Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : December

Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

This is the last verse for the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge, the very last one, the project is done.
Here is my last page for the mini book that I will put together and finish off when I return home after Christmas.

Stamps used:
Tim Holtz Collection : Watercolor Trees CMS317
Card-io Majestix : Elegant baubles

I have really enjoyed doing this project in 2017, sometimes it was tough meeting the deadlines, struggling with ideas and limited by the small pages but it was fun.
Thank you to everybody who has commented on my work this year, it was so kind of you all.

Merry Christmas everyone x

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : November

A bit of a last minute rush for the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge this month, where did that month go! I knew exactly what I wanted to do earlier in November but the days just got gobbled up.

November's verse;

Dull November brings the blast

Then the leaves go whirling past

Here is my entry;

I hadn't used Brushos on any of my pages for this project yet so this one is a Brusho and silhouette design, just to mix it up and use a different technique. I used Moss Green Brusho, possibly my favourite colour in that range and I think it really works for Autumnal scenes. I love the browns and purples that are mixed in with the greens.

The tree and leaves are from Lavina Stamps.

Only one month to go for this project now and the book will be complete.

Have a great weekend everybody. x

Spooky

A quick make for Halloween.

Sizzix Scarecrow Die and Skull Damask texture fades embossing folder by Tim Holtz.

Stamping with Water

I am still playing with Distress Oxides, I don't think I will ever tire of experimenting with them.
Here are some experiments using water with stamps and stencils.

Background : Distress Oxides applied with a foam applicator - wild honey, spiced marmalade and frayed burlap. Starting in the middle of the card panel with the lightest colour and blending out to the frayed burlap at the edges. Then with a background stamp, I used a Tim Holtz floral background stamp, spritz the stamp with water and stamp it on the card. The water reacts with the oxide ink and removes some of the colour.
I like this one, it looks like vintage wallpaper.

The same idea with this one but this time I used a stencil (Tim Holtz : Shattered). Spritz the stencil with water and stamp with it, hold it in place for about a minute with a piece of kitchen roll on top of it to soak up any water that seeps out. 

This one looks like a spiders web. 

I used the background to make an Autumn panel. 

Stamps used : PaperArtsy ESC05 by Scrapcosy and PaperArtsy ELB29 by Lin Brown.

Stamping with water is easy and lots of fun. Don't use too much water, just enough to make the stamp or stencil wet but not dripping. 

Bye x

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : October

Here we go, my October entry for the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge.

The verse for October is :

Fresh October brings the pheasant

Then to gather nuts is pleasant

I thought pheasants ought to feature in this one and I wanted to use my Scrapcosy acorn branch stamp for the "nut" element. Here is the mini page I came up with for October;

The background card is from my stash, coloured with distress oxides (wild honey, spiced marmalade and vintage photo). There is a bit of water spritzing there, just a little.

I stamped the branch in potting soil archval ink and coloured it with inktense pencils, they work on top of distress oxides which is new thing I tried today. Acorns are shiny so there is some glossy accents on that acorn, it doesn't show that well in the photo but it is there.

I printed off a couple of pheasants from the internet, cut them out and added them. They were tiny so the cutting was a challenge! 

Autumn is so inspiring for arty crafty projects. 

I'm off to see what others have done for the challenge now. 

Catch you later and thanks for visiting.

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : September

Time for my entry for the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge. The September verse is;

Warm September brings the fruit

Sportsmen then begin to shoot

Fruit stamps seem to be in short supply at my house but I have some pears so I thought I would use those for the background with a little country scene as the focal image. I have a Dreamweaver stencil of a pear. A bit of masking, inking and stamping with distress ink and I got my focal image. I masked it out with masking tissue and then stamped the pears and leaves on the background using archival ink and coloured the pears with a distress marker.

Silhouette stamps used were by Hobbyart CS083D Farmhouse Scene-it.

The pears in the background - unknown.

Stencil - Dreamweaver 

Archival inks : Leaf green and potting soil

Distress inks : Shabby Shutters, Tumbled Glass, Milled Lavender, Dusty Concorde

Happy Weekend everybody x

Blues and Greens Challenge

I had the time and felt like doing a challenge so decided to make an entry for the August Country View Challenge. The theme is Blues and Greens, a great colour combination. I was going to make a tag but changed my mind and made a small canvas. Here it is, photo taken outdoors in the sun so the colours look a little paler than in reality:

For the background I used an old book page and some torn music paper and painted it with Granny Smith and Teresa Green Fresco paints.

