Iris flower WLSC

 Hi Everyone, my DT card today is for We Love Stamping 

the theme this month being "Anything stamped, option, Fabulous Florals"

I received a newsletter advert and just had to buy the stamp, there is a tutorial of how to use the stamp on their blog, a new technique to me, so I followed the tutorial and cased the card.

I stamped the shadow layer, then the flower layer.  A piece of ripped vellum was stamped with the sentiment and using clear embossing powder heat embossed. It was then attached to the stamped layer. 

I layered the card and vellum onto yellow and purple card, so they were on 2 sides each. The colours were different for me too.  I am pleased with the result and glad I could case, and learn. I hope you like my version too.

stamp - Stamps by Me

inks - Distress Oxide, hickory smoke, fossilised amber, villainous potion 

vellum - Crafters Companion 

coloured card - Lidl

 

 

I hope to see you at the at the Challenge,

 there are Great prizes for the Winner this month

 

Two prizes, AALL and Create Petal Therapy and Vase Trio

 

I love Iris and have a blue and rust Iris in the garden. 

piccies below, taken in May.

 

 I haven't played at the 613 Avenue Challenge for a long while, so here goes, with my ATG.

613 Avenue Create Challenge

CAS Christmas card?

 Hi Everyone, I hope you are now to the last of your Christmas shopping or at least with just a little to go, no panic shopping! As I have done in the past. I can't believe how organised I am this year, just the food for a small hamper I am doing for my SiL. She has to cope with her Alzheimer hubby and rarely goes out, so a few treats to cheer her up. I hope. The snow and ice isn't helping, we are lucky, just below freezing temperatures to cope with, so far.

Be prepared for a picture heavy post!

Anyhow, my card today came about with me wanting to stamp a CAS card and not having a clue what to do with it. I stamped the reindeer and sentiment, coloured the reindeer and wondered what to do with the sentiment. I took a brush, dipped into the green ink on my mat, that I had chosen and scribbled the colour on. It still didn't look right, so I stamped some stars and thought I should have embossed them, too late! A silver glitter pen to the rescue, it still didn't look right, so I die cut a square of pearlised card near enough to the sentiment colour and layered it. Attached to a square card, and I was pleased with the overall effect. OH! This CAS designing is hard work! 

The photo gives the impression the centre is not straight, the only thing I can think of is my straightening of the card made it all wonky. You get the idea anyway, don't you?

stamps - Magazine freebies SC&P

ink- Distress Ink crushed olive, brushed corduroy, vintage photo

green pearlised card - Hunkdory 

silver glitter pen - Uniball

square die - Sue Wilson Noble square dies

I thought I would show you a little of the freezing here. I love the heavy frost on the plants.

a rose flowering in December and beautiful with the frost.

 

a ball Chrysanthemum and the bird bath

 

Heuchera

 

Hydrangea

this is the most we have had of frost, although it has lasted a few days. I love the red morning sunlight of the trees in the background.

Critter and Critters!

   I have 2 DT cards today this is the first.

2 Crafty Critter Crazies

our 50th challenge

Anything Goes but

they MUST feature a critter

Whether Furry, Feathered, Fantasy, Fairytale, Scaly, or Insect, there must be a critter featured...

We are sponsored this month by TNT Artspirations and they have generously

provided images to our DT to use on their inspiration projects.

My card today is a bit of fun and quite simple, as I thought she needed to be centre stage. I placed the files in my electronic digital cutter and print and cut. I then coloured the turtle with Distress inks. Layered all the papers, attached the 3 layers of turtle and a separate head, which you can't see here as I intended, oh! well. The sentiment I generated on the 'puter. 

Something seems to have gone wrong with my layout today, I've tried everything to get it symmetrical.

image - TNT Artspirational

inks - Distress inks mixture of greens and blues, abandoned coral, worn lipstick

papers - Cathy K Designs

I hope to see you at the Critter ATG Challenge.

I was out walking to the hairdresser this week and came across these bluebells, out with my phone and this is the result. Just gorgeous isn't it. Such a joy to see.

Also I have had this "critter" in my garden enjoying the nuts and

 maybe taking them to her babies?

These 3 tickled me pink, 3 pigeons fighting to have a bath. They did squeeze in.

