INKY FINGERS

Aha!  I bet you didn’t expect me to post again so soon… I saw the TIOT Challenge this morning – Dies and Stencils – and when I wandered into my Craft Room to put something away, I started messing tidying and playing with my dies… for someone who uses very few dies, I have a ridiculous number in my stash!

I’ll begin by saying this is a HUGE challenge for me because I don’t really do dies, even though I am an occasional collector. BUT you know you’ve had fun in your Craft room when you suddenly realise you’ve been in there for over 4 hours and haven’t even had a drink or a loo break !!!

So the first one didn’t work out very well, but I’ll show it to you anyway… I used the Tim Holtz flowers and dies, die cutting one of my hoarded Glimmer Mist backgrounds from aeons ago. I did add some shading with Prismacolour pencils and I stamped the stems, but the whole thing just didn’t come together well. Too much grass, not enough depth… I’m just not keen, but here it is. Maybe it would have been better on a smaller card base, I don’t know… I’ve also die cut the layers …I actually think these flowers may look better without the stems. I may try that later.

My second card was a play with texture paste (home made) and was far from perfect, so I found a word in my stamped words box and wrote another to go with it. I thought it was terrible but I have to admit that it’s growing on me, partly because I actually LIKE the imperfections. I think the choice of a creamy pearlescent card helped because it goes so well with the paste, which picked up a little of the inks behind – though drying with a heat tool may also have caused that... I love the smell of the baby talcum powder.

Some of the imperfections…

My third card was shamelessly cased from one I received from a lovely KCUK friend, Linda (whose cards I absolutely love!) when my Dad died recently.  I really fell in love with it, and especially with its simplicity, although I didn’t spatter ink on it, as she did. I used different butterfly dies and words and also added a touch of glitter…

Last but not least, with Brenda’s Pets Challenge over at Allsorts in mind, I played with the lovely TH dog dies and stamps. I had already cut up this stamp (Penny Black) as I so often do, but decided I didn’t want the ‘is like finding a four leaf clover’ bit at all, so cut that off and may well discard it. I always remove the dots and bits in between the words because they just don’t always fit what I’m doing with them, so cutting them off makes them far more versatile. I know – I’m weird – but words are important to me and this works for me.

I have a box of precoloured (while watching TV) doggies and crazy birds, so I like to pull them out now and again. Again, the card layers are die cut with double stitched dies. I really like the stitched ones and these are nice and big. I stamped the ‘Hard to find’ bit before I decided to cut the last bit off, so I decided to play with my Hero Arts circle stamps again to cover up the word behind the doggy’s ear and just carried on playing with them. I love the random effect.

Dogs are dear to my heart. I had an amazing best friend dog for 14 years and haven’t been able to replace him because he was like another child to me. Recently, however, I’ve decided I may well try to find a new friend, now that I’m in a house again and not the flat I lived in for four years. I prefer to rescue a dog that may not otherwise find a loving owner, so I’ve applied to a few places, one of which is just up the road, but they didn’t get back to me as they said they would, then didn’t turn up for the ‘house approval’ visit, so I gave up on them. I realise they’re all volunteers, but it’s such a shame when dogs are desperate for new homes. So I thought long and hard about what kind of dog I’d have if I was buying a pedigree and decided I’d prefer a lab…my last dog was half lab and was such a gentle, loving dog. So I applied to a couple of lab rescue places… I’m still waiting for the house visit, but I’m really hoping they show up soon. They’re a distance away from me, so I know they need to find someone closer to me but it’s been 3 or 4 weeks now and I’m excited about having another dog! My little granddaughter (aged 5) is also desperate for me to get one

Anyway, enough of that…

Thanks for the challenge, TIOT! It was fun.

Unfortunately, there’s no Linky on the Challenge blog – it’s saying ‘closed’ but I’m sure they’ll sort that out quickly…

I’m also linking to

A Bit More Time to Craft – Anything Goes

Thanks for looking

Cath

xxx