Happy New Year!

 

Hi There! I often spend some time between Christmas and new year tidying my desk, and putting all the christmas stamps back in their folders so I can find them again (I have in the past lost things at this time of year). Once the desk space was clear I decided to do a little bit if journaling to welcome in 2025. I don't do new years resolutions, but I do like to choose myself a word or two to focus on with a positive mindset. How about you? What do you do?

I began by blending distress oxides across the pages. I used Picked Raspberry, Mustard Seed, Mermaid Lagoon and Wilted Violet. 

Next, I placed the mandala inkables onto the page and blended Black Soot Distress Oxide through them. I was thinking of using the same inkable twice, but changed my mind and used a different one as you will see in the next photo. 

Using an inkables skyline I added more Black Soot Distress oxide along the bottom of the page. 

I then added a few light sprays of Distress spritz in Fossilized Amber, Worn Lipstick and weathered wood. 

On a scrap of white card, I stamped the big numbers 2025 in Charming Pink Versafine Clair and cut them out. 

Finally I added these to the page along with sone wordy stickers using matte medium.

Here is the finished (?) page again. I may well add some white pen before I put it away😂

I used:

Mandala Inkables  - I used 4 and 7 

Skyline Inkable

A square 5 inch journal 

Distress Oxide inks in Picked Raspberry, Mustard Seed, Mermaid Lagoon, Wilted Violet and Black Soot. 

Bee Crafty Art Stamps Numbers

Distress Spritz 

Wordy Stickers #2

Matte Medium

Thanks for looking and I hope 2025 bring you joy and opportunities!  I also hope you can treat yourself to something from the Bee Crafty Twixmas sale which ends on 5th January! 

A quick card in Pastel colours

 

Hi There! I am here with a quick and simple card for you today. 

I began by adding masking tape about a third of the way across a 5x5" card blank, then blending speckled egg distress ink through the inkable big one, but not up to the edge of the card.

Next I used the mandala inkable and blended kitsch flamingo Distress Oxide ink through it 

on a separate scrap of card I stamped the smaller dandedaisy in memento ink and coloured with alcohol markers. 

I stuck this to the card along the area where the tape was.

I stamped the sentiment using second generation Fantasia Versafine Clair ink.

Finally I added some more stamping using the worker stamps from Journaling Essentials #4 and Speckled egg distress ink. I also added spots of gold liquid pearls around the mandala.

Here is the finished card again. 

I used:

5x5" white card blank

Masking tape

Bee Crafty Inkable - Big one Fernando

Bee Crafty Inkable 6x6" mandala #2

Distress ink - Speckled Egg

Distress oxide ink - Kitsch Flamingo

Doodle Art Dandedaisy stamp set

Memento Black ink

Journaling Essentials #4 Stamp Set

Matte Medium

Wordage: Everyday Sentiments #1 Stamp set

 Versafine Clair Fantasia Ink

Thanks for looking! I will be live at 8pm this evening over on the Bee Crafty Facebook Page. I would love to see you there! 

Dena's Stamps at Crafty Individuals

 Did you see Jean on the Craft show at the beginning of August? She took the latest new stamps with her - 5 stunningly beautiful designs by our very own Dena Rangely. I've saved sharing my samples until they are on the Crafty Individuals website, which they now are. The stamps are all fantasy based - enough of me talking about them though. Take a look! 

First up is 'New beginnings', a gorgeous baby dragon hatching from it's egg.

Next is the Gentle Dragon....

There is the gorgeous 'Rising Phoenix'....

Next is the 'Wishing Tree'...

and finally the beautiful 'Fairy Rose'

Huge Congratulations to Dena on a very successful first Collection and if you want to get your hands on these goodies you can find them on the Crafty Individuals website here. 

Playing with my Gloss Sprays and those beautiful face stamps

 

Last week I treated myself to some more Dina Wakely Gloss sprays and decided to have a play with them for my blog post this week. 

Here is what I used to make my card:

15cm square card blank

14cm square of mixed media card

Dina Wakely gloss sprays in Heather, Mineral, Lime and Eggplant

Faces - Whatever Works stamp set

Inkable Easy frame circle

Inkable big one - Bakewell

Small Words stamp set

Archival ink in Cobalt and Majestic Violet

blending brush

Versamark ink 

White embossing powder

Dark blue scrap of card

First I sprayed the mixed media card with the 3 paler gloss sprays and left to dry.

Next I stamped the face onto the sprayed card with the blue Archival ink. Make sure you use a juicy inkpad for this and don't leave it on the sprayed surface for too long or it will stick. I also stamped the other eye, lining up the eyebrows.

Once the ink was dry I placed the Bakewell inkable and inny circle mask over the face before spraying with the Egg plant gloss spray. I put the Bakewell on the right hand side, leaving an area on the left of the sprayed card not stencilled.

After removing the stencil/masks and putting them into a bowl of water, I used the tubes from the bottles to splatter the colours across the sprayed card.

I used the same part of the bottle to draw some solid lines of the spray where the edge of the big one stopped.

once this was dry I placed the circle back over the face and used a blending brush to add a little extra shading in the purple archival ink around the edge of the circle and the edge of the card panel.

finally I mounted it onto a blank white card and added a sentiment (white embossed onto a scrap of navy blue card)

I can see I am going to have so much fun with the sprays as well as the stamps! 

