Less is More plus a bit of Brayer fun

 It has been a few weeks since I managed to enter Less is More, but as I am enjoying a few days of crafty play, I thought I'd better turn my thoughts to this week's Challenge where the theme is one word. I have looked through lots of stamps and finally came up with this.

A very simple watercoloured house. The stamps are from Chocolate Baroque and haven't been inked nearly enough!
 There are some fabulous CAS cards on show from Chrissie and Mandi, and I am looking forward to spending a little time visiting my fellow LIMettes.

My brother has a birthday in early January, and as a keen bird watcher I thought I would use my pheasant stamp and silver birches from Clarity stamps. I stamped and masked before brayering the sky and stamping the Inkylicious trees in the background. I then used my ink dusters to put a few shadows in the snow and coloured the pheasant with promarkers. The base card is stamped with the clarity small feather stamp in very pale blue. I often make him cards that would double as a Christmas card... well, serves him right for having a January birthday!

Next up is my first play with my Christmas stamps. The Stampscape set is called The light and the sea. The only stamp that isn't from that set is the foliage on the right, which is from the Andy Skinner Winters tale set. It isn't perfect brayering, and there are a few stamps hiding fingerprints (note to self: new handcream and shiny card are not a good combination!) but never mind. I was please with the colour combo. Bet you Brenda will be able to tell you the colours of Adirondack I used in both!
A very happy New year to you all and thanks so much for your lovely comments this year. I really appreciate them. Thanks too, to all of my followers for your continued support.

A bit of a craft fest

We had a lovely Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, surrounded by family. Santa was very kind with more shades of Adirondack ink, Waltzing Mouse stamps, Andy Skinner stamps and stampscapes stamps. As well as all these I received, from the lovely Lynne, some brilliant tools called perfect layers. You can find them here. I had lots of images that were waiting to be matted and layered, so I set to. They are very easy to use, so needless to say I made quite a few cards...

These first three were all stamped with Hobby art Scene-it stamps and painted with a mixture of aqua markers and distress inks. The papers were all snippets from my stash, which I spent about four hours sorting through. I have decided to donate a bag full to the Church near school, who hold 'Messy Church' art and craft events every month.I'm also sharing these with Jules Crafty Snippets Challenge - twice in a week - must be the holidays!!!

Next are a few cute ones...

A Milton Teddy from Wild Rose studios, coloured with distress inks, (Waltzing mouse sentiment and Hero Arts little flower stamp)

... 'Searching' stamp from Sugar Nellie, coloured with Aqua markers,

...and a Mo Manning (Mo's Digital Pencil ) Digi coloured with promarkers. These were all coloured during the school holidays in August and in October, and were waiting to be made into a card. Now I feel a little more in control of my craft stuff, I have had a bit of a brayering session, and I will share the results with you tomorrow. Thanks for looking!

See you on the other side!

I've spent the last 24 hours making cards and baking mostly, with a few hours sleep snatched in the middle. I haven't made half the goodies I'd intended. Just mince pies from me and mocha cupcakes from Meg. There is a nice piece of gammon cooking at the moment. Shortbread and cookies will have to wait, and I blame the councillor who thought it was a good idea to not break up until the 23rd!
Here are my cards. The first, second and fourth are all made from snippets so I'm entering them into Jules' Crafty snippet challenge. If you want any details  about the cards please ask and I'll let you know.

Thanks for looking and a very Merry Christmas to you all!

A different colour scheme for Christmas

Well, I am trying to make a bit of space on my desk and found various half finished things. I found a tipsy tree painted with distress inks, some scraps of paper and card left over from a kaisercraft pad and a (shhh!) peeloff in copper colour. This is what I made

I rather like this colour combo and might just try it again next year, but in less haste hopefully! Thanks for looking!

Blue and Brown at Allsorts

I sat down yesterday morning to make my Dad's Christmas card as I had suddenly realised I won't see him again until boxing day! I saw some fabulous cards made from three tags on the inkylicious stand at Doncaster, so decided to make a tryptich snowy scene.

The hills are all done with ink dusters and broken china distress ink, and the trees (Inkylicious) are stamped in broken china and tumbled glass DI. The foreground stamp on the right is from Penny Black (Berry red, snow white) added to with promarkers and the tree stump, owl and fence are from a Lindsay Mason set called Build a snowy scene. 

