Thanks to ShazinOz for this:

I was given this a couple of weeks ago, by the amazingly talented ShazinOz.  As well as making the most gorgeous cards, she does awesome calligraphy, as her blog title, Cards Calligraphy-Shaz in Oz, suggests. We 'met' via WOYWW, and as well as being a very talented person, she is a lovely lady, who lives by some stunning beachside scenery. So, Thank You, Shaz not only for the award, but for all your lovely comments to me, and the inspiration you provide all your visitors with. Now the rules to this are:
Link back to the person giving it to you,
Share it with 7 recently discovered blogs and
Tell 7 random things about yourself.
 So, I have linked back to Shaz, and now for 7 blogs, blimey, this would be hard if it was 70, or 700. I love every blog I find, lol.

So, in no particular order:
Lavinia's Paper Emporium- so many stunning cards on Lavinias blog, and lots of cool pics of her workspace.


Little scrapz of Life -Kazza has so many things to see on her blog- cards, cakes, fabric art- very inspiring

Creating Cards with Andrea. Lots of ideas & Inspiration.

Dotty A Cards & things Love to browse here at all the cards she does

Lucky Stamper - Love all her stuff too!

The Crafty Elf - always has cool/amusing/interesting posts, and makes GORGEOUS cards, especially with House Mouse!

Altered book lover -so much to see on Elizabeths blog, and she has a truly Beautiful puss called Bleubeard-and I have spelt that correctly, lol.

 Thank you to all of these crafters for there inspiration, and for all the info they share.

Now to the 7 random things:


My Beloved Husband & I share the same Birthday- 14th August- just 18 years apart!
I am passionately against animal cruelty & bloodsports.
I am a Heavy Metal fan- my favourites being Iron Maiden, Rammstein,Marilyn Manson,Disturbed and of course Metallica. What you may find odd about this is that I am 56!
My favourite colour is Black- what else?
I am a Pagan.
This is my second marriage,and I am blissfully happy! We will have been married for two years this year, although we have been together for 18.
I loathe: Bad manners,hypocrites,selfish people, raw carrots,fruit,chewing gum & the colour pink,:)

Bill on canvas

Bill makes a new friend!

    Not a card for a change, this is for my eldest sons birthday. The picture was printed onto a sheet of canvas, then attached over a 7x5 canvas bought from The Works. The green dinosaurs name is Bill, and has been Ants companion since he was in his mid-teens( he's now37!). Bill goes absolutely everywhere with him- he even has a special pocket in Ants motorcycle leathers. He has his own Facebook page, and amongst his human pals, he also has Philip & Remy the dinosaurs, Bertie the Peacock and Terry the Dalek.
 As you can guess, Ant is very, very fond of Bill- so I thought this canvas print would be a great Birthday present for him.This picture was taken in Canada earlier this year when my son & his family went on holiday, and clearly Bill really enjoyed all the snow!
    Oh and yes, there IS a (slight) strain of eccentricity in my side of the genetic pool, lol.

WOYWW #111

A few bits & pieces on my desk today, firstly a card,
using CI 185, from Crafty Individuals. The two images are all one stamp, I just split it into two images. The background was chalked with blues & greens, then overstamped using Versafine Black. They were stuck onto thick card, then triple embossed. You need to have a heavy weight cardstock for your card base for this, as the images are quite heavy when finished, I also thought after that they would make good fridge magnets, fixed to the card with re-positionable glue dots. I punched the border strips from blue paper for the wide one, and green for the narrow one. The butterflies were punched from some paper I had used to roll my brayer off onto! I overstamped it with a swirl stamp, and added a sparkle embossing powder, then punched out 9 butterflies. Each butterfly is 3 joined at the wings to get a 3-D effect. I have no idea where the message stamp came from, sorry.

Here is the same image, this time in its original form. I stamped onto an alcohol ink background, matted & layered onto black, then another alcohol ink sheet, then black again.

Next up is a purchase this week from Joanna Sheen, in her monthly e-mail was this item:on special offer at £1.49, instead of £1.99, for a pack of three, ultra-fine nib attachments for Promarkers.

I have tried for a close up here, so you can see the nib size, if you haven't seen them yet. You just clip them onto the existing nib, and you get an ultra fine line. Apparently it is best to buy 1 for each colour group, so you don't get ink crossover, and the recommendation seems to be to fit them to the widest nib. You can just unclip them anytime you want to use the wide end.





Finally, some more wicked bargains from The Works. I just LOVE this place, I really do. Packs of 20 luggage tags,and packs of  30 miniature mirrors, all 99p each.

