WOYWW #530- The Extreme Enabling Edition!

Indeed, due to me struggling somewhat this week- finding myself very, very breathless just moving around the house, I have done very little but sit at my PC and shop!
 I have to say that the Enabler got Enabled last week- Thanks Helen (StampingbyH)- who showed a  this fab stamp set from Paper Artsy, as well as the coloured wings from Lord Tim.
 As usual Wednesday means WOYWW, so I'll be popping over to leave my link with our Fabulous Leader, Julia, over at The Stamping Ground.

Speaking of Tim, these also happened to fall into my basket. I do love masks- except clown ones, they're creepy- and as well as the large ones, you get lots of small sizes too. And I can never have too many bats. Ever.

Occasionally, thoughts of Christmas cards wander through my mind, so this edger/cover type may well come in handy. That'll be some real fast cards.

Not newly bought, but thought I'd give you a better view of the Chocolate Baroque house stamps I've been working with.
This one is called English Cottages.

This one is Townhouses. Both come with an assortment of extras- trees/shrubs/signposts etc.

This is where I'm at so far, after they're coloured, I'm going to blend in some pale blue for a patch of sky behind them, and them maybe some footpath & lawn up to the house.

I've been doing the colouring with that set of Zenacolor II pencils I bought and showed you a few months ago, and for a real 'budget' price, they perform really well for what I want.
 And so I'm done. Second Chemo finished, and apart from it causing extreme breathlessness this time, not too bad.

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

A Grand day out at Ally Pally

'Twas indeed a great day out. Loved the show, all about papercrafting/stamping which I love. A very sensible ticket price, and free parking for everyone. Not a gigantic hall, but plenty big enough for stands to be well spread out with plenty of room to move about, unlike the NEC, which for all it's size, always feels like a sardine can!

This gives you a sense of the size- and that's an organ right at the far end.
This was taken about lunch time, and was still really busy, so you can see there was plenty of room to move about.

First lot of stamps bought- Visible Image, Lavinia and Card-io.

Some fab flowers from Paper Artsy, and some new Phill Martin releases.

Flipped one over here, you can see they are really big stamps.

Some really cool Woodware stamps, and the Sheena Douglas and Crafters Companion were all reduced.
 The Owl stamp was sold on the strength of a Sample on display, as were the Quirky Birds at the end.









The owl also had what looked like a Clear embossing paste through a stencil over the image, which you can't see in the photo.












Some Honey Doo stamps and an Inkylicious sentiment.
 Was really shocked, whilst talking to Amanda, to hear how much trouble they'd been having from people stealing. And this was about lunchtime, so they'd only been open 3 or 4 hours! So much of a problem, they'd had to ask to have the security cameras pointed at their stand. Shameful behaviour.

Had to laugh about this one- Doug had gone to put the stuff we'd already bought in the car,  whilst I went for a loo break. When he came back he said' I bought a stamp set on my way to the car! It was a really cool Pirate themed one, and was reduced in the sale too'.😇😇

This though had to be the show bargain. A grab bag of unmounted Rubbernecker stamps for £3 .
 I've heard of them, but never seen them anywhere before.

So I had to empty them out to see how many were in the bag. 60 stamps, some image, some sentiment/quotes. I'll have to stamp them out to see what the wordy ones say!

Dies next- Doug spotted the top two, the skull is a Sheena Douglas one.
 The two Sweet Poppy are part of a new range of dies for cutting out stencil images. The one on the left cuts sections from the Mehndi Flower stencil, and the Poinsettia die on the right goes with a new Poinsettia Stencil, which I watched a You Tube Video of Lucy making the other day. In fact, I watched a few, and most of my purchases were because of them, lol.

The Poinsettia stencil, ( I already have the Mehndi Flower), a Grid stencil, a Christmas one and a Magnolia flower, along with a couple of empty pots, for a Marbling Technique Lucy did in a video too.

These were a great find, and the find was due to a lady sat by us all when we met up for a sit down and some lunch. Tiny little blending tools and foams, on the Craft Habitat stand. So much so, Erika, Cindy and I all went and got some!
 The foams are 3/4" wide, or 2cm.
 Just had a look, and you can get them on E-Bay.

 Some gorgeous 3-D embossing folders fell in the basket next!

A few packs of card, some more of the non shed glitter card and a pack of Weave effect black.

This is cardstock, with an amazing 'oil on water' effect.
A bit like those plastic type sheets that were around a few years ago.
 Both items from Pink Frog Crafts.

