Someone Special

Morning all  now don't faint but I am here with another card !

I was asked for a birthday card for a chap with a white terrier and not being a big animal lover myself I have no dog stamps!

 

No idea what to do so I found a nice piccie of a chap walking his terrier in a dark moody setting  so I dragged it into Serif and sort of sized it so that the man would be central in the abstract squares stencil   I chopped up the pic so I have the sun in another square.  I added some text on another it of the picture and then cut this to fit another square.

Using the stencil I inked through with lake mist, butterscotch, slate and a touch of black to match the colours of the original pic. - In real life it looks quite good.  I did a bit of stamping hither and thither, using post it notes to protect around the shapes a few gems and a small wood heart I coloured in with a sn pen

anything goes

Oh Wow can you believe it's July already? Have you had your holidays yet or are you still looking forward to them?

 So have you had a look at all the fantastic entries we had for the Claritystamp Challenge 16 last month?  Masculine - we are all agreed men cards are a pain right?  but I will tell you what you lot are up for a challenge and you met it more than admirably - fantastic entries from everyone.

This month's theme is anything goes - easy peasy right? but no I really struggled to come up with an idea this month - I am blaming the weather  but my mojo seems to have gone awol and where I normally have loads of ideas of things I want to do my mind is currently a blank which is not good.  

Anyway I had to make a card for my crafty Sister in Law whose birthday was on Sunday so I have killed two birds with one stone and come up with this! 

I also wanted to used the abstract squares stencil (new addition - these stencils are even more addictive than the stamps - I have loads and still got a long wish list that is ever growing!

 

I wanted to layer up some of the squares so I made two backgrounds using red pepper, butterscotch and pesto, they are not exactly the same but as my mother used to say - a man on a galloping horse will never notice lol

I stamped the design onto one of the backgrounds using geranium archival.

 

 I looked at the squares and decided which ones to cut up to layer up from the second background.  I also wanted the stamping to match - could I find my acetate - could I heck as like - I could find some strong stuff but that was too expensive to just chuck in the bin after - so I raided the kitchen drawer and used some greaseproof paper - at least I could see through it!

I stuck down the greaseproof over the top of my image so that it wouldn't move and then with a tiny bit of tape gun on the back of my squares I lay them in place - now I could match up the stamp underneath without spoiling my original!

  

I then removed all the masking and attached in place with foam pads and stamped Happy Birthday.  I felt it just needed a few flowers - so I got some sweet lilac flowers that were white and inked them up with red pepper and my stencil brushes.

So that's it, Margaret loved it.  I am looking forward to seeing what everyone gets up to this month - Oh my word with the theme of anything goes - anything could happen lol. So come on give it a go  I love seeing what you all produce

Block card

Hello Strangers

I apologise profusely to all of you whose blogs I normally visit but I do not know where the time has gone just lately and life just keeps getting in the way of crafting. 

Like today for instance I get up ...late cos I overslept grrr because I need to do the dreaded food shop then grumpy says can we go for a drive somewhere, stop for a butty and then we can call at the supermarket on the way home?  OK says I (thinking here I am building up brownie points as I will be out all day tomorrow at the lovely Claritystamp Northwest with our lovely Maria Simms and loads of crafty friends).

So off we toddle and eventually get home around 1.30, unpack the shopping make a cuppa and I sit down with my lappy to check bank statements etc etc.  Oh hells bells I don't tally!!!!  so I then spend yonks trawling through my transactions and I finally get sorted.  Grumpy likes a printed statement - he doesn't do computers lol so I prints him one off and sign out, Go to get the print out - bliddy printer didn't take the paper straight away so top of of page missing ..So I signs back into bank to do it again.

In the middle of all this a crafty friend popped in with a very nice card to show me so now the afternoon is nearly over and I still haven't done anything!

So I give up am obviously not going to get any crafting done this afternoon and I promised several people on facebook that I would blog instructions for this here card I made.

I am ever hopeful that next week things will return to normal  lol

Here goes I just cobble a quick jobby together just to give you the general gist.

You can use either A3 or A4

 

for A3 score across the landscape view at 5cm intervals all the way along, this leaves a small strip at one end for A4 score at 3.5 cm intervals.  at portrait score the same measurement bur you only need to score 3 lines

now I included a little pocket in the back spine of mine - somewhere to write a message and sentiment if you want to do this you need to leave the end section - if not cut off at the bottome score line.  cut out the hashed area in the top have and also along the solid lines.

 

I trimmed a bit of the pocket so that it doesn't go right to the top when folded over and I left some bits at the sides with which to stick!

 

 

Thats it you now just stick the back to the front and the flaps in the middle that overlap to form the shape

Folds flat for posting now all you need are 15 squares to decorate the sides and steps, a longer piece for the spine and a little insert if you want to use the pocket.

