INKY FINGERS

Wow! It's such a long time since I blogged, but I haven't stopped creating - not completely.

Sadly, my eldest son was found dead last year and, as you can imagine, I was devastated. It's amazing how grief dries up all your creativity. A lot of my creative friends have also passed away this last few months - some very, very close to me. I've missed them and I'm sure I will do in future. 

But the biggest tribute is to continue creating, don't you think?

I'm just going to post one or two of my bits and see if anyone looks these days - I've so lost touch with all the blogs, the challenges, etc. Emotions don't ask permission to mess with your life.

I really liked the larger flowers in Lou Withers' Studio Light Just Lou range, so I played with watercolouring them in different colourways. I did have a plan to use them as book covers - they're a lovely size for a nice big journal. (Yes, I'm still making lots of books, mainly with Studio Light dies!)

That was originally Happy Sunday! Oops! I hope you're all well and enjoying the last little bits of Summer. It's been a lovely week here and I hope it has where you are.

I have a couple of cards for you to see. I actually added the Happy Birthday to this so I could enter it into the Birthday challenge, then didn't manage it, and that's probably over 2 weeks ago! It will come in handy. As you can see, the little masked minx on the left has been dying her bunny to match today's outfit - poor little bunny. I quite like this stencil. I think it's a Uniko stencil and I like it because it's irregular. I used Oxides for the ink sponging.

Challenge Up Your Life, Circles

Creatalicious, Anything Goes

Try it on Tuesday, Summer Blooms

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge, Anything Goes

Thank you for calling in today

Back soon

Cath

xxx

I used it on this one, too. Just a play with some Paperartsy stamps.

And another over a stencilled background..

Then, some simple ink blending for a change...scan on the left, photo on the right. I really like the way this one turned out.

  

And for a bit of fun. Another stencilled and stamped background and one of those images that always makes me smile. 

Linking to 

Watercooler Wednesday Challenge, Occasions

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, Heat Embossing

We Love Chocolate Baroque, Favourite Stamps

Retro Rubber, Anything Goes (Lady with broom stamp)

Challenge Up Your Life, Circles

Stamping Sensations, Any Celebration

Thank you for calling in today

Back soon

Cath

xxx

 Hello friends. Almost back to normal now - whatever normality may mean to you 😊

I'm trying to reclaim some time for crafting, so this is what came out of my daily (well, almost) playtimes.

First of all, I'll show you Bees and Blooms, because the theme over on Make My Monday is Anything Airborne. Yes, it's another Janet Klein image - but I do love them. This is a photo, and it looks very washed out, so I'll also show you a scan, which is VERY different - and, as usual, it's half way between the two. It is very bright, but that's because I used Ripe Persimmon and Abandoned Coral, with a bit of Squeezed Lemonade, using one of my favourite all time stencils to add some interest This little one doesn't require much colouring but is fun to play with. The words are from a whole plate of Bee words which have come in handy since bee mania began. The white lines are added with a stencil (Uniko).

This was in my 'half done' basket, so I decided to finish it off because I do actually like it and I love tall cards. I was trying to use up my old Ecoline watercolour inks with a new (at the time) leafy stamp and an old leafy stencil. I have a real weakness for leaves and always have had. It was really tough to find a background colour to match, so I ended up going with white and the nearest shade I could find to the leaves - everything else changed the appearance way too much.

A gift from a friend, I stamped these flowers (Studio Light) onto a tag I'd used some of my favourite colours on. I'm really not happy with these flowers. I think I'll have to restamp on white and layer over the top. One of my favourite types of background on this tall (22cm) tag. I used the Uniko stencil on it, again - with Moonlight White Brilliance ink.

Linking to the following challenges

Make My Monday - Anything Airborne

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, Fun and Quirky

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday, Anything Goes

Country View Crafts Challenge, Use a Stencil or Two

Everybody Art Challenge, Anything Goes

It's good to be stamping again 😉 

I''ll be back to share more in a day or so - too many to share at one time. I'll also do my best to visit some blogs this week, tennis allowing 😎 I love watching Wimbledon! 

Thank you for calling in today

See you soon!

Cath

xxx

Hello! Happy June!