 

Just a last few odds and ends, some plastic cups for Shaker cards- they'll work well with some Snow Globe stencils and stamps I have.
 A Tidy tray, which I keep meaning to get. One of Lucy's techniques used glass micro beads, and when I've used them before they were a nightmare to collect up afterwards on paper.

Some sparkly gems, those plastic cups I forgot to move, some heat activated Puffy Paint and 3 more Clair inkpads.

Shopping over, now to meeting some of my crafting buddies!

Cindy and Erika doing a Lavinia Stamps make & take, with Amanda Branston, who I met back last year on the Eileen Godwin workshop.

Dolores and her Hubby Alan. WOYWWers know Dolores as
 Cardarian.

  Doug, Erica, me & Cindy having a well earned sit down and lunch.

By an amazing stroke of luck, as her phone wasn't working over here, Sylvie from the Christmas Card Club I'm part of spotted me! Not that I'm easy to miss, 😎😇😊. She'd flown here from Gibralter with a friend, and was going again on Sunday, as they make a weekend of it.


We also met up with Helen,( Stamping by H), but forgot to get a picture. Lots of pics from the day over on Helens blog.

Time to go home! Can you tell from my face I was done? This was about 4.30, and we'd been there since 10.30 ish. My feet were killing me, as were Dougs.

Finally, two pics from the night before. We'd driven down Friday afternoon, and stayed at the Travelodge in Wood Green. Across the road we found a great place to eat, beautiful food, and cocktails!  What more could I ask for? Food was so nice, we had breakfast there Saturday morning too.
The pic on the right is of their tiled floor, how amazing is that? My first thought was 'I think I've got an embossing folder like that'😏.

WOYWW #414

Right then folks, here we are at yet another Wednesday, and I'm pretty sure the last one was not a week ago! As usual, we start off at Auntie Julias place, The Stamping Ground. Then travel the world viewing desks of wonderment, delight, and in some cases, shame. 😎

 The first few pics are from Happy Stampers- first pic shows Sarah Brennan(Sarahscraftshed), then me, next to me is Neet(Hickdorums).
 Chris( Pearshapedcrafting) is stood by the doorway.

 This shot has Mark Alexander, from Visible Image, along with a lady called Rachel Fisher. I know Rachel from the Christmas Card Club,(Fishers cards & crafts) and in an amazing coincidence, she had won last week in their Facebook draw to celebrate hitting 3000 likes, so was there spending her prize.

Back at our lunch break for this shot, the lady on the far left is Lyn Hardy, who I met through Neet.
 We also bumped into Cara(Craftingbunnies)  on our way around, but didn't get a photo at the time.

Talking of coincidences, some of you may remember me making some Christmas Cards last year, using the Tim Holtz mixed media dies & poinsettias. I'd cased the card from Pinterest, and linked to the lady who made it first, Avril, of Mrs B's Crafting Addiction. Lo and behold, our Chris knows her, and she was there on Saturday, so Chris introduced us.
The other really funny part was how many ladies came up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was Shaz, or Silverwolf! Rofl. Ladies who'd been visiting my blog, looking at projects I'd done. That was totally surreal.
So, onto the goodies then.

Some lovely new stencils from Sweet Poppy- the tree one at the back has a distinct bonsai look to it, and as that is one of Ants hobbies, will make a great birthday card for him.

On to Lavinia stamps, and top of my shopping list were the Green Man stamps!
 Some lovely fairy houses also dropped into the basket, but that was Hubby.

As were almost all of these. The only one I'd picked up was the Eclectica flowers- Hubby took a fancy to the rest.

These stencils were 50/50. I picked the top two, Hubby liked the two trees.

More Owls.  The stamps are really quite large, but there were some gorgeous samples done with them.

Finally, not a purchase, but a gift from Neet. She knows I love my Stampscapes stamps, and brought this with her for me. I love it, that will definitely get some use when I do some more, thank you so much Neet.

 Almost forgot about these- some loose stamps bought from Chocolate Baroque. There are some fab textures, and a couple of small stamps that will go well with my Lavinia Stamp for scene building.
 Also had a chat with Lesley Wharton, the owner. Lovely lady.
Okay, I'll stop there. I'm sure you will come across more photos of our meeting on the other ladies blogs, and there will be quite a few pics of stamps purchased, I'm sure.
 Oh, almost forgot- went to the appointment on Monday, for the results, only to find they hadn't arrived, as yet. They are chasing them for the next MDT meeting, so we have to go back in two weeks. A bit annoying, but to be honest, we almost expected it. A lot of the hospitals have had services downgraded in the Worcestershire area,including our own, and those services put onto Worcester Royal, and that was where I was sent for my scan. They were struggling under the weight even before that, so it really didn't surprise me they hadn't got here. I had expected my Oncologist to have put my appointment to see him off, when I had the scan date for just a week before we were due to see him. Oh well,  it is what it is.😏

More Masterboards, and some Brusho ones too.

