Lovely Laurel

Good evening to you all!  It has been another lovely day here today!  I have finished my Clarity DT cards and will post them off in the morning.  Obviously I can't post them on here yet, but I thought I would share the card that Maria Simms showed on the Take 2 Clarity show today.  What a fab couple of shows and some brilliant demos.

This card was made with one of the new Clarity ladies - Laurel and the lovely Laurel Hedge stamps

Stamp Laurel into place first and mask her
Brayer some blue for the sky
And some green for the ground
Punch out a circle and sponge through the hole in yellow for the sun
Stamp the Laurel Hedge round the edges and colour in the leaves
Remove Laurel's mask and colour her legs, arms, face and hat 
For her outfit, I used fusible film for the dress and fusible film and fibre for the coat
Mat onto black then gold card
Die cut leaves from another bit of the gold card

Spring has sprung at last!

Hello bloggers!

Well, it is a beautiful day here in rural Norfolk.  The sun is shining (after a shower of rain!), the birds are twittering away and all the doors are open.  I have spotted the first few house martins around, I always love it when they are here!
In honour of all of the above, I thought I would share a 'Spring' ATC I made recently.

  An ATC is an Artist's Trading Card. It has to be 2.5 x 3.5 inches in size and you have to trade it rather than sell it - other than that, you can do what you like!
For this one, I coloured the card first with yellow and green pan pastels.
Stamp the sheep into place - I had to mask one of the little ones and stamp the one behind it.
Rub out the colour from the sheep , so they are white, rather than green, then fix with hairspray (or proper fixative!)
Cut out masks for all the sheep and position carefully
Add the hills by using a torn paper mask and 'Meadow' adirondack ink, then stamped the tree (one of my favourites!) into place, also stamp the edges of the tree round the edges of the ATC to look like bushes
Stamp the word 'spring' from the remountable seasons set and the bird into place
The sheep are from the Remountable farm set

In the Classroom Reeds

Good Morning, I can see leaves beginning to form on the trees around the house now, so hopefully, spring may actually be coming!  Still a bit chilly though.
This is another card using the new 'In the Classroom' kit,

The centre panel is coloured with distress inks, just by using the blending tool.  I used several colours which blend together to form other colours.
I created a few splodges by flicking water from my fingers on to the ink, then blotting with copy paper (the splodges don't show well on the photo)
When all that was dry, I stamped the reed with archival black ink and added the heads separately.  Stamp the mini dragonflies too.
Embellish with small black gems
Mat onto black card, tear the bottom edge

For the background, I stamped the reed without any heads
Put it all together and there you have it xx

In the Classroom - windmill and reeds

I enjoy any 'grass' stamp, so was delighted to receive this set.  The reed stamp is brilliant, as it comes with different heads, so you can easily change the look of it.  I love watching the classroom shows with Barbara, I especially enjoy seeing all the homework cards people send in - what a wealth of talent there is out there.  I am pleased to have many of those ladies as friends on facebook.  I love it when their cards get shown.

Main Image

• use the A5 white coated Claritycard, stamp the windmill in place using Adirondack pitch black, place a mask over the top
• mask round the edges with low tack masking tape
• to create the cloudy sky effect, press cotton wool strands on a versamark inkpad and transfer to the top half of the card
• Brayer time! use either stonewashed or denim Adirondack ink and brayer the colour on the top half of the card, the versamark acts as a resist, so you should get a nice cloudy effect, which will show up a bit more if you give it a quick polish with kitchen roll
•  turn the card round and brayer lettuce ink on the bottom half of the card (make sure you catch the base of the windmill - or it will look as if it is floating!)
• it looks better if you leave a bit of white between the areas of blue and green
• darken the base of the card with a darker shade of green, such as oregano or pesto
• Remove the windmill mask and the masking tape and using the black Adirondack, stamp the reed into place chose which head you like best and add to the reed stems
• colour the windmill with promarkers
• draw a wiggly black line round the edge of the ink
• mat onto black card

Background

• Use Theuva card, brayer the sky blue and the base green
• stamp the reed with oregano/pesto/lettuce (whichever you use for the grass in the main image)
• ink round the edges in black
• mount on to the base card and add the image at an angle on top

Phew!  Sorry that was so long!

Douglas and the Shatters

This was the most popular of the April design team cards, so I thought it had better be the first one I blogged.  All stamps used are from Claritystamp

This card is very, very easy, it is really all just stamped, embossed and coloured in with promarkers, the most important thing is to make sure you don't get any excess powder specks, it would really spoil the look of it!  I had several goes at the background 'shatters' to make sure!

• Stamp Douglas with versamark and emboss with detail gold powder
• Colour in with various shades of cool grey promarkers and a red for his bow tie
• I dot and dash round the edge of the image along a ruler, using a fine black pen
• Embellish with small black gems
• Stamp and emboss the shatter stamp three time, once in gold, once in silver and once in bronze.
• Colour in with the same colour promarkers, using different combinations of colour for each image
• Mat onto dark grey card and add to the base card at jaunty angles
• Add Douglas over the top
• Embellish with card candy
• All done!

Pan Pastel Tree

This is another card I did for the workshop on Saturday, using Pan Pastels with a lovely Dreamweaver stencil



 

I used Pan Pastels to do both the background and

the main image.

• Tear a piece of white linen effect cardstock, so it is a bit bigger than the stencil
• Place the Cypress Tree stencil in the centre of the card and emboss (I use a Grand Calibur)
• Remove the stencil and using a pale colour Pan Pastel, colour the centre area, it is easier to do this now rather than later
• Replace the stencil and sponge some Versa Mark ink through the gaps
• Leave the stencil in place, then sponge a mixture of green, brown and red pan pastels through the gaps
• Lift the stencil and shade round the edges with pan pastels
• To create the 'ground' tear a piece of paper and place it so you can add shade under the bark of the tree
• Remove the paper and fix with hairspray
• Mat on to a torn piece of white linen cardstock, then onto green and finally the white base card
• Add card candy
• There you have it - a nice simple card!
• Enjoy your weekend xx 







A lovely surprise!

Well, what a lovely surprise!  The lovely Linda Page has nominated me for an award!  Thank you so much Linda, I am very flattered.  Please have a look at Linda's Blog  I don't know Linda personally, but we have become friends on facebook and she makes some lovely cards and is always very generous with her compliments.  Thank you for this award, Linda x

Please see below for the idea behind this award, I am giving due consideration to who I would like to nominate and will post the names very soon

This award is designed for blogs that have less than 200 followers. Once the award has been accepted, the idea is to pay it forward to 5 other blogs that you like to read and follow, and hopefully encourage others to visit, read and follow them too.

To accept the award you have to ......

Thank the person who gave it to you, and link back to their blog

Post the award on your blog

Give the award to 5 other Bloggers, with less than 200 followers and leave a comment on their blogs telling them they've been nominated.

Cards from Diva Red workshop on Saturday 6th April

So this is my first blog - how exciting! 

Obviously I have to post a picture of a card!!  Inspired by a lovely lady, Eileen Godwin, these were done for the Diva Red workshop I run with my crafty friend Moira.  They are very easy to do,

•  blend pan pastels over some lovely linen effect cardstock
• fix with cheap hairspray.
•  Stamp the Cherry Blossom Claritystamp with versamark  and emboss with black powder (remember to use something anti-static first)
• Colour in the blossom with an opaque white pen
• Attach butterflies with a brad.  The butterflies are dies from Spellbinders
• Mat onto black card, then onto the white base card
• Voila!