Lazy & Tardy

 Hi Everyone, I am so lazy and tardy, I have no mojo whatsoever, I think the last 2 weeks have been a huge respite from craftiness and now I am finding it difficult to get going again. However I have one in the making, how successful that will be is another thing, but I thought in the meantime I would show you what's been having in my garden. It's been like a nature reserve, we have had so many birds OK! not different kinds as such, just the "normal" for our garden but so many more than usual.

These are Sparrows, gorging themselves, with the feeders down low they are waiting in the hedge for some room. The pigeons are snapping any seed that the sparrows are dropping.

These are grey squirrels, we have 3 visiting the garden and stealing the nuts, one patiently waiting for his turn, so funny.

This was taken earlier last year

Keep safe everyone.

Tropical stencil

Hi Everyone, my post today was inspired by Sally I really liked what she did and as she had an easy tutorial, I thought I would try it. It worked like a dream, then on my last stamping I made a mistake. Do I do it all over again? nope, I added stamped and die cut flowers, to cover the fault. I really enjoyed doing this and will try and do it again sometime.

I didn't have a large leaf stencil, so I used a digital die leaf and cut it with my Cameo out of acetate. I've also cut a smaller leaves stencil, so I can use them again. I used the large leaf style stencil, to match a leaf stamp I have, which is in the set of tropical stamps, with the hibiscus flower stamp. The Aloha was a digital die cut I have used before.

stencil - Planeta Silhouette 

stamps - Magazine freebies Simply Cards and Papercraft # 205

Distress ink 

sparkle pen - Spectrum Noir

pink card - The Works

black card - The Range

these are the stencils I cut out of 140 micron acetate. 

(Ashamedly the leaf still has some ink on it.)

Here's a link

I've bought or had a few freebie stencils to cut out recently, 

all I have to do now is get them cut and use them.

Seeing as we have some heat, not as hot as some parts of the UK, but very nice heat for us, to make us feel a little tropical, I thought I would share some piccies of Sparrows enjoying the feeder and the water we have for them. There must be at least 25 who visit every 2ish hours in the garden to feed off the feeders. They are so quick and are eating us out of house and home LOL.

They are not edited, sorry, I just wanted to add them before I posted this.

They fly into and out of the Physocarpus "Diabolo" shrub, the perfect hideaway for them.

some decided to have a bath

and then some more decided to join them!

I hope you'll be OK in the thunderstorms and heavy rain promised this next week.

Creative Moments ATG

Krafty Chicks Stamp Act

Inspired by  Endless Summer - Tropical 

Mixed post

Hi everyone, well after 5 months I have had my hair cut today, it was January when I had it cut at the hairdresser, they went into lockdown as I was due a cut! (hubby had taken an inch off the back though.) It was all done so well, with a mask given, although I had my own, my temperature taken and a hand sanitiser for me to use too. I think she is a great stylist, but I always wash it as soon as I am home, as I don't like how she, or any hairdresser, styles my hair after a cut. Fussy so and so aren't I?

 On to why you are here! after doing my comments and emails, I thought I would just browse my files. I have seen quite a few digital stamps and paper used recently and as I didn't feel like doing much on a very wet afternoon I decided to see what files I had, (forgotten about!) There were a LOT! 

I came across this lovely watercolour pineapple and background paper, I decided to use them and this is the resulting card. I added them to a shape in my Silhouette Design page and added a digital die to the centre, then after cutting them all out, I added them to a card and also the sentiment. The centre pineapple is layered 3 times. I wanted to print and cut the image, and also to cut it out on one page of paper, it took me longer to adjust them to fit on the page that to design it! LOL

pineapple and paper - Creativefabrika

digital die - Silhouette #14365

Nuvo Drops - Tonic 

sparkle pen - Spectrum Noir 

Yesterday morning I looked up into the sky and saw a plane trail, but not only that it had a shadow! There was another trail not far away but that had no shadow, I had to take a photo of it. It's like I did a shadow in Photoshop, (I didn't), it was originally on the right of the trail but gradually moved to to the left of it. It was a  duunnn dunnn... duuuunnnn duun... duuunnnnnnnn dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn dunnnn. moment!

