A Year In Bloom

Over at CRAFT ROOM the current challenge is 'In the Garden - Anything but a card'.  

A couple of years ago I bought a cheap set of 12 floral stamps, one for each month of the year and whilst I've used them individually, I've never used the whole set together.  This seemed the ideal opportunity and I decided to make a little floral album showing A Year In Bloom

I started with two strips of Bazzill Basics black card 10cm wide x 30cm long.  I then scored and folded this so I had two 12cm wide sections and one 6cm wide section.  I joined the two strips together at the 6cm wide section so this was in the middle of the album for added interest.

The front cover is an Indigoblu stamp I was lucky enough to win last year when I joined a blog hop. The floral stamps are from the (very) cheap set bought on ebay and the garden equipment, butterfly and sentiment stamps are part of a small job lot of about 15 stamps, also bought on ebay.

Now I don't possess any Pro Markers or the like as colouring-in stamped images does not appeal to me.  However, as I paint watercolours I don't need them anyway.  I used my small, pocket Winsor & Newton paint set, which has solid half pans of paint, to paint the images and then inked the edges with Distress Ink in Shabby Shutters as green is the only uniform colour on each page.  A little ribbon tie and an album title completed the project.

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I'm in the Spotlight

How lovely to discover that I have been chosen for the Spotlight over at Fashionable Stamping Challenges, for my tag card entered into the red,black and brown colour challenge.

My thanks to Shirley for picking me and congratulations to my co-spotlightees (I know it's not a real word but it sounds good), Margie and Dani.

My Girl

I recently found this picture of Louise, aged about 15, in my laptop's picture archive whilst searching for another photo.  I had intended to make a scrapbook layout with this image a long time ago but didn't get around to it.

As the current theme over at FASHIONABLE STAMPING CHALLENGES is 'Swirls' I decided to use this on the layout and instead of using lots of embellishments and die cuts, I stamped all the images on the background.

Starting with white card which has an embossed swirl design, I used Distress Ink in Broken China and StazOn Blue for all the stamping, to reflect the colours of the bed quilt (which I made many years ago in the Log Cabin pattern).  The swirls are from an American stamp set, the heart is from the February 2012 issue of Craft Stamper Magazine and the button flower is from the March 2011 issue, with blue embroidery floss stitched through the middle.

The photo mat has been dry embossed using a Cuttlebug and a swirl embossing folder to give texture and tie-in with the challenge theme.

The chipboard 'My' is from a K&Co. alphabet set but was the wrong colour so I heat embossed the letters with Blonde Moments, Savoury Sky Iridescent blue.   

Don't You Love Playing With New Products

It's always fun trying a new product out to see how it performs.  We visited the Hobbycrafts Show in Glasgow at the weekend and I bought some wonderful Fran-tage embossing enamel.  I've seen it used on different projects but never tried it myself and I love it. I also bought a couple of embossing folders and so made this quick little card using both my new purchases.

The embossing folder is not a well-known brand but it worked beautifully with my Cuttlebug, embossing a lovely grungy aperture with butterflies, flowers and spots.  The embossing was really deep so I swiped a VersaMark ink pad (instead of the dabber) across the embossed design and sprinkled it with Aged Teal embossing enamel.  After tipping off the excess powder, I brushed more off with my fingers to leave a light dusting of powder to add to the overall grungy feel of the card.

The butterfly was cut using the Cricut Indie Art cartridge from thick card, then covered with the same embossing enamel to give a mock verdigris finish.

I'm a Winner

A great surprise and something that really cheered me up.  I'm one of the lucky 5 winners over at 

CRAFTY INDIVIDUALS  for my altered bottle.

A huge THANK YOU to Jean and Malcolm and congratulations to the other 4 winners.

I'm sorry I've been rather quiet lately and not posting regularly but I just don't seem to get the time to do anything at the moment.  It's probably more down to me not being as organised as usual and I hope to rectify that soon.

Thank you to everyone who still takes the trouble to pop over, have a look and leave a comment.  I really do appreciate it and I try to pop to your blogs as often as I can.

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