The tree on the left is also from Inkylicious and the sentiment from Waltzing Mouse. I used promarkers for the fence, tree, tree stump and owl, before going over various bits with the quicky glue pen and glamour dust. The base card is A4, so it is a fair size. 

Only today have I realised that it fits this week's Allsorts challenge where the theme is blue and brown. Thanks for looking and I hope your preparations are going well. I still have a week of school left, although parties, a Christingle service, and an achievement assembly are all included in that, so not much to plan! Off to make a few more Christmas cards whilst tidying my desk!

busy, busy, busy!

I'm frantically making birthday cards for colleagues at the moment. There was one last week, three this week and two over the Christmas holiday that I need to get done in the next few days. I'm just going to post the cards with  stamp  and colouring information. I am sure you can work the rest out, but if you have any questions, pop them in the comments and I'll get back to you eventually!

Stamps: Inkylicious    colouring medium: colouring pencils and gamusol

Stamp: Stampourium           colouring medium: Distress inks    paper: artylicious cd

Stamps: Chocolate Baroque and Waltzing Mouse  colouring medium: Distress inks

 Stamp: Hobby Art    colouring medium: promarkers

 Stamps: Inkylicious         Colouring medium: Ink dusters, adirondack and big and juicy ink

Thanks for looking, and hope your Christmas preparations are going well!

A very quick post

Well, I'm sorry I haven't managed a proper post yet with some cards on it . There is one in the pipeline, honest!
Panto went very well, and it's all over for another year. I had to share these photos with you.

Playground duty on Friday afternoon and the sky was looking decidedly dodgy. I was almost expecting it to snow as the clouds had taken on a very unusual colour and a wall of cloud was approaching fast. There were a few drops of ice cold rain and then the most amazing rainbow appeared in an arc right over the school. it was so intense and bright that you could see more colours than usual.

Thanks for looking!

A few more CAS cards

I have been busy all week with Panto at school, so tonight is the first time since the weekend I've had enough time to stamp. We have one more matinee to do and then it is all over for another year. The song my class sang is called 'Life is a wonderful thing', and it is the sort of song that gets into your head and is there every waking moment. I found myself singing it as I was pushing the trolley round the supermarket! Anyway, on to my cards. I started with a couple more hero arts wreath cards, but as I had run out of red gems I used red tulip paint and stickles instead, and as I'd not used the tulip paint since last Christmas it had separated a bit and was a bit runny in places. I added a rather large tartan bow to cover a splodge on the next one!

Next I got out my Lavinia Mistletoe stamp and Versafine Olympia Green. I have made quite a few Christmas cards using this design since I first saw Tracy Dutton demo it at Doncaster about four years ago.

I added a bit of icicle stickles to the berries and a sentiment from Hero Arts. I tried to stamp another, but this time it didn't quite meet, so I added a bow in the gap.

The bow and sentiment don't look quite central on this one, but it doesn't look as bad as the photo in real life!

Finally I want to share some photos with you that I took on the way back from visiting my Dad on Saturday. 

 I thought of Adirondack eggplant and peach bellini the minute I saw that sky!!! I had a chat with Brenda and challenged her to recreate it and you can see the results here. She did an amazing job! Unfortunately the journey wasn't all good as a passing vehicle kicked up a rather large stone that cracked my windscreen, and the crack that was about 3cm long on Sunday was about 20cm long by Tuesday. I am now £75 lighter in the purse. At least it wasn't today it was being replaced - wouldn't have fancied that job in those winds and rain! Talking of the weather, I hope those of you in Scotland have made it through the day without problems caused by those winds, and are tucked up safely in your homes. Thanks for looking!

Playing Bingo at Sir Stampalot

Well, it's the first Sunday in December so it's time for a new challenge at Sir Stampalot. We are having a little game of bingo, and here is your bingo card.

I chose pearls, stickles and ribbon, and came up with these two Christmas cards

The stamps are Woodware Tipsy trees paper pieced with faux stitching added. The papers are from my stash. "What is the prize?" I hear you ask. Well, feast your eyes on these goodies!

I think Santa may have had a hand in this as well as Andy and Janice!