I added some circles stamped in chalk paint with a bottle top.

This is watercolour card stock with PaperArtsy infusions : In the Navy and the middle panel was an experiment with a few greens, The Sage, Emerald Isle and Slime I think. I didn't use that one. I die cut some Tim Holtz wildflowers from the larger panel and used the TH butterfly punch.

At this stage I thought the canvas needed a bit of stamping so I added some text with leaf green archival ink and the bubbles in cornflower blue. Sticking to the blues and greens for the stamping I was happy with the background. I added the die cut flowers and butterflies plus a TH quote chip colour tinted with the infusions.

Here is a close up so you can see the book text still shows through the paint although they were opaques, I watered them down a little.

Ingredients used for this canvas:

PaperArtsy Infusions : In the Navy

Ranger Archival ink : Fern Green and Cornflower Blue

Tim Holz Wildflower dies

PaperArtsy Fresco paints : Teresa Green, Granny Smith and Chalk.

Stamps : PaperArtsy Mini MN61 and Indigo Blu Bubbles background.

Tim Holz butterfly punch.

This is my entry for August on the  Country View Crafts' Challenge Blog.

Thank you for visiting today. 

Woodland Postcards

Here is one of my August bank holiday weekend playtime makes using my Scrapcosy woodland stamps.

I had a bit of a tidy up in the craft room recently and found some old cardstock with an interesting background. It acts as a resist if you add ink. I used Adirondack dye ink applied with a duster brush (raisin and caramel). I stamped the images with coffee archival ink and painted them with watered down distress ink (rusty hinge, gathered twigs and wild honey).

I added some wooden alphabet letters and a gem to finish them off and mounted them on dark red card stock.

I think you can see the resist background showing through on the mushrooms in the photo, in real life it shows all over the card which adds a nice subtle texture detail.

Stamps : PaperArtsy Eclectica ESC05 by Scrapcosy.

Ink : TH Distress Ink, Ranger Adirondack dye ink and Ranger Archival ink.

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : August

This is my August page for the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge.
The verse this month is :

August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.

I've been thinking about this one for two weeks, we have to include a tractor. All that kept spinning around in my head with this one was corn dollies. Should I draw a tractor with a corn dolly driving it, maybe a corn dolly with a tractor as an embellishment or a row of corn dollies and tractors in a field. There are so many ways to interpret that verse and I have no tractor stamps and no corn stamps so time to improvise.

The corn dolly and vintage tractor images were printed from the internet and colour tinted with inktense pencils. The background is a print of a photograph I took last week in the vegetable garden at Chartwell. A different kind of page this time, no stamping at all.

Autumn Tag

A busy weekend with house jobs but I still found the time to have a play. I have a couple of the new Distress Oxides: antique linen, frayed burlap and wild honey so I used then to make an Autumn tag.
Of course I got carried away and threw in some infusions as well.

Stamps: PaperArtsy Eclectica by Scrapcosy ESC05
Paperartsy Infusions : Rusty Car, Olive Tree and Orange County
Distress Oxides : antique linen, frayed burlap and wild honey

The images in the background and the mushroom are stamped with coffee archival ink. The branch is stamped with frayed burlap oxide and painted with antique linen. The mushroom was stamped on kraft card and painted with infusions and matte glaze, I quite like the effect on kraft card.

Hope your weekends were good ones.

Dreamer Canvas

When the May 2017 issue of Craft Stamper magazine arrived on my doormat and I saw the stunning project in the article by Jenny Marples, I knew I wanted to give that a try. I often see projects I want to try and time goes by but with this one, it was still in my head three months later.

I've pretty much followed the instructions in the article but used PaperArtsy Fresco paints, changed the colours of some of the buildings and changed the words to make it my own.
Here is my finished canvas;

The paints I used for the background were Squid Ink (one of my favourites, love the name and the deep purple tone), Elephant, Slate and Sage.

This is the background before I started:

The next layer was stamped using white gesso and the Tim Holtz Halftone background stamp CMS260. Then I used my PaperArtsy mini MN18 for the letters and numbers in black and coffee archival ink. I didn't get photos at each stage although I intended to. I totally got lost in the project and three hours went by in a flash, I forgot to eat, it was great.

