of favourites in this project - the colours, brown envelope, spray ink, adirondack paint dabbers, flowers and little bitty bits!

The spray ink is a summer sticky fingers spray - aqua.  The flower stamp is from Botanicals plate #1 by The Artistic Stamper.

And the punch is my only Martha Stewart one, hydrangea border :)

This week we have additional inspiration from Courtney Baker of Practicing Creativity as well as our regular designers - why not hop over to the Play Date Cafe to see what yumminess they've produced, and visit their blogs to leave some love :)  And don't forget, play date entries just need to use our colours, they don't have to be cards!

another metal box...this one's for PDCC#30

I so enjoyed making my metal covered box the other day I decided to have a go at using a different colour acrylic paint for the base, choosing 'pink' from this week's play date colours mainly as I could find a green and a yellow stazon ink to colour the metal but the pink is rather bright in stazon, to say the least!

Mona chose this week's beautiful Spring inspired colours and it's amazing how every play date cafe designer's piece is so different this week.  The balance of colour in a project really changes the effects.  Mine is very definitely PINK!!!

The base metal is gold coloured and I painted it with pink True Colours [Baby Girl] by Stewart Gill before spraying it with pink Sticky Fingers spray [to add texture] then adding extra colour using Sunflower Yellow and Cactus Green Stazon Ink.

I cut the dragonfly from felt and organza using the new die from Paper Artsy.  I'm so in love with that die!!  Don't forget to visit the cafe for some more inspiration for these colours!  I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with :)

pdcc#14: colours of summer

What I love about the play date colour challenge is that, through using images of the world around us, we can be inspired and challenged to try new colours in our artwork. This week's image is of flowers in my sister's garden which won a silver gilt medal at the Royal Horticultural Society's annual show at Tatton Park in Cheshire. I can spend hours photographing sections of her gardens, they are so amazingly put together.

I love this photograph, what I didn't think about was how easy [or hard!!]  it would be to make a project using these colours!!   These aren't colours I'm used to using together so it was a proper challenge this week!!

I needed some journal time this week so decided to play with these colours. My other option was an ATC with this month's free stamp from Craft Stamper.  That may still happen, we'll see!!

Anyway, I put the orange, dusty pink and lilac down on the paper in patches.  They were all acrylic paints although the lilac is a lumiere, which reacted quite differently when I sprayed Sticky Fingers Grass Green Summer ink over the top and let it drip down.

I then added stamping, again using the paints, before embossing the flowers and adding the flying stopwatch and the quotes.  My sakura white souffle pen didn't like the ink either and turned green as I wrote on the page!

I am particularly pleased that I finally managed to add some stitching to my journal ... hurray!!  The clock image was stitched before I glued it to the page.

Good luck with the colours.  I can't wait to see what you do with them.  :)

think monday think atc: architecture

This is the first time I've entered an ATC that wasn't made the day the topic came out!  But it's one of my favourite cards.  It was the first time I'd used distress inks and I only owned the Walnut Stain one; now I have a whole collection LOL!

Don't you just love how you meet new people through blogging!!  The lovely Paulette of Beedeebabee gave me this award; I'm sure if we lived nearby I'd be popping in to see what gorgeous things she was stitching and to borrow some thread!  I've never liked the idea of having to choose who to pass an award on to but with this one I know I'd like to pass it on to the people who I've made friends with through stamping/blogging who I wouldn't otherwise have met!  To my  friends Julie, Jill, Sue (who I don't think does awards but I think will smile anyway!), Wendy, Chris, Rachel and Jennie, and to those who I am just getting to know including Kate, Jo, Joanne,  and Audrey.

Whenever people leave me a comment I always try and visit their blog and I'm also interested to see who my followers are; so if you're a 'secret' follower, who just pops by now and then, or has me on their favourites list, I'd love to meet you.  Become a follower and then we can meet up! :)

my day

Well I'm certainly having a better day than my good friend Julie! Read her blog here to hear what is happening at the end of her garden - it's shockingly unbelievable! Sorry Julie, I'd share these with you if I could!!!

A guy came into the shop today and wanted help undoing a leather thong necklace in order to swap a couple of beads over. He'd bought it in Jamaica and had to have it re-threaded this time when he went over there. It wasn't til he got home he noticed a couple of beads were incorrect and he couldn't work out the knots. I did it for him and refused any payment; it was my good deed of the day! Anyway, a couple of minutes later he reappeared with this box of chocs for me! Isn't that kind :)

Now to make you smile Julie! I tried taking a picture of 'Scrap', Tom's guinea pig (remember I told you he wanted to buy one? He had the biggest smile on his face the whole of that day; he's waited sooooo long for his very own pet!) Anyway, Scrap is a little reluctant to have his picture taken...

No, I don't have a furry growth, it's Scrap crawling up my arm inside my cardigan!! He was a bit braver when he had Brillo to crawl under!

