A bit more Autumn

It's the weekend and finally I've found the time to post. Here is a card featuring a 'Stampin' up!' set called Touch of Nature, that they have now discontinued.

All stamps are from the set except for 'Old French Writing' (Hero Arts) used on the base card. The bird and branches were stamped, coloured with promarkers and then embossed after colouring over with versamarker. The background stamping and shading was with a variety of distress inks, as was the leafy part of the base card. I'm entering this one into the Lot's to do challenge this week where the theme is autumn colours.
Next is a birthday card for one of Meg's friends who has the nickname 'Wolfie' so I thought the husky/ wolf image from Clarity Stamps would make an ideal card.

Both of these cards are very much in the style of Michelle Zindorf. If you have never visited her blog or looked at her tutorials please do. She is one extremely talented lady!

Tag you're it - Who inspires you?

The challenge on Tag you're it this week is to create a tag in the style of someone who inspires you. I really struggled to choose between several people for this. Eventually I decided on Michelle Zindorf. I have spent many an hour looking at her wonderful creations and tutorials, and it was her blog that encouraged me to get my brayer out (after many failed attempts) and have another go. I'm still learning, but I throw a lot less away these days!

For this tag I used a big and juicy ink pad (Spice), Leaf flourish stamp (Hero Arts), tree stamp (stampin' up), Bullrushes stamp (Stampscapes) and butterscotch Adirondack ink for the moon and a white gel pen

I have also picked up a few tips along the way from Brenda, Tracey Dutton and Barbara Gray. I can recommend watching all of them demonstrating!
Told you I was in the mood to get inky! Thanks for looking!

Inspiration...

OK so I fibbed. Just one more tree card before I started on the flowery ones. The stamps are the 'Fall Season' set from inkadinkado. Another inspired by Michelle Zindorf. After that I spent ages looking at some papers I bought a while ago. Lovely colours, but as always the design on the papers is so much larger than on the design sheet in the front of the packet and I just didn't know what to do with them. All I could come up with was a bit of 'licky, sticky crafting' to borrow a phrase of Glenda Waterworth's. Glitter glue, peel-offs and sticky pads for decoupage. Not art, and not really my cup of tea. They will go in my box at a low price. I couldn't send them to anyone.

I started digging around in my flower stamp draw looking for something to be a bit more creative with and found a stamp with a very similar design to one of the other papers. This next attempt left me feeling a little better. After lunch we went for a walk in the woods near to Portland Training College, just off the A60 near Mansfield. The Sun came out and we had a lovely walk. We took a few photos and then headed back to the little Cafe and gift shop for a cuppa before heading home.

Once home I cooked Roast Beef for dinner, and then sat down with some stamps and tried again with a couple of birthday cards and another Christmas card. The first features a Penny Black stamp, the second a Hero Arts stamp and the Angel is a Toybox stamp. I feel better now!

I've got a thing about trees...

I seem to have bought some more tree stamps! Of all the stamps in my collection the trees outnumber anything else. I bought the Stampendous 'winter trees' and the clarity fir tree group at Doncaster. I also found the inkadinkado fall season stamps online. The lower 2 pictures are virtually direct copies of Michelle Zindorf's, but I loved the originals so much I had to try to recreate them. What I should have been doing this evening was marking books, but the pull of unused stamps was too great!

Autumn leaves...

This morning Steve and I were out in the garden doing some tidying and planting that that we didn't want to do before the tree people came. It was very cold and I'm afraid I only managed an hour and a half before I went back inside for a cup of tea. This afternoon I did a bit of planning and then had a go at a Zindorf inspired autumn leaf card. I used a hero arts stamp, and was quite pleased with the results. Megan managed to trip and twist her ankle yesterday, so the walk in the woods isn't looking so certain now. Hopefully she will feel a bit better tomorrow after resting it for most of today.

More guitars!

I wanted to see what the guitar card looked like in other colours, and whether there was any difference using glossy accents or embossing with a versamarker and clear powder. I also wanted to see what it looked like without the swirls. Here are the results, and I think there is little difference between the two finishes. The purple was done with glossy accents and the red with heat embossing.

It has been a long day. We had several trees made shorter and one tree felled (a Eucalyptus) today.Putting it through the shredder cleared noses for miles! Meg took several photos, which I will try and upload during the week.

Busy, busy, busy!

My friend Lynne (her blog is Creative Lynks) runs a card making class. Every so often she asks me to do the class for her whilst she visits her family in Scotland. I'm busy preparing some 'Cards for Men' for a class at half term. Here are a few of the samples. Stamps featured are from Lavinia stamps (all on Pheasant card), Dimension fourth (Guitar) and Wendy House (Vegetables). I took my inspiration from Michelle Zindorf - her blog is truly amazing.