Christmas Carded Out!

Hello, managed to get my Christmas cards finished today and posted off where necessary slightly later than planned as we've had yet more drama here concerning my father in law! Won't deal with it here but he's at least on the mend now.
Here are some of my cards which were created with the gorgeous Christmas Time stamp set designed by Melina Dahl for That's Crafty! and I love this set so much.

The card you can see 3 of has a masterboard background which I created by misting Christmas Red and Green, together with a touch of Lemon Lustre sprays through the poinsettia mask on a sheet of A4 cartridge paper.

I then stamped on the fir branch using Shady Lane VersaFine Clair ink. I cut this in 4 and added the panels to square kraft card blanks, trimming if necessary.

I stamped the bird several times on another sheet of cartridge paper using VersaFine Clair Fallen Leaves ink, such a dark brown it's almost black. I coloured the birds with flat matte sprays using ochre, tomato and walnut. I die cut the images into circles in most cases although one is rectangular as I slightly misjudged the spaces when I stamped this one.

I added the images to deep green mats and glued them on the cards, finishing off with text from the Winter Berries stamp set also added to a green mat.

The other card is simply a misted background with ochre, saffron and walnut flat matte sprays with a touch of frost lustre spray. I stamped on the fir branches with the same Shady Lane ink and stamped the sentiment at the top with this ink.

The bird was coloured as before and cut out this time. I glued him in place on the card and brushed his wing with 3D holographic gel medium for some sparkle.

Hope you like these and will be back soon.

Fliss x

Long Time, No See!

Hello everyone!

Just realised it's an absolute age since I last blogged everything and don't know where the time has disappeared to. I've been so busy with various things again and trying to keep up as I used to has been really difficult.

I finally have the house to myself again for the first time in nearly 2 years as my elder child moved out again last Sunday having finally gained a permanent job rather than a contract based one since being made redundant at the beginning of last year. I have to say it feels a bit weird getting used to it again!

The moving out actually coincided with the Indigo Blu Dirty Weekend in Brighton last weekend which I was lucky enough to attend, spending the first day with Leonie Pujol and the second with Kay Halliwell-Sutton. I was really lucky to meet 2 celebrities too, Julia Watts who demos on Hochanda for various companies and Alex Turchyn who's one of their presenters. Both of them were creating along side us. Had a fabulous time and got very messy!

I created the triptych with Leonie and the altered cabinet with Kay. Hope you like them.

 

I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with a couple of frosty Christmas cards that I actually created for the July Hochanda shows (rather than me as I'm still working on mine!) You can find all the details on the blog.

Here are a few more of my creations that you may have missed as they didn't appear on here!

As you can see, there are a lot of bunnies which is because I was lucky enough to get this gorgeous stamp set to create samples with and I just love it! I couldn't stop creating with it!

Hope you're all well and I think my New Year resolution has to be to blog more often as my poor blog has been very neglected this year.

Best wishes.

Fliss x

Autumn Dawn

Hello! No crafting to share today, just some pics to share of today's amazing dawn as I was up with the lark this morning.
It's a rather chilly Autumn day today and the poor trees are already shedding their leaves when they're still green here so not much in the way of those glorious autumn shades I love yet.
Hope you like these and have a good week whatever you're doing. In my case today I'm off to the Tai chi class I've just started to help my clunky neck and back from years sat at a computer doing accounts work.

Fliss x

Blue Tulips!

Hello on a rather blustery Friday! It seems more like October than September and the poor trees are shedding leaves when they're still green.
I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with a mixed media plaque on a floral theme with a bit of artistic license as my tulips are blue!
Here's a sneak peek and you'll find the whole project over at the blog on this link

Have a great day and a lovely weekend and will be over for a long overdue visit this weekend.

Fliss xx

Dragonfly Dreams

Hello everyone, I hope this finds you all well and sorry it's been so long since I've been here. Things have been very busy firstly with work then family stuff and then I got struck down on Bank Holiday Monday with a nasty sinus infection which has only fully cleared up in the last few days.

I've done some creative therapy as I had to take my car to the garage on Friday after a warning light came on and they phoned me later in the day to say that the cost of the repair is going to be over £1,600 due to having to take the engine apart to do it. It's really upset me as you can imagine so crafting has helped a bit to take my mind off it.

Hope you like what I've created with Melina's beautiful dragonfly stamp and her gorgeous lily design as I wanted to create a calming nature scene.

I used one of Melina's gorgeous masks with texture paste on one of That's Crafty! substrates, a large white/greyboard circle with 2 little holes to add a hanger.

