Christmas already

Well I've already made a couple of Christmas cards because I really wanted to use some Tim Holtz masks that I had................wooooooooooooo!!! I masked off the sleigh and stamped over the snowflakes in red and also blended some of the green/grey which I think is Iced Spruce and maybe another one. Then I used a bit of the same paper and stamped on the greeting and mounted it on some silver card. Then the other one I used the snowflake mask on patterned paper and just mounted that on a couple of different cards, added a greeting and some glitter.

I also had some new stamps including birds because I am bird crazy and here is a card I made, I stamped the image in black archival and coloured it with a craft nib and distress inks, and then I blended some ink around the edge as well, and finally stamped on the greeting.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Well what to get the old fatherkins (sorry less of the old!) for his birthday.....I decided to procure an alphabet of beer, mostly courtesy of beer hawk, and to accompany it I created a little booklet, here are some of the pages and the beer in all it's glory on the kitchen floor hehe and a picture of the birthday boy himself!!

So the little book itself is mostly a lot of Dylusions ink everywhere! Plus a bit of Distress ink, a few stamps here and there plus an alphabet set for the letters, and good old mod podge for the gluing; and I remembered the merits of a white gel pen on the cover. I punched each page and tied them together with a couple of pieces of twine that I'd also dyed with ink, oh and I added a little sparkle on the front with perfect pearls.

Then to the card which is Distress stains and perfect pearls in the background, then Dylusions on some paper and then I stamped the map stamp which I think is Papermania, and a Tim Holtz Enjoy the journey stamp and tore them out and edged them with ink. I stuck them down with washi tape, oh and I had an off cut where I'd used texture paste through a stencil and inked over it. I took some plain chipboard letters and used alcohol inks and then rock candy crackle paint.

And that I believe is it..........................phew!!!!!!!!!!

Great Tit in Bird House eeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!!

Erm the title probably says it all hehe! A Great Tit came and had a look around our bird house, first bird we've seen in there woohoo!!

Here are a couple of clips

Siskin and Goldfinch

Well it's been pretty quiet on the feeders recently, as expected really, but a Siskin has been paying quite a few visits recently and today a couple of Goldfinches appeared. Here is a little clip of the Siskin and one of the Goldfinches - plus our new feeder with multiple perches :)

All hail the Pumpkin king?!

So I got some new goodies mostly some bargains from the Happy Daze closing down sale - wish they weren't closing down but got some great new things; including a set of Tim Holtz masks, I couldn't wait to try them out, so here's what spilled out of my head in about 10 minutes of messing about....

I stuck down the pumpkin mask, and sprayed on two Dylusions sprays, peeled off the mask, drew round the edge with a black pen, added the crown stamp, used peacock feathers distress ink round the outside and stamped on a stamp from the Tim Holtz ultimate grunge set, I love this set so much I use it all the time. Then I wrote on all hail the pumpkin king because that's just what came into my head.

T for Tessellated

It's letter T this week in the Craft Barn's alpha challenge

Had a look through the dictionary and decided on Tessellated.....now what to actually tessellate......well I thought of Escher but decided fish etc. were a little too ambitious......and then I had a brainwave to use the letter T itself.

I cut out some little letter T's using some graph paper and experimented in getting them to tessellate, then I used one as a template to draw them on to the page, I had painted the page with Cool Peri paint dabber as a base to start off with as well.

Anyway getting the letter T to tessellate isn't as easy as you might imagine, I tried to copy the pattern I had made with my graph paper T's but then ran into a few problems which resulted in a lot of rubbing out and rearranging, finally I just about managed to fill up both pages - phew!!

I then drew over my pencil lines with a fineliner. I then drew and coloured a few of the T's and then I used a black OHP pen on the ones around the edge.

Yo-Yo!

This week it is letter Y in the Craft Barn's alpha challenge....well there's not many words to choose from.......but I decided to choose Yo-Yo! And the second part is to use yellow - well you don't have to ask me twice to use yellow hehe :)

Here are the results:

I used Dylusions lemon zest and pure sunshine and highlighted the definition with an orange fineliner. I stamped various background stamps using sepia archival and distress mustard seed. I used vintage photo distress stain around the edge of the page. I stuck down some strips of paper tape. Then I made some yo-yo's by taking some offcuts that had already been coloured and punching out some circles and on the large one I stamped on some arrows. I dyed some baker's twine with yellow alcohol ink and stuck it in between two circles and then stuck it all on to the page.

Then I stamped on the word Yo Yo and slighted highlighted that and around the edge of the yo-yo's using a craft nib and some walnut stain distress ink, and I think that's it! Now off to watch the tennis.........