A Preview

First of all my thanks to everyone who left a comment regarding my last post - it is so nice to know that you liked the card even though it wasn't stamped!  I forgot to mention that it was rather a large card too as it was 22x22cm square.  Thankfully my Aunt did like it!  I don't think I have ever used as much cardstock on one card in my life with all the layering that I did along with the decoration inside!

Anyway today we are back to normal sized cards.  I did promise to give you a peek of what I will be demoing with this Sunday at Stevenage so here is one of the cards that will be on show using the latest range by Denami Design.  Anyone who knows me quite well knows that I love the clean lines and the simplicity of the Denami range.  For this card I stamped Mimi in the Rain and opted for her to be rained upon by flowers rather than raindrops which I took from the Whimsical Garden stamp set. I stamped the Small Umbrella a couple of times and cut out to add as embellishments to the card and then stamped the wording and the dotty swirl to add further interest.  All the imagery was coloured using Polycolor pencils and blended with a Splender pencil (which I will be showing you how to use on Sunday).  The papers were taken from the Basic Grey Sugared Paper Pad.

Here's a closer look at the colouring.  For added sparkle I also outlined some areas using a silver Sakura Stardust pen and then applied some glitter glue too.

All of these products are available from Stamp Addicts and of course I'll be showing you exactly how I achieved these results on Stamp Addicts's stand on Sunday.  So if you are able to come along do pop by and say hello as it is always nice to see some friendly faces!!

Art Deco Ladies

Morning everyone.  A few days ago I promised to show you the card that I did for my Aunt's 65th birthday.  Well here it is!  I don't think that I have ever made a card without any stamping on it before and I probably won't ever again!  However I knew that my Aunt loves the Clinton Cards Art Deco ladies as much as I do so I scanned in one of the pictures from my Clinton Cards slimline calendar and printed it out onto glossy paper.  I then layered it up onto some foiled, glittery, glossy and pearlescent cardstock that I have had laying around for ages.  The circles were cut using my Nestabilities and the numbers were also die cut using my Cuttlebug Curls and Swirls alphabet set.  The decorative corners were done using one of my new Martha Stewart punches that I purchased recently from The Craft Barn!  And although you can't see it very well in this photo I added lots of stickles to the ladies too.  The ribbon came from Quixotic Paperie.  I am really into this raffia type of ribbon at the moment as being see through you can still see the rest of the card peeping through it!

As you can see I decorated the inside of this card too using the same materials as for the front of the card and generated the greeting using my computer.

Here's a closer picture of the inside panel.

I did make a box for the card to go in which was stamped so I did get some sort of stamping in!!  Didn't take a photo of this though.

Even though there isn't any stamping on the card I thought that I would share this with you anyway!  I hope you like it!!

Pretty Pastels

Hey guys!!  Well it is almost the weekend which means that it is not long now until I get my Dancing On Ice fix!!

This week I have been busy making a special card for my Auntie as she will be having a party this weekend to celebrate her 65th birthday and also her retirement.  It took me ages to decide on what to do for her and in the end I cheated and used one of my pictures from my Art Deco Ladies Clinton Cards calendar as I know that she likes them!  I'll load it up in the next few days and show you the result.  I have been days making this card as I wanted it to look just right and kept changing my mind on the layers of cardstock!  There is absolutely no stamping on the card at all or any colouring so it really shouldn't have taken me very long at all!!  I don't think that I have ever made a card with no stamping on it before!!

Anyway here is a card that does have stamping on it and colouring too!  This was made using the Sarah Kay Precious Moments stamp which is just so sweet and then coloured using Copics.  Everything that you see on this card (apart from the 'best wishes' wording) is available from The Craft Barn.  The background paper that you see is by Bo Bunny and the cut out sentiment is a Craftwork Cards Oh My Words message.

If you like this card you might like to hop on over to The Craft Barn's blog as they have some more Sarah Kay cards showing today too.

Working Girls

Morning guys. Today I thought I'd show you a card I did a little while ago using one of my favourite Mimi stamps by Denami Design.  I absolutely love this range of stamps as there is a Mimi for almost any occasion and she is just so chic and stylish. This particular one is called Mimi in the City and is a great stamp to use for any friends that work in an office as you can see all the office buildings behind Mimi and her friends.

The papers that I used here are by Basic Grey and the sentiment is an old stamp by Penny Black.

All the Mimi stamps are sold in the UK by Stamp Addicts.