I spent ages die cutting the Tim Holtz suburbia buildings and adding the details, some of the parts are so tiny but it is worth the effort.  The photo below was taken outdoors so the background looks a bit more blue than it actually is.

Here's a close up :

I am really pleased with this one so huge thanks to the very talented Jenny Marples for the idea.

Enjoy your Sundays and see you again soon. x 

Message in a bottle

I was having a play with some Studiolight papers and dies at the weekend and made a couple of collage cards. These are the results of my playtime;

All products used are by Studiolight from the Summer Feelings range.

6x6 Paper pad.

Dies Summer Feelings SF47

Decoupage labels sheet EASYSF576

Embellishments - pearls from stash

I liked the colours and the beach themes, fun to work with. The die cut starfish and feather were cut from kraft card and colour tinted with distress ink.

There are lots of birthdays in August so two more cards done.

Thanks for visiting today.

Playtime

This afternoon I had a play with my Seth Apter bits and pieces. I love the abstract shapes of Seth's dies. Normally, I'm not a fan of die cutting (unless they are Tim Holtz dies of course, who doesn't like those) but the Spellbinder die I have from Seth's range cuts properly and is great fun to play with. Initially I just used a bit of old shiny card from my stash  just to see what the die looked like but ended up using it because it matches the limited edition paints quite well. I think I need to add more of these dies to my wish list!

Here are two cards I made with my panels, one is a card for a friend's 60th birthday in August.

Spellbinder Die : Seth Apter Splatter Proof

Numbers die cut using Sizzix Tim Holtz Boardwalk die 

Stamps : PaperArtsy Eclectica : E3 Seth Apter 04 

Paint : PaperArtsy Fresco Seth Apter Limited Edition : Smoked Paprika, Green Patina, Mud Splat, Key Lime.

Metallic effect card stock from stash.

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : July

The July verse for the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge is :

Hot July brings cooling showers,

Apricots and gillyflowers.

We have to include a gillyflower so I googled gillyflower just to be sure. A gillyflower is a medieval term for any fragrant summer flower but typically refers to dianthus or carnation. So I used my Tim Holtz sketchy flowers for this page, I think they are carnations.

I started with distress ink on the background, mainly blues but with some cracked pistachio thrown into the mix. Then some stamping and masking of the flower heads in the background, I wanted to leave them sketchy and add one flower head as a focal image coloured apricot. I used Promarkers to colour that one, cut it out and stuck it on the page. 

I wasn't too happy with the background as I wanted it to look summery but as if it had been raining or was about to rain. I added some distress oxides in faded jeans and broken china plus water spritzing and tried to drip it a bit from the top of the page. It doesn't show that well in the photo but there are some very fine drips. OK, happy with that now. Oxides are just so good!

New PaperArtsy Stamps

I am loving the new PaperArtsy releases and I predict they are going to be costing me a fortune. My first purchase was Kay Carley's beautiful foxglove set EKC08 and the new stencil PS061.
Check out the PaperArtsy blog post, Kay's example's are stunning :
http://blog.paperartsy.co.uk/2017/06/new-paperartsy-products-eclectica-kay.html


Inspired by Kay's work I had a play and made up a couple of little cards. Here is one of them.

The background was an experiment with infusions which went a bit wrong so I used Chalk Fresco Finish paint on top of it, I quite like that effect.
I used Distress oxides Faded Jeans and Wilted Violet for the stencilling then stamped the smaller of the two foxgloves from the set in black. I added some of the other flowers in black and cornflower blue archival ink and coloured them with distress oxides. One of the bees is cut out and mounted on a foam pad so he stands off the foxglove.

That was fun, I know I will use the stamps and the stencil a lot.
Thanks to Kay and to PaperArtsy for another great release!

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : June

Oh how I struggled with the verse this month. It was the posy. I had loads of ideas for roses, I like doing floral themes, but the posies and the children blocked all creativity. I have to say I don't particularly like this one but it is done.

I found a stamp with a child holding a posy, phew! I just stamped it and coloured it with water colour pencils. That's it.

Stamps used : Polka Doodles PPC0001
Water Colour Pencils - Faber Castell

June brings roses, lilies, tulips
fills the children's hands with posies

... and I missed the deadline in the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge for June.

