A bit of Lavender and Lace

 I am finally able to find the time to enter a challenge this week! When I saw the Allsorts challenge on Saturday I just had to have a go. I had a lovely play with a 'new-to-me' technique. Not sure if anyone else has tried this, but thought I would share anyway. I have a bottle of indenting fluid that I bought in the 1990s and I still haven't used more than a quarter of it! I had seen some faux mother of pearl techniques with other products (Shimmer paint and Liquid pearls), so thought I would try experimenting to see what happened. I got a piece if scrunched up paper, dabbing it gently in a small blob of indenting fluid and then dabbed it across the satin card stock. Once this was dry I used my ink dusters to apply some colour (Shaded Lilac Distress Ink). The indenting fluid leaves a pearlised finish and acts as a resist to the ink too.

Once this was dry I stamped the Sweet Pea from Inkylicious in Archival Black and coloured it with Tombows. I added a bit of a shadow with a tumbled glass distress marker too. The panel was mounted onto a base card with a border of embossed pearlised card and some lovely white lace. The base card was stamped with Delicate Vines, also from Inkylicious This is for the Allsorts challenge this week, as I said earlier.
I also tried another card with the offcut from this one, this time using a Hero Arts stamp called Dogwood and colouring with promarkers. The colouring looks very messy compared to the first card. I think I am better sticking with water-based markers on this sort of card!

 and here is a side view to try and catch that sheen.

The centres of the flowers were dotted with Cotton Candy distress stickles. Before I go, a big welcome and a wave to my new followers. Glad you have joined me and keep popping in as I will be doing some follower candy very soon! Thanks for looking x

Disruption for a couple of days

Good afternoon! I thought I'd better do a post to let you know that my visits to blog land might be disrupted for a couple of days. The reason is that we have a rotten joist under the front room floor. This room houses my PC and all my craft stuff, so bit by bit I'm having to move it into various places around the house. We did have a piano too, but that was heading towards our cellar so quickly we decided it could go. The keyboard we have will come downstairs in it's place once it is all finished. We have a fab builder who is fairly confidant that he can sort it in a day (two tops) and so normal service should be resumed by the weekend.
Before I disappear I'll just show you a couple of cards.

 First up is Meg's birthday card, made using a sweet pea fairy, some Artylicious essence of nature papers and some of the rolled roses I've been making recently. The next are two Easter cards stamped with a wild rose studio stamp called 'sheep for ewe'. I don't do much cute, but I know this will go down a storm with Steve's mum and several friends, so it leaped into my basket on our last visit to Sir Stampalot. The daisy swirl in the background is an aspects of design stamp (Kay Carley) available from the Stampman.

 I'm entering these into the following challenges:
Craft your days away - Easter
My time to craft  - Easter Wishes

 Finally here is another creation from the blog girl day at sir stampalot. This was a project we made with Chris. It is going to sit on my desk and look after the post its I seem to accumulate. The dragon is another Wild rose studio stamp and those gorgeous papers are from Stella Rose.

Thanks for looking and wish me luck with the floor! I'll be back!!!!

A couple of Birthdays

Well, here is Steve's Birthday card. I got the Brayer out, but had 4 attempts before I managed this one! I managed to smudge a couple, and then wasn't happy with the ducks flying over. I used Adirondack inks in Butterscotch, Terracotta, Purple twilight and Eggplant. The moon was coloured with scattered straw distress ink. The stamps are from stampscapes (bulrushes), Hero arts (Silhouette grass) and Lavinia (Ducks). The sentiment is from a clear set by personal impressions. The theme for Stamptacular Sunday this week is 'Whateva!' so I'm entering it in their challenge.
My next card was for a lovely blogging buddy who celebrated her birthday last week.

The papers are from my Artylicious Essence of nature cd, The ribbon was a gift from Lesley aka Crafty Mamma and the Sweet pea fairy Stamp was from the lovely Brenda. I coloured the stamp with promarkers and added quite a bit of glitter with my quicky glue pen. Here is a shot from a different angle so you can see the glitter a bit better.

All that glitter should meet the requirements of the sweet pea stampers challenge blog where the theme is glitz and glamour, so I'm entering this one there too.