Positive Mind...........

Good morning folks!

Well, I need to take a spoonful of my own medicine with this one I think - I've just been over ran with being so very busy over the last week or two that I think I need to keep my own mind in that "positive mind, positive vibes and positive life" status!!!!!

This was a quick make that I did between art calls and thinking positive as I always try to do, I came up with this design! Wouldn't it be nice to be laying on that hammock in the garden with nothing to do but read that book!!! Pitty the weather is turning now leaving the Summer behind us and bringing on the Autumn which in itself, brings us the beautiful colours that no other season can compare with.

Some Rubber Dance stamps have been used here along with Stamp Addicts and some Sue Wilson ivy dies.

Love a bright background and a silhouette!

Thanks for stopping by today,

Leanne xxx

Bright Copper Kettles and Warm Woollen Mittens for Fashionable Stamping Challenges.......

Good morning!

Busy busy busy here making inspirational pieces for our current theme over at Fashionable Stamping Challenges of "The Sound of Music" or "Your Favourite Things".

This first piece was great fun, although at first it doesn't look like it's a very busy card, it's when you see the stamped out die cuts on that background that you see the work that has gone in to this one.

I started here by sponging on some orange and yellow distress inks and splattering some water off of my fingers on there and dabbing off to remove some colour (like dribbles or spillages typically from cups, kettles and teapots!).  I didn't have a cup or teapot stamp so my brain had to get thinking here.  I did have two dies by Tonic though, one a cup and one a teapot so I cut those out of funky foam, attached to an acrylic block and stamped away in the orange colour!!! If you then look closely, you will see that those little shrink plastic tea cups are the same stamped image on to shrink plastic, cut out and heated to make them much smaller.

The Kettles were stamped direct on to the card and on to clear acetate (so that I could reverse two of them).  I coloured the kettles in Indigoblu luscious powder to give me that perfect copper colour and shine.

The sentiment has been die cut from a Sue Wilson alphabet and placed to look like the words are pouring from the kettles.

How is that for improvising!

This time it's a simple tag with the only mittens stamps I own (which came on a sheet free with a magazine).

This was simply done using a distress ink background and stamping the mittens.  I drew cords on the mittens as I always used to put my daughters mittens on elastic that I threaded through their coat so that they didn't lose them - do you remember those days??!!!

Some white embossed snowflakes and a sentiment of warm wishes.

I added some nice lace and ribbon for a tassel to the tag - perfect for Christmas.

Now you can have a go too and join us at Fashionable Stamping Challenges for our current theme of "The Sound of Music" or "My favourite Things"!

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope that you've enjoyed your visit,

Leanne xx

Dream canvas.

Good morning!

Well, this is indeed a more complex piece of artwork but I had a ball with it!!!!!  I let my creative side just take over!

I am very grateful Cec and all the team at Stamps and Stencils challenges

stampsandstencils@blogspot.co.uk for asking me to be their Guest Designer this month.  Their new theme is "swirls, whirls and flourishes" - it's a brilliant theme and there is lots of scope there to include a swirl, a whirl or a flourish on your piece.

As you will see, I went the whole hog and got swirls, whirls and flourishes on here so shall we take our usual journey and see how I got there?

OK, I started off with a piece of tissue paper (gift tissue) and with some cut n dry foam applied some Archival watering can ink through the stencilgirl stencil.

Then it started to get messy (my favourite place!!!) I stuck the tissue paper to a 12 x 12 inch canvas using Powertex napkin glue and allowed that to completely dry. Then I applied some modelling paste through two stencils - a swirl and a whirl!.

Here I have sprayed some yellow Powertex Bister Spray to start the background colour.

Now we have some drama on that background, I've used green and yellow Bister Sprays now, I added some lace that I've applied with Mod Podge and sprayed with the ink sprays too.  The flourishes are Sue Wilson Dies and the small paper flowers I have had in my crafty stash for so long, I have no idea where they originally came from!

Now, the problem I saw was that the girls face was too lost on the canvas and I needed to bring her completely forward so I made a start on completely enhancing her face and her hair.

There! What fun I had!  I used the modelling paste to change her hair to bring her forward and the face I enhanced to bring out that nose and mouth and particularly the eyes. I have used Pebeo gilding wax (silver) to highlight all of the swirls and flourishes and gold gilding wax to highlight her hair.

I stamped the sentiment of "Dream" from Clarity Stamp on there and I was very happy with this.

If nothing else, this project shows you how you can adapt your stencils in to anything you wish them to be.  Use your stencil to start your piece off and build on it from there as I have in this piece.

This is all the ingredients apart from the stencilgirl stencil which you can see in the first photo.