Illustrated Garden

Today I would like to share a couple of cards I have made using the Tim Holtz Illustrated Garden stamp set by Stampers Anonymous.
For some time now I have wanted to try stamping on fabric and I thought the lovely vintage flower stamps would be perfect for this. The images are  stamped with black archival ink and coloured with TH distress markers on fine linen. I am quite pleased with the results.

The panels are mounted on paper cut with pinking shears and some torn book pages. 

Have a great week everybody and thank you for visiting.

Cat Therapy

Sometimes all you need to do to clear your head and relax is colour something in with watercolour pencils. The Laurel Burch stamps from Stampendous are perfect for such therapy. Today I finished off a panel I started in the week and mounted it on a card so I can add it to my stash for a birthday later in the year.

I used watercolour card, masking and stamping in black versafine ink.
I have a new set of Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer watercolour pencils that I was keen to try out and I must say, they are so nice to use. They are very soft and loaded with pigment, the colours blend really easily.
I bought my pencils from Cowling and Wilcox and they are on sale at the moment in a set with Pitt pens, it's always good to find a bargain.

I am quite pleased with the result so I might just stamp up some more panels for those times when a bit of colouring therapy is required.

Thanks for dropping by today and hope you are enjoying your weekends wherever you are.

Simply Wild

Today I would like to share a little card I made using my Visible Image "Stay Wild" stamp.
This one was super easy. The background is made with distress oxides on white stamping card spritzed with a little bit of water. The horse image is stamped with black Versafine ink. That's it, very simple.

Enjoy your weekends everybody.

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : May

Here is my entry for the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge for May.

The verse this month is :

May brings flocks of pretty lambs

Skipping by their fleecy dams

I remembered I had a stamp of a lamb which was a freebie with a magazine. Amazing, I found it! Then I remembered a Hobby Art set that a friend gave to me as she had a duplicate. It is the same set that Claire used on her canvas this month, I recognise those sheep. 

I used distress inks for the background and for some of the stamping, removed the ink from the sheep in the distance with a water brush and coloured the fences and lamb with inktense pencils.

Stamps used:

Card-io Oriental Blossom (branches and leaves).

Hobby Art CS083D Farmhouse Scene-it (sheep, wildflowers and fences)

Rural Springtime from Creative Stamping Magazine issue 23 (lamb)

Next month we will be half way through the challenge and half way through the year, how scary is that!

Veggie Scraps

I love bank holiday weekends, I get time for me. I have spent the afternoon playing in my craft room and here are a couple of Scrapcosy inspired cards.

Stamps by PaperArtsy : Eclectica E3 Scrapcosy 02

Stencil by PaperArtsy : Scrapcosy 049

The background technique is described on Raquel's Scrapcosy YouTube video for the Ally Pally make and take. I used metallic glaze with some gold acrylic paint and "In the Navy" infusions for my wood panels. The vegetables are painted with infusions and the yellow on the cabbage card is inktense pencil. I love those stamps.

What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter?
Pumpkin pi.

Wild Horses

I have been having a play with my new Laurel Burch stamp from Stampendous today.

I made two versions, one is coloured with Copics and for the other I used water colour pencils.

The images for both cards were stamped and embossed with gold sparkle WOW embossing powder before colouring and I added some doodle details with gel pens.

I cut out the panel coloured with the alcohol pens and mounted it on some purple cardstock, I think I prefer that one because these folk art style images need bright colours.

Colouring these was fun.

Stamp : LBCR005 Cling Wild Horses by Stampendous.

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : April

Here is my entry for the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge for April.

The verse this month is :

April brings the primrose sweet,

Scatters daisies at our feet.

The challenge is to add a primrose or a daisy so I chose daisy giving me the opportunity to revisit my favourite JOFY daisy stamps from PaperArtsy's JOFY 13 stamp set.

 

I kept it simple because I think the sketchy images are so lovely I did not want to over-work this one. The background is an old book page with a light wash of gesso and some vintage photo distress oxide lightly added.

The daisies are coloured with distress markers : wild honey, spiced marmalade and mowed lawn. I added the verse and my page is done.

Happy Easter everyone.

Infusions Take 2

It crossed my mind that I said I would share a few more of my infusions experiments a couple of weeks ago so here they are.

First a tag using metallic glaze with Emerald Isle and Black Knight infusions for the background.