This is how it started

A closeup of it

This is where it had moved to the left and was still a trail,

 where the original had almost disappeared! 

The smaller trail had also nearly disappeared.

EDIT - After Shirley's comment I went to Google and found this explanation, seems it's not common, so was thrilled to get a photo of it. 

Contrail shadow

Keep safe everyone.

CD Sunday  Digi - Yep!

LiL Patch of Crafty Friends ATG - Yep!

Scrappin4fun Challenge  Birthday - Yep!

Blue Robins?

Hi Everyone, my first Christmas card of the year, came about entirely by accident, I was looking for a colour combination for me to stamp on, saw this colour combo at the challenge and thought yep! go with that. The colours were added onto acetate, watercolour card placed on it but, it turned out not as I would have hoped. Well it was my first try! Then thought how about a die to cut the colours out, I chose a die which really is so inappropriate for the colours, but I decided to go ahead and this is what happened! Must have been storm Ciara affecting me LOL.

Robin die - Cut & Make mini die

Distress Inks -

Broken china, Salty Ocean, Faded Jeans

stamps - Magazine Freebies

navy card - stash

Christmas Card Throwdown

https://52cct.blogspot.com/2020/02/february-colours-challenge.html

http://thehollyandivychristmaschallenge.blogspot.com/2020/02/challenge-65-anything-christmas-goes.html

You can slip by this, it's picture heavy!

In the middle of the storm I looked out of the conservatory and saw these pigeons looking so forlorn, as if they are saying to the one sitting under the birdhouse roof - "C'mon it's our turn to be out of the storm!" They sat there for at least 20 minutes like that. Sorry about the not too clear piccies, blame the heavy rain and being taken through the window.

I hope you were all safe and sound in the Storm.

Our Daffs held up quite well.

Storm Ciera from my TV 
with thanks to the Porthcawl RNLI live feed camera
The waves obscure the Lighthouse at the end of the pier.
 These were as the tide was 1/4 way out.

Belated

Hi Everyone, a card today that I did for a  friend, I keep forgetting her birthday as it's the 2nd of January, with all the Christmas things going on it passes me by. Anyhow I made this card for her, she is owl mad and collects anything to do with owls, so I hoped this would make up for my forgetfulness?

The owl image and the paper are magazine freebies

the ribbon - Dragons Lair Designs.

sentiment - computer generated

It's a one layer digital card designed in Photoshop, I added Spectrum Noir clear sparkle pen to the image and ribbon and Nuvo Crystal Droops to the "sorry".

I hoped you could see the raised word and gloss on the "sorry"

I haven't shown you photos for a while, so thought I would take this post as an opportunity to show you what the crazy weather we are having, is doing to our garden.

Daffodils flowering. Hubby planted them like soldiers on guard duty LOL.

hyacinths poking their heads through

even the roses have new growth and in the pot is a purple crocus, you may just be able to make it out on this photo.

 Lupins are well on their way

  

Fuschias are budding, but will be cut back in March!

Hello

Hi Everyone, I felt I had to explain my lack of visits to you all. As you may know we are carers for my son, who has mental health issues. These last many months have been particularly wearing for us, maybe our age is getting to us? Anyhow, I want to thank you for your continuing support while I have taken a step back from a few things, but comments will have to wait I'm afraid, for the time being, while I pick myself up.

I have thankfully been able to keep up with my DT work, but I have not felt like crafting and even when I do, I sit here and nothing comes to me. Lots of procraftinating! Family cards have had to be made even though nothing else happens, I make myself do them, the dreaded Christmas cards are particularly difficult this year, lesson learned - start early in the year, which is what I promised myself at the start of the year, oh! well.

I wanted to show you these few things while I'm here.

After seeing our neighbours holly tree hedge, I had to take a closeup photo of them, I haven't seen so many berries in all the 25 years we have been here, does that mean a hard Winter? there were 3 magpies sitting in it (circled)

another part of it

I have been looking for a while for matching canisters to suit my kitchen, whilst in the supermarket a few weeks ago I saw these and thought them perfect, but they didn't have a labels on them. As they were only £2 each I decided to have them and then made my own labels on the Silhouette Cameo 2 with vinyl. I'm really pleased with them.