Nature Themed Artist Trading Block and more

Hello on a very wet, chilly and windy day. It's so cold I just had to switch my heating back on despite wearing 3 layers of clothing already! I did my weekly shop earlier too and although I got there quite early the car park was almost full as was the supermarket. Don't know if people are panicking about the weather or the dreaded corona virus.

I'm over at That's Crafty! blog today sharing one of my samples for the recent One Day Special on Hochanda and this one is an artist trading block featuring the gorgeous new Language of Trees stamps designed by Lynne Moncrieff.

As it's so cold, I'm longing for Spring even more so thought I would share a few of my Spring type artwork to cheer myself up and hopefully you too. Hope you like these.

Have a great weekend and see you soon.
Fliss x

Graphic Birthday Card

Hello on a very chilly but sunny day here on the south coast of the UK. 

A quick share of the birthday card I created for my eldest nephew who was 27 on Monday and I always struggle to create cards for young men other than those involving sport, but as I don't actually own anything for that type of card, my creative thinking hat went on.

A search through my papers file unearthed some gelli prints made a while back featuring just stripes of red, white and blue (That's Crafty! multi surface paints in bright red, light blue and white) that I had created for a project with a marine theme.

I decided on a simple graphic style and cut strips of the paper, some with vertical and some horizontal stripes for extra interest. I trimmed one end to an inverted triangle and added them to a mat of black card to make them pop.

I felt they needed an extra something so I took one of the mark making stamp sets designed by Lynne Moncrieff and stamped on alternate strips with black ink. I glued the pieces in place on a white square card blank and finished off with the birthday text stamped on a further scrap of my chosen papers (the text is from one of the grunge flower stamp sets by Melina Dahl).

Have a great rest of the week and see you again soon.

Fliss xx

Attitude is Everything

Hello! Slightly late to let you know that my usual Friday post is up over at That's Crafty! Blog and this week I'm sharing a double page spread from my A4 journal which was one of the samples I created for the recent Hochanda shows. This journal is all about using printed papers and how you can make them your own.

You'll find all the details on how I created these pages by hopping over to the blog.

Thanks so much to everyone who left such kind comments on my last post about the scam attempt I suffered last week. It will take a while to get over it but I definitely won't be caught like that again!

Have a lovely weekend.
Fliss x

That's Crafty! and Other News

Hello all, I hope you're well and have had a good week, definitely better than mine anyway as I had a rather traumatic experience on Wednesday afternoon as a man phoned up saying he was from the security section of my bank and that a large transaction was about to go through my bank account and had I originated the payment, which I had not!

Suffice to say it went on from there with him piling on more and more pressure in various ways but it wasn't until he tried to get me to transfer money from a savings account to my current account (to protect my compromised accounts of course!) that I realised there was something radically wrong with the phone call (the number of the caller being that on my debit card by the way) and left him hanging on about to send me a "security email to prove his identity" and phoned Andy.

Andy phoned the bank and was told it was definitely a scam. I can't tell you how stupid I felt letting it get as far as it did, even though I did realise it before it was too late. You hear stories of other people being taken in by these sort of scams and don't understand how that happens. I can tell you now having been on the receiving end of one of these calls just how plausible and convincing these people can sound. It's really shaken me up too!

On another note entirely, a much more cheerful one, I have my usual Friday post up over at That's Crafty! blog and I'm sharing one of my sample journal spreads for this week's One Day Special on Hochanda featuring some of the gorgeous new stamp designs from Lynne which I absolutely love.

Here's one half of the spread but you'll need to hop over to the blog to see all of it.

Have a great weekend and see you soon.
Fliss x

Floral Tag for That's Crafty!

Hello everyone, a slightly late post today to let you know that I have my usual Friday tutorial up over at That's Crafty! Blog and this week I'm sharing a mixed media tag that I created for the January Hochanda shows.
It features some of the gorgeous new doodle stamps designed by Melina and topped off with one of her lovely floral images.
Here's a sneak peek to hopefully tempt you to hop over.

As you can see, I seem to be in the bright image on a darker background phase although I know I'll revert to my usual bright and cheery style very soon.

Hope you've had a good week and that you have a lovely weekend.
See you soon.
Fliss xx

A Bit of Bling for That's Crafty!

Hello on a somewhat dull and dreary Friday. A quick post to let you know that I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with a mixed media piece of artwork with a bit of bling from the amazing That's Crafty! 3D holographic gel medium and some bright and cheery flowers.
Here's a sneak peek to tempt you to hop over if you'd like to see the whole project.

You can just see the bling in the background and hope you like the bright flowers as I wanted a strong contrast to the darker background which was an experiment on MDF with the flat matte ink sprays.