Charlotte

Morning guys.  Well the snow has virtually disappeared from our little corner of the UK and instead we now have rain!!  Personally I actually prefer the snow as at least it looks pretty!

Today I thought I'd share a card with you that I did last year using Charlotte Ketto which is from the Stamping Bella range.  This range is now available exclusively in the UK through The Craft Barn and what is even better is that you can now view the range online too!!  So why not head on over to The Craft Barn and see all the different ranges that they stock including Kettos, Bella, Fella, Green Bean Babies, Huggabugg, Lulu, Tiddly Inks and more.  These images are so sweet and truly lovely - I want so many of them!!  Best of all most of the images are quite quick to colour too!

Classes for March

Morning guys.  Yes!!  Today is the day!!!  No........................nothing to do with Valentines Day!!!  Today is SUNDAY which means.......................................it's Dancing On Ice day!!!  HURRAY!!  Ooooohhhhh!!  Can't wait!!  (Yes - don't worry - I know that I am very sad! Lol!)

Anyway what I did stop by to tell you is that I have just added some class dates for the month of March to My Event Diary on my sidebar.  On Saturday the 6th March I will be doing an all day class at The Glitter Pot showing how to make a pretty, floral concertina card which would make an ideal card for Mother's Day or a very pretty birthday card for a special person and on Saturday 20th March I am back at The Craft Barn taking classes with the 3C factor - Charismatic, Cute and coloured with Copics!!

Before the classes happen though I will be demoing at Stevenage on the 28th Feb for Stamp Addicts - I can hardly believe that this is only two weeks away now!  I have been working on some sample cards for this over this last week using some of the latest Denami stamps which as ever are fantastic.  If you are very good I may post up a few sneak peeks of some of these cards soon!

Meanwhile I hope you are all enjoying your weekend and are staying warm!!  It is bitterly cold here outside although the snow is beginning to melt away - we have just got a cold wind to replace the snow instead!  Still it is perfect card making weather as I have no yearnings to be out and about in this!!

More Pepper

Hi guys.  As promised here is that other card from the class at The Glitter Pot using that Pepper clear stamp set.  The butterflies are also included on the stamp set along with the main image and this was of course coloured using Copics!

The swirls as wording came from my Fancy Flourishes stamp sheet.  As you can see the layout and colour scheme remained the same for this card - I just changed the Nestabilities template for the Deckled Rectangles instead.

Not long to go now until my favourite day of the week comes along!!........................

Winter Wonderland

Hi guys.  Well yesterday we had a few snow showers and today I woke up to a thick blanket of snow outside!  In some places it is about 6 inches deep which is quite something for our little spot of the UK!!  The weather this morning has really been quite bizarre with bright sunshine one minute and then a snow blizzard so thick that you can't see the trees in the field across from us!  I must say that it all looks really pretty and I have wasted so much time this morning just watching the snow!  There is something quite fascinating about it - perhaps it is because we don't get to see it that often here!

Luckily for me I don't need to go anywhere for the next few days but I do feel sorry for those who have got to try to struggle into work!

Anyway today I thought I would show you one of the cards we made last Saturday at The Glitter Pot.  Although I do love dogs I hardly ever do 'dog cards' so this is quite a rarity for me!  However when I saw these designs I just had to use them!  This particular little sweetie is from the Pepper clear stamp set by Dovecraft which of course is available from The Glitter Pot as is everything else that I have used on this card. 

Can you guess what I coloured him with??  Yep that's right....................my copics of course!  There wasn't an awful lot of colouring to do either so that didn't take too long!  The dragonflies that you see on the card were also from the Pepper clear stamp set and the swirls and wording are from my Fancy Flourishes stamp sheet.

I used my Nestabilities to cut out the dog and one of my new Martha Stewart punches which I just love!!  These are so easy to use.

Originally I was going to go with a brown and beige combination for this card but in the end I decided I wanted it to look pretty so I added my favourite colour instead!  I believe this is the first time I have used lilac and brown together and I think that it works quite well.

Tomorrow I'll post up the other card we made using another of the images from that Pepper clear stamp set.

Blue Funky Flowers

Here is the last of the cards that we did the other week at The Craft Barn using that Funky Flowers stamp sheet again.  This card was a little bit more involved than the one I showed you the other day as there was a little bit of masking involved.  We started off by stamping the larger (pink) flower head onto the white panel, then stamped it again onto a post it note. The post it note flower was cut out and placed over the original stamped flower so that we could then stamp the different flower head to the right and slightly behind that first flower head.  You can see that we also needed to make a mask for that third flower so that we could stamp the leaf behind it. (To see all the different components on this sheet check out my sidebar.)

