INKY FINGERS

I’m catching up again…life has a habit of getting in the way of daily blogging. Or maybe I’m just not very good at blogging every single day. Only five days left and I’ll be back to my intermittent, spasmodic posts

I journalled my thankfulness for yesterday this evening – after making my day 25! Yesterday, I didn’t go into my craft room once – now that really IS a record these days, lol. BUT I did spend a number of hours colouring and cutting out images I’d stamped previously. I had a huge pile of them waiting, so thought I’d clear them all – and I actually managed it! But when I did venture into my favourite room, I found some more in there, so I have yet another pile of images here, waiting – albeit a much smaller pile – and my box of Promarkers is still here!  Unfortunately, I have a busier week coming up, so they may take me longer to clear.

This was what I did yesterday, for AEDM…a very colourful and productive day!

I’m looking forward to just being able to glue them on!

Thankfulness Day 24 was for a new day…

I don’t know about you, but there are days I’m glad come to an end, for one reason or another. Someone once said God was very kind to give us night time, because it’s as if he pulls the curtains on the day and when we wake up, it’s a brand new day and a chance to start again. I like that thought     

It’s a very simple page – a Kraft page, painted with white acrylic, stamped, embossed, stencilled around the edges with Espresso Oxide, then a little bit of journalling around the edges.Every day is a new day!

I’d also like to enter Art Journalling Journey’s Old and New Challenge.

Today, day 25, I’m thankful for music. I love music of many genres and am usually singing around the house, even when it’s very quiet. Mum played piano and although I only learned to play the recorder at school, that meant I learned to read music, which helped a lot in later years. My two brothers and I all played guitar and I spent many an evening with one of them, playing and singing – as I often did with my oldest friend, who I’ve known since I was sixteen and am very close to. She also joined my brother and me many a time.

My church doesn’t have a choir, but at Christmas, we do have a small one for Carols by Candlelight, and practices begin this week. I’m so looking forward to that – we laugh as much as we sing, and have so much fun.

This week’s challenge at Allsorts is Inspired by a Song, so I used some of my newly (wildly) coloured birdies to make this card.

I’ll link this to Colour Crazy Challenge – Anything Goes

This one started out as a CAS card but ended up being not so CAS because I cut it down… It’s a while since I’ve used these Paperartsy Christmas stamps.

I may not make tomorrow – but I’ll try to do something quick and if not, catch up on Tuesday.

Thanks so much for calling in…

Back soon

Cath

xxx

Catching up with my Month of Thankfulness.

So yesterday, I was thankful for Fun and Laughter… this page started life as a card, but I soon realised it wouldn’t be appropriate as a card, so I pulled out my 6x6 Kraft paper journal (reminded by Yvonne!) and attached it to a page, after stamping the words and drawing the speech bubble … then added Les Rats des Villes (Katzelcraft) as my imagination ran riot. I love the one slinking away on his belly…

I gessoed another page, then added Oxides through a stencil, using bright colours as a contrast to Weathered Wood, stamping the large Laughter (Hero Arts) a few times off the page. There were some larger die cut letters in my little box, and because I’d been colouring and cutting out les rats, I decided to stand them on the letters, with the top one running away from the girl with the shotgun...  It’s a bit busy, so the rats are almost lost, but  I just played around a bit until I realised I’d better stop before I made it any worse! Theoretically, it’s a continuation of the first page, but is actually on the page before… duh! It just happened!

I wanted to make another ‘Resist’ card for Fashionable Stamping Challenge, so I stamped an old word stamp on glossy card in Versamark, heat setting, then sponging Adirondack inks over the top, stamping the word background in the same colours as the background.

I was imagining butterflies on this, but took the easy way  cos I’ve cut out too many images and looked through my cut out basket. Ihis TH image worked well with the background words and I liked the fact that I wouldn’t have chosen pink for him… Hunting for some suitable words in my word box, I found these…

So today, I’m thankful for !IMAGINATION!

Allsorts’ challenge is CAS Christmas…I don’t make many Christmas cards, but I wanted to try out this die.

The black lettering is a little harsh, but I tried blue first and it was a little lost… if I do this again, I’ll stamp some watermark snowflakes in the background.

Finally, another Die cut… smooshed with Oxide inks, stencilled, the happy duck added,then the die cut Birthday.

I’ve never used as many die cuts in my life, lol. I love some of the latest designs but seem to acquire them just to look at - not to use… I especially like word dies.