Stencil : PaperArtsy PS049 by Scrapcosy
Stamp : PaperArtsy Hot Picks HP1507EZ

.... and a set of ATCs. The backgrounds are metallic glaze again with Golden Sands infusions applied with a brush.

Stamps : PaperArtsy ESC01 by Scrapcosy

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : March

Here is my entry for the Craft Barn Twelve Month challenge for March.

The verse from Sara Coleridge's poem is :
March brings breezes loud and shrill
Stirs the dancing daffodil.

The challenge for this month is mad hares and daffodils. The first thought that popped into my head was the March Hare from Alice in Wonderland, no surprises for me as I am an Alice fan. So, whatever I did, I wanted my March Hare in it.

I didn't really have a plan when I started so I stamped the hare onto white card and coloured him with inktense pencils and cut him out. Since he needed to be somewhere, I created a background with Stampscapes stamps to make a pathway with tufts of grass. To add the daffodils I used an old wooden block stamp from my stash called Three Daffodils by Hero Arts and made them "dance" into the picture along the border.

I have also finished off the cover for my mini book for these pages to live in when I complete the twelve month project, also a motivation to make sure I do finish it. Here is my book cover:

I used a Sizzix Thinlits die by Lori Whitlock to make the pages and the covers plus the little embellishments on the cover. The papers are from my Tim Holtz wildflowers paper pad.

I am having lots of fun with this project and love seeing what everyone else comes up with too, there is so much talent out there. 

Until next time, thank you for dropping by. x

PaperArtsy Infusions Blog Candy from The Craft Barn

The Craft Barn has Blog Candy and it is a full set of the 12 new PaperArtsy Infusions. What a treat it would be to win those.

Here is the link :

http://thecraftbarnblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/blog-candy.html

Talking of infusions,  I was having a little play with them yesterday. Here is an ATC that I made using Infusions with PaperArtsy metallic glaze. I am pleased with that effect, in fact, I was so pleased with it yesterday I made more things. I will post them on my blog later.

PaperArtsy Infusions : Black Knight from the last release.

PaperArtsy Metallic Glaze

Botanical image from PaperArtsy stamp set ESC01 by Scrapcosy

Stencil : PS049 from PaperArtsy, Ground Espresso distress ink

Good Luck with the blog candy draw everyone.

Distress Experiments

Oh my goodness, I love the new Tim Holtz Distress Oxides.
I was relatively restrained and only ordered three colours, just in case I wasn't impressed. Well, that wasn't going to happen was it!
They arrived last week so this afternoon I had a little play. There is no finished project here, I just wanted to share some of my experiments with you.

The three colours I have are Vintage Photo, Iced Spruce and Spiced Marmalade. All the trials are on white stamping card.

First up, here are two panels showing the difference between Distress ink on the left and Distress oxide on the right. The oxides are muted colours when you add water, the inks are more vibrant. The finish is matt, just as advertised.

This is a link to a video of Tim's demo at Creativation by ScrapTimeVideos :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p92g4Kfnbw

The second panel originally had a bit of iced spruce ink mopped up from a previous project and I added the oxides on top. The oxides are opaque so on top of the ink but there are some little patches of the dye ink showing through.

So, what are they like to stamp with? Here are some comparisons.

See the colour difference between the iced spruce panels, isn't it lovely. The leaves are stamped with the vintage photo, the colour is very similar but spritz water on them and the magic happens. The dye ink separates from the oxide but the image is still there as the pigment is left behind, just not so sharp. Add more water, more separation.

Finally, what does distress ink look like on top of the distress oxide? 

For the tag on the right, I used the three colours as in the first photo. I spread the oxides on the craft mat, spritzed with water, dried with the heat gun, added more, dried again and so on until I was happy with it.  Watch Tim's demo, the technique is exactly the same as using distress ink. 

I used spiced marmalade distress ink through one of the new stencils (Floral THS077). Doesn't that look good. All it needs now is a focal image and maybe some embellishment and I think that would be quite a nice tag. I'll think about that later.

The small tag on the left is just me cleaning up the stencil with a baby wipe, we don't want to waste that ink do we! I'll find some use for that later too.

I highly recommend these oxides, I had great fun this afternoon with my new toys.

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : February

Time to post my entry for the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge for February.

This month's verse is:
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again
and the challenge is to include a heart and cherub.

