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

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