Ambrose is much better now, his 'eyebrow' has regrown, I shall post a picture later. Thanks to everyone for their good wishes to him :).



Now I am off to post this, and start my way around everyones desk. Happy Wednesday everyone, I shall get round everyone over the next few days.

WOYWW #109

Bit of a mess on my desk this week- leftovers from yesterdays project for Hels Sheridans Sunday Stampers challenge I decided to have a go at- see post below this one.The old hair dye bottle contains watered down PVA, by the way. This particular brand has a screw-on top to the nozzle, which made it very re-usable!


A couple of pics of things that didn't make it into the project:

Some little tags, that were slightly too large in the end, for the scale of the project, so they are waiting now for the right one to come along. Here I have strung them onto pearl string.

The only other thing I have for you this week, is some rolls of gold ribbon, from E-bay, so now I can start making some wedding samples for a friend. She wants Gold & white, and while white would be easy to buy & match up, gold was probably going to be harder, so I wanted to get as much as I would need before I even started. It would have been awful if she liked a particular ribbon I had used from my stash, then I couldn't get any more.6 x 25yd rolls, £7.90, plus £1.05 p&p! Bargain!


Huge thank you to everyone who wished Ambrose well, he is looking much better this week. The swelling over his eye has gone down, he just has a bald 'eyebrow' now, where he'd scratched the fur off, lol. He isn't complaining about his diet either, which has REALLY surprised me, eats his dried food just fine- picky creature. He gets lots of fresh water put down, however, he still prefers to go & drink out of the pond, or the birdbath! Makes you wonder about whats in tap water, when your cat prefers rainwater, lol.Oh, and I'm glad my sudden wake up when I fell out of bed amused a few of you- its the sort of thing that you even laugh at yourself afterwards.Well, I am off to visit the good folk of Lady Julias estate, have a fab WOYWW everyone.

The Writings on the Wall

I decided I would finally get around to joining in with a challenge,and that I would do something that wasn't a card for the first time, so I went over to Hels Sheridans blog, Ink on my Fingers, to see what her Sunday Stampers challenge was for this week. The theme is 'Writing', and to be honest I didn't have any idea what I was going to do, at first. Hels mentioned that her project started life as a wooden Ikea frame, and I liked that idea, but don't have any of those! However, I do have piles of Clip-Frames of all sorts of sizes, so I dismantled one of those, and used the back to cut out two more rectangles from mountboard, then cut out the centres to give me a frame. I used two because one didn't seem thick enough.

                                       I stacked these all up, and stuck them together with DST.
 I quite like the artworks you can buy where the picture spills over onto the frame, if you know what I mean, so that was where my mind was taking me with this. I cut some cream tissue paper down, and overstamped it with a script stamp, using Versafine Sepia.This was stuck down over the whole frame, very carefully(!),not worrying about damaged bits, as it all smooths out in the end.Some more bits of script were stamped onto spare tissue, and I created some mini envelopes then used some excess stamped tissue to make some mini letters. All tied up with some burgundy ribbon. Some lace was aged with Distress Ink, Antique Linen, then added to the inside of the frame, along with some pearl string, the bundle of love letters, an old ear-ring and a cameo made from a Quickutz die. I finished it off with a few stick on pearls, a triple embossed heart and a group of flowers . When the tissue had dried completely I added a little Antique linen distress ink to the edges.

Work in progress

           The main image (Illuminata, Inkadinkado) was stamped in Black Stazon on an alcohol ink background, using Blues & Purples from the Earthtones palette , with Copper Mixative. I also stamped it onto a pastel background, also in blues & purples from the Lights palette.
The background panel is a Magenta stamp, 26019-R, stamped and heat embossed in gold on black paper. The  darker Illuminata image was matted onto black card, then mounted on top of the Ornate panel. Then I cut and punched some random sections of the pastel print, coated these in Glossy accents and sprinkled with a few seed beads.These were then stuck over the corresponding parts of the original image, some with glossy accents, so they sit flat on the surface, and some with a little silicone glue to add dimension.

 Some blue eyelash wool was wrapped around the front of the card, and the phrase' Unique Art', Paperartsy, was stamped onto some offcuts of the Alcohol inked image.  I stamped the two words separately, by covering one with lowtack tape while I inked the other word, then peeling the tape off before stamping.They were then heat embossed using Black detail powder. This allowed me to cut both words into a tag, which had a copper eyelet added before being threaded onto the eyelash wool & knotted in place. This is being entered into The Stampman Challenge, #26, Alcohol Inks and optional sketch.