Anything Goes For December

Hello! Welcome to my inspiration for the December Challenge at That's Crafty! Challenge Blog and our theme this month is Anything Goes so hopefully you'll join in as you can enter anything you like, nothing easier than that!
I'm still in Christmas mode so I have more cards to share made with another masterboard that I've used to make a varied collection of festive cards with a tree theme. Read on to find out what I did.

My favourite Christmas set has come out to play again as I love all the elements in Donna's lovely set which has something for everyone.

I used ink sprays to create my masterboard, using Aqua and Rose Flat Matte Sprays with Aqua, Lilac, Lime and Silver Lustre Sprays. The silver was a bit stronger than I thought it would be so I used a brayer whilst it was still wet to spread the colour further and the end result was the sheet above which is an A3 size piece of cartidge paper.

I found a piece of spray overflow paper in my stash of these types of paper, this being A4 size and green and gold so perfect for my trees. I managed to get 9 stamped on the sheet with black VersaFine ink which I heat embossed with fine clear embossing powder.

I cut the masterboard into 8 pieces and decorated it in a variety of ways with stencils and metallic paint, stencils and heat embossed embossing ink and stamped, heat embossed images. I cut all the trees out and then stamped just the top star on yellow/orange spray overflow paper using black ink and clear heat embossing as before, then cut these out.

I added a little colouring to the trees with Zig Clean Color brush pens then assembled my cards using glitter cards as mats in most cases and finishing off with either a Tim Holtz seasonal sticker or a stamped sentiment.

I used:

That's Crafty! Clear Stamp Set - Christmas Collection Set 2 by Donna Gray
That's Crafty! Clear Stamp Set - Scribbled Shrooms by Melina Dahl
That's Crafty! Flat Matte Sprays - Aqua, Basil, Rose
That's Crafty! Lustre Sprays - Aqua, Aubergine, Frost, Lilac, Lime, Red, Silver
Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens
VersaFine Onyx Black Ink
Fine Clear Embossing Powder

I hope you can join in for some great prizes - all details on the challenge blog.

Have a great rest of the week.
Fliss xx

My New Obsession at That's Crafty! Blog

Hello! I hope you're all well and sorry yet again for not being around much lately. I'm still dealing with my in laws' stuff and there's still a little way to go. My father in law is definitely on the mend and will be coming out of the rehabilitation centre soon so there's a mad scramble to get the house ready for his return. He's got to live downstairs so there's loads to do to make everything as easy as possible for him.
We've finally been able to arrange my mother in law's funeral too which is at the end of this month. Life will never be the same afterwards as we will have to help my father in law quite a lot which is such a shame when he's a very independent person. I'm sure we'll all cope and at the moment it's really a case of going with the flow.

I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with the very textured trio of artist trading coins, one of which was on my last post. If you'd like to see them all and how I created them, I'd be so pleased if you hopped over.

Have a great weekend.

Fliss xx

Winter Wonderland at That's Crafty! Challenge Blog

Hello! It's a really horrible day today down here in the South as we have really strong winds and intermittent rain, really not nice!

On the crafty side, we have the November challenge beginning today over at That's Crafty! Challenge Blog and to go with the now chilly weather, our new theme is Winter Wonderland.

My inspiration is rather 2 birds, 1 stone as I've made a start on some festive cards with my favourite snowman and made a masterboard so that I could create 6 cards at once.

I began with making the masterboard from an A3 sheet of smooth cartridge paper. I sprayed it with a mix of flat matte and lustre sprays using Aqua and Bluebell Flat Matte Sprays and Aqua and Lilac Lustre Sprays. You'll notice there are a couple of areas that are green and pink, this being the accidental result of leaving the paper to dry rather too near some later ink misting so it ended up with a bit of lime and rose flat matte spray on but, hey, what does it matter! It just adds to the effect.

I then cut the sheet into 6 pieces as these fit 6x6 card blanks rather well. I used the snowflake background Dinky stencil with white multi surface paint to add a pattern just around the edges of the paper panels.

I next stamped the snowmen from Donna's Christmas Collection Set 2, 6 times on an A4 sheet of smooth thick cartridge paper with black ink. I cut these out with a stitched square die from my stash and coloured them up with Zig Clean Color markers (now in stock at That's Crafty! - yay!).

I distressed the edges of my background paper panels and glued these to some 6x6 kraft card blanks. I added the snowman panels, tucking a white die cut snowflake behind each in the top right corner and finished off with some Tim Holtz Holiday Talk stickers.

There are some great prizes if you enter so don't forget that you have to be in it to win it!

Have a great day and see you soon and it's a rather exciting Thursday tomorrow as That's Crafty! have 2 shows on Hochanda TV at 11am and 3pm with lots of new gorgeous goodies. Here's a sneak peek of what is on the shows.

See you soon!
Fliss xx

Dream Tag for That's Crafty!

Hello! A rather late post today after another exceedingly busy week to let you know that I have my usual Friday post over at That's Crafty! Blog where I'm sharing a mixed media tag with a large blooming flower embellishment.

