Rose Cottage.

This is a little painting I did for a post card swap back  in January.   

The stamps are from Art Impressions Water colour range and I have been watching their videos  on how to use them. I have coloured in using my Marvey Le Plume II water colour pens by scribbling the colours out onto a palette and then picking the colour up with a paint brush. You have to send the postcard as it is so after painting it I left for several days and then sprayed it with Spray and Shine varnish to protect it from  the elements whilst in the post. Happy to say it arrived safely and unscathed.

Has anyone else noticed how hard it is to now to follow back people who become your follower.

You no longer get a direct link back to their blog when you click on the little icon so unless they leave a comment on your blog at the same time as linking  or you do recognise who they are then your, to put it mildly 'Up a creek without a paddle'! Conversely I have now noticed that I no longer have an image of me when I follow a new blog and the name is showing as my full name and bears no resemble to my blog or blog address and I can't find out how to fix it back to how it was. I am so annoyed. Can you see the steam!!!!!

Thankyou to all my new followers and please leave comments so I can find you back.

Hugs 

Spring Pansies

I'm just about to send off my card for the March Chain Card Swap that I am participating in and realise Iv'e not shown the card I sent out in January yet. My partner for that month was my lovely blogging friend Greta. The  colours to use on your card were Royal Purple, Crocus and Buttercup which just screamed out pansies to me. I chose the theme of Friendship and to incorporate the products  Buttons and Twine if you wanted to.

I used a scalloped blank card base and then yellow cardstock to die cut the Spellbinders Nestabilities 'Marvelous Squares'. From the insert I then further die cut 'Pansy CR1305 ' by Marianne Design. I relaid the insert back into the piece of yellow card that I had cut it from and adhered to the card blank front. This left me with the pansy recess So I recut the pansy die from snippets of green, purple and mauve card and carefully glued the little pieces back into the recessed area to recreate the pansy. I then used a really tiny hole punch to make a yellow centre for the flower. The buttons are Joy Crafts 'Button die 6002/0057'  which I threaded with a scrap of mauve/white bakers twine from my stash.  The sentiment is from a combined stamp/dies 'Notelets set 'by Sizzix which I stamped onto a snippet of white card and die cut using SU's 'Word window' and 'Modern label'.

For the inside of the card I die cut a purple Marvellous Squares and popped the left over yellow insert from the yellow card on top. Sentiment is from the same Sizzix combined set and Su's 'Decorative label' die from an offcut of white card.

I have used lots and lots of snippets up so I'm off to join the rest of the gang in the playground
Pixies Crafty Workshop #271/272 Use up your snippets.

P.S. Please check out the recent winners of my 7yr Itch blog candy as not everyone has claimed their prize yet. You have until 15th March. After that if you haven't  come forward I will do a redraw. 

Mint Edges.

A new challenge has started over on the Butterfly Challenge.
#74 Butterflies + E is of Edges and/or the colour Mint green.
 Here are my inspiration cards for you.

The first card is a bit special as I have used a Tattered Lace die set that I have recently won which was part of the Candy on Sue's Crafty Corner Blog. Thankyou Sue. This set is going to fast become one of my favourites to use.  I cut the the front of the card shape (from an existing card blank) using the largest of the label dies and only putting my cutting plates on half of the die as I wanted the back of the card to remain square.  Then I used the next lable size down and cut from half  a sheet of  mint  green card. The remaining piece was used to matt inside the card. I then chose the Edge 3 mat to cut the pattern on the green card. My Big Shot is getting a bit old and worn now so I found I needed to run it through on several passes and move the die round to a different  position on the plates but it came out fine and the little pieces all fell out cleanly.  Looking through my digi papers I found this one from Funky Hand's 'Minty Madness Collection' paper No5 and it had a very similar daisy pattern on it which looked good with the die edge. The butterfly was  a freebie from Making Cards and was on a sheet called Florals and Flutters. I trimmed a wide edge round the butterfly first and glued onto a scrap of white card stock to strengthen  and then fussy cut more closely. Sentiment is a ready made one from a  Hunkydory Set in my stash. 

Entering this card into the following challenges:

Artitstic Inspirations #174 Anything goes.

Creative Knockouts #183 Die/Punch frenzy

Brown Sugar #240 Anything goes.

Fussy and Fancy #182 Anything goes.

International Art and Soul #3 Fancy borders.

Lil Patch Of Crafty Friends #53 Anything goes.

Crafting By Designs #Anything goes.

Creative Ladybirds Creations #24 Anything goes.

My second inspiration card for you uses another paper from the same Minty Madness set by Funky Hand  No 19. I used cream card stock to make the base card  and adhered the paper to the front. The embellishments are from a ready made decoupage set by Hunkydory. I cut the butterflies from a left over piece of the edging strip and placed around the top of the circle (thus making another edge for the theme). The pearls were from my stash. 

