Floral Hello Card

Hello all, I've a card to share today as it was rather wet yesterday after a good start and today has been dull and cold so what better tonic than a bit of crafting (and sketching though can't yet show you).
This one is a little different and the colours are slightly off too as my camera seems to struggle with plummy tones and the doily is actually a shade of rose and not quite as strong as it appears here.

As you can see, I've included the background before embellishing and it was actually the leftover result from making my floral wishes card as the stencil was covered in the Distress oxides that I used and it was a shame to waste it so I misted on some water and pressed on a sheet of card. The above background was the end result and it's so pretty I just had to use it.

I stamped my fanciful flower twice on mixed media paper with VersaFine Spanish Moss ink. I then coloured it with Distress markers, using Spun Sugar, Crushed Olive and Wild Honey. I then cut out the whole flower once and just the petal part on the second. I shaped them with a large embossing ball tool and layered them up with 3D glue.

I assembled my card using a couple of pretty doilies, adding a gold pearl to the flower and stamping on the hello text (a free stamp from Making Cards magazine) with Archival Plum ink.

I'd like to enter the following challenges with my card:

Everybody Art Challenge - Flower
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Flowers

Hope the weather is better where you are and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Fliss xx

Heart Blooms for That's Crafty!

Hello everyone, well it's now rather a wet day after a good start earlier on and I'm hoping things improve for the weekend too.
A very quick post before I start on some work I have to do today to let you know that I have my usual Friday post over at That's Crafty! Blog and this week I have a very bright creation to share which came about because I saw the colour of the year is ultraviolet and I love purple!

I love purple so much that I've actually managed to acquire a purple coat - my Andy won't lose me in a crowd lol. I'm hoping there will be more purple in the Autumn as the current clothing colours (yellow, orange!!!) do nothing for me with my blonde hair!!!

Have a great day whatever the weather and a lovely weekend.
Fliss xx

Floral Wishes Card

Hello everyone, I hope you've all had a lovely weekend with sunshine as we did and it actually felt like summer down here on the South Coast as it was so warm. Not quite so warm today but we still had a sunny start so hopefully the week will be good.
I have another card to share today made from my stack of flowers from my recent marathon stamping and cutting out session. This one is for a friend who's going through a bit of a tough time at the moment with health issues and I wanted to send her something to let her know I'm thinking of her.
Happily the colours fit the April colour challenge at Rubber Dance so although I haven't used their stamps this time, I hope that's OK (between you and me, I have to work out where I put them as I had a tidy up and now can't find things!)

I made my background paper by swiping card through some Distress Oxides (Squeezed Lemonade, Twisted Citron and Worn Lipstick) spritzed with water on my craft mat. I then used the That's Crafty! TC8024 Flourish stencil with the same inks used neat to add a shabby chic pattern as I wasn't too bothered about getting the pattern perfect.
I cut a piece to fit my square kraft card blank and glued it on. I stamped the sentiment (a stamp free with Making Cards magazine) with black ink and then added some layered up flowers assembled with dimensional glue.
I finished off with an offcut of my stencilled paper which I die cut with an old scallop lace border die and inked with Worn Lipstick, tucking a couple of pieces under the flowers for added interest.

I'd like to enter this in the current Rubber Dance Challenge having used the colours although not the altered bit this time:

Have a great week and see you soon.
Fliss xx

Blossoming Flower for That's Crafty!

Hello on an exceedingly warm and sunny Friday feeling a lot like summer in April! Hope you're enjoying it too wherever you are.
I have my usual Friday post over at That's Crafty! Blog and this week I'm sharing a vibrant and zingy make on one of the That's Crafty! Chunkies, just fabulous for mixed media.

You'll find all the details over at the blog if you'd like to hop over (of course, I hope you will).