And even braver when I lined them all up. Here are Fudge, Boris, Brillo and Scrap. Fudge and Boris belong to school but they live with me most holidays and some weekends! Fudge and Boris are 1 year olds, Brillo and Scrap are just 8 weeks old - bless!

Now onto cards! I've tried taking a picture of one of the moving cards I taught on my workshop today. It's made out of a single piece of A5 card but by cutting and scoring you can create a moving central circle.

closed

open

card standing up (sorry it's not a great photo!)

Not only did I meet new people on today's class, I learnt two new things! A folded flower, and a new fold for a card. I'll get pics up soon, when I've had a play with the ideas :)

cute alert!!

I received a text this morning from a very good friend which said, and I quote,
"CUTE ALERT!! Do not go in Ashton on Mersey pet shop" (that's our local village).
So of course, Sophie (my 12 year old daughter) and I had to go and see this cuteness. And look who we came home with :)

He looks like a little squirrel but he is the most chilled out, beautiful looking guinea pig I've seen. His fur is kindof wiry, hence the name 'brillo' :) We already have two guinea pigs that belong to school, but live in my classroom. They often come home for the weekend. Now we have our own guinea pig, and a second one is coming tomorrow. Tom (13) has decided to buy one with his birthday money. He's wanted his own pet for ages.

But now to arty stuff. I belong to a small group of people who send out one ATC to everyone once a month. Any theme. Not very demanding time-wise(there's only 5 of us), but I still find it so hard some months to do it, time just catches up. I owe them all July and August at the minute so I decided to use my new tree stamps and do a mini-series of trees. The Hero Arts tree is one I already had.

what fun!

I was teaching a card making work shop today at Paddy's Stamping Place. All the cards had some kind of movement eg slide, twist, turn. This is a slide card.



I met some new people who hadn't been on my workshops before and we had a great time. Workshops are great aren't they? Spending time doing what you love, catching up with old friends, meeting new ones :)
Paddy was away as she has had a bereavement in the family which meant I got to be 'shop girl' this afternoon. I love doing the till. It's like playing shop again :) But locking up isn't quite the same as being locked in an unfamiliar stamp shop!!!!!!!

Next workshop is on Wednesday :) although I may 'play shop' again before then; I've been meaning to do a window display for ages!! Have an idea, will let you know if it works out!

holiday journalling

This is the first time I've been away and packed fairly succinctly craft wise! I usually take loads of stuff and never use it all. I took my A5 moleskine notebook I received as a birthday pressie last year, paints, selection of stamps, couple of masks and stencils and a bottle of autumn gold spray ink. The acrylic paint goes onto the paper in the moleskine book very differently to on watercolour paper. For some reason, maybe the hot sun didn't help, the paint doesn't move around much on the paper. This page has blues and reds and yellows on, then I decided to be brave and experiment and sprayed the autumn gold over, using the mask. I like the result, which was a bit of a relief!!

my little princess

This is my very favourite photo of my little princess. She's not so little anymore, 12 last birthday. This was taken on her first day at Nursery. I added the wings and pixie boots a couple of years ago and now this little Sophie fairy lives in my workroom:)

TMTA: kings and/or queens

I know she's a bit predictable, but I really didn't have any other kingly/queenly images and I was keen to try this one out! This is a stamp a friend of mine leant me a while ago but this is the first time I've played with any of the images. The background was looking a bit 'iffy' 'til I swiped it gently with gesso - now I like it!!

Another journal page

This isn't what I was supposed to be doing today! I have a list of ATCs and birthday cards to make but need to tidy my craft area first so I can get to the things I need. To do that, I have to go down to the cellar and with a broken foot once I'm down there I don't want to be coming up anytime soon. So with the imminent arrival of visitors I stayed put for a bit, then it thundered(and I didn't fancy being down there where I couldn't see the lightning!!) and before I knew it I had a lovely journal page made :)

This is what initially prompted me to do it:

It's my work journal page from Chris' workshop at Paddy's last Thursday. I was happily cutting out those houses to go on the page when I suddenly thought what a great journal page that would make in my visual journal. I love cutting and sticking :)

Great to see my followers are back :) With extra ones :) :) :)

Can put it off no longer ... am off to tidy up!

Craft Stamper Sketch Challenge - June

Another first for me - I've never used a sketch to design a card before, but I really liked Craft Stamper's sketch this month and had the time to have a go. Sorry image isn't the best, I'm still relying on my scanner rather than a camera!

Thank God It's Friday Challenge - Striped Trousers

This is my first attempt at an online challenge and I couldn't resist the theme of 'striped trousers'!! My stampotique bird was going to make another appearance until I remembered that one of my new Port Sunny purchases had striped tights! He's 'Em's Elf' from The Old Island Stamp Company.