I do hope you will be able to join in with us this month and I look forward to visiting. Pop over to the Stampalot Challenge blog for details of our rules and more fabulous inspiration. Thanks for looking!

Second post this week and it's only Tuesday!

Well, my Less is More mojo is on overdrive and I haven't made a mess of anything yet, so I made a few more bling cards. These were all very very quick too, which doesn't always go hand in hand with LIM!
My first uses a previously uninked stamp that I got last year. It is a Hero Arts cling stamp called Wreath of leaves. I just added a few gems and a little Hero Arts sentiment.

After that I remembered some other stamps I bought last year, and didn't really get round to using. These are called Joyful Bubbles by Paula Pascual and were an absolute snip at £4.99. I stamped both cards with versafine (Royal purple and majestic blue) then embossed with Kaleidoscope embossing powder, adding a couple of gems too. The first is the blue one...

 

...with a close up of the sparkle...

The second is the purple one...

...and another close up...

I am thinking this kaleidoscope embossing powder is seriously addictive!

Challenges:

Stamptacular Sunday : Anything Christmas

Crafty cardmakers : Heat Embossing

Thanks for looking!

Bling at Less is More

It has been one of those weeks at work, which has led to my craft space getting overcrowded and mistakes and spillages a plenty. First of all I have managed a Less is More entry where the theme is Bling. I dug out an ancient Stamporium stamp, embossed in silver sparkle and painted the holly leaves with bleach. I added some red gems and then decided the leaves needed a bit of sparkle too and added diamond stickles. Not my best, I'm afraid.

Last week the theme was silhouettes and I was really trying to join in. Unfortunately I got some really bad ink smudges on the one layer card I had made. I tried to get rid of them with bleach, but the colour of the base card was affected, so I gave up and put it to one side. Suddenly yesterday I had a brain wave and found the Parisienne borderability I had bought but not yet used. I was quite impressed with how well it covered up the mistakes!

I used ink dusters, dusty concord, wild honey and black soot distress inks, and tree stamps from the Inkylicious Winter's tale plate. Thanks for looking. I am hoping to visit a few more LIMettes this week, but with School Panto week rapidly approaching I may well not get the chance!

Age cards

I have been busy this week working on a few orders.My First card is for a colleague's son who turns twenty-one next weekend. He is a mechanic, so I went for a cogs and tools look. All of the images on this card were free clip art from the net, as was the font.

 The tools are novelty buttons that I've had in my stash for years.
My next card is for a lovely student I have in my class two days a week. She will turn Eighteen on Friday. For this one I used a computer generated number and then a Waltzing Mouse stamp for the fancy circle.

The roses and leaves were made with Marrianne dies, the border was made with my new Martha Stewart Doily lace punch (I wore out the old one) and the circles were cut with nesties. I used the Victoriana embossing folder on this one.
One of our lunchtime supervisors is fifty at the end of next week, so this next one is for her.

I cut out some numbers and used B&J soothing sunset, my ink dusters and a Fun Stamps paisley stamp to decorate them. The flowers and leaves were punches and the background was embossed with a paisley cuttlebug embossing folder, and the background paper is some I had printed out from an Artylicious cd, and just used a corner of it. The sentiment is a Waltzing mouse stamp. 

Finally I have a card for which I pieced together a selection of scraps and finished off with a little scene using Hobby art Scene it Tuscany stamps and coloured with Distress inks. I was rather pleased that you can't tell the backing paper was in five pieces and the corrugated card covers a big jagged gap!

The more I look at it the more I think I made a bit of a faux pas, as there is only one glass and two bottles of wine partially drunk! Apart from the first one I made all of these from scraps and snippets, so they are all eligible to be entered into Jules's Crafty Snippet Challenge.

Less is More - one layer and leaves

When I saw the challenge was leaves at Less Is More this week I knew straight away which stamps I was going to use. I bought these Chappell Road maple leaves at the first show I ever went to in Leeds many years ago. I stamped them in Big and Juicy Foliage, sponged around the edges with Tea dye distress ink and used a damp brush to spread a little colour across the leaves.
I thought I would also show you yet another triptych card that I would have submitted for last week's challenge had I finished it in time!

The Allium stamps are from Lavinia and I used Copper embossing powder this time. More details about how I made it can be found here.
Thanks for looking, and I hope I will get round to visiting a few more of you this week!