WOYWW #567- The Colouring Edition.

Well, as if the lockdown causing us to lose track of the days wasn't enough, now we have bank holidays sticking their nose in. Almost totally missed Wednesday this week, and that would be a Bad Thing, as this is the day we post desk pictures and share them with crafters worldwide, just as we've been doing for almost 11 years.What an achievement that is. I wasn't here right from the start, looking back I seem to have come on board around week 83. So, pop your link over at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, and join in, please. We'd love to meet you.

Desk shot taken from the side, and yes, it's an unholy mess. Cards being stacked towards the front are some of the UFO's that got finished. Well, almost finished. Need inserts and envelopes, but closer to usable than they were a few days ago. And I have tidied a lot away now, as I wanted to stamp some more images to colour.

 
 These are some coloured images, from the post below, I finished over the last week.

One thing I did learn, to colour with pencils, you need a really super smooth  cardstock. Which these weren't.  It was Smooth Stamping card, which is fine for stamping and blending ink on, or for using with markers, but not smooth enough to get a great finish with pencils.

Any surface texture does make it difficult to get a good smooth finish and blend.  So I wanted to stamp some more and I've tried the Super Smooth Lavinia stamps Multifarious card. I'll report back on the success level.

 
I've used some more of my Gorjuss stamps, to try this out, but it feels like it will work well.  I know the Gorjuss girls aren't everyone's taste, but I like the weirdness, lol. Stamped with Archival Black Soot.

I also came across this sheet of butterflies, a Visible Image stamp, and they're done on Letraset paper, which is meant for use with Promarkers. Also a sheet of Bauble images, that's an old stamp, no idea of the maker. The goth girl is also a Visible Image stamp, and she was done with Promarkers. Just needs finishing off, when I manage to do some skin colouring that looks semi realistic, at least!

 And you have an enable free week again, as I haven't bought anything, so there's that.😁
 But thats me done, just leaves.....And Finally........( And it's another twofer)



I've never said I was responsible.......

And this is surely true.😀

Christmas Card Club 2020- #2 Holly and/or Ivy

This fortnights challenge has been chosen by Elizabeth, and she'd like to see Holly and/or Ivy on our cards. We also are welcoming a new member to the group, Linda, so we are all looking forward to seeing what she creates.
I've made 4 cards for this challenge, all pretty much identical.
I've taken Holly as my theme. The holly background in 3 of them is a Sweet Poppy Large background stencil, and I covered the paste in glitter while it was wet. The two on the left are two-tone, top one a mix of green & silver, the bottom one copper and green.  On the right, the top one is green glitter, and the bottom one is stamped with a 'cover a card' stamp from Impression Obsession.

 Here you can see the details of them a little better.


I matted them onto dark green card, then mounted them onto my card base, which are just under 6" square.

Next I stamped an old Chocolate Baroque stamp, Holly Script, in gold and heat embossed with Gold detail powder, then cut them down to a tag shape. I cut the same size tags in dark red, and ran through an Embossing Folder from Creative Expressions, called Festive Greetings. I layered them together, slightly offset, and added a small ribbon detail.
 I mounted them to the card front with some foam tape, for a little dimension.

The final addition was a glittered holly bough, taken from the CB stamp. I'd stamped onto acetate, then glittered and finally cut out. A few small spots of silicone glue adhered them over the holly image on the tags.

A peel off sentiment finished them off. I only wanted a small sentiment, and this helps use up some of my peel off mountain! I stuck the peel off onto scraps of the green card, then matted onto scraps of the red.

WOYWW #542- The Fighting Back Edition.

Yep, because I am. Slowly. The last chemo totally wiped me out, and I'm definitely still not even close to ok again, but for the first time in over a week I'm back in my craft room, and linking up at Julias Place, The Stamping Ground.
 No crafting done, apart from some colouring I've sat doing, but there has been some internet shopping done, so normal Enabling Service is resumed.😇
 I mentioned new Lavinia stamps a couple of weeks ago, and here they are.
Pegasus- or is it Pegasi?-  and mushrooms.


I also paid a visit to Country View Crafts, and as well as a TH Christmas cardstock pack, which I don't actually NEED, but they were too gorgeous to resist, I also got a couple of bargains in her end of summer sale, so worth a look.

Some TH Tissue papers, and a fab waves stamp.

