A Return To Vintage - Raspberry Beret

 Hello again!

I managed to snatch a bit of much needed creative time just for me this weekend as I'd been looking for something and found something unexpected instead. As I've recently been working with the new small elements stamp sets and new stencils some of which are vintage in style and they're just perfect for the stamps I unearthed. I've had them all for ages and just had to play.

I stamped them all out first using VersaFine Clair inks in shades of brown, using smooth white stamping card that I got as a bargain from Hochanda a while back.

I had some inner panels spare from the frame shrines that I got to play with when Kelly's Steampunk Darlings stamps came out, so decided to use one of those. I painted it with chestnut brown multi surface paint and once dry gave it a coat of crackle glaze. Once it was mostly dry I over-painted it with a shade I mixed from several shades of multi surface paint - I used light pink, adding a little orange and magenta to produce a dusky vintage pink. As you can see, The crackle that came out was amazing!

The next step was to add some stencilled texture paste so I coloured the paste with some chestnut brown paint andd then used the gorgeous damask stencil to add a pattern in opposite corners. As it came out lighter than I expected, I lightly tapped the fully dry raised pattern with a dark brown ink and then heat embossed the pattern with clear powder.

I took my chosen stamped image and trimmed around the edges leaving quite a border. I wanted her to fit an MDF atc so left enough room round the image to add her to that with a frame on top. I stamped the frame with an image from the elements set above working my way round with brown ink and heat embossed the frame with gold embossing powder.

 

 

 

As you can see, she has a raspberry beret which I couldn't resist as that's one of my favourite songs from Prince - are you singing?

 

I then created some embellishments with craftyboard lace which I coloured lightly with Antique Linen oxide ink and then sponged with a touch of brown for a vintage look. I also stamped some MDF inchies with some of the images from the set and heat embossed these with gold powder. The colour's a bit off in the photo as they look brown but are actually gold!

 

 

I then assembled my collage using a mix of silicone and multi purpose adhesive and finished off with some text stamped with brown ink, heat embossed and trimmed into shape to fit.

I hope you like her and there will be more to follow once I get a bit more time to play.

See you soon,

Fliss x

Vintage Patchwork for That's Crafty!

 

Hello!

As promised I'm trying to do more blogging as I've been so bad at things lately (and in fact have a now huge catch up on Instagram due very soon as I'm even further behind on that!)

The artwork above is my post this week over at That's Crafty! Blog where I'm sharing my vintage style patchwork of inchies, twinchies and dominoes.

 Hope you like it and will be round to visit soon.

Have a great weekend.

Fliss x

Trying To Get Back To Blogging

 Hello from a very sheepish Fliss! I just realised how long it is since my poor blog had any attention from me and I'm really hoping to do better from now on.

There's been a lot of family drama going on in the background, mostly concerning my increasingly frail father in law as lockdown has not been good for his general wellbeing at all. His walking is now very bad due to his not being able to leave his home for several months and he's now very wobbly and has had several falls, the last one when he fell off a chair and hit his head so he ended up in hospital for a week. He's now requiring a lot of care with 4 times a day visits which the family are corrently dealing with and as you can imagine, it's taken up a lot of time!

On top of that, we have business worries with lack of work, furloughing staff, making staff redundant and so on. I won't bore you with that as I know lots of people are in the same boat.

I'm here today to share my artwork that is on That's Crafty! Blog and is one of the samples that I created for the One Day Special on Hochanda last week. There's also a pic of last week's one too underneath. I have to say that crafting has been the only thing to keep me sane at the moment as there seems to be no end in sight for the current doom and gloom!

As you can see, the latest release from That's Crafty! has seen the return of inchies, twinchies and dominoes but with a twist from Laura and Graham as they devised surfaces for whole sets to sit on if that's what you want to do, although of course you don't have to as my second pic shows 😀

I'm also getting to grips with the new Blogger format so really hope this comes out right!

I'll be round to visit shortly I promise and please forgive me for being missing for so long.

Fliss xx

Happiness Is......

Hello! A bit of a happy post as I finally managed to find my favourite bread flour on my weekly shop last week after braving Tescos. Really glad I did! This disappeared from the shelves 5 months ago and I had to restrain myself from buying more than 2 packs.

It's the little things that mean such a lot these days.

Have a really lovely week and will be round to visit soon.

Fliss xx

Always Look For Rainbows!

Hello on a rather dull and blustery day. Hope you're all staying safe and well in our troubled times at the moment.
I have a project to share over at That's Crafty! Blog today which came about as I wanted to create something to show my appreciation for our brave and amazing care workers and this is the least I could do.
If you watched the Hochanda shows yesterday That's Crafty! had, you may have spotted this on the counter next to the gorgeous new stamp designs from the ever talented Melina Dahl. There's rewind if you missed them and they're well worth a look for some amazing demos from the lovely Jo Channon, back in the studio for the first time since lockdown started and her nasty brush with the dreaded Covid-19 virus.

If you'd like to see how I created my rainbow, please click HERE to be transported to the blog.

Have a lovely weekend and see you soon,
Fliss x

More Wildflowers

Hello again, some more pics to share as I took my camera with me on my walk earlier as yesterday's photo was taken with my phone.
Somewhat of a risk to my current hayfever troubles but wanted to take some more photos whilst the flowers were in bloom.
As you can see, there were a lot more than poppies in the meadowed patches.

