Douglas is the man

Hello,

I am a bit behind with my blogs, so I thought I would do a three in one today.  I am getting excited because I am off to a Weekend Crafty Retreat with Susan Moran in Preston.  It is a long old drive, but we are staying in a nice hotel and I will get to meet some fb friends and fellow DT members who I haven't met yet.  I think you can build up quite a friendship on fb with folks you've never met.  Oh! and there's the crafting too - mixed media and Groovi - both of which I could do with some extra practice, so I am very much looking forward to it.

 These cards are the ones we did at the last Claritystampers East workshops over the last two weekends, all using Douglas and the Shatter (I always think that sounds a bit like a pop group...)
Some of the ladies didn't particularly want to do men's cards, so they used some of the ladies intsead and I have to say, these backgrounds work brilliantly well with more feminine colours.
Of course there are always those who go off piste completely..... and that looks good too!

The first one is the most grungy, start with kraft card, then blend blue and green distress inks all over.  Place the harlequin stencil over the top and spritz, then blot to remove the ink.  Keep the stencil in place, and add yellow ink randomly through the stencil. Do an additional small pice of card too...
Once dry, place the alphabet stencil over and randomly add grunge paste, not worrying at all if extra bits end up on the card, it all adds to the grunge!  Remove the stencil and do the  image part of the card while it dries. (or eat some of Veronica's legendary cake!)
Stamp Douglas onto a piece of white card, and the little piece of background, cut out his suit from the background piece.
Stamp and colour the edge of the Shatter round the edge of the card and blend some ink round, being careful to avoid his face, then colour his shoes, hair and bow tie and layer the cut out suit over the top.
Once the grunge paste is dry, just brush a bit of black over to tone down the letters.  Piece it all together.


For the second card, we used the same background as I did in a previous post with the butterflies, just using masculine colours, see here for details
For the main image, this time we stamped Douglas, then masked him and stamped the Shatter over the top with a light colour, then coloured with distress markers.

This is really simple, just mask down the edge of the background card, the stamp the Shatter across and colour with promarkers (use Memento or Adirondack to stamp!)

Stamp and colour Douglas with Promarkers - I used mostly shades of grey (??50) with a touch of red.  I ran  black promarker round the edge of both pieces of card and dotted a few black gems around.

Right, I've got all my crafty stuff packed and ready, just got to sort out my clothes now - got to get your priorities right...!

Don't forget Barbara is on TV this Sunday and Monday, I think it will be old school on Sunday,..Clarity Classics! and bang up to date on Monday!

Here are the links to the stamps and stencils used:
Douglas
Shatter
Harlequin stencil
ABC Stencil

Thanks for visiting, Janet xx

In the Country..

Hello folks,

Don't forget that the lovely Paul Church is on Hochanda today with some fab stamps, stencils and Groovi plates.  I'm sure there will be some brilliant demos too....
I have some samples from the shows, but today will show you the last card from Barbara's last show,

This one was done with the Wee Country Animals set and the trees from the Wee Village set as well as the fantastic new Alphabet Word Chain
I started by masking off a strip across the centre of my card, then added lots of browns and a touch of green ink.  I splattered some water over and blotted, I stamped the words first with black archival, then stamped all the animals and the tree in place with brown archival ink

I removed the mask and stamped the tress across and coloured with the same colour distress markers as the inks I'd used for the background.  I used a fine pen to draw a line across the top and bottom of the strip, inked all round the edges, and matted on to brown card.

Hope you have a lovely weekend - I am at the Claritystampers East workshop in Bawburgh tomorrow, so should be good!
Thanks for dropping by
Janet xx

Animals

Hello everyone,

It has been a proper April day here today, this morning, we were sitting on the patio enjoying the sun and commenting how warm it was, got the grass cut and a bit of weeding done.  This afternoon the lawn was under water and we were listening to thunder and lightning!  Good old British weather eh?

Today's card is one of the ones I did for the last Clarity TV show,  I love the new Alphabet Word Chain set to match the word chains and I thought of doing a sort of cross word straight away, so it just took a bit of planning how the words would interlink - I sat down with a cup of coffee and pen and paper to work it out.  Once I had got the words sorted, I fitted the animals from the Wee Farm Animals set round the words.  It took a few goes to get the balance right and to have enough letters for the animals to stand on.  I stamped everything with black archival, then added the little scene and the tractor from the Wee Farm Scene set.  I used the cloud mask to do a sky background, inked round the edges and added a black frame
Thanks for dropping by
Janet xx

Pretty Distressing

Hello Bloggers,
I hope it is as lovely where you are as it is here, we have bright sunshine (a cloud came over just as I typed that - so maybe it isn't going to last!)
I have been away for a few days, spending some time with my sister and her family, once we'd put the world to rights, we had lots of crafty chatting. She is a quilter and it is always interesting to see how much overlap there is between our two hobbies/crafts.

Today's card is the second one I did for the Diva Red workshop last weekend, I decided to do a distressed technique, but with pretty colours.

The stamp set used is the Butterfly Tree Set.

We started by doing the background paper, apply plenty of distress ink in your chosen colours, go quite bright here because it is going to get darker!
Spritz some water over the ink, then blot, scrunch up the paper and lightly go over the top with a darker ink (black or brown), this should just pick up the raised bits of paper
I also stamped some butterflies lightly all over using the same colour inks, just as background interest, not really to see the complete image.
Cut to the correct width, then tear one end, sponge some colour round the edges, wrap one top corner round a pencil to get the foldback,then stick to black card and teat the same end to roughly match the paper.
While we were doing the background card, we also inked another piece of card with the same colours, but without all the distressing.  Stamp the butterflies with black versafine and emboss with holographic powder to give a bit of sparkle, then cut out.
Before sticking everything together, wrap some matching cord round the main piece of card, Stick together, then add butterflies, buttons, sequins etc (Yes, I am still trying to use up my stash!!)
Have a fantastic weekend and I hope you enjoyed Ally Pally if you went - I am hearing good reports!

Something new

Hello bloggers,

Don't forget it is Clarity Sunday on Hochanda and there is the One Day Special launching too, so lots of shows on Monday and an absolute 'must have' set of stamps coming up...

Today's card is one of the ones I did for the Diva Red workshop on Saturday,  I bought some of the new Distress Crayons and have been itching to try them out and decided that this was my chance!
I used two Clarity stencils:Trellis and Filigraphy Flower and the Filigraphy Foliage set of stamps, which matches the stencil

I checked you Tube for ways of using the crayons and most users said they worked best on card if it had been Gesso'd, so we started by doing that!  Apply a thin layer of white gesso to some card and allow to dry.
I cut a square piece of the card and applied lots of colours of the crayons, blending slightly with my finger as I went.
Put the trellis stencil over the coloured card and wipe with a baby wipe to remove some of the grayon, so when you lift the stencil you are left with a colourful patterned background.
I cut this into 4 squares and mounted on black card
For the main image, we used another piece of card and placed the filligraphy flower stencil over the top, very lightly inked through so you can just see the image, then remove the stencil and stamp all the petals in place using the filigraphy foliage stamps and archival ink.  (You have to make sure the stencil is the right way round for this otherwise the stamps don't fit!!)
Allow time to make sure the ink is dry, then add colour with the crayons - nice and bright!
Hope you have a fab day!
Janet xx