Hope this helps - shout if you need help .

Maculine

Oh my life I cannot believe that we are in June - seriously- already! where is this year going?  I have even seen some people talking about the C word - I want a  bit of summer first please - I do hope it is going to be a "Flaming June" we have only had two or three nice days here in Darwen so it would be nice to see some more Sun.  

It's a right proper Claritystamp day today, what with a new blog challenge and of course our Barb on the telly, I am looking forward to the shows and then of course its a new month so I will get m NDC stamp shortly and a stencil too - can't wait 

We have had another set of brilliant entries for our Words challenge so lets see how you all get on this month MASCULINE now don't you all just lurve making cards for chaps - a right pain they can be 

This is my inspirational piece - I hope you like it.

 

I just had to get the men wheelie stencil - there are some great little chaps on there but I love this young lad leaping in the air.  I also thought what a great "hole" is in the stencil so I thought I would make use of it - well it would be rude not to!

So I made some masks and put them to one side, and kept the outer part too.  I found the centre of my card and drew a dot with a pencil. I also marked each side of the card at the halfway point.  I took the stencil apart and using the marks on the side of the card and centering over the dot I inked through the aperture  I dragged some colour across from the side  to give it a bit of variation and the little guy . I then used the outer mask to and stamped through the hole with the fob watches. I covered them up with my masks and then used the cog stencil for the background .  I used the cog stencil on some spare card and then cut circles out of it, added the words and mounted on to some cogs cut from a spellbinder die.

Right that's me done time to go and make a cuppa and settle down to watch Barbara work her magic - I wonder what stamps and stencil we will see today?  I know one thing for sure - there is bound to be something to add to my list of wants lol

Have a Super Sunday.

Working with Stencils

morning all - just thought I would share a few samples with you. My next workshop is on Saturday 7th June at the craft range - there is a link on the side bar if you would like to book a place.  We will be using stencils and dye based inks.

I

Fairy workshop

Hello everyone, I hope this post works as I am trying to do it from my tablet as my lovely lappy is poorly sick and has gone to see if she can be mended.

Just thought I would show you the cards we will be making on Wednesday 21st May over at the craftrange class is 10.30 -12.30

It's all about the words

Good Morning all - Where did April go then, it certainly went by in a flash but not so fast that we didn't have lots of fantastic entries on the Claritystamp challenge blog - Oh so many for the monochrome theme a very difficult choice to pick my favourite 5 - glad the winner is picked at random by computer!

So why not join us this month - you too could be the winner of a lovely voucher to spend on the Claritystamp webiste  - then you would have a difficult choice to pick what you would like from all the fantastic stuff on there!!

So the challenge for May is all about words.  The original theme was going to be song titles and in my head I knew what I was going to do ...but then we changed it to words and I was stumped.

After much debate with myself this is what I eventually came up with

I started with a gelli print from my stash of prints from my big plate.

I know that the plate is rectangular and I like square pieces to work with but sometimes the 6 x 6 doesn't seem big enough.  So not long after I got my gelli plate I came up with an idea for making it square.  I drew around one side of my gelli and around the corners onto a piece of plastic I cut from one of the plastic wallet  document holder jobbies.  I then made it the right width to leave a square on the gelli plate.  

I put it on the side of the plate before I add my paint and stuff and simply whip it off before I pull the print 

Anyway back to the challenge  as I said I started with one of those prints you have in your stash but I wanted one that had lots of white still left on.  I then added lettuce adirondak using my stencil brushes 

You can't really see it on the photo - you won't believe how many photos I took at various times of the day and in various places and you still can't really see the green! David Bailey I definitely am not lol.

So anyway trust me its mostly brown with some green on!

I got my inspiration from a chart I saw from made up of words - it was one of those stupid Facebook things and it picked up the words I used most on my comments so that's what I will do - I thought to myself!  But felt it would need a saying on top - took me ages to think of something - it came to me in the middle of the night!

I stamped some of the words from the word chains on to some copy paper and then cut around them to make masks - I sprayed them with stick n spray to make them re positionable and started laying them out on my background until it was full. I laid some horizontal and some vertical.  When I was happy with it I removed one stamped the same word in its place then went onto the next one.  I used fern green and sepia archival inkpads to do this - I obviously did all the green first then all the brown ones.

I used my letterbox set  to stamp out all the little boxes in the sepia archival  on a piece of white card.  I used my brushes to colour the card with old paper I stamped the letters again in sepia then cut them all out leaving a small border.  I added some of the lettuce with a blending tool and then mounted the tiles onto brown mats.  I stuck them on top with foam pads to lift it up.  I matted and layered onto brown and cream - job done.

I hope you decide to have a go this month as I can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with .