I'm so glad our local parks department (or at least I think it was them) decided to scatter the wildflower seeds to give us all such wonderful signs of nature to enjoy.

Have a lovely week and see you soon.
Fliss xx

Poppy Meadow at the Seaside!

Hello again, just a quick post as I just had to share this photo I snapped a little while ago.

I was driving to deliver my niece's birthday card and couldn't quite believe it when I drove past the most beautiful sight. It was a huge surprise as I was driving along the seafront. On the way home I stopped and took some photos.

Would you believe it but a poppy meadow was growing on the grass greesnward on the seafront and if you look you can see the beach huts in the background. How amazing is that!

Isn't it just gorgeous? I think my watercolours will have to come out again.

Fliss xx

Watercolour Meadow

Hello! I hope you're all well and I'm still struggling somewhat to keep up with everything (I've been working on things behind the scenes that can't yet be shared).
I have got something to share today for once as the ladies in my craft group whom I can't meet up with due to lockdown had the idea of setting up a weekly challenge project which has been very varied having included baking cakes and biscuits (when flour was available!) and making various cards shapes etc.
It was my turn to set the project this week and I wanted something rather different so out came the watercolour paints.
I thought I would share the tutorial I sent to the ladies as it's much easier to do than you might think and doesn't use much in the way of craft supplies.

Supplies:

Watercolour paints
 Selection of brushes including fine and flat
Old store or credit card
Watercolour paper
Acrylic block or plate

Step 1

Add water to blue and green paint to create washes and brush onto a square, rectangle or even a circle or oval of card, the choice is yours!

 Step 2

Add grass green watercolour paint to an acrylic block or plate and then using an old store card or similar pick up paint with the edge and use to create rough blades of grass on the lower half of the paper. You can go up into the sky if you like.

  

Step 3

Add blue paint to the block and repeat the above step with blue, scraping some paint at the bottom to add texture.

Step 4

Using a fine brush and green paint, paint of squiggles and loops as shown in the photo. It might seem strange, but these form rough stalks for the flowers.

Step 5

Using the acrylic block, add pink watercolour paint if you have it (I didn’t so I mixed red and white) then use a fine brush to create clusters of rough dots to form tall flower heads. Water down heavily any remaining paint and flick this over the panel to create splats and dots – this adds lots of interest to the piece.

Step 6

Repeat the above step using bright yellow and also add the watered down dots and splats from a loaded paintbrush.

 Step 7

Repeat the above step including splats with blue watercolour paint. As you can see in the photo, I also added more yellow to the piece.

 Step 8

Add some tiny daisies by creating brown dots for the centres and then using a fine brush with orange to create the petals which are just tiny lines in my case.

To finish the painting, water down white paint and load up the brush to create lots of dots on the panel, including the sky.

 

The finished piece can be used to make a card if you like or you could frame it to make a picture if you like it too much to part with it!

As you see, it really is just a lot of layers and you can add as much or as little detail as you like or change the type of flowers if you fancy some poppies or other meadow type flowers.

I hope you enjoyed this and let me know if you give it a go as I'd love to see it.
Have a good week and stay safe and well.
Fliss xx

Bad Blogger Again!

Hello everyone, despite my best intentions blogging and visiting has gone out of the window again over the last few weeks.
It's partly due to my DT commitments as I've had lots of samples to create which is the good bit as it was lovely to get some crafting done (although I had a bit of a struggle as my mojo has been somewhat reluctant over the lockdown).
I have been out walking as much as I can which was necessary as it helps when I have to deal with difficult accounting stuff.
I have some artwork to share which I hope you like.

Another one that's part of the journal I created for the recent One Day Special That's Crafty! had on Hochanda with quite a lot of steampunk and industrial elements and I couldn't resist calling this Einstein A Go Go as it contains what I know will be my new favourite text stamp - can you guess what it is?

 

I'll be round to catch up over the Bank Holiday weekend and in the meantime, have a great weekend and stay safe and well.

Fliss xx

Back Again!

Hello everyone, apologies for being missing over the last few weeks. I've been having a very stressful time dealing with the furloughing of some of Andy's staff who ran out of work and no more had come in to give them due to the ongoing pandemic.
I've had to do webinars with our payroll software provider and do a lot of reading up via the HMRC website and various other sources on how to deal with the Job Retention Scheme and calculate what can be paid to the staff and reclaim.
It's lucky I checked the calculations on the HMRC calculator before finishing the payroll as I discovered the payroll software was not using the right calculation method so I had to try and find out if they were going to sort it out. There were lots of complaints from other users but no explanation forthcoming so in the end I amended the figures to agree to HMRC's before making the claim. I was glad I did as they paid the grant in 3 days!
Our payroll provider said today that we would have to amend the figures to make them agree to HMRC's which is what I suspected as I couldn't see any other way of getting them correct due to the way the payroll usually calculates pay. I don't want to change providers as their accounting software is very good so I guess we're stuck with it!

Anyway enough whinging and on to much happier things as I've been crafting to keep me sane so here are some of my recent creations:

A tutorial for the following 4 floral note cards can be found on That's Crafty! blog by clicking HERE

Hope you like these and I should be round to catch up over the weekend as I have mostly finished with my payroll and accounting duties for the moment - luckily doing what I do, I'm the only one that won't get furloughed as someone has to work out what to pay everyone else!!!

Stay safe and well,
Fliss xx