A warm welcome to all my visitors,

Thank you for taking the time to come and look at my blog, I really do appreciate it. I would love you to leave me a comment, even if it’s just to say Hi. It means I can come visit you!

All my designs are original, so copyrighted to me. If I have been inspired by someone elses work, I have named them in the post, and where able, I have provided a link.

Please feel free to use my designs for inspiration, I just ask you to credit me, and provide a link back to my blog.

Thanks, Shaz XX

Sunday 22 April 2012

A Perfect Day Silhouette

This is a really simple little card, the background is brayered using Latte Adirondack at the bottom, and Sandal at the top. All the images are stamped using Archival Jet Black. The Oak Branch at the top is Stampscapes, from Nature Sheet No 8, u/m. Along the bottom, from the left, are Willow, assorted grasses, Black cat and  Butterfly, all from Inkylicious.  The grasses came from' Create a Collage'-Meadow set & Essential Grasses.  Willow Twigs & Playful Cats  ( also includes the butterfly, two other butterflies and a sitting cat).  After trimming to size, I matted it onto black, then a similar coloured brayered sheet and mounted to the front of a square black base card. The sentiment is a clear stamp from a Penny Black set.

Craft a Scene Silhouettes

The challenge at Craft A Scene this month was Silhouettes, with the images provided by Carolines,who designs her own range of  Rubber Stamps, as well as the digital images she kindly gave us to work with. She has some beautiful images and backgrounds, and speaking as someone who has not worked with digi stamps before, they are really easy to manipulate and combine in whatever Photo/Image editing software you use. I chose to use them to make coasters- after combining backgrounds, frames and images, I printed them out, then simply laminated them to make them a little more durable. You could  cover them in adhesive film if you do not have a laminator, or Xyron do a laminating cartridge if you have a Xyron machine.
 Each coaster is made by choosing a background, then a frame, then I picked an inner background, finally adding various elemnts to create the picture. All the component parts are fully adjustable for size and scale- the only limit is your imagination!

 These are the type of images I worked with, you can see how you can combine them to create whatever scene you like.

Winter Moon Post-it note Holder

 This months challenge was all about Silhouettes, and for my second piece, I used a stamp from Non Sequiteur, from the plate 71c, Winter Solstice.









First I stamped  in Distress Black Soot onto a piece of White Pearlescent card. I then stamped the image onto  a couple of joined together post-it notes, and cut out the moon to use as a mask while I sponged on the colour.I used Sailboat Blue, Stream & Denim, then added some Eggplant round the edges. I also masked off the lower half of the image while I did this, again using post-its.
Now I switched over the post-its, and sponged the bottom of the image with Sunshine Yellow, Sunset Orange, Butterscotch and Rust.
This is the finished image with all the post-its removed. Using a white pearl card as a base gives the Moon a nice sheen.
Trimmed down to size, and ready for mounting,which I did onto dark blue card.I cut a base card to the same size as the mounted image, and folded it Easel style.On the bottom I added a strip of the dark blue card that I ran through my 'bug in a Lattice folder, then mounted a pad of Post-it notes with DST.
A really useful and quick to make pressie for someones desk, and you could swap the stamped image for a photo- or a little frame so the photo could be changed.

Wednesday 11 April 2012

WOYWW # 149, Paper Flowers

Back at the Weekly Workdesk Wander, courtesy of our most excellent hostess, Julia Dunnit at The Stamping Ground. 
   These were the Tim Dies I bought recently, having admired what people were doing with them. So I've spent a few days cutting out loads of flowers in different papers.
I've have been putting some together for a couple of Wedding cards in Black and White that I have to make.I used black and white pearlescent paper, along with some glittered vellum for a bit of sparkle.


Here I've layered them all up, and also added some seed beads in Black or White to the centres. So that's my desk this week.

                   Roof Update:
 We now have a roof over our bedroom, lol, just in time for the glorious (!) Bank Holiday weather we had,and we have someone coming into plaster the room next weekend. The kitchen roof is coming off now, as well as taking down the chimney stack at the end of the kitchen. We have an old Victorian house with the galley- style kitchen:

According to the guy you can see taking it down, the only thing keeping it there was gravity!!!
 Hope you all had a lovely Easter, and have a great Wednesday.

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Playing with Punches

As I have been having fun with the Tim dies for the Tattered Florals, it reminded me that I used to use my punches to do similar things.




 As you can see, I punched loads of different flower shapes out of various papers, even mulberry paper.
  This works best if you 'sandwich' the mulberry paper between ordinary copier paper, the mulberry is too flimsy on its own and just tears rather than punches.

I'm using a large ball embossing tool and an old mouse mat to give the flowers a little shape.

 
 


 Then its just a matter of layering them up together
 in various combinations. I use a little Glossy
 Accents, or silicone glue for this bit.






 Final touch is the centres, I use either Glitter Glue, Stickles or Glossy Accents with either seed beads or loose glitter.



Last but not least are the leaves- again these are mainly punched from mulberry and handmade paper for effect. This fern leaf punch is by Woodware.
 Here's a card I used a small selection on- a better size for this project than the Tattered Florals.



Wednesday 4 April 2012

WOYWW #148


Not so much Whats on my Workdesk, as the view from my Workdesk today.
 
 Scaffolding.
We are having a new roof, and this has also shown up some cracked brickwork between two floors.
So at some point soon, all the brickwork above my window has to come out, have a steel lintel put in, then re-bricked. Great. How much mess is that going to make?

 On the up side, we have also had the dormer window in our bedroom widened, and raised to a peaked roof, instead of a flat one.
This is a 'before' pic of our bedroom, which is on the attic level,and you can see the slope of the eaves either side, and the height of the ceiling over the widow. Beloved Husband has hit his head more times than I could count on that slope! He is also going to redo the built-in cupboards that were to the right of the window, and we have used the need to shift everything out to have a damned good clearout.

Having the dormer widened, and the ceiling raised was Hubbys idea, and I have to admit that its made a HUGE difference to the room.It looks, and feels, twice the size now.
This is what it has looked like.
 Work is still ongoing on the roof, but at least now we have some solid-ish covering. For three or four days, it was tarpaulin between us & the sky. I feel like I've spent the last week in a tent.

So not a lot happening desk-wise,(but you can see some new Tim dies I bought recently in the previous post) so its time for everyone to visit our Mistress of Ceremony's,
Julia Dunnit over at The Stamping Ground. Oh, and a big Thank You to Julia for my WOYWW badge I received last week. Its fabulous, and pinned to my handbag in the hope that one day it will be spotted by a co- WOYWWer.
Have a great Wednesday, this post took forever as Blogger didn't seem to want to post pictures today, so I had to try to upload them from my pc, wait for them to 'vanish' then upload them again from Picasa! Duh!!
 Have a great Wednesday everyone.



An End of an era

An end of an era

I write this with a broken heart, that only time can heal My beautiful, wonderful wifelet Shaz (Silverwolf) passed away peacefully in the ea...