Hope you like what you see and that you have enjoyed our crafty journey today.

Don't forget to pop along to Stamps and Stencils and join in their new challenge of "Swirls, whirls and flourishes".

I would like to enter this piece in to current That's Crafty challenge of "Silver and Gold":-

http://thatscraftychallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/silver-and-gold-challenge.html

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne xx

Let it snow.......

Good morning!!

Well, I don't think it hurts any of us to go a little bit out of our comfort zone occasionally and try something different that is not our "normal thing" and this was most certainly not my normal thing!!!!!

We know that I love ink, paints, stamping and splatter and this couldn't be further from it!!!

I saw this challenge over at Time Out Challenges with their theme of "Winter with a twist of white on white".  I could have just passed it by but something stayed in my mind and got me thinking about this one, perhaps because it's so far from what I normally do? I enjoy a challenge and I very much enjoy what I do so I thought, you know what, let's do it!  

Well, my usual stamping wasn't going to happen as I just couldn't think of how I could show anything up with the twist of white on white so I opted for die cutting.  You will see from the blog that die cutting does come in to my crafting but usually as an embellishment of some sort or another but this one had to be completely die cutting for me to stand a chance of seeing it on the camera!

So, a pretty straight forward line up really, I started by tearing two pieces of white card stock to layer right at the back to give a bit of depth. I then hand embossed some wavy lines to add a feature to the bottom of the card.  I tucked in the beautiful Christmas Tree (Tattered Lace) between the two layers.  I then cut the three lovely deer and snow flakes (all Sue Wilson Dies). So, once I had the dies all cut I knew I had to stamp the sentiment (the only form of colour that the challenge would allow) so that I knew where to build up from.  I then set about layering everything up with glue and 3D glue gel for dimension.

I added some glue here and there and covered with white glitter dust.

Matted and layered on three white mats.

What a pretty card, hey, that's a Christmas card done for next Christmas already - a great start!!!!

I would like to enter this in to the Time Out Challenges "Winter with a twist of white on white":-

http://timeoutchallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/challenge-74-theme-with-optional-twist.html

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne xxx

Happy Christmas........

Good morning!

It's a new challenge over at Fashionable Stamping Challenges today with the theme "Anything Goes" - (well, I had to do Christmas then didn't I?!!!!). Come and join us, with such an "open" theme it's easy to have lots of fun and show us what you can create!

http://www.fashionablestampingchallenges.com/2016/12/11/challenge-118-anything-goes/

OK, lets take our journey shall we.....

Isn't this a stunner of a stamp? It's the Impression Obsession J7042 Santa Horses stamp.

I started with my usual plain white Sheena stamping card and stamped the horses in Archival watering can.  I coloured their hats in with Spectrum Noir colouring pencils (you will see this on the next photo).  I then pressed some perfect medium through a stars stencil and embossed with clear embossing powder.

I then blended the background with distress ink (weathered wood) to show the white stars more clearly.

I cut two black mats and a silver one and passed the black mats through my Platinum machine with an embossing folder that looked like snow falling by Leonie Pujol. (I had to pass them through twice as my card was wider than the 5 x 7 embossing folder so I hotched the folder over a bit and ran it through again!).

I then stroked the embossed card with a tiny bit of Pebeo silver gilding wax to highlight the snow falling - it looks so metallic!

The sentiment was stamped "Happy Christmas" (Bee Crafty) and edged with the weathered wood distress ink and matted on to black card stock.

Here I was playing with the idea of a nice red ribbon? - Yes, I think that works well!!!

There, who said that you can't do monochrome for Christmas?!!!!

Matted and layered up and red felt ribbon and bow to finish with some die cut ivy leaves (Sue Wilson - Creative Expressions) which I also finished with a touch of silver gilding wax.

I thought this was really classy! I shall choose someone special to receive this one I think!

Do come along and join us at Fashionable Stamping Challenges with our new theme of 

"Anything Goes".

http://www.fashionablestampingchallenges.com/2016/12/11/challenge-118-anything-goes/

May I wish all at Fashionable Stamping Challenges, the Design Team and all you out there who enter and make the challenges such fun for us all a very Merry Christmas!

I would like to enter this in to The Artistic Stamper Creative Team blog challenge "Christmas":-

http://theartisticstampercreativeteam.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/decembers-creative-challenge-christmas.html

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne x

Art Depends Not On Who Creates It......

Good morning!

Well, I think I've gone a bit mixed media for me but I've had a fantastic time!!!!

I've taken photo's along the way so let's take our usual journey shall we?

This card started life as a piece of greyboard and I applied 2 coats of gesso to it.

