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

On Butterfly Wings

Hello everyone on a lovely sunny Good Friday. I hope you're all surviving the current lockdown and not going stir crazy! I always find crafting helps and luckily I'm still able to go out for a walk each day and so far everyone is very good at keeping their distance.

I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with some very bright and pretty journal pages, chock full of floral detail as I wanted to show another way to use a lovely texture stamp.

I hope you all have a lovely Easter, well as much as you can under the current circumstances. We can't spend the weekend with our children as one is stuck in Brighton and the other in London but we will at least be able to talk to them via Skype.

See you soon.

Fliss xx

IndigoBlu Stamp Play

Hello!

I hope you're managing to have a good weekend in spite of not being able to go anywhere, in fact such lovely weather today, going in the garden if you have one is what I would recommend as a spot of weeding and digging is a really good way to get some much needed fresh air.

I have been doing that but also fitted in a bit of crafting to finish off some of my works in progress as I have quite a few on the go which haven't quite got there yet! These were made with the stamps I got when I attended the IndigoBlu weekend in Brighton last November/December and I've only just managed to get them inked up!

The tag uses up quite a few bits from my scraps box that were all in shades of spring green, some stencilled and some ink spray overflow and so on. I stamped the dog rose spray and coloured it with flat matte sprays, using rose, basil and saffron then cut it out. I brushed 3D gloss gel over the top after shaping the flowers and leaves with a large embossing ball tool.

I added some die cut pieces created with pink and dark green card and a Kaisercraft grungy lattice die together with a scrap of green dyed old crochet lace and the text from another IndigoBlu set which was stamped on an ink spray overflow scrap in shades of pink and green.

The card contains the stamped image I originally intended for the tag but turned out too pale - it was stamped with VersaFine Clair Shady Lane ink and coloured with Zig markers. I tried out lots of different backgrounds from my box but this one seemed to work the best. It's just another overflow piece that has flat matte sprays on in rose, lilac, aqua, bluebell and a tiny bit of walnut. The text is from the same stamp set and is on a further scrap of overflow paper.

I hope you like these and there will be more to follow once I finish them off!

Stay safe and see you soon.

Fliss xx

Back to Nature and all that!

Hello!

Hope you're all ok and managing to cope with all that's been thrown at you since the world went mad! This is a bit of a long post as I managed to snap a few pics on my walk this morning as nature is growing fast even if the rest of the world has come to rather a standstill.

I'm also over at That's Crafty! blog today where I've gone back to nature as I thought we could all do with a dose of serenity, the perfect time to share these particular art journal pages that were created for the February One Day Special on Hochanda.

I just love these gorgeous trees that were stamps created from the hand carved designs made by the very talented Lynne Moncrieff.

Now for my nature photos that I had to snap as it's so lovely to see nature in bloom.

I hope you like these as must as I enjoyed seeing and snapping the original flora.

Stay safe and well and keep on crafting!

Fliss x

Work in Progress

Hello!

I've been doing a bit of colouring therapy today to take my mind off all that's happening at the moment and spent most of today stamping, colouring and cutting out images ready to create some artwork, assuming my somewhat missing mojo decides to make an appearance.

I've been playing with the gorgeous stamp designs by Emma Blake for Clever Prints and love the simplicity and quirkiness of style. Hoping you like what I've done with them too.

As you can see, I've gone for bright and cheery, colouring all the images except the lovely Mary with my That's Crafty! flat matte sprays as they're mostly bright and zingy. Mary's hair and clothing are coloured with the new satin inks which have a lovely sheen to them which you can't really see here unfortunately.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend even if you're stuck indoors, at least here in the UK you can go for a walk once a day unless you're classed as vulnerable for age or health reasons. I'm hoping this continues but who knows when the situation is changing so rapidly.

Stay safe and well.

Fliss x

Feelin' Groovy Baby!

Hello, hope you're all ok and managing to stay positive and cheerful in spite of all that's happening in the world at the moment.

Everything feels rather strange like a row of Saturdays and Sundays and going to the supermarket really is an ordeal! I did my usual weekly shop yesterday and we all had to queue around the outer edges of the huge carpark, 2 metres apart to enter the store. That took around half an hour as the queue was so long but when you actually got in the store it was a different story with quite a few people getting much closer than they were supposed to as they were so eager to grab the food! I mentioned this on the way out and was told they were now limiting the number of people in the store  as they seemed to have under estimated the length of time it took to do the shopping and pay.

It wasn't all bad though as the elderly man in front of me at the checkout had what I though was a walking stick in his hand but when he put it on his trolley I saw it was a riding crop!!! I nearly asked if it was to warn people away from him but thought better of it lol

I have my usual Friday post up over at That's Crafty! blog and this week I'm sharing a rather funky art journal spread with a retro vibe that I created for the last Hochanda shows.

You'll find all the details over at the blog.

Keep calm and keep on crafting and see you soon.
Fliss x

Art Journaling Day

Hello, I hope you're all coping in the current very difficult circumstances and surviving isolation if you have to do that. We're now on lockdown here in the UK and it's been difficult already as I've been doing financial things over the last couple of weeks as I'm the accounts and financial manager for my hubby's partnership which if you didn't know is an architectural business.

It's not just the shops suffering from lack of income as the business has lots of fees outstanding and no-one is paying them! This makes it so hard as we obviously can't pay our bills so we're scrambling around trying to find out what to do!

I have a couple of art journal spreads to share, one of which was my That's Crafty! post for last Friday and is very topical as is the other which shows how nature is so important to me although at the moment, the nearest I'll get is my garden! I think by the time the virus issue is over it might look a lot better than it does now.

This second is my nature refuge one.

This one has an ink spray beackground which I misted first using a stencil with walnut flat matte spray, flipping the stencil over and pressing the inky side on the other page. I followed this with the same stencil and aqua flat matte spray, flipping the stencil over again and repeating the previous step.

I stamped Alexa's gorgeous face on the right hand page with black ink, colouring her hair, eyes and lips with the amazing new satin inks from That's Crafty! I coloured her face with Prima watercolour pencils.

I stamped the trees (by Lynne Moncrieff) and mushrooms (by Melina Dahl) on the left hand page with dark brown ink, colouring the mushrooms with pencils and adding blossom to the trees by dotting with white, light pink and magenta multi surface paints until I was happy with the effect.

I then stamped the flower from the Alexa's face set directly on the pages with the same ink and coloured them with orange satin ink. I finished off with one of Lynne's fabulous affirmations from the trees set I used which I stamped on a scrap of ink spray overflow paper.

Have a great rest of the week and stay safe and well.

Fliss x

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