Leafy prints

If you follow my work on here, you will know from time to time that I get very inspired by the lovely leaves of the macleaya cordata plants in our garden. I was sitting in the garden on Monday and the leaves in the sunshine looked like they had been dusted with fine gold mica powder, they had a gorgeous delicate sheen. I felt it was time for a creative leafy session. So on Monday I picked some leaves and inked the reverse sides with dye inks for some delicate leaf prints, using my Speedball brayer to gently press the detail into the paper. I used the plume poppy leaves, geraniums, hop leaves and ferns so ended up with some quite varied results. I sprayed some of the prints with walnut ink, my old glimmer mists and some Cosmic Shimmer sprays and I was really pleased with the way it made the ink bleed gently. I also added some leaf stamping on some of the pages. This was results of a couple of hours leaf printing.

I was really delighted with one of the prints that I will be keeping to make into a project just for me as it reminds me of that golden sheen on the leaves that inspired me in the first place.

I loved the way the gold spray collected in the veins of the leaf. If you click on the picture you can get a better look.

Here are a couple of the designs of card I made with the sheets of printing. The first uses a similar print to the one above. I lost the top of the print, so had to crop it a little. I added a DoCrafts sentiment and some Impression Obesssion die cuts in chocolate brown card.

These next two use one of the sheets like a masterboard and I used 3 x 3 inch squares to make the prints go as far as possible.

This panel used fern prints which I overstamped with the fern from the Chocolate Baroque Wild meadow set, using shades of Versafine ink. I added another DoCrafts sentiment and more of the IO leaf die cuts.

The second card uses the same sentiment and an Impression Obsession Gingko leaf die. I love Gingko leaves and I am hoping we can find space to plant a Gingko tree in our garden before too long. I added a little Vintage Photo DI to the edges of my leafy squares.

I was very pleased with how quickly these cards came together in the course of one evening once I had made the leafy prints and I still have plenty of material to make more cards and projects with.

Elaine

Scribbly birds

I have had my eye on these Dina Wakley Scribbly Birds stamps from Ranger for a while. I just think this little fella is especially delicious!

I haven't had a lot of time for crafting recently. We went away for a little break and then work and home stuff has taken over a bit. This afternoon I had a couple of hours much needed tidying in the shed and once my desk was clear I felt the need to make it messy again. The background of my card is stencilled using DIs and ink shaded using the new mini ink applicators, I really like these little round ones, you don't get the horrid straight edge marks as with the usual rectangular ones. My leaves were stamped using a Dyan Reavely set, also from Ranger and I had those already stamped and coloured left over from my book project. I stamped little bird and sentiment in brown archival ink, cut them out and added more DI and a bit of Distress Marker and stuck them on separately and then realised I could use up the little bit of spare leaf and a couple of pearls to finish things off on a black base card.

Things are blooming in the garden, even though we don't have much veg planted this year, things have a way of growing despite what we do or don't do sometimes!

Isn't it amazing that a flower can develop from this (excuse the blurry pic)

to this

to these!

I can tell you they taste amazing too! I am currently enjoying them every morning with breakfast.

These poppies seeded themselves in the garden and grow like weeds, I find it impossible to pull them all out and this is the result!

I have also been experimenting with the amazing and simple artisan bread recipe. Find the recipe here. This recipe only uses four ingredients - flour, yeast, salt and water and you don't even have to knead the dough. I have made two loaves so far, the first with just white flour and the latest with half wholemeal and half white and I also added some sesame and ground flax seeds. This made a really tasty loaf for so little effort, it works like magic!

Whatever you are doing, I hope you are enjoying the summer that finally seems to have tentatively arrived.

Elaine

Wetlands birthday card

I recently treated myself to three stamp sets from Stampin' Up, including the Wetlands stamps. This is one of my first cards with that set.

I had seen lots of cards on Pinterest made with these stamps and rather liked the torn edge effect. I started with some hot pressed watercolour paper and used my Peerless watercolour paints to add some background colour. I then stamped the birds and grasses stamps. It is a while since I stamped this card, but I think I used brown and grey inks for the images.

I added some more torn layers in handmade mulberry paper and Co'redinations card and then mounted the whole lot on a black A5 card blank. I finished off with the sentiment stamped on more watercoloured paper and finished off with three little gems.

I really love these stamps and look forward to making good use of this set.

By the way, if you missed my post on our shared blog, please do pop over and have a look here We are all making accordion book projects and this is mine, using another of  my Stampin' Up purchases.

Thanks for popping by!

Elaine