A pretty frock!

I saw these gorgeous B Line dress stamps being demoed by Linda Brown and Linda Elbourne at the LB Craft stand at the Ally Pally show in April and had to add them to my wish list. When we visited LB in June as part of our mini Retreat trip to Bedfordshire, I had to buy them. You may have spotted them in a recent issue of Craft Stamper in an article by Linda Brown.

It took me until yesterday to get around to using these stamps and I made a card for a friend. I'm sorry the picture is a little out of focus, I only took one quick snap before I needed to get the card in the post.

I stamped the images in Ranger jet black archival ink on a sheet of K & Co matting card that had a natured themed design. This is actually textured card, so not the best surface for getting a really sharp image, but hopefully good enough to show the final result. I added more stamping from a Crafty Individuals set, the flourish is from the Tecnnique Tuesday Whirly Words set that had been on my wish list for ages and I finally got at Ally Pally in April. The sentiment is from the B Line dress set. I cut out and edged the dress with Shabby Shutters DI and mounted the whole thing onto dark green card, that I folded and cut out into a dress shaped card and just added a little wooden button.

I really enjoyed christening this delightful set of stamps.

Elaine xx

New Quartet Project

Well I am last off the starting blocks with this month's project post for our shared blog, but after my leaky bucket disaster previously mentioned do please pop over to see the full details here.

I have been making a couple of cards with the freebie stamps from Craft Stamper. This one uses the flower from the latest issue, cut out and mounted on a background stamped with the Prima Notary stamp. This is brilliant value for a script background sized 4" x 6". I coloured the images with Sunshine Yellow Adirondack dye ink, Spiced Marmalade DI and Cranberry Adirondack. I added a little heart button and some orange sparkles. The whole card is tiny, only just over 2" square.

I have been having a long overdue sort out of our house and look at this delightful little vintage travel iron I found. I think I found it at a car boot sale. I am thinking it could have good potential for crafty uses as it has a really heavy sole plate, once it has been tested for electrical safety of course!!

Thanks for dropping by!

Elaine xx

Butterfly girl

July is a busy month for birthdays in our families, so I have loads of cards to make. I made this one as a real quicky this morning for a 3 year old.

The gorgeous stamp is from Imagination Stamps see here. I bought the stamp at the Alexandra Palace show in April, I am ashamed to say this is the first time I have used it, but I knew I had to have it! I stamped the main image in black archival ink and then rubbed over the whole image with a little pale blue Viva Paper Soft Colour. Then I used a Cosmic Swirl stencil template (Imagination also sell these) and sponged a darker blue around the central image taking care to avoid the face. The butterflies are stickers. They are a little glittery and not the sort of thing I usually use, but they seemed appropriate for a little girl's card.

I need to get back to finiishing my flag book now, I am the last to go posting this month - Judith has just posted her gorgeous rainbow garden project here,

There's a hole in my bucket, Dear Liza!

I really can't believe that is has really been 2 weeks since I last blogged. I have been crafting, but there are a few things I haven't been able to post yet, for various reasons and a couple of cards I made in such a hurry to catch the post I even forgot to take photos!!

This post is really a sneeky peek for the next project I am working on for the blog I share with Jo, Judith and Lesley. I am rather behind the others (again), but this time with quite good reason and there is a moral in this tale!

I like nice quirky bits and pieces in my shed and the other day I spotted this little bucket in a gift shop! It is about 3 inches high and I thought it would make a nice little water pot for when I was painting. However I have since learnt that not all buckets are equal when it comes to holding water and this was obviously supposed to be a purely decorative item!

I made the nine flags needed for my flag book, this was three layers of dye ink on each side, two colours (willow and citrus) sponged on with Cut 'n Dry and the top colour (lettuce) stippled on using my leafy background technique. As you can imagine this took me some time, needing to cover 18 sides on all! I then did a little painting on another project with some H2Os, by which time it was time for me to cook the dinner. I didn't clear up behind myself and empty my water pot, but left it on my craft desk with my nicely inked flags all laid out to dry ready for stamping!

However, this was the sight that greeted me next day ........... nine inked flags all water damaged - the dratted bucket had leaked all it's water across my desk! So the first set all ended up in the bin!

This afternoon, I have made a replacement set, ready for overstamping during the week, hopefully I will be able to post the results on the other blog by next weekend. Ever get a feeling of deja vue? This time, I have made sure there is no water nearby, I should be fine unless the roof leaks!!

In the meantime, do pop over and see what the other girls have already posted here, Jo and Lesley have both done gorgeous Parisian themed books. I am still in my comfort zone and going for another nature themed project.

Thanks for popping by!

Elaine xx

An afternoon of distractions in the craft shed

This afternoon, I went down to my shed for my regular Sunday afternoon craft session. On the agenda was making progress with my canvas for the latest project for our shared Craft Stamping Quartet blog. My lovely shed is down in my wild garden in a wooded area, on the way I had to snap this lovely rose - isn't it a beauty?

On the way down to the shed I spotted one of our resident rabbits go down a new burrow that has only recently been excavated near the shed and as I arrived down at the shed I disturbed a baby rabbit who was sunning himself on my verandah. Sadly I didn't manage to get a picture of him.

I started some painting for my canvas and while I was waiting for it to dry, I started a little tidying and found this beauty. This is a Burnet Moth and is one of my most favourite native species of moths and butterflies - this is a little bit of a ragged specimin, but look at that colour! I managed to catch him gently in my hands and set him free in the garden.