Once it was dry, I misted the surface with Aqua and Basil flat matte sprays to colour it. As you can see, the white surface underneath picks up more colour to bring out the pattern made by the stencil.

I stamped the dragonfly on spray overflow paper in shades of blue and green, adding more detail with a mauve Zig brush pen. I cut the image out and painted on a coat of the new and gorgeous 3D holographic gel which if you haven't tried it is just amazing!

The lilies were stamped on white cartridge paper and coloured with flat matte sprays and Zig brush pens then cut out. The leaves were stamped on spray overflow papers as was the text. Everything was then cut out.

I assembled my panel as you see using silicone glue for a 3D effect and added thread made from recycled sari silk at the top.

Here are a few more of my creations from the last few weeks which I haven't shared here yet:

I'm hoping to try and be a better blogger from now on so fingers crossed that I can keep this promise!

Fliss xx

Shrooms Galore!

Hello! Slightly late with this post as we had no internet for some of the day as BT had some sort of problem that they took several hours to sort out. You never know how much you'll miss it until you don't have it!
I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with a card featuring quite a lot of mushrooms as That's Crafty! has 2 shows on Hochanda tomorrow at 11am and 3pm and will have quite a lot mushroom stamps with some fab demos from Jo to inspire you.

You'll find all the details on how I made the card (I even managed to sneak in an artist trading card) over at the blog.

Have a great weekend and hope you can catch the shows - I know I'll be watching.

Fliss x

Grunge Flower Birthday Card for That's Crafty!

Hello on a rather dull Friday! It's still rather hot and sticky although we had a very loud thunderstorm in the early hours which woke us up and then there was quite a lot of rain. It's cleared now but is very grey and cloudy. I'm rather glad we don't get temperatures like they do in London as my daughter Sarah said it was an unbearable 37 degrees there yesterday and the design studio where she works was really awful. It was only just below 30 here but I still got puffy ankles!

I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with a rather colourful and quick to make card on a floral theme. Hope you like it.

Hoping for cooler weather over the weekend and that you're coping wherever you are.

Have a great weekend whatever you're doing.
Fliss xx

Holiday photos and more

Hello everyone, hope you're all well and coping if you have a heatwave as we do here on the UK south coast at the moment.
Just got back from our holiday to the Norwegian fjords which we greatly enjoyed as the scenery was spectacular and we were lucky with the weather as there was only 1 day with some rain. The rest of the time was mostly hot and sunny which made it rather weird to see snow on the mountain tops and ice on the glaciers we visited.

I have a few pics to share here. We stayed at Balestrand, a pretty village with traditional houses with carved wooden dragon decorations typical in the area. The fjord was the longest one called Sognefjord and it was strange the water was salt so far inland.

The food was largely fish based which I love as it's my favourite and I tried out several I haven't had before - catfish, coal fish and monkfish to name but a few. The only downside to going to Norway is the astronomical price of everything - £5 for a rather bad cappuccino (Norwegian ones are nothing like Italian!!!), the same for a 330ml bottle of fruit juice, almost £50 for a bottle of wine and so on.

Kvikne's Hotel in Balestrand where we stayed, room with a fabulous fjord view

Typical property in Balestrand with dragon decoration

View from the Akvarium jetty at Balestrand and apparently much painted

Little fjord view towards Balestrand

Further little fjord view

Esefjorden flora

Esefjorden reflections as the water was like glass

Waterfall seen on rib boat trip (exceedingly scary at first!!!)

Goats spotted on this very small scrap of relatively flat land, the rest of the area had trees everywhere and a few more lone goats were seen in these. Farming in this area is very difficult due to the lack of flat ground and we saw many tiny farms on mountainsides.

First view of the glacier area from the boat

Closer view with 2 glaciers in the distance

Supplebreen and yes, that is ice at the top, it was a blue grey in colour

Boyabreen with a top and bottom glacier as the middle section had melted

Mundal book town with lots of books in the most peculiar places, this one being the most picturesque

The top of Esefjorden

Vik Stave church complete with carved dragons

Vik Stave church and churchyard

Amazing view of layered mountains taken from Vik quayside and the photo doesn't really do it justice

There were lots of jellyfish in Vik harbour!

Bergen harbour where we spent a few hours on our way back. The tall ships race was on and the harbour was packed with masted ships (not shown here as it was too difficult for me to take photos of them). Andy was in his element and took 100s of photos.

Hope you like these and will be catching up as soon as I can.

Link to my post for last Friday at That's Crafty! Blog where I was sharing 2 cards made with 1 stencil technique.

Fliss xx