Have a great day and a lovely weekend.
Fliss xx

Going Round In Circles Challenge Midway Inspiration

Hello, hope you're all having a good week and hopefully have Spring weather as we do as it's a glorious sunny day down here on the South Coast and much warmer too.
Slightly dodgy start to the day though as I had to make yet another trip to the tyre repair shop as I had another puncture in the same tyre as last time! Pesky builders and their screws which shouldn't be in the road!!! Thankfully it was fixed very quickly.
I have some midway inspiration for our April Challenge at That's Crafty! Challenge Blog with the theme of Going Round In Circles and I couldn't resist this floral wreath which I created for last week's Hochanda shows and if you watched, you might have seen this one (screen shot below)

This started off with the largest of the new MDF circles, the 8 inch one which I painted with white gesso and then used just the centre of the new dot mandala stencil (a sellout on the shows) to add detail in the centre of the circle (no point stencilling on an area to be covered up!) with texture sand paste. I then painted the whole circle with slightly watered down lime multi surface paint which gives a lovely fresh Spring green. I then spritzed on some diluted lime and mustard, allowing the paints to run down the panel.

Once the background was dry, I took a selection of flowers in shades of pink and purple from my large supply of flowers stamped and cut out from gelli prints in a recent mammoth crafting session and laid these out around the circle to decide on placement. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I glued them together with 3D glue gel and added them to the background with the same glue. I glued leaves in between, making sure they popped out a little to give a realistic wreath effect.
I finished off with some green gingham ribbon tied through the holes in the top (I can recommend threading through with a needle if necessary as it helps pull thicker ribbons through) and the quote stamped on a scrap of gelli print paper and shaped to form a plaque.

I hope you can join in the challenge which is now open to entrants all over the world and has a prize of a £30 voucher for the online shop for the randomly drawn winner and stencils of choice from the ever expanding That's Crafty! own range for the Top 3 chosen by the Design Team.

Have a great day and a lovely week.
Fliss xx

Craft Stamper Take It Make It Challenge April 2018

It's been an absolute age since I've created anything for a challenge due to various issues which have taken up a lot of my time. A New Year resolution was to try and remedy that so as I had a large number of flowers in my stash to be used box (pic below if you didn't see them when I first did them), I made another card following on from yesterday's offering for That's Crafty! Blog as I'm still on rather a high after the Hochanda shows and if you caught them, you might just have seen my floral wreath which was made from some of the big heap of flowers below.
Spring is finally in the air so I made this card to celebrate in pretty blossom shades as the trees are at last starting to bloom.

My flowers were stamped on gelli prints after I had a long session making quite a few with muted prints which I love for stamping flowers and leaves on as it saves on having to colour them! Here's my finished haul below!

I shaped a couple of whole flowers made from my stamps for That's Crafty! (link in my side bar if you're interested) plus a couple of centre parts and the rounded centre in green. I layered these up with dimensional glue and shaped some leaves to go with them in a fresh green shade.
My background paper was a ghost gelli print, made from cleaning the plate after making a green and a pink print where I used a jar lid to make a circular pattern. It turned out a pretty soft green, perfect for my card. I cut a piece to fit my 5 x 7 kraft card blank and distressed the edges with an emery board. I then stamped on the stitching from Donna's Claire stamp set from her Donna's Girls Collection for That's Crafty! (she gave it to me as a gift too, thanks Donna!) using Fern Green Archival ink, adding the quote from my Fanciful Flowers Set 2 stamps with the same ink.
I glued on the background paper and added the layered flower and leaves with more dimensional glue to finish.

I'd like to enter the Craft Stamper Challenge for April with my card and hopefully will enter more from now on.

Hope you're all having a great weekend and enjoying the sunshine if you have it.
Fliss xx

Vintage Floral Card for That's Crafty! and Hochanda News

Hello everyone on what for me is a very exciting day as today is the day my stamps will be on Hochanda - yippee!
I also have a post over at That's Crafty! Blog where I'm sharing a vintage style card make with some mixed media background paper that I created.
Here's a sneak peek which I hope you like.

The shows are on at 12pm and 4pm SKY 663, FREEVIEW 85, FREESAT 817 and hope you'll be watching!

Have a great day and a lovely weekend.
Hugs,
Fliss xx

Exciting Times!

Hello everyone, hope you're all having a good week. Mine is getting very exciting as tomorrow is a very big day for me - I'm very proud (and a bit nervous) to say that my stamps for That's Crafty! will be making a debut on Hochanda with our lovely new demo lady, Jo Channon - how fantastic is that!

