A little evolution

I love it when a card evolves in to something you really didn't expect. When I started this one, in my minds eye it was going to have some silhouetted flowers against a hazey purple sky in the lower left corner of the card.
By the time I had finished blending the purples through a circular mask, the colour was just crying out for a bit of shimmer spritz. I lifted the mask and there was undeniably a planet staring back at me so I went with it. I turned the card a quarter turn to put the planet in the 'sky.' A quick addition of some silver star stamps (from Lavinia and craftwork cards) and a message (also craftwork cards) and finito!

I'd like to enter this in to
Less is More - Purple
Craft Barn - Stars
SSS Wednesday - Fathers Day / For a guy
Craft stamper - Get inky

The big 100!

As the title suggests this is my 100th blog post since starting on a blogging venture almost a year ago! I make no apologies for the longer length of this post - it's a special one, hopefully with something of interest for everyone!

I start with the previously promised tour of my new craft space. It was high time I had a proper space - no more running up and down the stairs between the craft cupboard and the kitchen table every time I thought of something I needed!

There was a pretty tight budget involved here. We already owned the shelving unit although it wasn't previously in use. The table top and two drawer units came from Ikea along with the shiny new lamp which was the one extravagance. Also new from Ikea were the white magazine boxes giving a total spend of just under £100. The little brown tubs are ones I have been collecting for some while. Riverford send us our veg in them but I thought they would be perfect for all those little bits and pieces! 

The set of drawers immediately to my left contains all the things I need to have 'grab-able.' Top down this is; Ink pads, stationery and sticky things, colouring pens and pencils, glitters, embossing powders and liquid pearls, card blanks, paper pads.

A closer look in a couple of drawers. I'm really enjoying the ink pads laid out in a single layer - so easy to pick the one you want! Nothing is labelled yet to give me time to check it all works and make any changes I need to.

On the shelves the little boxes are filled with all sorts from punches to paints to smaller acrylic stamps. The magazine style white boxes house more stamps, dies, craft magazines and scraps of paper. Wooden stamps are in the mini chests of drawers below so that everything is in reach.

At some point I hope to have a little pin board on the wall in front of my work space and this handy chart will definitely be on it! I found it the other day on the hobby art website along with some others. It's so useful, you colour the squares that you have which not only gives you a quick reference guide to what you own, but also shows the pens true colours. 

Under the shelves are a few more key bits and pieces - scrap book papers, stickers, rub-ons and embellishments stored in the folders and a range of miscellaneous items stored in the giant shoe box. 

Now for the shameful bit. This is my ribbon box :0

I'd love to hear how you all organise your ribbons or if you have any top tips because I'm stumped! some ribbons are on rolls or card and they're fine but it's the really silly scraps that I just haven't got tamed! 

Ok, so that's the tour. Now on to a few cards eh?!

A super simple LIM. I fell out with the inlaid die technique in a big way after my last attempt but when I cut this new Sheena Douglas die it was just crying out for it. It's fair to say the technique and I have made peace again! This is based on the less is more sketch. I'd also like to throw it in the mix for casology's CAS 200 challenge.

I had been wondering how to address the Penny Black Saturday 'Masculine' challenge when I found this PB stickeroos yachting set. I teamed it with papers from Basic Grey and Kanban (fitting with the 2xpapers craft barn challenge) and added some green ribbon layered with the grosgrain ribbon. (For the crafty ribbons masculine challenge)

This one hasn't photographed well but it was another attempt at a shaker card. I mixed a magic potion (ingredients photographed below) masked part of the card and spritzed away. The flamingo is a magazine freebie die backed with some pink paper from the stash and filled with pink beadazzleds. The sentiment is from craftwork cards. I made this card with the allsorts pink challenge, SSS Mask it challenge and SSS monochrome challenge in mind. It was based on the Less is More sketch and suitable for the celebrations at AAA cards.

