More golden oldies

Good evening,
Thank you for visiting my blog, Welcome to new (and regular!) visitors,I hope you enjoy it.
I am having a bit of a re-visit of older cards at the moment, as my current designs have to be kept secret until after the TV show on Easter Saturday and the Clarity workshops.

This card is one I did several years ago for a Clarity challenge - back in the early days before the challenge blog, it is still one of my favourites.

The theme was to use green, blue and white and include brayering, and a tree

This was in the days before the blending mats, so I had to do the famous wheelie to make sure the edges of the ink on the brayer were nice and smooth.  I used Clarity card and added blue ink diagonally across the centre, the green ink on the edges.
I embossed the fab Pear tree (one of my most favourite of the Clarity trees!!) with white embossing powder.  I also did a smaller panel and embossed part of the tree in white and the other part in blue.
I then spent ages 'colouring' the leaves with a quickie glue pen and adding tiny pieces of gilding flakes.
The larger background piece is stamped with a leafy sprig using versa mark, which will resist the ink brayered over the top.  I edged all the pieces with a gold krylon pen, then mounted it all.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend - I am quite excited about mine - I will let you know about it next time
Take care, Janet xx

Madeleine

Good morning!

Happy Sunday, I hope you are having a great weekend so far.  I am a bit short of cards to show you - the new ones I am doing are for the upcoming TV shows and workshops, so I can't show those yet and I think I have shown all my cards from the last shows.
I had a look back at some of the cards I did before I started blogging and I thought I would share a couple of them.

Both feature Madeleine, a rather lovely lady from the Claritystamp range

I decided that I would colour her hair with greys for both cards, then add different accent colours in the flower.
I used promarkers to colour them , I think I would add more shading if I were making this now.  I am getting a bit more confident with colouring these days!
Once I gad done all the colouring, I added some glitter onto the flower.
I matted with grey card and also found a colour to match the flower.









The yellow behind the verse on here looks very splotchy in the picture, but it looked better in real life - honest!!


Have a fab weekend and for those of you at the NEC - ~I hope you stuck to your budget!!

Janet xx

Time for tea

 Hello folks,

I have had a nice relaxing day today, we went out for afternoon tea, so I thought I would share a card I did some time ago with Clarity's remountable Kitchen Set, a fab collection of stamps for the baker in your life.

 I stamped each element separately, then cut everything to the same size and mounted on blue card, cut a bit bigger.  Mount all the square on some patterned paper.

I then set about colouring everything in, I also added a touch of glitter and glaze.

I hope those of you who went to the NEC had a great time.

Take care,
Janet xx

Magic is in the air!!

Hi folks,
Weekend on the way!  I hope you have something nice planned, I am cooking Sunday dinner for my Mum, as it is Mother's day on Sunday.  I also have to get all my craft stuff put away - I hope I can find enough places for it to go!!
I need a bit of magic!  Luckily I have just the card!

I made this one for the Clarity show on TV last time, the new set of wee Fairy Folk is fabulous, such pretty images!
There is a male and female set, you definitely need both!
I cut an aperture with a die, then added lots of distress ink, so it was nice and bright, I did my stamping with archival black ink, then used water to lift some of the colour out of the toadstools and wings, I added some glitter to the fairy wings.

THe background is done by using the same colour inks squished on a glass mat, then spritzed and picked up on a piece of card, when it was dry, I stamped the grass stamp round the edge.

The word 'Magical' is stamped on a spare bit of the background.

Have a great weekend xx

Weekend workshops

;Hello everyone,
Welcome to my new followers, I hope you enjoy visiting!