I’m linking this to AEDM, Art Every Day Month

Watercooler Wednesday Challenges – Occasions

Penny Black and More – Make Someone Smile

Addicted to Stamps and More – Holiday

Thanks for visiting

See you soon

Cath

xxx

Today is a good crafting day

I live on the main road, not too far from a large Tesco, Aldi and Iceland, not to mention pretty close to an M6 junction and to the A580, so the roads are always MAD busy here. Not to mention that there’s a primary school behind my house and another one across the road, plu a busy Nursery directly across from me. My craft room is at the front of the house, so I have learned virtually to tell the time by the sound of traffic. I love being in there on Sundays and Bank Holidays because the roads go really quiet when the supermarkets close… it’s great! 

Today, it suddenly went quiet just after 2pm. I wondered what was happening and suddenly remembered the football. Sure enough, the football was live at that moment. The roads are almost empty! If I hadn’t already been shopping, it would’ve been a great time to nip over the road for some

The challenge for this week at Allsorts is Sweet Treats. My first reaction was ‘eek!’ – I don’t have any ‘sweet’ stamps… so I hunted around and surprise, surprise – I actually DO have some ‘sweet’ stamps! I just don’t use them very often – or in some cases have never used them, shame on me

So I thought I’d have a change and go seriously cute and sweet… even using a deckle card, which is rare these days.

…just realised I forgot to add the glitter to the butter cream!  I’ll so that later.  I coloured these very sweet House Mice with Prisma Pencils. Although they look very sweet here, I wouldn’t be very happy if I found them lurking in my kitchen!

Sweet Stampers have an ‘Animals’ challenge, so I’d like to link that, and Sweet Stamping have a ‘Food and Drink’ challenge, so I’ll link to that, too.

I was playing around with some new stamps and trying to do a CAS design, but I wasn’t over happy with my results…

Then I really messed up on one by adding a few bits of painted Distress Oxide – it just didn’t work. SO, with nothing to lose, I started dipping into Oxides smooshed onto my craft mat and spritzed with water. Then I added a little stencilling with Moonlight White and finally, a few spatters with white paint.  I have to admit, I really like the end result.

I’d like to enter this into the Word Art Wednesday Challenge.

I liked the inks over the white embossing, so I did a little resist with them, stencilling over the Oxides with Moonlight White. I was also challenging myself to use more die cuts; I used five on this

This is for the Make My Monday Resist embossing Challenge.

The previous day I found one of my old ‘Faux Batik’ backgrounds, with a stamp I used to use a lot, so – knowing there was a Faux Batik Challenge at Art Cards Challenge,  I started playing with it, adding inks and experimenting to see if the Oxides would cover the FB image or not. They did, but I used a baby wipe to wipe them off, so you can just about see the (reverse) image in the background on the right hand side. I discovered that if you use another piece of card instead of (or as well as) newsprint or Kitchen roll when you iron off the EP, you get a lovely reverse Faux Batik effect.  You can, of course, take this a little further and create another resisting image, but I hadn’t done this on the piece I found, so I just overstamped it.

With the SSS Wednesday challenge of ‘Bright and Cheerful’ in mind, I made this next card, which was so much fun to make… the astute among you will notice that the words and stamps do NOT belong to the same plate…oops! I may just have ordered two sets…

I’d like to enter this into

Simply Papercraft Anything Goes challenge

A Perfect Time to Craft – Anything Goes

Back to Basics – Heat Embossing

and

Daring Cardmakers – What a Wonderful World

I’d also like to thank Brenda for sharing the ‘fix’ for receiving Blogger comments again!  Yay Brenda! Many thanks – I really missed being able to reply to the lovely comments people make.

That’s it for now.

Back soon

Thanks for looking

Cath

xxx

I’m still creating, though I’ve been a bit stuck on something for a few weeks… but I also went to the show at Port Sunny (Port Sunlight) on the Wirral, which was LOADS of fun and way too expensive… I spent a few lovely hours with my friend Neet (Hickydorums) and met up with lots of old friends (you know who you are…)not that they’re old, just that I’ve known some of them a LONG time, which always makes the show sweeter. I also got to chat to Sarah and Chris and KCUK Chris – so lovely to catch up and to share what we’d bought.  Sarah was doing another of her wonderful demos, but (un) fortunately, I’d already spent too much by the time I got to her, so I didn’t spend TOO much at her stall. I was hunting for something specific, which I didn’t – sadly – find, but I made up for that

I’ve been playing with a variety of things lately, so I’ll share a few now.