You'll find all the details over the blog as usual if you'd like to see how I created it.

I'm still involved in doing a lot of stuff on behalf of my in laws which is why I still don't have much time for blogging. Hopefully the end is soon in sight as my father in law is now at the rehabilitation centre and is being helped with his walking.

Have a great weekend.
Fliss xx

Joy and Serendipity at That's Crafty! Blog

Hello everyone, apologies yet again for my lack of visiting. My whole week has been spent down at my in laws house moving my father in law's clothes downstairs to the bedroom he will use when he gets home (some washing needed doing too!) and dealing with taking my mother in law's clothing to charity shops plus a dress agency which will be selling some of the more high value items to raise more money for charity. I still have to sort out her flower arranging stuff as my father in law has asked me to do that so I'll be down there again next week to get it done. It seems never ending at the moment!
My father in law is now much better and can walk at last and get out of bed by himself. We're now waiting for him to be transferred to a rehabilitation centre to get him ready to return home.

I have my usual Friday post over at That's Crafty! Blog today too and it's another tag using lots of the new products from the last Hochanda show.

You'll find all the details of how it came about over at the blog.

Have a great weekend and will be round as soon as I can find a spare hour or two!
Fliss xx

Rhapsody in Blue

Hello everyone, I hope you've all had a better week than me as since I did my last post, as some of you that are friends on Facebook will know, we lost my lovely mother in law Jean last Sunday.

She seemed to be recovering but on Saturday we had a call to say she'd taken a turn for the worse and later on they called again to say that they couldn't do any more to help. Andy spent several hours with her and we were called at 5am on Sunday morning to say that she had passed away. Poor Andy had to go straight down to the hospital to sign forms and collect all her belongings as they wanted to clean her room. Rather heartless in my opinion but I suppose they see death all the time there.

My father in law is still in Brighton hospital recovering slowly from his hip replacement and a chest infection he picked up there. He has now been told about Jean and is coping as we all are so hopefully he will continue to recover as we want him back over in Worthing where it will be much easier to see him. Poor Andy has been visting every day after work in Lewes and doesn't get home before 8pm so it's a very long day for him.

I do have my usual post up over at That's Crafty! Blog today which is a card as I needed something quick and simple due to lack of time.

You'll find the whole photo over at the blog if you hop over as this is just a sneak peek. As you can see, I'm feeling rather blue this week.

Have a great weekend.
Fliss xx

Blossoming Tag for That's Crafty!

Hello everyone, hope you're all enjoying the current sunny weather if you have that as we have down here. Not that I've seen that much of it as I've had a lot of stuff to do, some rather exciting and some not! Lots of family stuff going on here due to my in laws both still being in hospital which has resulted in us all pulling together to deal with their house etc etc.
I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with my usual Friday post which this week is a layered up mixed media tag (I ended up with very blue fingers making this too) which I hope you like. Here's a sneak peek to tempt you.

I hope you have a lovely day and a great weekend and will see you soon with some rather exciting news about happenings at That's Crafty! towers.

Fliss xx

Forever Autumn Challenge

Hello! Hope you're all well at the moment and thanks so much for the kind comments on my last post. I'm still not quite 100% but I feel a lot better and just have to be careful what I eat so hopefully that will help.
My parents in law are both still in hospital for different reasons and we're still waiting on news of what is actually wrong with my father in law as they still haven't told us about the severity or not of his hip fracture.
Anyhow, enough of all that and on to my inspiration for our new challenge for September over at That's Crafty! Challenge Blog where our seasonal theme is Forever Autumn and I don't know about you but I have Justin Hayward singing that amazing song in my head!

I used one of the gorgeous shaped greyboard tags for my creation (they come in a pack of 30 in 5 different shapes with 6 of each and are incredible value) as you can throw all sorts of mixed media things at them and I did!

I first used the fern mini stencil with texture paste to add some detail to the background. Once it was dry, I went to town with some Flat Matte Sprays, using Basil, Orange and Saffron. I aimed for some complete cover and a splatter effect over the top and happily it worked!

I then spritzed on some Gold Lustre Spray for some shine and was quite surprised as it came out quite dark on the raised texture paste areas, looking almost black. Once it was dry, the amazing lustre was apparent. It doesn't show up very well in the photo but in real life it looks gorgeous.

As the background is quite strong, I had a bit of a dilemma with my leaf as I first stamped it on paper I coloured with copper, bronze and orange multi surface paints. Sadly it didn't have enough of a contrast to the background.

I solved my problem by stamping my leaf on some of the spray overflow paper as there were areas with quite a bit of orange. I brushed the leaf with 3D Gloss Gel when it was dry and glued it to the tag with silicone adhesive.

A Tim Holtz Clippings sticker coloured with a marker and some twine tied through the top finished off my tag.

There are some great prizes just for entering with a voucher for the online shop (with a stunning array of gorgeous goodies) and stencils for the Top 3 chosen by the Design Team.

It would be fab to see your lovely Autumn creations there.
Have a great day.
Fliss xx