A card and a gift

Before I tell you all about my card I want to say a big thank you for your continued visits whilst I have been a little pre-occupied with real life stuff. It has been a busy few weeks here. Meg is applying for university and I had definitely forgotten or not realised what that entails these days. We have visited 5 universities, 4 on consecutive Saturdays. Bless her, she has taken on board my advice to go close enough to home that she can get home, do a load of washing, get it dry and have a bit of time to relax before heading back again! I am so proud of her and she has worked so hard. I just hope her dreams come to fruition.

On top of that we have had one of our HMI visits at work. I won't go into details, but it was a very intense 5 days leading up to his visit. Positive but intense. At the moment I feel I could sleep for a week!!!

Anyway, on to my card...

 

A friend of mine had a birthday recently, and as well as making her a card I decided to make her a gift too. Her card is a simple scene created with ink dusters and memento inks in dandelion, rose bud and elderberry (I love this colour!) All stamps are from inkylicious. I also used a mountains and valleys stencil with my ink dusters.

A while ago this friend bought one of my cards featuring this stamp from Inkylicious and put it on her wall. I thought it was time to make it into a proper framed picture.

I sponge-painted the plain wooden frame from Ikea with paper artsy fresco paints, before using grunge paste through an imagination crafts stencil. a bit more painting and some treasure brass finished it off. I was quite pleased with the result, so am now working on an Ikea mirror with the same paints and stencil, with a few additional stamps too. I will let you see it when I have finished it. In the meantime I am entering my picture in this Month's Penny Black and More Challenge where the theme is Autumn.

Thanks for looking!

Rudolf day for September

 My two cards for Rudolf day this month are very similar, although one is on a rectangular card and has a sentiment, whilst the other is a square card without a sentiment. I was experimenting with the Old Beech Tree set from Inkylicious on different sorts of paper. The first is on the reverse side of some centura pearl and the second is on watercolour paper. I can't remember which I used chipped Sapphire DI or Memento Paris Dusk on! To get the snow in the foreground I wiped off the majority of the ink on the bottom of the stamp with a baby wipe. I added a few snow drifts with ink dusters and a mountain valley stencil. I then dusted the sky too. The first card looked fine as it was, but the dusting on the second card wasn't very even, so I went over it with a water brush.not sure if this works or not.

I added a fair bit of stickles as snowy sparkle to the branches and the snowdrifts, as well as some white gel pen highlights. Do pop over to Sarn's blog to take a look at her very elegant Rudolf day cards - such unusual, but gorgeous colours!

My favourite five stamps (or confessions of a treeoholic!)

 Good morning! It is my turn this month to provide some mid month inspiration for Stamping Sensations.
Our challenge is to choose our 5 favourite stamps and make something including some or all of them. It was so hard to choose only five, and already I am thinking of ones I missed out! I had about 8 trees and lots of leaves on my shortlist!
Here is my card...

 I used my ink dusters to create the background with memento inks in dandelion, Rose bud, Danube blue Tuxedo black and Elderberry on plain smooth white card. I used a mountain and valley stencil too, along with a white gell roll pen and a stardust gelly roll pen.
Here are my stamps - I think this is the order I would choose!

   

All of my favourite stamps are from Inkylicious. 
I realise there are some sets here, but if I have to choose just one from each set, it would be the biggest Northern Pine, the buzzard from the old beech tree set and the grasses from the picture perfect set!
Thanks for all your lovely comments lately. There are still a couple of weeks to enter our Things with Wings challenge at Stamping Sensations. Thanks for looking!

A get well wish and a birthday card

 I needed a Get well card quickly last week, so reached for my ink dusters and inkylicious stamps. The background was dusted with Memento Dandelion and Rosebud and crushed olive Distress ink. It looked a bit flat, so I added a few dots and leaf highlights with a gellyroll clear stardust pen. You can just about see it from this angle...

The next card was the birthday card I made for the same person. Whenever I get to work she is generally applying her make-up, so I thought this stamp from acid drops and whatnots was ideal! The Best Wishes sentiment is from Inkylicious.

Minimal colouring with promarkers on this one, but all my matting and layering is from my snippet drawer, so I am taking them to Miss Di's snippet playground.
Sorry I am not around as much at the moment. We have university open days for Meg on consecutive Saturdays throughout September. I think I am going to be crossing my fingers rather a lot!
Thanks for looking!

Things with Wings at Stamping Sensations

Good Morning and it is time for another challenge over at Stamping Sensations. Our theme this month is Things with Wings. I chose dragonflies for my cards this month.

 My first card features a new stamp from Inkylicious called Dragonfly bookplate. I coloured it with distress markers and dusted around the edges in grey flannel memento ink. I then used a clear stardust gellyroll pen to go over the dragonflies.

you can just about see it in this photo. My Second card was made with Crafty Individuals stamps, again coloured with distress markers. The background was dusted with tumbled glass and broken china distress ink

Our prize this month is donated by Crafty Devils.
                                         
£35 worth of goodies - how good is that!
I do hope you will join in the challenge this month and I look forward to seeing your lovely stamped creations. Pop over to the challenge blog to see the wonderful creations by my very talented teamies and to remind yourselves of the rules.
Thanks for looking!

New Video Tutorial

Well, I have finally got round to making another video tutorial - only a year since the last one! Thanks to everyone who has left me such lovely feedback for the previous two. I can't believe they have had over 2700 views and that I have 37 subscribers on my You Tube channel! Thank you! After watching Deby's you tube video I thought I would experiment with just using yellow, pink, blue and black ink.
Hope you like it!
Just to show you how very similar backgrounds can be made to look very different using a range of stamps, I made some more...

 This one is stamped with the small willow tree and a sentiment from the Old Beech Tree set.

This one features the buzzards from the old beech tree, the foliage(top right) from the Simply trees set, and  the ferns from the Fern Leaves set.  As well as on the Inkylicious website, all of these products will be available at Hobbycrafts shows, Ally Pally, GNPE, Stamp Magic and lots more - dates here.
I am taking all of these to Miss Di's Snippet Playground, because all of my matting and layering is from my snippet drawer. I have had to cut alot of the pieces diagonally to make them big enough! It will be good to see all the girlies - Don't feel like I have been for a play for ages!
I'm also entering this last one into the Penny Black and More Challenge where the theme is Anything goes
Thanks for looking!