As I said before these stamps were all designed to interact with one another so the amount of different compositions you can create is endless and it is entirely up to you how intricate and involved you want to make them.

Once I've gone to the trouble of making masks for any of my flower heads or leaves I then store them on a piece of acetate and slip it into the folder that I keep my stamps in so that they are always together and ready for next time.

The background for this card was created using my Fancy Flourish stamp sheet.  Both of these stamp sheets can be purchased from The Craft Barn.

The colouring was done using a combination of Copic Ciaos and Sakura Stardust pens which again The Craft Barn stock.

Lilac Windflowers

Morning guys.  I was going to post up the other Craft Barn Funky Flowers card that we did but on reflection I thought that I would give them a rest and pop this card on here instead.  This was a result of one of my 'play' sessions that I had just after Christmas when I had a little bit of time!

The main image is by Penny Black and is called Windflower - hence the title!!  The wording is also by Penny Black and is from their clear Salutations stamp set - both of these items I got from the lovely people at Sir Stampalot who do a vast range of stamps!

The flowers are a bold stamp so I used my water-based markers directly onto the rubber stamp, then lightly spritzed the stamp with water to blend the inks and stamped out onto card. (You can see me do this technique on my Basics and Beyond DVD.)  To soften the white background I took my Judikins Mince Flourish stamp (Judikins), coloured the rubber with a water-based marker and stamped down the left side of the panel. Using this same marker I then lightly sponged the background. 

The dotty stamp that I have used as a border is by Denami. This stamp, the Judikins stamp and the ribbon came from Stamp Addicts.

Hope you like it!

Mounting Un-Mounted Stamp Sheets

Woo hoooooo!!!  It is that time of the week again when I get to watch my favourite programme tonight!!  Am already looking forward to watching all the routines on Dancing On Ice and can't wait to see what Jason has to say this week!!

Anyway enough about that I had a question from Pauline yesterday asking about whether I mount all my un-mounted stamps.  The short answer to that is yes I do but it got me thinking that perhaps I ought to explain the way that I do it as there are so many un-mounted stamps out there.

Sometimes when you buy 'cling' stamps (with the mounting foam already attatched) they have got the design on the 'cling' side of the stamp which I really like as you can then see that you are stamping it the right way up which is especially handy when you are stamping words!

Now unfortunately I don't have any pictures to explain what I am going to say so you will need to read this carefully!!  (I have in the past shown how to do this on one of our Create and Craft programmes so some of you might know what I am talking about!)

1. First of all peel the protective covering from the cling side of your mounting foam.
2. Ink up your un-mounted stamp sheet with a dark colour StazOn inkpad. (I normally use black.) Carefully pick up the sheet, turn it over and place it onto the cling side of your mounting foam lining up 2 edges of the stamp sheet with 2 edges of the mounting foam.
3. Using a large acrylic block, press firmly all over the stamp sheet to transfer the ink onto the mounting foam.
4. Peel the stamp sheet away from the foam and clean the stamp sheet.
5. Next turn the mounting foam over (turning it sideways as opposed from top to bottom) and remember which 2 sides you used to line up the stamp sheet with - for instance I normally tend to line my stamp sheet up with the bottom edge and left edge. Once the mounting foam has been turned over these 2 edges then become the bottom edge and right edge.
6. Peel back a little of the protective covering from the bottom edge of the sticky side of the mounting foam and place your stamp sheet carefully into position lining up those same 2 edges.
7. Once in place, peel away the rest of the protective covering and press all over the stamp sheet to ensure it is nicely stuck.
8. Cut out around your stamps as normal and then store on an EZ mount storage panel or whatever you prefer.
9. You now have all your stamps mounted with a handy reference guide on the cling side - you probably won't be spot on with your stamped images on the cling side in relation to the actual stamps themselves but at least you will know which image you are stamping and that it is the right way up!

I hope this helps!!  I normally tend to use EZ Mount as my mounting foam as this is great quality along with the EZ Mount storage panels which can both be purchased from The Stamp Man.

Funky's In Lilac!!

