Floral Spring and Brusho

Hello everyone,
I hope you are enjoying the bank holiday weekend.  It has been hot and sunny here in Norfolk, I hope it has for you too.  It is good to get out in the garden, the down side is that my eyelids have swollen and I look terrible, I think I have reacted to something!
Anyway, I have also been preparing some cards for upcoming Clarity workshops, so I won't show you those just yet, but I will share some I made for Rossella's shows a couple of weeks ago.


I was a bit short on time (again!) for these, so I had a rummage through my prepared backgrounds and found this brusho one - I am pretty sure this was just the black sprinkled and spritzed, then dabbed.  One half was lighter than the other, so I made that the ground and stamped the Floral Hare in place.  I masked off the bottom with torn copy paper and stamped the little Floral Grass along the paper, avoiding the hare.
I added a bit of shadow under the hare, and a black line along the bottom edge of the grasses, then sat and coloured in all the tiny flowers, this is lovely to do - very relaxing!  I inked round the edges and mounted on black.

The second card is a bit brighter and more spring-like.  I simply stamped and coloured...

The main stamps all come from the Floral Figures set

The word 'Spring' is  an NDC stamp from a while ago

and the birds come from the tiny wee folk sets that were with the outline stamps.

Thanks for visiting and I hope you have sunshine where you are today
Janet xxx

F I T Colours!

Good evening,
Thank you for dropping by, I am showing some pages from the delightful little Rhyme-Time Nursery Rhyme Alphabet book from Claritystamp.  This book has a large letter to colour in and a little verse to go with it, along with a small image which has already been coloured, so you have some inspiration if you need it.  I had such a lovely time just colouring these in.  I have a lovely set of Prismacolor pencils which is what I used, along with a blending stump and Sansodor, to colour all the images.  The sansodor doesn't come through the card, so if you wanted to keep all the images in the book and colour, it would be fine.

I love this image, I just added some stamps in the background and inked round the edge with a matching colour ink.















I decided to keep this fairly monotone, I used an oval aperture stencil to frame the lad and his lovely pony, then added some dots round the edges using a dotty stencil

 

I used the old 'torn copy paper' trick to add the background for this one and added a couple of birds and the grasses at the front.  The words come from the title of the verse in the book, I just cut them out and edged them in black.

I was lucky enough to receive two books, one to cut up and use and the other to keep - I am going to enjoy sitting and colouring the other one, it is sooo relaxing!

Enjoy your evening!
Janet xx

Handbags

Good afternoon,
Very grey and dismal this afternoon here in darkest Norfolk and so cold!!  I thought I would share the handbag card I made for Rossella's show last week, using the Handbags and Purses set of stamps with masks.

I stamped all the bags and purses first, then masked them all.  It is worth taking time to make sure the masks are perfectly in place, otherwise you end up with white bits where you don't want them.
I covered a square round the main bag, then used Distress Oxides to colour the outside frame.  I used blues and yellows. I just sponged the colours over.  I removed the centre mask and just sponged the yellows over the centre area.
I took away all the handbag masks and coloured everything in with pencils.
I decided to give the main bag some texture, so I carefully added PVA glue and sprinkled gold microbeads over the wet glue, then left to dry.
To finish off, I used a fine black pen to outline the centre square and added a bit of gold glitter pen to the bags.  I printed out 'A Girl Cannot Have Too Many Handbags' on my PC, then cut out each word to add to the card.
Thanks very much for visiting, I hope you are having a good day!
Janet xx

Ladies with Hats

Goo evening to you,
I am avoiding a certain song contest at the moment, so thought I would take the opportunity to write a blog post.  The clarity stamp shows are coming thick and fast now, ans I am getting a bit behind with my blogging... This card was one I did for Rossella's show last time, using the Hats 2 set and a piece of designer paper from the New England Fall paper pack

This is a simple card to do.  I used a DL card, then cut the paper a cm smaller, I chose my backing card, then cut a strip of the paper and matted it onto a slightly wider strip of the card and glued that across the larger piece of paper, cut the ends to fit, then mat onto a bigger piece of the backing card and attach to the main card.

I stamped the ladies on small squares of white card, coloured their hair and lips and very lightly coloured their skin.

I stamped them again on different sections of the same designer paper, I added a bit of colour to the hat bands, then just cut out the hats and glued onto the appropriate head.

