Steve's Birthday card

It was Steve's Birthday yesterday, so here is the card I made him. He loves Ducks, so this Crafty Individuals stamp was a must buy! I stamped it in archival black on silk art card and coloured with distress markers and dusted with distress inks. The background paper on the base card was sprayed with a combination of Adirondack, dylusions and crafty notions sprays. I stamped the grass (inkylicious) with Memento Olive Grove and put faux stitching round the edge with a Gelly Roll pen. I'm taking this to Di's snippet playground as the mulberry paper and the sentiment circle were snippets from my snippet mountain, as was the silk art card that the main image was stamped on.
 Hope you are all managing to stay warm and dry. Here it has rained rather a lot (no playtimes at all today!) and we had some decent sized snowflakes a couple of times, but nothing settled, much to my classes annoyance! Right, better go and get on. I've had a headache for a couple of days and I think only good sleep will cure it, so I am having an early night.
Thanks for looking!

Happy Burn's Night and Rudolf Day!

Hi there! Well, the 25th January came round very quickly didn't it? I have been busy doing the Big Garden Birdwatch and making a Hot Marmalade Pudding for our Burn's Night celebrations tonight at a friend's house. It is my turn to provide pudding. I have spent ages trying to get hold of a Drambuie miniature to make the custard with, but haven't found one. Should have tried at Christmas or in Scotland!
Whilst it is in the steamer I have been having a play and made two cards for Rudolf Day over on Sarn's Blog, so here they are.

and here are some 'closer-ups'.

The image on this one is a digi from Doodle Dragon Studios, the base card is stamped with Inky Doodles backgrounds 2 and the poinsettia is a Marianne designs die. The sentiment is from Craftwork Cards.

My second card is a one layer card stamped with Inkylicious stamps and a sentiment from woodware. I added various glitter glues, although you can only really see the red here. All inks used on both were by memento.
If you haven't done the Big Garden Birdwatch there is still time, as tomorrow is eligible too. Not as many unusual visitors this year for us as last, but that could be down to the snow we had last year. About half an hour after I finished we got a pair of black caps, coal tits and blue tits, which were noticeable by their absence earlier! The seasons certainly are out of kilter this year, as we saw hundreds of Catkins on the way home from shopping this morning - at least 4 weeks early. Our daffodils are a few inches tall too.
Hope you have had a productive day and you have managed to avoid the hail storm we had earlier. Half past two looked more like half past six here, it was so dark, and the hailstones were marble size rather than pea size!
Thanks for looking!

Maple leaves

Here is another of those beautiful Nicecrane images from the Incredible Jessie Willcox collection. I loved the blue dress contrasting with the autumn leaves and so layered the image on snippets of copper and blue papers and mounted on a card base. This had been dusted and stamped with the Inkylicious maple leaves in Kaleidacolor Autumn leaves ink. The sentiment is from Inky Doodles. I am off to Miss Di's snippet playground with this one. Hope it is a bit drier than it is here - might need a hot toddy to keep me going! Steve went out to fill the bird feeders in time for this weekend's big garden Birdwatch, and it was rain that hurt! Great big spots that were cold and blown at you with force!
I also needed another thank you card for a male, so I used the larger of the maple leaf stamps and Kaleidacolor Creole Spice.

The Sentiment is from Chocolate Baroque and fit perfectly in the stripe where I put the masking tape. This ended up less clean and simple than I'd intended - another 'save' where my fingertips had left their little smudges! I do love this ink pad!
Thanks for looking!

Playing with Dylusions

I took the plunge and bought the latest dylusions colours with my Christmas money, mainly because they were in a set and less money that way.
I've sprayed loads of bits of paper, but so far only managed to make two into cards! It was loads of fun, though!!!

This first card has now reached it's destination, so I can post it. As well as the Dylusions I used memento inks in teal zeal, grape jelly and lilac posies. All stamps are from Inkylicious. The button has been in my stash for so long (Nearly ten years at a guess!) I loved how well it went with the colours.

On this second one I also used a dylusions stencil and a creative expressions mask, black and white pen and a bit of card candy for the flower centre. This is the same Inkylicious daisy stamp as on the card above. Thanks for looking and for all your lovely comments. I will be round to visit as soon as I can. At the moment I am writing posts at the weekend and scheduling / publishing them to space them out.

Stamping Sensations mid month inspiration

Welcome! It is time for a bit of mid-month inspiration at Stamping Sensations. I have made another card using the incredible Jessie Wilcox images from Nicecrane. I love them because they are such delightful images of children reading and take me back to my childhood. I had an Andy Pandy fancy dress outfit very much like the one this child is wearing (but blue and white)!

Mrs A said my last card using these gorgeous images reminded her of Milly-Molly-Mandy, which took me right back! I read them all! Does this one remind you of anyone or a book character? I used the delicate vine stamp to add some interest to the backing paper and used scraps of various papers to matte and layer.

