bits n bobs

Just a few bits n bobs to share today.  It was Mothers' Day here in the UK yesterday.  My Mum is in the US at the minute so I've not made her card yet, but I did get one made for Malc's Mum.

I love to add little snippets to my cards, and really enjoyed sewing this one together.  But why can I never design and make a card in ten minutes?!!

 

The flower is by Wendy Vecchi and is stamped onto some card I had sprayed with lilac ink.  The centre is a prima flower and the rest is just bits n pieces from around my craft room :)

Last week saw me in the plant nursery that my sister runs.  We were creating a centre piece to the room based on the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.  It's not finished yet, but it was great fun making bird feeders from cups and saucers, and planting herbs in jugs and cups :)

 

I managed to squeeze in some time today to complete a zentangle, something I've wanted to play with for ages.  Milliande put a challenge on her blog to draw a zentangle within a handshape within a mandala.  So here's mine:

This is across two pages in my journal so I think I'll add more circles around it, of various size, and maybe do a zentangle border.

Wendy's canvas

I'm scheduling this post (and have my fingers crossed that Wendy has her canvas!!) as I'm in Harrogate taking this class with Dina Wakley :)

I really enjoyed making this, especially as it had been in my head for so long!  It was my first time using grungeboard and I just aDoRe it's texture :) 

My sewing machine had no problems going through it at all.

The flowers are Wendy Vecchi stamps and co-incidentally (and I promise, it wasn't planned!  It's scary sometimes how Julie and I are thinking similar things at the same time LOL) Julie has posted an autograph session with Wendy Vecchi over on her blog 'Julie's Open Window'!

The buttons are from my button tin ... I have LoTS as I LoVe buttons :)  I used Tim Holtz masks and stamps for the background, along with a mixture of adirondack dabbers and spray inks.

Hmm, now I need to get one of these made for me!!!

play date cafe challenge time again!

And this week's colours, chosen by Sandi, are much easier, I promise!  There are only four (well three really, as there are two shades of brown) and they include that lovely combo of blue and brown :)

I used some fabric I found from another project and decided to incorporate it into a tag.  It's always good to have a desk/work area that's not too tidy, it means such serendipity has a chance!

I layered the fabric wth some papers, adding blue and green flowers from my Prima collection, sparkles and stitching.

[sorry that pic isn't the greatest]

I used peeled paint and walnut stain distress inks, and distressed the edge of my tag with scissors.  For the background I used Tim's School Desk set.

And I just LOVE the Wendy Vecchi butterfly :)

calendar challenge

A month or so back Kate was inspired by Jill over at the Third Age Musing blog to create a journal calendar page for December '09 and to fill it in daily [see above photo].  As it went so well during the busiest month of her year, she's challenged us to do it for the year.   You can sign up here.

The work is really only in the preparation.  And as the choice of design is up to you, it's down to how much time you have.  Otherwise the daily commitment is only 5 minutes!!!  The challenge is to fill in a little tiny square each day with a word, a picture or a sentence picking out something from your day. 

Kate used pages in her A4 moleskine, adding another challenge for herself by working larger than she's used to.  I decided I wanted to make a book which will then become a diary of the year.  I'll be REALLY chuffed if I manage to write in it everyday, I've never managed to keep a diary beyond the first week or two of January ;)

I started with a large sheet of Bockingford watercolour paper on the kitchen floor and had a wonderful time adding colour to it using my adirondack paint dabbers.

When my husband came into our small kitchen to get his breakfast, he was very sweet and really didn't mind manoeuvring around me, but did fall about laughing at me and insisted on taking a photo...which I'm not sharing!!

 

Once I'd painted both sides and they were dry, I tore the paper into eight pieces, and sewed down the middle of seven of them to create a book.

 

I had a very relaxing time adding tabs to each page which I'll put the calendar months on. 

Then promptly forgot I was taking step by step photos!!  I've stamped the first open spread page using adirondack paint dabbers and stamps by Tim Holtz, Wendy Vecchi and Lost Coast Designs, highlighted the letters saying 'january' using a very soft graphite pencel, and added printed words and 1" squares cut from a sheet of white card stained with coffee.