This older Chocolate Baroque set, because the words were used on ATC's from a Halloween swap I was in, and loved them. Is it wrong that I read them in the voice of the great Vincent Price, lol?

A Pegasus stencil from Sweet Poppy, many of their stencils have been designed by Tracey from Lavinia Stamps, and match up with stamps.

The Embossing Powders are by Lindys Stamp Gang, part of the range of Two Toned Embossing Powders they make. They used to be called MoonGlow Two toned when I first bought them many years ago,  the Lindys brand seems to make them now, but they are not very widely available in the UK, so these on E-Bay were a lucky find.

I don't have this one yet, they are pre-order for 31st October, but you all know we lost a lovely friend in Erika earlier this year. Erika was a huge Visible Image supporter, and Mark & Helen were at her funeral. Mark has designed this stamp set in her memory, and Helen has added words that reflect Erika.






This was the anniversary card I actually managed to get done in time a couple of weeks ago. I'll try and find the energy to blog it later in the week, with the products used.

This weeks chemo is put off, I'm needing another 3 or 4 weeks recovery time. This one really flattened me, I spent 18 hours or more asleep last Wednesday & Thursday! Still not even close to having any strength, but at least the worst of the brain fog has gone, and best of all the neuropathy in my mouth has gone so I can have cold drinks. Nothing worse than desperately wanting a cold drink but not being able to have one for at least a week.



Which just leaves..........And Finally........

WOYWW #537- The Still Sparkly Edition!

Mainly because, despite the whole house being vacuumed, I seem to have shed a light coating of glitter- or Fairy Dust as I'm now referring to it-everywhere.
This is the result so far though- a whole stack of glittered images. I'll show you some in close up in a bit. They're now all dry, and trimmed down. In most cases, what I'll be doing is stamping the image again onto cardstock, and heat embossing in Gold or Silver, before adding the glittered piece with silicone glue.

Some images, like this assortment of Poinsettias,Christmas Roses, Holly & Mistletoe, have a script background to them, which has been cut away. All these stamps are from Chocolate Baroque, and are quite a few years old now, but are still available.







You can buy them singly, or as a set of four. The sets are DL size.

These are some other really old stamps, I bought them dunno how many years ago now, from The Stamp Man, they were part of their own range, Aspects of Design, and were discontinued after one Christmas. I think one size of this is available as a Woodware Clear stamp, from back last year.

I trimmed away the words from the glittered ones, and again I'll stamp & heat emboss.

This 3 Wise men stamp is another oldie, so old it's discontinued. It was from Elusive Images, which eventually became Chocolate Baroque.


The one thing I may do is stamp some more snowmen, I only have a few, and they are so sweet.

And that brings this weeks desk to a close, except for linking up at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, and popping round to visit everyone.
 So far, so good on the chemo. Definitely more tired, but not breathless like before, so it's looking like this might be ok.
 Which just brings us round to .........And Finally........
This really made me laugh when someone posted it to FB yesterday!

New Home cards with Chocolate Baroque stamps

Been a while since I did a blog post with makes, and these have finally been finished. I picked cardstock to matt them with that matched the colours used in the houses.It's from a Papermania cardstock pack called Assorted Colossal Colours, Textured Cardstock, comes in A5, A4 and 12x12" packs.
 
All the colour to the houses was done with the pencil set I bought recently from Amazon,  a set by Zenacolor, 160 pencils for £27.97. I found they blended fine, and produced good colour.
 






 The stamps I used are from two different Chocolate Baroque sets, Townhouses, and  English Cottages.


  I used some masking to allow me to stamp trees and bushes, either behind or in front of the houses.













For this I used Eclipse masking paper roll, again from Amazon. It's a great product, the whole of the sheet has a tacky glue like Post its on the back, and you can reuse each mask many times. It.s also 10 metres long, so will last for ages. I've stuck the masks onto some plastic from packaging, and dropped that into a page protector and stored with the stamps.

Once I'd finished colouring the houses, I wanted to just lightly add some grass & sky to them.

  For this I used two shades of green and blue Distress ink, and the Professional Make Up brushes. They are great for a very light application of colour, although you can easily deepen it by adding more ink if that's the look you want.

Again, I replaced the masks so I kept the colour around the images. I also added some paths to the door on some them, one or two with a Cobblestone path by Lavinia stamps, others just with a black fineliner. The Lavinia stamp is available in two sizes, large & small,I have the large, but I think the small would work better for this.

