Claritystampers Sunday

Good evening everyone,

I hope you have had a great weekend.  I did the Claritystampers East workshop in Great Blakenham today (the one in Bawburgh was two weeks ago)
We used shrink plastic amongst other things - without too much trauma!!  The first two cards were done with the very lovely Wee Folk Fairies and Elves and the fab Japanese Reeds stencil

 This card was done by brayering the background on Clarity Card, then stencilling over the top and stamping the fairies in place and adding a touch of glitter to their wings

 This is the one with shrink plastic - stamp the fairies with black archival on shrink plastic and leave to dry (this does take a while!)

In the mean time, brush some colour very lightly on to the lovely glossy Chromo Card.  (I had pre-embossed the image onto the card by running the stencil and card through my Grand Calibur)

Put the stencil back over the embossed image and add some more colour to the reeds and the sun.

Cut the fairies out carefully ,then heat gentlywith a heat gun and watch them shrivel and squirm before your eyes - don't panic!!  They shrink to teeny weeny fairies, which you can stick to the card with glue gel

The third card is also done with the brayer - but used slightly differently to usual.  Make the background by doing lots of small sharp stokes with the brayer, keep turning the card and use different colour ink.
Do a smaller piece too, the stamp the Gentian on it and cut out the flowers.
Stamp the image on another piece of white card, colour the leaves green, I added some colour to the edge of the card, then stick the cut out flowers over the top.
I have never had such a quiet spell during a workshop - you could have heard a pin drop during the cutting and colouring stage of this!!

I am home with my feet up now - tired but pleased with how well all the lovely ladies did!

Enjoy your evening,
Janet xxx

Sunny, spring day

Hello folks,

Welcome along!  It is the most beautiful day here today, bright, warm and sunny - there really is no better place to be than my own garden when it is like this!

Having said that, this card is another German sample for Barbara and Clarity and the words mean 'Good Trip'

This is one of those cards that has ended up very different to way I thought it would!

I started by using an orangey watercolour background from my stash, then placed the wonderful circle stencil over it and drew round it all with a fine black pen.  I removed the stencil and filled in the little bits to complete the circles I decided were going to be on top.
I coloured and shaded the circles, but to be honest, I can't remember what with!  If you pushed me, I would say promarkers!

I then did the scene in the centre square: I drew in the lines for the hills, then shaded with promarkers I stamped the cyclist in place and added a few lines for ground underneath. I then filled in the background to the circles with dark grey promarkers and stamped the words.

I hope you are enjoying sunshine wherever you are - it always makes the world seem like a better place doesn't it?

Take care, Janet xx

In Love

Good morning bloggers,

Welcome along to my blog, I am up and at 'em nice and early today.  I have the house to myself this weekend, so I am going to gets lots done: housework, gardening and some cards!  (Well, that's the plan!!)  The stamps for the next ClarityTV show have arrived and they are just lovely, I also have some new Chalk acrylics, which definitely need experimenting with.....

Today's card is a bit different for me, I made it as a sample for the Clarity show on German TV.
I used Gesso to cover a piece of kraft card, then inked it with distress inks - I loved the soft colours!  I used the fab new tree square stencil and ran it through my Grand Calibur, then sanded over the embossed bits - I was hoping it would make the tree and frame look brown, but it didn't work very well, so I added some brown to the tree.
I stamped and embossed the couple on the bench using distress powder and I stamped the words with grey archival.
If you look really closely, you can just see a yellow sun, but that was really faded!
I matted it on brown card, then dug out some brown eyelets for the corners - (I have a million of them and haven't used them for ages, but now I've thought about them, you may well see more!!)
I then matted that onto another piece of gessoed and inked Kraft card and brown card.
Hope you like it, thanks very much for visiting and I hope you all have a lovely weekend.
Take care, Janet xxx
PS 'Verliebt' means ' In Love' (I hope!!)

Hallo Deutschland

Hello Bloggers and an extra special welcome if you have joined me from Germany.  It was another sell out Clarity show there this morning, so I thought I would show you one of my samples from the show.
One of my favourite sets was the set of four square stencils, so useful for framing any image.....

This is 'crackle' along with some trees from the 'rows of trees' set of stamps.  I attached the stencil to a square of gelli card, then traced round with a black sharpie pen, then removed the stencil and masked off round the sides of the centre square and stamped the trees in place, then coloured it in with promarkers. Easy huh!
Hope you like it
Janet xxx

Late night alcohol

Hello everyone,
Thanks for joining me, this is a bit of a late night post, but I have been a bit remiss recently and this is a very quick card, so It should be quite quick to write!

It is a card I did last Saturday at our Diva Red workshop and was inspired by a card I saw on Kim Reygate's blog.
Do the stamping first, start with the butterfly tree, the mask off where the base of the strip is going to go and stamp some grasses.
Add alcohol inks to a strip of acetate, I tried not to get too dark at the bottom, so you can still see the stamped images.
I attached the acetate by folding the edges over the white card and taping on the back.
Stamp the message in place

Hope you like it, I'm off to bed now!
Janet xx

Crafty Saturday

Hello folks,

Sorry it has been so long since my last blog.  I was in Windsor last weekend with my sister.  We had a trip the the Stitching and Sewing exhibition at the ExCeL centre in London.  I don't do much sewing, but my sister makes some beautiful things.  There were a few cardmaking stands there too, so I wasn't completely out of my comfort zone!  I have to say that there some very beautiful works of art there, especially at the Quilters Guild stand - there are some very talented people out there.

After we had finished looking round and doing a bit of shopping (- well it would be rude not to!!) we met up with a lovely lady called Jeanne Pring and her husband, Chris.  We are probably not related, but we met on facebook and got friendly, so it was a wonderful chance to meet in person.  It was great to meet them both and we had a lovely time drinking tea and eating cake whilst having a good old chat

Then it was back home and back to making cards...this is one of the cards I did today at the regular Diva Red workshop I do with Moira on the first Saturday of the month (actually it is three cards, but just different versions of the same thing!



 I have recently added some of the Ken Oliver ColorBurst colours to my collection and this was based on an idea from his blog.
I taped the lovely floral stencil from Claritystamp to some porous card and sprinkled the tiniest amount of powder through the stencil.  I used Violet and Yellow on the petals and Green on the leaves for the first one.
I spritzed some water through the stencil and the colours burst out across the card, I had some kitchen roll handy and dabbed the edges of the petals/leaves to stop the water seeping underneath.
Remove the stencil and voila!
For the background card, I used the violet and green to create a watercolour background by spritzing the card, sprinkling some of the colour, then brushing across

 The second colour scheme was red, yellow and orange

This was made from one of my first goes at this, the flower came out really nicely but the lower leaves were a bit of a smudgy mess, so I cut them off and made a square card.  Waste not, want not eh?

Happy Easter everyone
Janet xx