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

 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...

  

 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!

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.

 

 

 Once upon a time, coffee time where I am would have been any time, and even in the middle of the night! But things change and now I allow myself 3 cups of caffeine each morning, followed by decaff for the rest of the day...it used to be decaff ALL the time, until I had to get up just after 5am to get to where I was working, and desperately needed that caffeine kick. Thinking about it now, I'm sure going to bed a little earlier would've been more effective, but I was often working until midnight (the joys of teaching in Adult Ed and having to provide all your own resources) so it didn't even occur to me 😁

Last night I went into my craft room to look for some images and when I realised just how many I had ready to use, I was really annoyed with myself...enough is enough! AND there are others besides...

  

 

And this is the finished card. I used a stencil from Visible Image, with Crackling Campfire, Aged Mahogany, Rusty Hinge, Walnut Ink and Fossilised Amber Distress Oxides, Delicata gold and Versafine Onyx Black inks. The washi tape is from my stash.

As usual on an Autumn day, it's difficult to get a good image, so I'll show you a scan and a photo 😊

Scan - accurate figure colours

Photo - more accurate background colours

I have a ridiculous number of both images and backgrounds (in various stages) to go at and still have a minibook to share, but I'll try to get more done this week, or my image stash may just keep on growing...

Linking to

 Hello again 😊

Just catching up with more stuff, so I thought I'd post some smiles today. Sadly, I forgot to photograph my brother's birthday card before I sent it, because it was lots of fun, but I have a couple more to share.

This feels very much out of season now, though it wasn't when I made it... I really need to get my act together again re blogging - and stamping, for that matter, at the moment. I really love Janet Klein's little peeps and things, and this is just another set I was playing with. The background is Oxides and Aall & Create, plus some stencilling. This was my first playtime with Crackling Campfire. The wings are glittery - Wink of Stella.