I'd like to say a HUGE thanks here to Laura for giving me the chance to make my dreams come true as I still have to pinch myself when I ink up the stamps that were once just ideas in my head.

You can watch live on the TV or online at Hochanda Tv or record if you can't watch at the time or on the Hochanda rewind.
The show times are 12.00pm and 4.00pm - SKY 663, FREEVIEW 85, FREESAT 817.

Here are rather a lot of sneak peeks of some of my makes in case you missed them earlier (plus there are some never before seen on here)

Hope you enjoyed these and if you watch the shows you'll see lots more creations with the stamps shown below from my very talented DT sisters.

See you soon.
Hugs,
Fliss xxx

Objet Trouve with Baked Textures by Seth Apter

Hello! A post on a Sunday is rather unusual for me but I received some very happy post yesterday as I've finally got my inky mitts on the fab baked textures (aka chunky embossing powders) by Seth Apter for Emerald Creek and I just had to play!
I've made a steampunk type mixed media art panel with unusually for me again, no stamping involved although there is ink.

Here's how it started as the background has a lot of layered paint scraping.

I used Seth Apter's limited edition paints for Paper Artsy, starting off with the most opaque, Midnight and Buff. I followed that up with Mahogany then Key Lime, finishing off with the translucent Terracotta and as you'll see some of the terracotta appears quite a bright orange, serendipity strikes again!

Once I was happy with the background which was made on a That's Crafty! 4.5 x 9 inch white/greyboard panel, I selected some greyboard cogs and gears from my stash of That's Crafty! Bits and Pieces Greyboard Sheets and using VersaMark embossing ink, decorated them up with the baked texture embossing powders. The only 2 not used were Ancient Amber and Vintage Beeswax.

I added the cogs and gears to my background with dimensional glue and then took a Tim Holtz Quote Chip and coloured this by heat embossing with the Vintage Beeswax baked texture which is translucent and really gave the chip a vintage look (I love this one the most I think!).

I finished off with some rusty tin wire through holes at the top, curling one side around a pencil to form a spring shape.

Nothing like a bit of crafting when it's rained nearly all day!
See you soon,
Fliss xx

Floral Bag for That's Crafty!

Hello everyone on what seems to be finally a lovely Spring day. We have sunshine and the happy birds are singing as I type this. Hoping it lasts as it's much needed after the bank holiday washout!

I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today sharing a rather different project this week as I've been painting and stamping on fabric and I think I might become a little addicted so watch this space!

Have a great day and a lovely weekend and see you soon.
Fliss xx

Going Around In Circles at That's Crafty! Challenge Blog

Hello everyone, I hope you all had a lovely Easter break and better weather than here as it was mostly cold, wet and windy with tons of rain on Sunday which actually caused puddles on our back lawn as there was too much water to drain away as usual. Something we hadn't had happen for years!
We have a new challenge today over at That's Crafty! Challenge Blog and for April, we're Going Round In Circles, a favourite theme of mine as I love circle shapes so my inspiration is a journal page with layer upon layer of circles.

You can probably see that my inspiration for this was the sun which on it's current rare appearances, makes me happy, happy, happy!

This is actually the first page in my new black journal which I thought would be a good challenge to see how paints and inks would go on that background.

I first swiped on multi surface paints with an old store card, using first yellow, then lime and lastly teal until the surface was roughly covered leaving bits of the black underneath on show.

I then took That's Crafty! Textures Collection Sets 1 and 2 and used the various circle stamps to make my background, starting with the lined circle image and Ranger Carribean Coast dye ink, following with the double circle image and Archival Cobalt ink. I then used the 2 circle background images with Archival Cactus Flower and Fern Green inks to add texture, stamping without an acrylic block.

I stamped the rather jolly sun from Melina's Nature's Faces Set 1 with black ink, adding the happy text underneath, stamping 3 times. I coloured in the sun image with alcohol markers, followed by some pastel pencil to make the image pop more.

I finished off with some doodling in and around the circles with a white and yellow pastel pencil. I sprayed the page with fixative to ensure the pastel stayed put too.

Hopefully you can enter and there are fab prizes on offer with a voucher for the online shop for the randomly drawn winner and stencils for the top 3 which the design team choose. How can you resist?!

Have a great week.
Fliss xx