'What you do speaks so loudly, I can't hear what you say.'
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wednesday 29 April 2020

Hi there. It's AGES since I blogged...sorry... 
I have things to show you soon...😊 but I thought I'd share yesterday's playtime and a couple of older projects.
A little while ago I bought some thick (400gsm) card because I needed something sturdier for die cutting. When playing with an offcut one day, I noticed that the inks moved beautifully on it, especially when spritzing, so I used a piece for this Oxide background. I loved it. So yesterday I stamped it and coloured with Prisma pencils. The centre flower started as a paler lilac colour, but it was almost absorbed by the background, so I decided to change its colour to paler yellows. Because I'd coloured over the inks with Prismas, it was hard to cover the original colours, so I tried acrylic paints, then added some Prisma shading. I love these flowers and they are huge, so I'm planning something bigger with them in the next few days. 
The words stamp (Stampinback, I think) is one of my all time favourites.
You can see how beautifully the water splatters show up on this card.
I used Poscas for the little touches of colour. You can also see the darker shading beneath the flowers.

This one was a 'kickback' after working on something specific. I picked up an old background for it and added a little stencilling before stamping the flower and colouring. It's richer than it looks because I used gold spray on the background and some chestnut shades, too. Maybe I'll take a photo...

I made this one a while ago but didn't blog it for some reason. I stamped a lovely friend's (Stampotique) image a while ago and just added colour and the little bird which was the remainder of something else I'd been playing with, and just happened to be on my desk...this image always brings to mind Le Petit Prince, a lovely old allegorical French book, which is a favourite of my very special friend's. There are now 'Petit Prince' stamps, which I'm very tempted to splurge on at some point. 
The colours in the background create an ethereal look, though it's not so easy to see it in the scan - the words are embossed in silver, so show up better in real life..  the stars are stencilled, with a few tiny punchies thrown in. I just love the way inks mingle to create gorgeous colours like this. I'm so often surprised by the results of just throwing colour at a piece of card 😉 and seeing how they turn out.
I painted the moon with some glitter medium I bought about 20 years ago! I always love the effect it gives. The doodled borders were made with a silver Pilot rollerball pen.
I went for a walk around my yard earlier and was in awe of these gorgeous azaleas, so I thought I'd share a photo with you. It had just been raining, so you'll probably see water droplets, too. What a shame they'll soon disappear!

I'm linking to the following challenges:-
Tuesday Throwdown, Add a Doodle
Artistic Stampers, In the garden
Penny Black & More, Anything Goes
Watercooler Wednesday, Anything Goes
Addicted to Stamps & More, Make Your Mark

Well done if you made it so far...sorry it's a bit of a photo heavy post 😉

Stay safe everyone!
Thank you for calling in today
Back soon
Cath
xxx

Friday 10 April 2020

Happy Good Friday! 
Today is the day we celebrate God's amazing love - and this year, today is also my very special friend's birthday! So now that she has her card, I can share it with you.

The background is sponged, smooshed and sprtized and dribbled and splattered, using Iced Spruce, Twisted Citron and Hickory Smoke Distress Oxides. The images are a roughly stamped and clear embossed Studio Light stamp, which I also stamped onto white card, coloured, fussy cut and glued over the stamped images. Splatters - which are hard to see - are Delicata Gold and Gold UTEE, sprinkled and embossed. Circles are jar lids, used as stamps. I really enjoyed making this one.


I made this Easter card yesterday, just to wish you all a Happy Easter. 
Spring is here, new life and growth are all around us. 
Celebrate the hope of Easter!
The flowers are stamped with spritzed markers, then defined a little with Prisma pencils.

Linking to 
Ellibelle's Crafty Wednesday, Bugs, Blossoms and/or Butterflies
Penny Black and More, Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp Mondays, Add Texture (UTEE)
Watercooler Wednesday, All About Occasions
Artsy Stamper Challenge, Things with Wings
Make My Monday, Make Your Own Background Paper
Alphabet Challenge, Anything Goes

Thank you for calling in today
God bless you and keep you safe
Happy Easter!
Cath
xxx

Tuesday 7 April 2020

...is the theme of this month's challenge on the Stamping Sensations blog. I'd just told someone I'd taken out my splatter stamp background, made last year with this gorgeous Inkylicious stamp, and it just happens to be a rainbow. So I just needed to find a suitable image and some words...these Lavinia geese seemed to work really well. They look to me as if they're searching for the rainbow and are now looking to see what the 'pot of gold' is! I love this image. I love rainbow backgrounds but it's always difficult to choose a suitable coloured card for them. This one worked well today.
The challenge over at My Inkie Fingers is Make it Pop. 
I made this card yesterday, using the newish Pink Ink flying pig stamp - it comes with dies, too, but I think they're pretty simple images to fussy cut. I stamped a couple of times and added foam tape to make the top ear and wing stand out - that seems to qualify for 'Make it Pop'!
I may just have to cut that border off because it's very limiting...I'm not a fan of square or rectangle borders on stamps. I did use the die cut for the words on this card, but won't in future. I don't really like  'cut around' words. It was fun to colour this, but until I cut off that border, I think I'll be using Miss Piggy on her own.
I'd also like to link to the Penny Black & More Anything Goes challenge.


I set a challenge for my FB group, last month - Flowers, to make it simple and here's one of the cads I made for it. I'm enjoying making backgrounds with the AAll and Create dotty stamp and stencil but I'm probably using them too much 😉

I love this flower and just ordered the larger ones, so I'll be journalling those in a day or two. It's really good not to feel bad about spending too much time stamping 😊😁
Also linking to
Make My Monday, Make your own background paper
Dragonfly Dreams, Add a flower/s
Sweet Stampin, Things with Wings
Paper Minutes, Make Someone Happy

Thank you for calling in today...
I'll be back soon
God bless you and keep you safe!
Cath
xxx

Saturday 4 April 2020

That's the theme of our April Challenge at KCUK. We usually do monthly 'mingles' where we each send something we've made to one allotted person. This time we're going digital because mail is suspended to some countries.
This little Katzelcraft birdie was already coloured and sitting on my desk, waiting to be used. I found my bee stamps and when I saw the beehive, I suddenly thought he'd look good if he was looking up from his perch, seeing bees all around... the beehive looks as if it's floating 😉... I will use a wall or fence stamp next time, I think, but for now, I'll claim artistic licence. They must be bumble bees, looking at the size of them and the flutterbies are obviously babies, a last minute addition to include all three Bs. The branch is a die cut.

Another blossom card , too. I love this image but I seem to hit problems with the words every time I use it, lol. This time I decided to emboss in white EP, but it didn't emboss well, so I had to go over the words with a white gel pen... The words say, 'My soul sings as I stand in awe of the complete and utter beauty of nature.' I think it's an old Stampinback stamp and one of my favourites. I smooshed over the stamped flowers, then bleached out the colour, adding Prisma colour afterwards.
Linking to
Ellibelle's Crafty Wednesday Challenge, Bugs, Blooms and/or Butterflies

Thanks for calling in today
God bless you and keep you safe!
Cath
xxx