I'm in love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wasn't feeling great on Thursday (suffering with sinisitis and waiting for my antibiotics to kick in - they now have - hurray!!) so when the postman knocked on and gave me TWo parcels, I was very excited, and they cheered me up no end :).  The first was from the lovely Dyan at Art from the Heart, and inside, a gift of her yummy new inks.  So I had to have a play straightaway - expecially with the granite one, I've wanted a grey ink for aaaaaaaaaaaaaages!

Then my favourite blues and greens:

which I then sprayed over using 'burnt orange', masking with a torn envelope.

before dabbing the envelope edge elsewhere on my page.  So what has made me fall in love with these inks?

well,

the colours are vibrant

they spray in a grungy way, a mixture of fine mist and splatters

you can overlay them

and best of all, you can work back into them with a baby wipe (or a wet rag/paintbrush) just like the Adirondack sprays

so watch this space for more play and journal pages :)

I can't share much of my second parcel as it contains highly classified play date cafe material ;), but will share what I can tomorrow.

Meanwhile, had a bit of a shop (ok, five carrier bags full over 2 days lol) on Thurs and Fri.  Since my painkillers weren't working, I decided 'distraction' might work against my headache, and went out to my local antique and collectables place to get some hardback books for my texture workshop at The Stamp Attic in Wantage on Saturday (click here for deets)

Some other bits n bobs happened to join the books in my pile :)  I can't wait for the workshop, we'll be playing with texture which makes for a great journal cover, but also looks fab on Maya Road die cuts or even around the edge of a picture frame.  [great for Chrissy pressies] 

Then yesterday, Sue Roddis asked if I'd go with her to her local antiques and collectables place and not to disappoint a friend I dragged myself there [ok, my antibiotics were working so I sang along to my music on the way and bounced into Sue's ;)  ]

and came home with this little lot and more!

play date cafe challenge #4

I'm not sure it's that easy to see this week's colours in my piece but I promise you they are the only colours I used paint-wise!!  When I'm buying a new product I'm usually hopeless at choosing which colours to start with so when I decided to invest in some Kaisercolour paints from Paper Artsy last week I picked this week's challenge colours - antique white, mud puddle and raw umber.  I love that name 'mud puddle'!!

Unfortunately the blue I picked up, sea breeze, was way to turquoise for the piece, so I picked up a more suitable blue from the local stationary shop this morning.

I also got some pearl metal from Paper Artsy although with the raw umber paint and creme de chocolat glimmer mist you can't really tell anymore :)

I used an old hardboard bookcover for the base of this project, added terra paint for texture then stamped into it and smooshed paint and glimmer mist around.  I had a bit of a 'wobble' about this piece earlier today but am feeling happier with it now it has the metal and watch pieces on.