I cut some die cuts (Sue Wilson trailing ivy, JustRite floral dies, Couture Creations scrolled tomentosa) and stuck those down always remembering to leave some nice blank space in the middle for stamping on to.  I applied some Pebeo sand texture paste and some pebeo normal texture paste, left it all to dry and painted a further layer of gesso over the top so that my paints had a good surface to sit on.

All looks a bit "white" but that will change!! (Infact, I quite like the white look - ummmm, food for thought, watch this space!!!!!).

Aquatints were used to colour. - I just looooove aquatints!!!!

Pebeo gilding wax was then rubbed on to highlight - perfect!

Now we're getting there!!!!

My sentiment was stamped and the eye (both Carabelle Studio).  I worked further on the eye to enhance it with white pen and glossy accents.  Although stars appear on the eye stamp, I added more!

Mat and layered up in matching card stock - voila! 

Quite a modern and up to date card, this would even keep the younger girls interested- my daughter liked it!

Hope you like what you've seen,

I would like to enter this in to the current Country View Challenge of "Stars":-

http://countryviewchallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/november-2016-stars.html

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne xx

"Art Sisters"

Good morning!

Well, following the Try it on Tuesday challenge "sun, moon, stars" - I achieved a top 5 place and Avril kindly asked if I would do a guest designer spot for them for their new challenge "Layer it up" which goes live today - so here is my inspiration with lots of layers!!!!

Please go over to the Try it on Tuesday challenge blog and have a go and show them what you can do  - it's so great to see your wonderful efforts and how each and every one of us comes up with something so completely different!

I have done a full step by step so lets take our journey shall we?

I started with my usual piece of sheena stamping card and sponged on some distress inks (shabby shutters, crushed olive and peeled paint).

I stamped my central image and using a Sue Wilson pierced square die, cut that out and worked out the largest die from this set that I would need and just put a pencil line around the outside so that I knew the space that I had got to play with!.

Ok, then I had some fun using the same distress inks and some lovely stencils, from Stencilgirl, Clarity Stamp and Imagination crafts.

So here I have laid down my Sue Wilson pierced square dies and taped them in to position.  To have your dies so close to each other like this isn't always advised as they can jump in your die cutting machine and damage each other but I find that if you are careful it's usually ok and if it's not, then you've only got yourself to blame!!

So you can see what is happening now (from the other side).

Here we are, the right side facing us and all the layers perfectly cut.

OK, I've worked through the "art sisters" sentiment on to the actual card blank so that when it is all placed and assembled on my card, it all looks right! I have also at this stage backed each layer on to sturdy craft card as it would have been tricky to get those layers together. Some highlighting has been done around the images too.

Waahaaay!!!! That's what I call layering it up!!!!

Foam tape has been applied behind each layer.

There, the end of todays journey, bus stops here!

Well, art sisters is what we are isn't it?

Hope you enjoyed the journey, don't forget to go over to the Try it on Tuesday challenge blog and show us what you can do with our new challenge of "layer it up" we all look forward to seeing your creativity and good luck!!!!

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne xx

Those Who Don't Believe In Magic................

Good morning!

Well, I'm getting in to that Christmas spirit early!!!!

This is a card that I have prepared for the current Lavinia Stamp challenge of "Let it snow".

Now, I have to admit, I got so engrossed when I was making this that I actually forgot to take photo's along the way!! - I did remember but when I did, it was a bit too late!!!! So, although we can't take our usual journey, I can talk you through how I got there.

I started with my usual piece of Sheena stamping card and gave it a coat of gesso.

I then die cut the snowflakes and different flourishes (these are all Sue Wilson and Courture Creations  dies).  They were then stuck on to the gesso'd card and another coat of gesso was applied over the top.

A small moon mask was stuck down.

Out came my aquatints and I have used a shade of light pink and light blue on this one and when dry I've applied a light covering of silver gilding wax to bring those images right out. The moon mask was then removed.

All the stamps (trees and stag) are Lavinia Stamps.  I stamped the stag in black versa fine ink and clear embossed him to set.  I then stamped all the other trees.  The sentiment was stamped on (also Lavinia Stamps) and I applied Cosmic Shimmer glacier ice and diamond sprinkles on the trees and around the ground and some for falling snow too.

How pretty is that?!!! Rather mixed media this one - quite different with Lavinia stamps I thought with quite a lot of depth to it -

I would like to enter this card in to the current Lavinia Stamps challenge "Let it snow":-

http://laviniastamps.com/lavinia-stamps-monthly-creative-challenge/

Fussy and Fancy challenge "Ice/Snow"

http://fussyandfancychallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/fussy-and-fancy-challenge-176-icesnow.html

Hope you like it!

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne xx

Wicked......