PHEW, what a long post! I'm glad you stayed with me to the end! TTFN Lou x

Sunny days

I've been given a beautiful new stamp set this week by my lovely Mum. The set is called 'Tuscany' by Hobby Art but reminded me straight away of beautiful sunny holidays spent in France. It was the perfect thing for my in-laws anniversary as they are fond of sunny European holidays (who isn't??!)

I stamped the 'view' first on to watercolour paper and then painted with my watercolours. On a separate card blank I stamped the wine and sunflowers using a mask to overlap them. I trimmed an aperture in the card using a craft knife and steel edge ruler. I used a stamp from the hobby art textures set around the frame in versa colour sand beige and then inked over the top with the same ink and some DI ground espresso.

Finally I made the little coordinating tag and added some twine and gold ribbon. I mounted the watercolour scene inside the aperture with 3D foam tape.

Thanks for visiting today, please do leave a comment so I know you have stopped by! Lou x

Challenges;
SSS Work it Wednesday - Sun (I used sunflowers and sunny holidays as my inspiration)
Stamping sensations - Anything goes
SSS Wednesday - Anything goes
Penny Black at allsorts - Anything goes
Crafty Ribbons - Flowers

A is for...

This fortnight at the Craft Barn we have come round to the letter A. Quite a hefty chunk in the dictionary but I was quite quickly drawn to my chosen word, so this week A is for...

Acorn

I got messy with acrylics to make the background and painted the set of oak leaves on to tissue before adhering it to the page. Then I used Tim Holtz autumn gatherings die and a selection of papers to create the scattered boarder. Finally I stamped the sentiment using Hero Arts alphabet stamps. 

I'm also linking this in to the craft barn's 'two paper' challenge, assuming two is the minimum number of papers allowed and I haven't broken the rules by using more than two?!

Thanks for calling by! Lou x

Pop art?

Being a little short on card making time at the moment I've had a go at combining a few challenges in this one card. Little Claires theme is Butterflies - that's straight forward enough. At Simon Wednesday the theme is 'Fun with Felt' so I used a felt butterfly by do-crafts. Simon Monday have the theme 'Make a wish' so I used craftwork cards birthday wishes sentiment stamps. AAA cards are celebrating their 2nd birthday, so this is the birthday card for them. Finally Less is More have the theme of 'things that pop or bang'.... can you guess? I used bubble wrap stuck around my acrylic block to make the background! It's my favourite thing that 'pop's' after all :)

Thanks for stopping by! Lou x

It's close to midnight...

That's the song I've had in my head all week since ATCAS announced the theme 'Midnight'. I had to turn to my lovely hobby art owls set for this one (any excuse!)

There was a bit of masking involved, I stamped the owl first, masked it, then stamped the branch and masked that, then finally masked the moon before inking the background. The card is coloured with promarkers and finished with 'starry night' stickles. Well, it seemed appropriate!

I know it's been a tad quiet here in the last week or so but if you call back in the next couple of days I will be doing a big reveal of my newly created 'Craft space on a shoe string!' Yep, I'm moving up in the world from my kitchen table to a corner of the office so there has been a lot of sorting and rearranging. As said, all will be reveled shortly!

Lou x

J is for...

This fortnight the craft barn dictionary challenge had the added twist of a dragonfly. I was concerned that I had included dragonflies just last time on my D page but looking back through the dictionary it turns out I had included them on no less than four other pages! Yep, they are dancing around the frogs on F, fluttering above the lavender fields in L, quietly adding to the background behind the quince in Q, and of course celebrating the dandelions and daisies in D. So really this should have been a doddle!

So, without further ado, this fortnight J is for Jetty

In a moment of curiosity I added a bit of blue liquid pearl to my acrylics to see what would happen. The result was a much better covering disguising the dictionary page but a much harder overall surface to paint on. I'm not much of a painter anyway but this was the only way I could think of to create this page. The dragonflies are the only stamped element on the page and they are a couple of my favourites from crafty individuals.

A quick close up of the definition but for whatever reason it is adamant that it wants to be sideways on!

I'm entering this in to Crafty Individuals anything goes challenge as well as the Craft Barn Dictionary challenge of course.