The sentiment was also cut from a shade of the matting layer.
 The right hand sentiment was bought from The Range,in  their £1 boxes, and the one on the left comes from a Phill Martin set of dies, called Scribbled Collection, that includes this one, plus the words Job,Baby Boy & Baby Girl.

 A really useful die set, the 'A New' part is a separate die, so can be combined with any of the other words. I particularly liked the inclusion of Job, as it's rare to see a die with that.

WOYWW #535- The Got Distracted Edition.

I did, I was tidying the desk behind the desk, putting stuff away, and came across a folder with Embossing Folder samples in it. I recall now I thought if I could flick through samples, I'd make more use of them. Shows how well it worked, not only have I failed to keep it up to date, I actually forgot it was even there.
 So, I'd cleared away one mess to give me room to make another. As you do. That's actually a tidy version of the mess.





So I used a couple of sizes of tag die to cut from the samples I already had, then die cut some blanks and embossed them with the ones I hadn't added. Divided up into rings roughly equating with the section they're stored under in the box, and now they'll go hang up next to my stencils.

The box is tidy, and almost full, so I need to avoid embossing folders, lol.

 So this is the desk behind the desk, finally cleared and cleaned.

Crop Bear looks like he's chilling out, sat on the storage tins.

I did eventually get round to adding some colour to the houses, just need a few tweaks, as I added paths to some, and one now has an extra tree- bottom right- as I forgot what I was doing, and added an inky brush straight to the middle of the pic!

I just used two shades of blue & green DI, and those 'professional make up brushes'. They work great, especially if you only want a light patch of colour, although you can deepen it by adding more layers, and darker colours.

 A feeble attempt at enabling this week I'm afraid. I got a £5 birthday voucher code from Hobbycrafts, and as I didn't want to get Doug to take us over there, I used it online. I wanted some fancy felt- I have an idea for some Christmas cards- so got the three you can see with the snowflakes on, a while glittery one and a couple of sheets of plain white. All A4 size. What annoyed me when they arrived- they were folded in half, and the bundle, a total of 6 sheets could have fit into an A4 envelope, easily. But no, it comes in a box around 12" long,6" deep and
  wide! As I say, they were folded in half,and the rest of the box full of those blasted plastic air filled pillows. An e-mail was sent, lol. Not that I expect any notice to be taken.
 In other news, saw my Oncologist on Monday, and we'll be restarting the chemo next Thursday (12th), he did say Friday, but I got a call saying they had a free space on Thursday, if I wanted it. I wonder if they have a problem with superstitious people?
OK, I'm all done,leave your link at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, and I'll be round to visit later.
Which just leaves.....And Finally.......

WOYWW #534- The Here be Dragons Edition.

I'm back, wasn't ill or anything last week, just had literally nothing on my desk worth showing! This week I do have a few enablings items to show you though.😉
Lots of lovely dragons from Lavinia stamps, along with a flock of bats and a new Fairy.



Also, a couple of new stamp sets from Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous, along with a couple of stencils, all via Art from the Heart.

Love the skeleton leaves, and the toadstools are great,like the illustrations you used to see in botany books.

The stencils are called Decayed, on the left, and Hocus Pocus on the right. I think the Decayed one would make a great fake crackled background.

Hopefully this afternoon I'll be getting these finished off and made up into cards. I want to add a patch of grass and sky behind the images, and I'm going to see if I can make a footpath to the doors, I know I have a Lavinia stamp of a cobbled path, and at least one footpath in my Stampscapes stamps, so it's just whether the scale will work or not.

Speaking of Stampscapes, that reminds me. If anyone is a fan of the Colorbox stylus tools for applying ink- I use them all the time for adding ink to Stampscapes scenes- the company (Clearsnap) is closing/has closed down, so if you do use them, grab them if you see them anywhere. They're not widely stocked in the UK, although I found some on E-Bay & Amazon, and at least a couple of other places I did find them had sold out, so it's unlikely they'll get more.
 Been trying to do a little reorganising, as I got Doug to replace a narrow shelf behind my main desk for a wider one. This is the current mess on the desk behind the desk!




Leaving my link with Julia at The Stamping Ground as always, and thats me done.



Which just leaves......And Finally..................................
I'd be substituting a G&T (or maybe a Long Island Ice Tea, or a Mojito)  for wine, but they all work just as well😂🍸😂🍸.