Thanks very much for stopping by,

Janet xx

Lovely lady

Good morning.

I am off to work soon, but I have time to do a quick post before I go.  This card i one I did using a stencil called Amaryllis  Clarity do a range of lovely ladies, this is one of my favourites.

I started with black card and taped the stencil in place.  Using a stencil brush (a flat ended one, not the normal Clarity brushes) I picked up small amount of Chalk acrylic paint and dabbed lightly where I wanted each colour.
I masked off areas, so the colour was in the right place and used the opaque colours, so it shows up on the black card.
I removed the stencil and allowed it all to dry, then added bits of gold pen to highlight the hair.
I edged with a gold pen and added some gold sequins to finish then mounted on more black card.

Thanks for visiting, Hope you have a good day,
Janet xx

Just Leaves

Good morning!
I hope you are well.  It is still cold here, I have seen some of my posts on fb from a year ago and I was saying how hot and sunny it was.....
I am still catching up with cards from Rosie's show a while back when she was showcasing Tina's lovely flowers and leaves.
One of my favourite things to do is just use one stamp to make the whole design.  I have done that on this card using one of the leaves from the Tina's Butterflies and Dragonflies set

I used the solid square from Sam's Shapes to stamp three squares in different colours (I used my new Distress Oxides for this).  It took a bit of experimenting to get the right level of colour for this, I didn't want it too dark as I wanted to stamp over it.
I stamped the leaf over the top in black, then coloured in some of the little sections, using the same three colours

Fot the background, I blended the same colour inks, then spritzed and blotted, then stamped the leaf, again in the same colours.  I edged both pieces of work with black, then mounted up.

Hope you have a lovely day
Janet x

Groovi in Lowestoft

Hello folks,
My week off seems to have vanished , why is it that  time off work seems to pass so much quicker than time at work????
I had a lovely day yesterday meeting a new group of ladies in Lowestoft.  We did a Groovi workshop and I really enjoyed it.  The hall was good, the lunch was very nice and apart from a bit of a blip at the beginning, it all went well.

These are the projects we did, no-one finished properly because it is always best to leave parchment to settle overnight, then do a bit more embossing, but there were some beautiful projects well on the way......

My picot cutting still needs more practice, but apart from the I am happy with this one

Thanks very much ladies, hope we can do it again soon.....
Janet xx

Tina's Flowers

Good evening,
I have had a nice day at home today, I have taken the week off work so have been doing lots of pottering and getting jobs done - very satisfying.  I am also prepping for my upcoming workshops and doing a bit of colouring (see Barbara Gray's blog to find out why!)

Today's card is one I did using one of the new flowers sets from Tina Cox.  These are lovely sets, with three sets of flowers in each set and three sizes of each flower.  I used Tina's Flowers 1 for this card

I made the background card first, the grid is embossed using a Hougie board, then I dragged ink pads up and down.

The diagonal piece is a paper from the New England Fall Designer paper pack I added some circles by dipping a lid into some ink and stamping on the paper.

I stamped and embossed the flowers on to paper from the same pack then cut out and stuck together.
The centres have sequins added
The butterfly is also stamped and embossed on the same paper, then glittered
I dotted a few more sequins around to finish.

Thanks for visiting,
Janet xx

Claritystampers East April 2017

Good afternoon,
How is your Bank Holiday going?  It started a bit rainy and dreary here, but it is quite nice now.  I started the morning by going to visit the new village hall in the village where we do our Diva Red workshops to have brunch - very nice it was too - both the hall and the brunch and the company.

Home again now to prepare for a Groovi workshop in Lowestoft - a first for me but I am looking forward to it.  It will be lovely to meet a new group of crafty ladies.

It was the Claritystampers East workshops over the last two weekends, Bawburgh last week and Great Blakenham yesterday...I even took some photos of the cards the ladies made at Bawburgh .  I am not good at remembering to take photos, so it took a bit of nagging, but I am pleased I did, so I will try to remember for the next ones too.

I love the variety - everyone does something a bit different (some always do things alot different - they know who they are!!)

My original, so you can see the detail

Not everyone liked the trees through the stag, so did a solid one instead

My original

I love the different colour schemes..

The original

Thanks very much for visiting, if you live in the Norfolk/Suffolk area and would like to join us, you can get in touch via the contact box.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend! Janet xx