Have a great day and a lovely weekend.
See you soon.

Fliss xx

Longing For Spring Artist Trading Box

Hello everyone on a very wet and miserable day here in the South of England. I decided to finish off the artist trading box I started creating last week to cheer myself up as I'm really longing for some better weather to arrive.
Hope you like my cheery artwork.

Here's how it began:

I found some ink spray overflow paper with shades of green and yellow with white space in places and a sprinkle of orange in my box - perfect for a spring themed creation. I took the gorgeous leaf silhouette from one of the sets designed by Lynne and stamped leaves in shades of green on the papers cut to fit my box. A couple then had additional stamping with another leaf and orange ink.

I stamped some of my own flowers, choosing the one that makes me think of spring as it looks a little like a parrot tulip and coloured them with flat matte sprays, using orange, saffon and tomato.

I then assembled my box adding in some leaves from my box, not exactly spring shades but oranges, browns etc to contrast with the background.

 

I added text from Lynne's Leaf sets and some of her beautiful affirmations together with the lovely butterfly from That's Crafty! Textures Collection set 3 stamped on overflow paper.

I hope this has cheered you up if you have a nasty wet day.
Have a good week whatever the weather.
Fliss xx

A Bit of Mixed Media for That's Crafty!

Hello! Hope you've all had a good week and managed to fit in some crafting as I did (in between accounts and VAT!). I'll have some more things to share over the weekend I'm hoping as I have several things in progress at the moment.
In the meantime, I have a post today over at That's Crafty! blog which is another of the samples I created for the last Hochanda shows which featured some new and gorgeous background stamps and masks designed by the ever talented Melina.

Here's just a sneak peek and you'll have to pop over to the blog if you'd like to see the whole thing which has a bit of bling in the form of the gorgeous That's Crafty! holographic texture paste which I really love.

Have a great weekend and see you soon.

Fliss xx

Creating Grungy Background Papers

Hello! It's been ages since I've done some creating just for me so over the last week or so I've snatched a bit of time and managed to make some rather grungy mixed media backing papers so that I had some to put some cards together for those occasions when time is short - most of the time in my case!

I took some photos of the process as it was kind of one layer a day so thought I would share here how I created them as if you do several at once it's much quicker.

 The first step was to cut an A3 sheet of smooth cartridge paper into 6 pieces as these happily fit card blanks 15cm square, my size of choice.

I took some pastel shades of That's Crafty! multi surface paints - Apricot, Lavender, Light Blue and Teal and put a small amount of each on my glass craft mat. I misted them with a little water to dilute them a bit, then used an old store card to scrape the colours on to the paper squares. You can see the results above, sort of rough stripes.

Once they were dry, I got out the Distress Oxide inks and Melina's new Just Doodlin' background stamps which I know will get inked up an awful lot as they're so versatile. 

You can see below the shades I used and I've put a link to the stamps at the end of each photo.

That's Crafty! Just Doodlin' Clear Stamp Set 2 by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Just Doodlin' Clear Stamp Set 2 by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Just Doodlin' Clear Stamp Set 3 by Melina Dahl

As you can see from the photos, quite a bit of overstamping and second generation stamping came into play here as I was aiming for a grungy textured look rather than an obvious pattern.

I then made a few cards so that you can see what you can do with the papers once you've made them. The colours were kept fairly quiet so that the images on top could be much stronger shades and stand out well.

That's Crafty! Grunge Flowers Set 1 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Grunge Flowers Set 2 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Flowers Collection Set 6 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl
That's Crafty! Grunge Flowers Set 4 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl (for the text)
That's Crafty! 6 x 6ins Mask - Leaf Circle by Melina Dahl


Hopefully I'll have some cards to share soon using the remaining papers and hope you like what I've done so far.
Enjoy the rest of the week!

Fliss xx

Dreaming Artist Trading Block

Hello all, trying to get back into blogging again is one of this year's resolutions along with trying to fit in a lot more crafting.
I will also try and visit more than last year which was mainly because of having to do quite a lot for my father in law after his terrible fall and slight stroke which have left him struggling to do everything so he's needed help. As I only work part time, a lot landed on me.

I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today sharing the artist trading block I created for the Hochanda shows on Monday with Melina's gorgeous new stamp and mask designs. If you haven't tried making one of these, I can recommend it as it's so much easier than you might think.

All the details can be found over at the BLOG

Have a great weekend and see you soon.

Fliss xx

PS: Just a little quickie to say that I've had to activate comment moderation as I got deluged with a ton of spam comments on some of my posts (had to delete a couple as there were so many to deal with)

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