Last weekend was another busy crafting one: Diva Red on Saturday with Moira and the Sundae Club on Sunday, also with Moira.  We have been getting together with all these ladies for a long time for crafting and chatting.

thses were my cards for the workshops, all using Clarity stamps and stencils

Card number one, we used Jo's bubbles to do the background and keeping the stencil in place, stamped the lovely Roseart swirl through the aperture.
The main image, is done by stamping and masking the versatile urn and Roseart
I also stamped the Roseart round the edge of the base card and did a bit of shading round the edge

The second card, using a fab Gentian stamp, I just embossed the Gentian with white embossing powder onto Kraft card, then coloured in with Distress markers.  I added some 'ground' with a white pen.
The speckled background is chunky white and gold embossing powder, sprinkled on the card, then heated from underneath to stop it all blowing around

The last card is the one from Sunday, Just stamping and colouring, with a bit of masking to make sure the chick is in the egg.

We also made two lovely cards that were Moira's designs, but they would have to be stood up and photographed for best effect, and I don't have that sort of technology, but if you look on Moira's facebook page, she has posted them there.

Thanks very much for visiting,
Janet xxx

Spring is on the way!!

Hi Guys,
Happy Thursday!, my day off work - yay! ....and the weather is looking good.  It has even been light when I have had to get up for the last few mornings, so definitely a lovely spring feel.  The thought of spring and summer always cheers me up!
With that in mind, this card is one made with a lovely set of spring day stamps from Claritystamp.  It is one of my samples from the last show.  Tulips are one of my favourite flowers.

I started by stamping the word circle, then the tulip circle inside it - I used green ink
I found a circle die the right size and cut out a circle of copy paper to cover the stamped image.
Cover the top and bottom of the card to leave a strip along the centre, then add green to the bottom and yellow along the top of the strip
Remove the mask, then using one of the clarity stencil with a circle aperture, I add a bit of yellow round the edge of the circle.
Now it is just a case of colouring in....I used distress markers, they have a fine tip to get in all the small areas on the tulip leaves
Once that was done, I added a slightly darker shade of green round the edge of the card, and used a fine pen to run a couple of squiggly lines along the edge of the strip and round the circle.
Hope you like it!
Enjoy your day!
Janet xxx

Claritystampers East Feb 2015

Morning everyone,

Thank you for visiting!  I am having a couple of days off work, although I have been busy doing workshops.  I did the Claritystampers East workshops in Bawburgh and Great Blakenham over the last two weekends, so I am posting the cards we did there.

It is always great to catch up with all the ladies and I enjoy watching people muttering away because they don't think they are doing very well, then being really pleased at the end because they have created a lovely card!
The first card is done with the Floral Bouquet and vase stencil set, we made the background by stamping the solid version of the stamp onto Clarity card using versamark ink, then brayering over the top, the versamark resists the ink, especially if you give it a polish!

To make the vase, choose which one you like from the stencil, then either brush or sponge ink through the aperture, make sure to mask off any bits from the other vases!

We stamped the outline flowers on a separate piece of card, then coloured in and cut out and added some gems to the centres of the flowers

This is my favourite of the cards, I love doing these sort of backgrounds.  Start by stamping the trees from the 'In the Country' set then mask a strip across the card, just under the trees. Brush lots of brown ink over the rest, I didn't mask the trees because I was going to colour then a darker brown anyway.
Using the same colour brown, add elements from the fab 'Journalling'set, I blotted before stamping to give a more faded look. (Apart from the bird, which is first generation!)
then, the fun bit!  Spatter some of the brown ink.
Remove the mask, then stamp and colour the cats.
Colour the trees. I used different shades of brown with just a touch of turquoise! I added some turquoise glitter glue to the trees and dotted a bit around the background too.
Originally, I intended to keep the strip clean, but it got some ink on it, so I spattered that too!

This card produced the most muttering!!

Use a square of copy paper to mask of the centre of the card, then stamp the trees round the edge
Use a black fine pen to draw in the square, then do another square inside that one, draw in some little lines to make sections
now mask off round the edges of the square and stamp the dog, mask him then stamp the trees, add a moon mask and mask the trees, then add the sky and some ground.
Remove all the masks then colour it all in.

Hope you all have a great day,
Janet xxx