 

It's still waiting for '2010' to be added, and 'january' to be added to the tag, but otherwise I'm pretty much set!  The book needs a cover, and I'm going to prep february's page next, but it's good to go for Friday :)

Thanks Kate, this is going to be great fun!!!  And hello to all my new followers!  And the uplifting comments people have left as part of the Stamp Man's first blog hop.  If you've not joined in yet, there's still time!  You've got until midnight GMT Sunday 3rd January 2010.  My part of the blog hop is the post below this one.  Happy Hopping!

what a treat!

My stamping friend Chris invited me to the Graphicus Christmas Open Day today, and what a fabulous time we had!  I'd never been up to Graphicus and with so many demonstrators it was a real treat.  Glenda was demoing a stunning new butterfly image by Elusive Images, colouring it with Copics.  I ended up buying it so will share a close up very soon.

Every time I saw Lynn she was demoing something different [I know Glenda was too but it was Lynn I caught on camera more frequently!]   LOVE the reindeer antlers!

I did take pics of all Lynn's demos but the other pics were a bit blurry, sorry!  Here she is showing Joanna Sheen the ten seconds studio embossing plates.  But just look at these flowers she made with UTEE and paper flowers ...

They just look sooooooo metallic!  I love them!!  The white pearl ones are great too, but need to save up for that colour UTEE. 

Oh and Laura, they had Wendy Vecchi stamps on special offer so I now own two sets :)

play date cafe challenge 7

I love working on envelopes, my version of tags I guess!  They're small, contained, and they can be added to cards of journal pages and have things put in them.  I think this one is waiting for a tag!

In between checking the colours, and getting out my supplies, my idea of the correct green for the week seems to have gone awry!  Sorry Sandi! 

 

I love black and white with a splash of colour and so decided to do a bit of a play on that and do brown and white.  I love the white embossed leaves under the coloured ones.  This was my first play with any Wendy Vecchi stamps - love that script, and the leaves!!  Pity my brain forgot I was going to stamp the words in brown, took me a few hours to spot that mistake, by which time it was too late!  Never mind!!

ps just found a card of stamped green leaves - I cut the wrong ones out late the other night when I was working on it; but the great thing about this challenge is there is leeway re the shades of the colours in the challenge so you may see different greens around from the other designers too!

EDIT:  Ok, have no idea why my blog didn't post as scheduled, or why I have coffee with my cake ;)   I've left the challenge colours up there that I worked from but here are the proper ones!  Hmmm, and my background has disappeared!  I suspect the snow, will investigate later!

Have fun playing along in the play date cafe :)

soooooooooooo tired...but what a fabulous workshop!

I was teaching at The Stamp Attic yesterday, my first workshop for Wendy.  And it was just GREAT!  I went down to Wantage on Friday in time to help prep for the workshop.  It was like having the world at my feet, look at all those yummy stamps to play with in the workshop :)   I don't own any Wendy Vecchi stamps, yet, so it was great to use them to demo with.

The workshop space is opposite the shop,  So I had the absolute pleasure of sitting in the quiet workshop, working away in my journal,

and being able to turn and look out of the window at the shop; it was fabulous once it had gone dark outside,  looking out across the cobbles, from such a safe, magical space :)

The kitchen area of the workshop has a very distinct roof...

Wendy said this is protected; it was the garden shed from the buildings that were here before the shops!  Isn't it fabulous :)

Anyway, back to the workshop, what a wonderful group of people they were.  It was great to meet Laura (who I spent the day calling Paula, sorry Laura, I misheard!!) who is a regular visitor to the play date cafe.  Once I'd persuaded her that she really needed to journal on paper to keep it permanent

(only joking, couldn't resist that quip)

...she produced one of my favourite pages of the day!

To me this penguin like bird looks like it's saying, "right, ok, WHAT am I doing here?  In fact, where am I?  What's going on?" and it just tickled me!  I loved lots of the pages people made, and will share some more with you tomorrow. 

Just look how hard they all worked, you can't see an inch of table!!  And at the end of the day, when they'd all gone, and the room was quiet once more, I worked hard too!  Any guesses as to what I was up to?

And sorry Mrs Roddis, you know so no giving the game away ;)