 As I said in the last post, I decided to try some masterboards using Distress Stains. I admit that generally I've bought the more vibrant, zingy colours, so I'm never going to get subtle backgrounds till I invest some more money in Tims offerings.








 Anyhow, the first one was streaked with Wild Honey, Squeezed Lemonade and Carved Pumpkin.

Then, flicking through my stencils folder I spotted this one, by Paper Artsy, which I was enabled into by Helen (Stamping By H) back last year. It looked the sort of thing that would be really useful at the time. I overstencilled by sponging on in Carved Pumpkin, then in Ripe Persimmon.













Setting that aside to dry, I started with Salty Ocean on the next one, followed by some Dusty Concord. I'd got into the stencilling now, so used two Tim Holtz stencils on this one, Mesh and Shattered, which I think looks just like cobwebs.






I used Seedless Preserves for the stencilling this time round.

Now I switched back to the DI pads, so I could get some lighter backgrounds, and the first one up I failed to photograph until I'd got to the stencilling bit, but it's shades of purple-Shaded Lilac, Dusty Concord and Wilted Violet. First stencil was Tim Holtz Honeycomb,inked in Wilted Violet.The flourishes stencil is called Mini Capricious, and the clocks stencil Mini Time Travel, both by The Crafters Workshop, both inked in Blueprint Sketch.
 The next stencil I'm using I hope you can see in the picture, is one of a variety of sized circles, which I cut on my Silhouette machine, from OHP film. This also got inked with Wilted Violet.






 For the next piece I went back to the leaves stencil,onto a background done with Squeezed Lemonade,Mustard Seed, Shabby Shutters and Twisted Citron.The leaves were stencilled first in Shabby Shutters, then in Wild Honey, and finally with a baby wipe through the stencil to remove some ink and give a ghosting effect.

Final sheet of Distress Backgrounds, and I used quite a lot of colours on this one. I went through all the pinks, just building up colour.







Then I brought in Picked Raspberry, Wilted Violet and Carved Pumpkin.

I started stencilling with Wilted Violet again, and the stencil is a Clarity stencil, a circle of stars and dots.I just used parts of the circle, and moved the stencil around to give me a scattering of stars. The branches, in Picked Raspberry, are from a stencil by Imagination Crafts, I think called Bird Houses.


Now the first ones had dried, I started adding some stamping. Using Candied Apples and Blueprint Sketch DI's, I stamped 3 different dragonflies over the orange background.

The green and yellow sheet had 3 different butterflies stamped in Lucky Clover and Cracked Pistachio.

As I'd stencilled what looked like cobwebs on this one, I continued the theme with a skull stamp ( Stamp Addicts Sheet, Skulltastic), a dancing skeleton,( Lost Coast Stamps), and a flight of birds from a Cherry Pie Artstamps sheet,Dark Boundaries. The skull was stamped in Blueprint Sketch DI, the rest in Seedless Preserves.

On this one I stamped a dandelion head from an Inkylicious set, called Make a Wish.The flock of birds stamp is also Inkylicious, a Twinchie stamp, both stamped in Seedless Preserves.

The stamping on this one was again Inkylicious stamps, a clocks set called Timepieces. I used Chipped Sapphire DI to stamp in.


So thats the DI pieces. Whilst I was making a mess, I thought I'd have another play with some Brusho's.

I was interested at first to see what other colours you get, when using a single colour group. This sheet only has blues on it, but you can clearly see some purples forming from the powder.

So I did the same with greens, and here there are yellows, oranges, reds and even some faint blues, just from green powders. The olive green did seem to burst into the widest range of colours.

 Ditto with yellows, we have oranges and browns too.

In fact, reds seemed the only colours to stay true.

Then I started getting random- I love the almost organic shapes you get forming. This was water misted onto the paper first, then the powder sprinkled on.

This was powder first, then spritz.

 This one was lightly sprinkled with powder, then lightly misted.Less water gives you a more confined spread.

This one started out by being pressed onto the one directly above to mop up some of the water, than I added a few more powders.