Entering this card into the following challenges:
Dream Valley #151 Lots of layers.
Deep Ocean Challenges #150 Dots and or stripes.
A Bit More Time To Craft #39 Anything goes.
Crafting With Friends #38 Anything goes.
Jo's Scrap Shack #178 Anything goes.
Card Mania #90 Pastel colours.
Crafts and Me # Springtime.
Crafty Hazelnuts Patterned Paper # Anything goes.

Hugs

Something To Tell You.

I have something to tell you.

Mother hen here is fluffing her feathers out and strutting about  proud as proud can be.

Faye (Stampin FlufnStuff)  our daughter  is going to be on 

 HOCHANDA

tomorrow 8th March  showing off her skills with 

COPIC MARKERS!

Her time slots are 10am and again at 5pm.

Probably not many of you are aware that Faye is a

European Copic Colouring Master.

(There are not many of them I can tell you and she is the only one in UK.)

So if you are  interested in seeing the real mccoy at work you can catch her on

SKY 663

FREEVIEW 85

FREESAT 817

 I'll be watching. 

Bird of Paradise

I've tried my hand at another flower from the  Chinese Brush Painted Flowers book by Joan Lok.
A Bird of paradise.
(This style is usually created without a sketch and the composition is adjusted as the paintings proceed.) Not too keen on this as your applying the colour straight to the page from the brush and shaping the petals and leaves as you go. I don't have any of the correct paints or brushes and used my Marvy Le Plume II water colour pens scribbled onto  a palette and then picked up with a wet brush.

I'm pleased with the colours of the actual flower head and when I had mounted it onto two shades of orange card and then a green frame it looked a lot better. Will probably just add the sentiment to the inside as I think it would be too much on the front of the card .

Off The Wall

Time once more  for the girls in the Christmas Card Club to show our  next cards. Zoe has set the theme this time and it was quite a brief.  Zoe wanted  to see Off The Wall. i.e. non traditional, a little whacky, unusual colours. OK then. A quick rootle through my used christmas card stash turned up a couple that I thought would work well.
Here is the first one. I have had this in my stash for years and years. Not because I thought I would ever actually use it but the colours and design were so bold I rather liked it in a odd kind of way.

I trimmed the front down very slightly to fit within the die cut frame which  I cut from white 300gsm watercolour card. Base card is from purple cardstock which matched the birds plumage perfectly. There is a sheet of acetate between the frame and the image but I have managed to take the photo without any reflection showing. Don't ask me how as I had bright spotlights beaming down from the ceiling right above at the time! The frame is a die cut by Crafts -Too  'Rectangle Stitch Hole  ' my favourite go to at the moment. The sentiment is  a die cut by Creative Expressions.  I had it just  in white to start with but it looked lost against the white frame work so I cut another in the purple card  and attached it slightly to the side to create a shadow effect and suddenly the card all came together.

My second card uses  another card front that I have simply trimmed down and attached to purple card stock. 

 I attached acetate that has a pattern of stars on it over the top and held it on with matching purple brads in each corner. The whole image was then adhered with sticky 3d pads (to add dimension) to a card base made from  cream leather effect card stock.

Hope these are both unusual enough for you Zoe.

Hydrangea with Contour Lines

I purchased a floral  painting book  last weekend  firstly because the title caught my attention 'Chinese Brush  Painted  Flowers' and secondly (being one of the last big spenders) it was reduced from £15 down to £3 so it really would have been so rude of me not to have done so. We were away from home at the time but a quick look through the book and I was itching to have a go at one of the flowers. There are 36  in total illustrated and how to paint them for all levels of artist from beginner up (a third reason for buying) and the artist is Joan Lok. There are 5 distinct styles in Chinese brush painting and Contour is one of them.
I had a little play Mon/Tue and this is the result which I have made up into a card as more inspiration for  #73 Butterflies +G is for Glossy Accents and/or the colour Slate Blue.  which still has 1 week left to run.

I don't have any chinese paints or the correct brushes so I used my Marvy Le Plume  water based pens instead and was pleased that my painting sort of resembled the picture in the book. I used a butterfly dimensions sticker by Anita's (a) because I needed a butterfly on the card and  (b) its hiding the awful mess I made underneath it! (Having spent 2 days painting it there was no way it was going in the bin.)

 The glossy accents element is the pink spotty candi that I gave a liberal coating to before adding to the card and which I managed to catch on camera. the inside of the card was finished with light and dark slate blue card stock and another Dimensions butterfly sticker.

Entering into the following challenges:

Through The Craft Room Door # Anything goes.

Crafting By Designs # Anything goes.

Crafty Creations #336 Anything goes.

Penny's Paper Crafty #318 Anything goes.

Brown Sugar #239 Anything goes.

Crafting With Friends #37 Anything goes.

Crafty Catz #359 Anything goes/thoughts of Spring.

Jo's Scrap Shack #177 Anything goes.

The winners of my 7yr Itch blog Candy are in the post below. Be sure to check it out.