I'm here to share the last book I stamped. I've made so little since then but I'm so yearning to get back in the creative space and play again, weather and 'sorting out' allowing 😊 Some of my shelves are looking quite bare, but that's deliberate and it makes me happy. I'll be starting to put some online this weekend, all being well.

This one is a bit of a strange shape - again - because I kept adding to it, as I so often do and got in a bit of a pickle with the closure, etc - but what's new?  It's Janet Klein themed again - these images are so much fun to play with and to colour, plus the pages are small enough to be relatively quick to decorate.

So here it is...

  

Oops! I had a blip - and lost a week 😉 But I'm still determined to clean out my last year's folder, so here are some cards I made towards the end of last year. I've had this post waiting to upload for a week - so sorry. In between, it was my birthday and lots of other things have happened. I'm also working on a special project for a friend's 80th birthday, so it's been a little busy.

This was a Christmas card for someone special. I love Wonky Tonk images, but they're a little limiting. I was practising watercolour with these - lots of room for improvement, but I really enjoyed it and spent a while on them. I used irridescent inks on part of her hair and gel pen for her earrings. It's never easy to stamp words on watercolour paper, especially without a stamping platform. The stars are Jane Davenport and I used a deckle edged die. I cut off her hair... gosh, it's a long time since my own hair was that long! Long hair always looks so good on other people.

 I set a tag challenge for my FB group yesterday, so in order to open the album, I made a couple of quick tags, using what was on my (very, VERY messy) desk and in my stash 😊

I'd already die cut this one and used it to mop up some colour, so I smooshed a little more, stamped the Paperartsy text, added some filler stamps and doodling, then the stamped and die cut flowers from my stash - which is where the Janet Klein words came from. Edged in Delicata Gold Shimmer.  

I stamped, coloured and cut out this lovely lady yesterday, so I found another tall piece of card I'd stamped her on, smooshed some colour, added some stamping, some Inktense pencil shading and some doodling, then stuck my image over the top, colouring the stars with Oxides. I then went a bit mad with    

 This was the first book I made this year, in my quest to explore different ways of adding pages or bindings. I've made 4 since then...😊 but this is my favourite so far. I played with gluing pages back to back, using my favourite mixed media cardstock, which is quite thick. It worked beautifully, until I decided to add a little 'spine' to the cover, so that they'd fit better... it was very slightly too wide, so the back page and the cover split the pages a little on the fold. I still love the book, so I haven't attempted to fix it, although I did cover the spine with washi tape, inked to blend with the background.  It's a slimline format, which I love, and a nice change from the square/rectangular ones I've been making. Can you see the cracks? Such a shame because the thicker card works so much better.

 Hello bloggers! Happy Sunday! and wow! We have more sunshine 😁It may still be cold, especially if not in the sun, but it feels so bright and spring like - it's so uplifting. There are flowers everywhere - what a joy! I finished off a couple of things I was doing this week and decided to make two into journal pages for my 'planner journal'. I love these dies because I can die cut the binding side but make the page any size I like - plus I already had some great planner page dies and they all work really well together.

Aren't these stamps (Art by Marlene) fun? Everything Marlene does is BRIGHT, so I had to follow suit. Her t-shirt is actually lime green and white but it scanned as aqua for some reason...??? It's an A5 page.

This is another one I began last year and finished off this week... I've used it before, but this time I'd cut around the top edge so that I could add it to any b/g - don't know why I ended up putting it back on white!

And a very simple one...The image is stamped and clear embossed, then I added colour in the darker parts of the flower and drew them out with water, hoping to create paler colour, but there's so little card remaining after embossing that it doesn't really show up. Nice, bold image, though. This is a 6" x 6" card.

I've just finished and photographed another book, so I thought I'd better post the first one I made after Christmas, when I hadn't been able to stamp for a month or so... but I'll put it in a separate post. 

Hello!

I finished another little minibook yesterday, with a different way of adding pages. I noticed this method when watching a video of Marlene's new products, which included a little book die. It's very nice and makes it easy to make a book, but it's also very simple, so I thought I'd try it on standard pages. This way you can make it any size, too 😁 so it's more versatile doing your own.

Here's the book cover, with the closure in place, and without it. The one on the left is a scan, the other a photo to show that the inks are lighter than they appear in the scans. I just stencilled the backgrounds with Brilliance White inks, for speed.