The heart and cherub were a bit of a challenge but I found a nice gothic cherub picture on the internet holding a heart. I think it matches my sombre, rainy lake scene. I have edged the verse with worn lipstick distress ink to tie in the colour of the heart.

Lake scene stamp from Stamp-It Australia : Luscious Landscapes stamped using watering can archival ink.
The background is iced spruce and weathered wood distress ink with water added to make it look a bit gloomy like a rainy day.

PaperArtsy Pink and Orange Challenge

Having spent most of January drooling over the spectacular new releases from PaperArtsy and purchasing a couple of the new stamp plates I decided I should get busy and use them.  The inspiration posted by Darcy for Topic #1 : Pink and Orange was fantastic, I could easily have been inspired by several of those ideas. I chose the fabric picture with sequins, the colours reminded me of sari fabrics which are typically hot colours with gold accents.

I have made a small canvas for my entry. My plan was to have pink and orange stripes in the background with sequins dotted around and then use my new Tracy Scott stamp set for the focal image. Here it is.

Fresco Chalk Paints :
Bougainvillea, Smoked Paprika, Pumpkin Soup, Rose, Old Gold.
(ooh - Bougainvillea blends so well with that Smoked Paprika paint, rather pleased with the result on the flower)

Stamps :
Eclectica ETS08 by Tracy Scott.
I painted some white card and then stamped the flower, cut it out and stuck it on the canvas. Same idea for the centre of the flower which was old gold on top of pumpkin soup.

Archival Ink:
Jet Black and Monarch Orange

Finished off with some sequins, gold flake and bit of gold sparkle pen on the stem.

Hope you all have a good week and thank you for visiting. x

Playtime

Just having a little play.
Here is a small panel of happiness using distress crayons and PaperArtsy Eclectica EEG16 rubber stamps by Emma Godfrey.

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : January

A new year and a new challenge from the Craft Barn, this year the challenge is based on Sara Coleridge's poem, The Months.

January brings the snow

makes our feet and fingers glow

Click here for the link to the challenge page to join in.

This year I had a plan which is a massive improvement on 2016 when I had no plan for the alpha/dictionary challenge other than the dictionary itself. My original plan was to make postcards and send them to people each month but my plan is now modified. I am going to make a mini book with twelve pages in it, one for each month. Now, the postcard idea was still in my head so that is how I dealt with Mickie's twist challenge for January which is to include a bird in wellington boots. I had to draw the boots and the bird but I have made it into a postage stamp and stuck it on the page.

About three years ago I went to a workshop at the Craft Barn by Kay Carley, the first craft class I had ever attended! We did two lovely winter scenes using Lavinia stamps so I thought I would revisit that style for my January entry. Here it is:

Stamps used:

Lavinia Stamps : Spring Trees

Kanban : Stag and Doe

Woodware : Deck the halls

Paperartsy : ELB30 by Lin Brown

Clarity Stamps : postage stamp

The background is made using distress ink : Milled Lavender, Tumbled Glass, Stormy Sky and Chipped Sapphire. The trees are stamped with stormy sky and the fir branches are stamped with silver ink, I think you can see those silver branches if you look closely, they are subtle. 

The rhyme is from the poem on the Lin Brown set which I fortunately have so hope to be able to use it for all the pages in the challenge over the year but I think it might be a challenge to do that as the text is small.

I finished it off with some Stampendous Frantage shabby white embossing enamel to make the snow, I love that stuff, gorgeous little bits of gold in with the white.

OK, thats me done for this post, enjoy your weekends wherever you are and thank you for dropping by.

Alpha/Dictionary Challenge 2016 : P

My first post of 2017 is the final page for the Craft Barn Alpha/Dictionary project and the letter is P. I chose poppy and just used lots of poppy stamps all over the page, I guess it sort of works. I was thinking of choosing page as my word, highlighting the word and leaving the page blank but that would be a bit of a cheat wouldn't it!

Recipe:
Rubbernecker Red Poppy Stamp coloured with TH distress markers (candied apple, abandoned coral, ground espresso and black soot) and stamped directly onto the page.
A selection of poppy stamps from Hobby Art CS044D Poppy Scene-it set stamped with black archival ink and coloured with inktense pencils.

I have really enjoyed this project and am proud of myself for completing it. My thanks to all of you who have left comments, it means a lot. Thanks also to Jane and Mickie at the Craft Barn for running the challenge for us and I wish you all a very Happy 2017. x