Thanks for looking! 

Bluebells

 Hi There! So sorry I haven't been around Blog land much for a couple of weeks. I was busy working on samples and then my laptop decided to stop working. It has taken a little while to sort out a new one and install most things, but I am back now, hopefully without having lost too much. It is a bit of a rigmarole to transfer photos from my camera until I get a card reader. My old laptop had a slot the right size but this one doesn't! 

Anyway, here is something I can show you! This is a card made with the latest stamp from Crafty Individuals. It is a stunning bluebell sketch by Jean. This is on a 7"x7" card so you can see the stamp is a really good size. You can find it here.

I stamped it on a background created with Pretty Gets Gritty explosion powders and coloured with arteza metallic watercolours. The sheen really doesn't show in the photo, which is a shame! The base card was stencilled with distress inks (mermaid lagoon, blueprint sketch and wilted violet) and a That's Crafty mandala stencil.

How is it going? I hope you are okay. We are looking forward to being able to go a little further for a walk and meet up with Meg and Grant too. We haven't seen them in the flesh since Christmas.

Thanks for looking!

Butterfly Birthday Greetings

 

Hi There! The Doodle Art Insects and flowers seem to be my 'go-to' stamps at the moment when I need a card and Mr Mojo is having a break. As soon as I start colouring them he seems to show up again! Last weekend I made another colourful birthday card using the Doodle Art butterflies. Here is how I made it.

First I smooshed some distress oxide ink in Broken china onto some acetate, misted with a little water and touched it onto a 13cm square of plain card.

Once this was dry I place the Big Ones Botanical Garden inkable over it and sprayed with distress oxde spray in wilted violet.

Whilst it dried I stamped 2 butterflies using the regular doodle art butterfly set  onto watercolour card and coloured (you don't have to be particularly careful with colouring as they are going to be cut out) with ecoline pens in deep yellow and magenta.

I added a few Gelly Roll gel pen highlights and then cut them out, removing the antenae.

I stamped the butterflies onto the background where I wanted to place them

and used 3d glue gel to stick the cut out butterflies over the stamped images. This way they can still have antennae! The spatters and dots around the stamp are also added.

I matted and layerd the background onto a 15cm square card, adding the Happy Birthday sentiment from the everyday sentiments 2 set.

Here is another look at the finished card. Those bright colours really cheered me up! It is well worth experimenting with different colours together. The yellow and Magenta weren't a combination I would have guessed would work so well. Hope you like it.

Thanks for looking and Happy stamping!

                             Sally x

Putting my stencils to good use!

 I've not entered many challenges for quite a while, so I thought it was high time I put more of my stencils to good use and entered CAS Mix Up where the challenge is to heat emboss through a stencil. I have used mostly very very old stash for this one. The Stencil was bought at Stamp Magic Doncaster 9 or 10 years ago, I think from Stamposaurus. The stamp was bought from Stamporium about 20 years ago, and the green pearl embossing powder was also from there. I used Distress Oxide ink in Crackling Campfire and Rustic Wilderness (new to my stash) to ink through the stencil and to ink up the stamp. Here is a closer look at the embossing powder sheen. I really wasn't sure if it would have gone off, it is so old, but it worked perfectly.

Do check out the talented DT over at CAS Mix Up. Their work is so inspiring! 

Thanks for looking! 

                         Sally x

Crafty Individuals on Hochanda next week!

 The lovely Jean Hardy will be taking some brand new Ellie Mulligan stamps and loads of gorgeous samples on to Hochanda on Friday (12th February) at 10am and 2pm. Make sure you don't miss the Crafty Individuals shows!

Here are a couple of the samples I made for Jean using the Ellie Mulligan lion king stamp CI-524. 

The first was stamped over a background of smooshed distress oxides in crackling campfire, speckled egg and peacock feathers. I fussy cut it and then brayered a background in 3 shades of aqua/blue chalk paint. I used a That's crafty stencil and gold paint on the background before adhering the lion using 3d foam pads to the front.

For my second card I smooshed the background with the same colours then stamped it with a range of Flo Langley's background stamps. I stamped the lion onto kraft card adding a little coloured pencil to emphasize his features and again used 3d foam. The sentiment was stamped and embossed onto jade parchment paper and folded over the corner. 

Thanks for looking!

                             Sally x

More CAS using stencils

 Following on from my blog post on Monday I have had a little play with two Funky fossil stencils that I had for Christmas, again with the make up brush and distress inks. 

For the first, I used the same inks as the card in the last post.

For the second I used wilted violet and bundled sage. The sentiment is from woodware. Being this CAS is a little out of my comfort zone, lol.

I have had a chilled day today after a day of appointments yesterday. My Dentist was running 45 minutes late (I waited outside on the pavement for her to reach me, which was a little cold to say the least). By contrast, I cannot praise the nurses completing flu jabs at our local surgery enough. They were so brilliantly organised I walked it there and back (8000 steps) and had the jab in less than an hour.  They are marvellous - I just wish I could award them a pay rise! 

I hope you are all keeping well and the current lockdown isn't too hard for you. Sending hugs x

            Sally x