Ferny cards

I have been playing about a bit with trying to teach myself to use a brayer and the background for the ferny panels on these cards were brayered onto matt card in citrus and lettuce Adirondack inks. The larger fern stamp is from the Elusive Images Wild Meadow set and the others from an unknown clear stamp set I bought second-hand. I have heat embossed some of the ferns in two colours of Cosmic Shimmer embossing powder. Both cards are backed on to a Sandy Lion scrapbook paper called Green Wilderness.

The panel was cut out with oval nestabilites sets and mounted on a brown shape in the next size up in the scalloped set. This larger card also incorporates a background of pale green card sprayed with Cosmic Shimmer Cosimic Glimmer spray in Golden Mint - a delicious colour. The down side of this card is that I used a peel-off greeting for speed as I needed to get the card in the post and I am not totally happy with the result.

This smaller square card uses the same materials. The panels were cut out with one of the nestabilites label sets and mounted on a brown shape in the next size up in the set. This one has a heat embossed greeting from the EI Elephant Paisley plate, using a Cosmic Simmer powder. This is one of my favourite sentiment stamps, it is so stylish. I am much happier with this combination.

I have a long way to go with the brayering, but I feel I have made a start.

A simple anniversary card

I made this anniversary card for my husband earlier this month. He's not easy to make cards for, but he does like art nouveau designs, so this Cosmo Cricket Everafter paper and borders seemed just the thing.


The card only took about 15 minutes to make - that must be a record for me!! I thought the blue, brown and orange colour combination was really unusual, but it worked somehow. The dots are Craftwork Cards card candy, which I like to use sometimes instead of brads because as they have no "legs" they don't cause that lumpy finish you sometimes get otherwise.

My favourite rubber stamp companies - 2

This card features a stamp from another of my favourite rubber stamp companies - Crafty Individuals - and the featured tag stamp (CI 101) may be my most favourite. The little girl's face actually features on three different CI stamps and I think we can all see why!



This card is all based on white card. The background is coloured with Distress Ink in Broken China and Peeled Paint and then stamped with another CI stamp, a crackle design (CI116) in pale green Versamagic ink - Sage I think. The next layer was sprayed with Sticky Fingers (pale green) and Glimmer Mist (irridescent gold) sprays and when dried embossed in the Cuttlebug Script folder. The torn edge was coloured with a gold Krylon pen. The butterflies were cut out with a Martha Stewart punch from more DI ink and Glimmer Misted card and overstamped with a tiny section of another of CI stamp (CI 131) in Versafine Olympia Green ink, as was the little girl tag. I finished by adding three old-fashioned pearly green buttons.

This picture looks more blue, but it is greener in real life!!

My favourite rubber stamp companies - 1

Today I am posting a card that uses some of my favourite rubber stamps from one of my favourite rubber stamp companies - this uses the Wild Meadow set from Elusive Images. I was really helped with this card by a step-by-step tutorial on Glenda Waterworth's blog. http://artylicious.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/meadow-faery-card-step-by-step/ The dragonfly and sentiment stamp are not EI stamps.

I built up this image on white card, using loads of different inks, a mixture of dye, pigment, chalk and the odd bit of metallic. The dragonfly was stamped with Blue Lagoon Versafine and had a little clear stickles added to the wings. I heat embossed the sentiment in Cosmic Shimmer powder and then matted three times to add definition.

The card was for a very good friend's birthday.

Hope you are having a good day - the sun is shining here!

This is the Craft Shed!

I am a keen craft blog hopper, so I decided it was about time I joined in! My IT skills are limited, but I hope to learn more in time so I can add more features to my blog as time goes on.


I do my crafting in a lovely shed that my husband designed and built for me, down amongst the old apple trees in our garden, so that's how I decided on the name and layout for my blog. My craft shed is my little haven, where I can explore my creativity and experiment to get techniques right.

Like many crafters I am on a quest to get my craft space perfectly organised and one day when I have had a really good sort out, I'll post some more pictures of my other work and storage areas. This is a picture of my craft desk when it was unusually tidy, although normally I have to say it looks like a whirl of creative chaos and I have to give it a good blitz at least once a week to make sure I have any space to work in!


In the next few days I will try to start to post some of my craft projects.