Over the next few months our lovely DT are going to feature some of their favourite cards and projects on the challenge blog that they have made over the years. This month it is my turn, so here it is.

Back in August I created this card after seeing some amazing sunsets whilst on holiday in Wales.(See my post here)  Meg persuaded me to make a tutorial for it on youtube, which she filmed and edited for me, and you can find it here.

Ink duster tutorial #2

There is still plenty of time to get your entries in for this months challenge. We are really enjoying seeing your superb cards featuring ribbons, buttons and bows. Thanks for looking and for all your lovely comments

An altered domino

Inspired by the lovely gift I received from Lynne that you can see here, I decided to have a go at altering a domino that I had in my stash. I drilled a small hole in the top and added a bail and a bead. I created the background with alcohol inks and stamped the Inkylicious tree in versafine, before covering with crystal glaze and edging with a silver leaf pen.
It isn't a patch on Lynne's beauties but I really enjoyed making it, so much so I have ordered myself some more dominoes to play with!
I have had a day off work today. We had a burst pipe in the ceiling affecting asbestos, so no staff were allowed in school! I did my shopping when it was quiet and pottered about doing this and that. I have had a play with my dylusions too, which I will share with you soon. 
Back to work tomorrow and a course after school too, so I'd better go and get ready.
Thanks for looking and for all your lovely comments

One layer Thank Yous

 I was having a bit of a clearout to house some new stash and found two quite small scalloped square cards, I used low tack masking tape round the edges and dusted the central panel with Distress inks.For this one I used the Summer set of Distress inks and the Inkylicious Allium stamps and a sentiment. I added glitter to the allium and a wobbly line round the edge of the panel to cover up some smudges!

My second card used the same stamps but this time I used the spring distress inks and  managed no smudges, lol!
I am entering this into a new challenge, the One Layer Simplicity challenge . The theme this month is to 'restock the shelves', and as I had used up all my thank you cards in my box, it was definitely time for some more! Thanks for looking and I hope you are having a great weekend!

Butterflies

Thanks for all your lovely comments on Sunday's posts. I will try and catch up with you over the weekend. Thought I'd pop on with another card I made with some of my Christmas presents, 'Backgrounds 2', 'Happiness is' and Butterfly Script' backgrounds from Inky Doodles. I used antique Linen, tea dye and tumbled glass distress inks for all the backgrounds, then coloured the butterfly with a mixture of Sakura gellyroll pens - some glaze and some star.
Here is a closer picture of the butterfly where you can see some of the sparkle

I also made an easel calendar for my friend who I went to Rwanda with.

This time I decoupaged the butterflies wings too, and dusted clouds onto the background.
I've been doing data analysis every evening all week, and I can't tell you how much my craft table is calling me! I'd written most of this post last weekend, so it didn't need much time to post it.
Thanks again for all the lovely comments. I'd better go - One more year group to analyse and then I'm done until February!
Thanks for looking!

Flowers

 Two posts in one day!!! Can you tell I go back to work tomorrow?! Here is another card I made using the Inky Doodles backgrounds 2 and Happiness is stamp sets. I used memento and impress inks for the flowers and the background, then coloured the flower centres with promarkers. I used a ball tool and some 3d glue to make the centres of the flowers stand out a bit too.

The die is from Marianne Designs and the ribbon and buttons were in my stash.I am entering this into the Allsorts challenge this week where the theme is 'free and easy', and Heck of a challenge this month where the theme is 'new' (I used my new stamps that I had for Christmas)
Thanks for looking!

Ribbons Buttons and Bows at Stamping Sensations

Hi There! It is the first Sunday of the month and time for a new Challenge at Stamping Sensations. This month our theme is Ribbons, buttons and/ or bows. We are sponsored by the wonderful Ignacio from Nicecrane Designs, and he very kindly gave us some images to use. The gorgeous set of Jessie Wilcox images appealed to me instantly as it seems so rare to see images of children reading these days! It took me back to the days of Janet and John reading books! I added some snippets of paper from some magazines and stamped the main background papers with Vintage flowers (Inkylicious) in Tea Dye DI.

My second card used stamps from Inky Doodles 'Happiness is...' set, stamped in memento inks.This gorgeous set of stamps was a Christmas present from my lovely hubby.  I used the Victoria Cuttlebug embossing folder and some buttons and ribbon from my stash.
Now onto the prize - Thirty-Five Pounds worth of goodies from the Nicecrane website!!! How marvellous is that? There are so many fabulous images to choose from too. Thanks, Ignacio! Don't forget to pop over to the challenge blog to see the fabulous inspiration from my lovely teamies. They have done themselves proud once again!
Both of my cards have gone a little way (not that you can tell!) to using up my snippets, so I am off to the snippet playground with them, where there has been a bit of wild weather. Think I will take my bucket and wellies too!
Thanks for looking!