It wasn't long before something else caught my eye. I have this little bird house outside my shed. It has been there a couple of years unihabited. This year however, my favourite bird - the wren - has built a nest and is raising babies. She spent the afternoon to-ing and fro-ing feeding the babes and cleaning the nest. This is the best pic I could get, as my battery chose a bad moment to run low, excuse the quality.

To be honest I didn't make much progress with my canvas, I think I may have to give up trying soon and get on with something I can do! There was only one thing I successfully decorated - my hands!

But I did have a lovely peaceful afternoon. I hope you'll forgive my distractions from the crafty content, but I love the pleasures my garden provides.

Elaine xx

Home again!

Well, I can't believe how long it has taken me to report back from my crafty holiday with my Craft Stamping Quartet companions, Jo, Judith and Lesley.

Apart from the day we all travelled and arrived we had the most amazing weather - in fact some days it was a tad too hot! I was the only one of us to travel on public transport. Despite all the other girls being really kind and bringing as much as they could for me to use to save me carrying too much, my bags were like lead weights thanks to me packing so much "essential" craft kit and cakes!!

We found some really nice accomodation which worked really well for us. Seeing all our craft kit together was completely unbelievable - there were piles and piles of boxes everywhere. In true dedicated crafters' style, we made a mess very quickly. You all know how much mess one crafter can make - just imagine this multiplied by four!!

I did try and tidy up my working space from time to time. At one point I am sure Jo thought I was trying to steal the whole table - sorry - I really didn't mean to, but I suppose I am used to having my whole shed to myself!! Making space to eat our meals was a continual challenge!!

We just had a perfect time. We showed each other techniques. Judith taught us the essential techniques of jewellery making - she was very patient as I was a bit of a sloppy pupil I think!!!

A lot of our time was spent making the circle journal pages for each other. We worked in pairs keeping the final version secret until the last evening when we handed them over. We all managed to make two each, but somehow we all managed not to make any for Lesley, so she had three IOUs. Sorry Lesley, but I am making quite good progress with yours now!

It was so interesting working alongside each other - seeing how we all work in such different ways. I think the results were amazing - I know this is in large part due to the care and attention everyone devoted to the pages we made for each other. They felt like a really special gift for fellow crafters who really understand the pleasure of what we all do.

These are the pages I made for Jo. I planned my designs before I went away to make sure I took all I needed with me. My starting point was knowing how much Jo likes kraft paper. The ideas blossomed from there.

These are the pages I made for Judith. I knew Judith liked the Basic Grey Wisteria range, so this background paper drove my colour palette. I had to include poppies as they are Judith's favourite flowers, so I stamped these on mulberry paper, decoupaged the layers and added black seed beads in the centres to reflect Judith's love of jewellery making.

We also fitted in a brilliant class with Linda Elbourne at LB Crafts - making a fabulous wall hanging. I haven't finished mine yet, but will post it as soon as I can. It was great and shopping at LB was a treat too, what an amazing place with a fabulous choice of goodies.

My efforts at teaching were to show the other girls how to do my leafy background techniques, using the plume poppy leaves I had bought from home. I blogged these a while ago here. The leaves were sadly a little floppy by the time we got round to it, but everyone got really good results in the end.

Some people got quite messy in the process - no names mentioned, but you know who you are!!

We kept ourselves fuelled with cakes, chocolate, a little wine, lovely home cooked food and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables of course!! We laughed lots, talked about life, the universe and everything - including crafting of course, had horrendously late nights and just had the best time ever. We popped out to the outside world now and again and spent time dodging the very large resident black great dane who was nearly as tall as me with his feet on the ground!

Sadly our few days together were over so quickly it was like the blink of an eye. Saturday morning when we all said goodbye was just so sad, we had shared so much. So thank you Jo, Judith and Lesley - how often can four women spend so much time in such close proximity and never have a cross word - you are great pals - I hope we can do it all again before too long.

Elaine xx

An exciting day!

Today is a really exciting day as I am packing to go on a mini craft retreat with my three Craft Stamping Quartet companions. It isn't often enough we are able to get together in real life, in fact we have only once had all four of us together in one place ever, so this holiday is an amazing treat to have real quality time together. 

Tomorrow we set off for four days of crafty heaven together, in some holiday accomodation in rural Bedfordshire - the location chosen because it was fairly centrally located between all of us. We have planned a schedule of activites to keep ourselves occupied, sharing our skills and knowledge between the four of us and generally having a brilliant time. We have also managed to fit in a workshop with the very talented Linda Elbourne at LB Crafts. I am so looking forward to visiting the shop for the first time as I love shopping at their stand when I go to Alexandra Palace.

One of the things we will be doing in the evenings is making circle journals where we decorate the pages for each other, so we all end up with a journal at the end of our break. This is the cover for my CJ and I have lots of ideas for the pages I want to create for the other girls.

The base layer is a gorgeous paper from Graphic 45, with all sorts of memorabilia added that really suit my taste. It makes a change to make something just for me!!

I cannot tell you how much stuff I have packed for the trip. We have all co-ordinated our packing lists, but I still feel like there is so much stuff I absolutely must have with me!! I think my craft shed must be nearly empty! It is like I am doing a weigh bridge test on my new crafty tote. If a wheel falls off I have had it!! I will just have to try and look like a pathetic damsel in distress when I am getting on and off the hovercraft, coach and train in the hope I might get some help lugging it on and off!!

To finish off look at this beautiful geranium I have blooming in my window box at the moment. Isn't that the most stunning colour? I think it really has a wow factor. 

Enjoy your week, I will report back when I get home.

Elaine xx