what I've been up to...

At the weekend I was browsing other blogs and I came across a challenge to use yellow, kraft and white or ivory. As yellow is so out of my comfort zone - I do not look good in yellow and have never in all the houses I have  ever lived in had a yellow colour scheme - except in the current house where I inherited a yellow room, bought yellow bedding and thought mmm! yes this looks bright and cheerful. Anyway, I digress.....
so I got out my spray inks and templates, drew a birdhouse on a large piece of card  and set to work. I diecut birds from kraft card and flowers from the mop-up piece of card - well true crafters never waste anything - I put the kitchen roll from mopping up aside for another day...I die-cut a hanging sign and purely by accident sprinkled white embossing powder instead of clear onto the hanger part and it looks antique - happy accident eh!!

 I was having so much fun that I then went on to tags and so I Distress Stained some tags...

and die cut more birds and flowers, stamped a bit and stained some lace and seam binding, added a few embellishments and ended up with very messy hands but three very nice tags - so all in all very happy with the result...

Right, just a quick call out for the ladies who live in Spain but not in Javea - I have had a load of new dies and texture fades from Sizzix but be quick...you know how fast these disappear...

and disappear is what I am going to do to watch Britain's Got Talent so

Bye for now

Sue

In class on Friday I demonstrated the Ranger Distress Stains and showed how versatile they were and how they worked with the Distress inks and reinkers.                                   
I stained a tag and pressed onto it a sheet of hammered card and took a print which became my main card front. A bit of blending around the edges, stained some seam binding, some stamping and a bit of embellishments and my card was ready - tra la!!!

A week ago I had a few days away from the shop to visit Tanya in Belgium. She is psyching herself up for her breast rebuilding op next Wednesday and so we chatted loads and had a fun lunch and some shopping in Hasselt, a nearby town, along with an hour long visit to a huge art shop - 4 floors worth of arty goodies - the rock chicka looks good don't you think.....

and back at hers she offered me the opportunity to make a page in a new "old" journal. Her neighbour Ludo had given her an old ledger from the 1960's and that was too good to turn down so armed with just what was to hand on the coffee table - its a big table!!! -  a DCWV 6 x 6 paper pad, a box of watercolours, a case of coloured pencils, a bottle of red Stickles, albums full of Tim's stamps and a Coffee Archival ink pad I set to while Tanya dozed...

I watercoloured, cut and pasted, highlighted,  stamped, crayoned, stickled and generally enjoyed myself in her journal... the photo has turned itself around and I haven't a clue how to rotate it on here so hopefully you can make out what I did - if not look on facebook - it worked ok on there!!!

Tanya also lent me a book - Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier - heavy going at first but ok once you get into it - and inside it I found a tag bare and unloved and so I had to change that - well I did didn't I - and so I took some coloured pencils from her pencil case lying on the coffee table and a Sharpie marker and she now has a doodled colourful bookmark and a reminder of me to boot.

Tanya lives in Heks - its in the middle of nowhere -
    
but a beautiful fruit growing region - just look at all that blossom on those trees everywhere you looked   - bit like round here in February when the almond trees blossom...           

Right that's enough for one day so
Bye for now
Sue