Hi guys.  Ok back to the Funky Flowers for this post.  This is one of the cards we made using the Funky Flowers stamp sheet in the afternoon class at The Craft Barn the other Saturday.  If you look on my sidebar you can see all the different elements on this particular stamp sheet consisting of different flower heads, leaves etc...  When I designed this sheet I had it in mind that it would be fun for people to be able to make up their own flower compositions using these different elements. In particular I thought this would be really handy when you have a particular size or shape of space to fill - for instance when you have cut one of the Nestabilities templates you can then stamp an arrangement to fill it perfectly.  So for this class I showed this easy version where you just take some of the elements and stamp them in the appropriate places without any need for masking.  The stems were simply drawn in by hand using a waterproof fine line black pen.  There are just so many different compositions that you can obtain using this stamp sheet to fit any size of space apart from teeny tiny!!

The flourishes and the wording came from the Fancy Flourishes stamp sheet which again is on my sidebar.

To colour the flowers I used a combination of light coloured Copics and Sakura Stardust pens along with a water brush.

The stamps and materials used on this card are all available from The Craft Barn.

I hope you like it!!

A Flower For You!

I thought that today we would have a rest from the Funky Flowers (as I have more of these to show you) and go with a card that I did last summer for my Colouring Techniques DVD.

As I think we all know by now, I love the colour lilac and if I combine it with another colour it is normally with blue but for a change I decided to go with green for this card and I was actually quite pleased with the colour scheme.

The main image is by Penny Black and was stamped onto watercolour card and then watercoloured using water-based markers along with a water brush.  The flourish stamp (Judikins) that you see around the panel was stamped using a green water-based marker and then I gently traced over the stamped impressions with my water brush to soften the lines.

The flowers were punched out from Basic Grey background papers and Bazzill cardstock using my retro flower punches.

Materials used:
Penny Black Mouse from The Glitter Pot
Judikins Mince Flourish (around main panel and on green panel) and Mince Flowers and Leaves stamp (on lilac panel) from Stamp Addicts
Retro flower punches from The Hobby House
Friends Always stamp from a Hero Arts clear stamp set from The Glitter Pot

Hope you like the card!!

More Funkys

Today I thought I'd post up the other card we made on that same class as the card I posted up yesterday.  As I am sure you can guess this card uses those same two stamp sheets and the same technique of building up backgrounds using inks and flourish stamps. Once again the flowers were coloured using the Copics - what else?? 

The inkpads that I actually used for the backgrounds were -

Adirondack (Dye-based) in Willow
Distress inkpads in Tattered Rose and Peeled Paint.

The stamp sheets, inkpads and pens are all of course available from The Craft Barn.

Some Funky Flowers

Well I guess it is about time I showed you one of the cards that I made the other week when I was struggling to make anything at all!!  This is one of the cards that I finally created for one of my classes at The Craft Barn that I took the other Saturday.  I am sure that you will recognise the stamps as coming from my Funky Flowers and Fancy Flourishes stamp sheets!!  The backgrounds were created using some of the different flourishes from the Flourish stamp sheet along with some different coloured inkpads to build up a layered look.

The flower panel was coloured using Copics and then flourishes were stamped around them and some light sponging added.

The wording that you see was also off of the Fancy Flourishes stamp sheet. Both of these stamp sheets can be purchased from The Craft Barn along of course with the Copic Ciaos.

A Lovely Time

Hey guys.  I'm under strict orders from my chiropractor to rest for the remainder of the day but I've just got to update my blog first!  (You know how it is!!)

Lisa- you are an absolute genius!!  Yesterday Mum and I (finally) went shopping to Tunbridge Wells and it was just what I needed!  I had a thoroughly nice time - just having a change of scenery was great!  Although all the bargains had been snapped up from the January sales, I still had a really nice time and came home with my purse rather a lot lighter!!  The best thing though was that going around the shops things kept jumping out at me and I now feel quite inspired and am in a much more positive frame of mind, so here's hoping I won't be struggling so much in the next few days with my card making!!

The trouble with feeling so inspired was that my mind was really buzzing last night and consequently it took me ages to get to sleep as I just couldn't switch off!  This morning though I woke up to find that the landscape had been dusted with icing sugar!  We had had a very light sprinkling of snow last night on top of the frost and it really did look as if someone had taken a very big sieve and dusted our little corner of the world with sugar!  It wasn't enough to cover the ground entirely so it didn't cause any upset around here.

The card that I've loaded up today is another one that I did last summer.  The main stamp and the faint background stamp are both by Penny Black and the black fine flourish is from my Fancy Flourishes stamp sheet. The sentiment is a little pre-printed die-cut from Craftwork Cards from one of their Oh My Words collection. These are great time savers and they do a huge variety of different words in both this oval shape and in circles too.  The main image was coloured using water based markers.  Here's hoping you like it!!!