Good morning!

Well, we are on the "dark side" again! Well, it is October after all - we're allowed to be!!!!

There are lots of creepy challenges out there this month and I personally love something a little "different" and having a choice to get away from cute and cuddly for a while!

I took photo's along the way so lets take a journey this morning shall we?

This card started with a piece of good quality watercolour card stock.

Now, one of my favourite mediums at the moment is drawing ink, I know lots of people shy away from it as with watercolour painting but believe me, it's really quite forgiving, just have the confidence to give it a go and the next time and the next will be better and better!  I soaked my watercolour card and dripped some yellow drawing ink on to it to make it bleed and followed that with some black india drawing ink.  When I was happy that it had spread enough I dabbed with a paper towel and lifted off the excess which lightened it to where I wanted it to be - nice and dirty looking.

Next came my stencil, this one is from Stencilgirl - isn't it fabulous! I thought she looked rather mean and ideal for a bit of a creepy card.  I went through it with black soot distress ink and then diluted some of the distress ink and painted in the right hand side of her face to give it shadow. I then stamped the drips (Designs by Ryn) on her face, neck and from the top of the image and coloured in with distress markers and topped with Glossy Accents (you can just see the tinge of blue at the top here as it wasn't dry when I took the photo).  I then stamped around the edge with some funky foam that had been embossed from a folder (another technique I've mastered recently) and stamped in spiderweb designs around her.

Here is the Sheena Douglass embossing folder that I turned in to a stamp!

I stamped the suitable sentiment "Wicked" - Chocolate Baroque.

To finish I mounted on to black card stock, framed with a gold die cut frame (Sue Wilson Pierced Squares) and mounted that on to a white 8 x 8 card which I blended the black soot distress ink all around.

I didn't want to add anything more as I felt it was complete just the way that it was.

Happy with that and if my 16 year old daughter says it's cool - then I'm happy!!

I would like to enter this in to the following creepy challenges running this month:-

Dream in Darkness - 31 days of Halloween:-

http://dreamindarkness.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/october-1-challenge-post-31-days-of.html

Country View Challenges - All Things Spooky:-

http://countryviewchallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/october-challenge-all-things-spooky.html

Dark 'n' Daring Challenges - Anything goes :-

http://darkndaring.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/challenge-6-anything-goes.html

Cards in Envy - Frame it:-

http://cardsinenvy.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/frame-it-card-challenge.html

Once again, I hope I haven't frightened you off! We have to get in to the spirit don't we!!!!

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne x

Happy Anniversary Husband......

Good morning!

Todays blog is a card made for my husband James for tomorrow 10th September (no, he's not allowed to look at this blog until tomorrow!!!!) - our 22nd Wedding Anniversary.

James loves his cars so I thought this design was rather sweet, so, started with my usual white piece of card stock.   I've stamped the lovely little old car first (Joy Crafts) then I masked it with masking fluid.

The next stage was to use a heart inkable stencil (Inkylicious) and drag in some distress ink around the edges so that I could see the heart and knew where I was going.  

I filled in the top section of the heart with some blue distress ink to sort of give me a sky and then I stamped some trees and grounded those with the same colour distress ink as I had inked the heart with.

Went straight over the top of my masked off car with the lovely green bushy trees (so that they appeared behind the car when I rubbed off the masking fluid.

Added a couple more trees coming up from behind the green trees.

Painted Glossy Accents on the windows of the car for shiny glass, framed the whole design with a lovely brown leather effect card stock frame cut from Sue Wilsons dies and I was done!

Very happy with this one and I hope that James will be too tomorrow!

"Happy Anniversary James" xxx

I would like to enter this card in to:-

Sweet Stampin Challenge - Weddings/Anniversary/Love.

http://sweetstampinchallengeblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/weddingsanniversarylove.html

Country View Challenges - September challenge - Travel.

http://countryviewchallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/september-challenge-travel.html

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne xx

We Don't Stop Playing Because We Grow Old..........

Morning!

This card was made for my Father In Law.  I have used distress inks on the background and a slight sprinkling of brusho powders.  Then I have moistened a round sponge applicator and stamped in plain water the circles and lifted off with kitchen towel to give a faux bleached effect to the circles.

A Creative Expressions stamp of the Jive and some musical notes from Visible Image stamped in black with the sentiment of "We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing".  Some final work on the edges with some silver embossing powder and top and bottom die cuts by Sue Wilson.  Matted on white card then a black mat.  Underneath that, an  embossed white mat again on a black mat.  Some black Creative Expressions glue dots and I was done.  It was well received and I was pleased with that! Not a small card measuring 8 x 8 inches.

Thanks for stopping by,

Leanne x