Here’s another card made with my favourite PB stamp – this time a very quick and easy, using felt tip pens. It’s way too much effort to use a stamp positioner to restamp, so it’s more of an impression than a proper image. I made the mistake of letting Izzi (Granddaughter) play with my Tombows, resulting in some dry ones, so I may have to get an alternative soon.

I have a couple more stamped, so will make something with them soon and show you.

I’ll link it to

Penny Black Saturday Challenge – Favourite PB stamp

This one was made for fun, because I love this new stencil and the stamp in the background.

This is a playtime gone wrong, but I’ll show it anyway… I love the background but I messed up on the tree stamping and the words just don’t show clearly enough.. I included it in a parcel I sent out, explaining it was a reject, lol.

This lovely new PB stamp arrived yesterday – a preorder. I coloured the flowers with Gel pens, which was fun – something I haven’t done much of for a long time. one of the pens I picked up just happened to be a Soufflé pen - I loved the result. The words are from the stash I ordered when I won the Simon Says Stamp Voucher and are from Impression Obsession. I used an old ISA stamp in the background, along with a stencil won in an Allsorts Challenge.

I’ll link this to the

Addicted to Stamps and More Make Your Mark Challenge

These I made a while ago – I really, really wanted these Kay Carley stamps but have found them difficult to use, if I’m honest. Must work on that! The larger stamps are a little TOO large for me  – really must try again.

This one is specifically for

TIOT Challenge – Destinations

I realise it’s a little oblique, but that’s cos I was planning to use a stamp that says ‘The journey is more important than the destination.’ I didn’t, so it may not make sense, lol.

Last but not least,

Close to Nature is the challenge at Stamping Sensations

I stamped the bamboo on the Oxide background and thought the birds would give the illusion of Japanese brush art, so I hunted out the text and voilà! I quite like the look.

I’ll link that to the

Penny Black and More Anything Goes challenge..

Enough for now.

Thanks for looking

See you soon

Cath

xxx

The challenge at Penny Black Saturday Challenge is Anything Goes, with optional ‘Use your Favourite Penny Black stamp’.

This one is easy for me…absolutely no hesitation!  This fuchsia stamp is my most loved and most used stamp and definitely my favourite Penny Black stamp, although I usually stamp it with markers for a great watercolour effect, especially on glossy card. It makes a very quick and easy card in CAS fashion or with inky backgrounds.

Here I’ve stencilled the Distress Oxide background with white acrylic paint and used another of my all time favourite stamps, a PSX word stamp, stamped over the background in toning inks..

On this one I’ve taken some colour off, using another word stamp with Versamark ink, misting with water before stamping. You can’t see it very clearly in the photo, but you can see it on the card.

This one was created just for fun and fits the current Country View Challenge of ‘Use Humour’.

It’s one of the old Designs Ink’d Humorous Seniors stamps – possibly the Red Hatters plate – they’re made with blue rubber, which always amused me.  The words were a gift  (a LONG time ago!) from a very precious friend in the US, who’s having a hard time at the moment.

I’d used a new roses stencil in the background, with the paler Distress Oxides (Squeezed Lemonade and Spun Sugar)  but because it looked empty, I added the thin cuts of black card and the brads, just to break it up and add some contrast.

This fits the challenge at 4 Crafty Chicks – Women Celebration and

Inspiration Destination’s Anything Goes challenge

and

Sweet Stamping’s Flowers Challenge

That’s all for now… I’m repotting tomatoes and sorting out my pots outside while the weather is good… happy days!

Have a great Bank Holiday weekend if you’re in the UK.

Thanks for looking

See you soon

Cath

xxx

‘One for the Girls’ is the them at Stamping Sensations, so I was playing around with some of my sillier images…

I went a little overboard (for me…) with gems on her shoes, glasses and ring, plus an odd bit of Stickles on the earrings, cigarette holder and hair ornament, but it’s just a bit of fun!  It’s amazing how feeling old creeps up on you… I gave her a blue/purple hair rinse, too

I’ve been using up more scraps and using some images I don’t use as much these days, so these are the results.

This one is made with new stamps and uses an old background, stencilled over with White Brilliance ink.

I’d like to link to the  ‘Anything Goes’ challenges at

Mix it up Challenges

Word Art Wednesday

and

A Bit More Time to Craft.

Thanks for looking

See you soon

Cath

xxx