Moonlight…..

Wow, into March already. Time is flying past, it seems.
We had some fabulous entries in last months Craft A Scene challenge, which was ‘A Winter Scene’, and I believe the winning entries will be posted up this weekend.
So now onto this months Challenge, which is ‘Moonlight’.
For the first of my two pieces this month, I have used images from Lavinia Stamps, Stampscapes, and Inkylicious.

 The Lavinia Stamps are:
Moon Fairy
Bamboo( Bottom Left)
Fairy House

The Inkylicious are:
Grasses
Willow (Bottom Right)

The Stampscapes are:
Oak Branch, 203G and
Spooky Branch 273G.

This piece sort of grew of its own accord as I worked on it, and  I wasn’t entirely sure what I would do with this when it was done, but when I got to the end, I realised I had made our Granddaughters Birthday present!
  She loves fairies, and this will go in a frame for her bedroom.
The piece of card is A5 in size, 5 3/4 x 8 1/4. I brayered the background firstly with Adirondack dye inks, starting with Cool Peri. I followed this with Shell Pink,Stonewashed,Purple Twilight and Eggplant. The ‘tunnel’ effect was achieved by keep turning the card so that I brayered all four sides, and tried to come in a little further at the corners by brayering across the corner. All the images were stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black, starting with the Moon Fairy. Next came the Fairy House, then I added the grasses along the bottom edge, Willow in the right corner and Bamboo in the left. The 2 oak branches and the Spooky Branches were all positioned using the Stamp Positioner, so that I could get the orientation right.

The moon was given a little colour with Antique White Flexmarker, and I used Promarkers in browns, reds and greens to colour the Fairy House. I added a little colour to her wings with a Glitter Sakura Gelly Roll pen, and also the dots around the moon. I dotted a glue pen between the Moon Fairy & the Fairy House, then sprinkled some crystal glitter over it. That doesn’t show up too well, to be honest, and I shall add some more dots of Stickles over the top, before I frame it. Then I just trimmed the edges to neaten it, and matted it onto some black cardstock.
You can probably see that I tend to work on top of an A3 pad, the sort you can buy for children as a sketch pad. It makes it easy to take the ink off your brayer, test stamp images, stamp off onto, and sometimes you end up with a really interesting masterboard style piece, quite by accident!
   So thats my first this month, pop over to Craft A Scene tomorrow and you will see all the DT first pieces, as well as the winners from last month.

WOYWW #127

OK, I think its time for whoever is stealing all the days between Wednesdays to own up. And the person stealing all the weeks until Christmas for that matter. Where are they all going? Do we have a black hole somewhere they are all dropping into? Or is someone secretly stashing them away to get themselves some extra time? I think its time they ‘fessed up!  But seriously, here we are again at the weekly wander round the worlds workdesks- presided over by non other than the Wonderful Miss Dunnit at The Stamping Ground.
 After my visit to the NEC, and my goody stash (here) all put away,and yes, Julia, that is definitely a years worth, Lol, I got down to a few tags. Some are in the previous post, but these two were inspired by some display cards on the Inkylicious stand. I liked their samples so much, I bought the stamps- that reminds me of an old advert!

I liked these stamps because they reminded me of a cat we used to be owned by- she was forever hiding amongst the garden plants to catch butterflies, gently carrying them indoors then letting them go. She was very fond of doing the same thing with mice too- and worms when it had been raining! Ick! There is little worse than treading on a worm in bare feet in the dark, honestly.Makes me shudder to think of it.
  The cat & butterflies are one stamp set, which has a sitting cat in it as well, the willow branches is a separate one. The flock of birds is yet another set, and it has a lot of single birds and flying birds in it. Really useful little set. This one doesn’t seem to be on their site yet, so I couldn’t link to it. The tree is from a Crafty Individuals Crafty Elements sheet, CI 209. The tag on the right has an assortment of small grasses and flowers,mainly from Chocolate Baroque,Autumn Hedgerow, the hanging leaves are from Lavinia Stamps,Leaf Trail, and one of the little birds sitting on a branch.

For anyone who likes small metal embellishments to add to tags/cards etc,like these:

 go look at the post about the NEC, there is a link there to the company I got them from, Riverside Beads, and they are SO, SO cheap!

 Final thing for this week, an e-bay purchase- lots of watch workings. The one thing I really have been short of is this sort of stuff to add to tags etc. 

 As Marg posted, we went to see our Granddaughter Merlin in a little concert for the Grandparents- they were wonderful. As were the cheese scones that we had back at Margs. I can most definitely vouch for the scrumptiousness of them- they have to be eaten to be believed! If you haven’t made any yet & tasted them, you do not know what you are missing. Trust me on this, you will be totally unable to eat just one. Unless its the last one, and the next batch are still in the oven.

 On the subject of the box I was looking for, I discovered two things: One, My Beloved Hubby reads ALL my blog posts, lol! I assumed he just looked at the pictures and read the comments- WRONG!

  The second thing I discovered was I should have Googled for them- I found somewhere via Amazon- and they do them in all sorts of sizes, from 2 compartments up to 12, I think.  They are called Coins Accessorise, and they have all sorts of  wooden items besides, like jewellery boxes, tags,hanging shapes, wine bottle boxes, coasters,and some fantastic little sets of drawers, and they are really cheap! Perfect for decorating/altering. Here’s a picture of one of the drawer sets-£8.69.
Had to share this place- its the sort of thing we are always looking for, isn’t it? I see lots of Birthday pressies for next year here. So my little box has arrived, and although Beloved Hubby knows about it now,( he thought it was a great idea, phew), he doesn’t know what it will look like when he gets it. I also just realised you have a picture of my penguin cursor on the drawers- his name is Nux. 🙂. Well I hope everyone has a great Wednesday, and I shall be seeing you later on.

Hobbycrafts at the NEC.

Well, I did go to have a look-see, and yes, I did buy some more stuff! I was very good though, and returned home without a single Christmas themed item! Having looked through all my stash recently, I came to the conclusion that I could make Christmas cards from now till the end of time, and probably still not use all the Christmas stamps I have- and don’t get me started on Christmas paper pads, please.

So, I mainly bought stamps, and embellishments- something I don’t really seem to have much of. I have tried to remember where I bought everything, and link either to the retailer, or someone who has the product if I couldn’t think who it was.

Some u/m Stampscapes stamps, definitely one of my weaknesses, I prefer u/m’s, and not many places seem to carry them, so these were a distinct bonus.I have wanted the Oak Branch and Spooky Branch for a while, but the u/m sheet the Oak is on also contains stamps I  already have as woodmounts. I got these from BJCrafts. 

These clear stamps from Inkylicious were very reasonable,and I thought the multiple types of birds will be very useful. The Face caught my eye too, I have a similar one but smaller.

I liked this when I saw pictures of it a few months ago- nicely dark & gothic. I can’t remember who I got it from, but it is available at Cheddar Stamper.

These two packs from Kaisercraft have lots of useful words and phrases, and were a very reasonable £2.99 each, which I thought was fabulous value. Bought from Ali-craft.

 A Paperartsy set, Clocks 5, and Crafty Individuals CI 305. I love the cogs stamp on the Paperartsy, and the CI stamp has good male/collage images. I bought both from The Artist Trading Post.

These two u/m sets by Papermania really surprised me. Called Urban, they have really nice, usable images for me, not what I would normally associate with their name. Usually, they are too ‘cutesy’ for my tastes. These came from Hotshot Craft– there are 4 available. These two are Bird Print  and Botanical print. The other two are Type print & Travel print.

 These are three u/m plates, two are textures & patterns and one is faces. They were an amazing £2.50 each- hows that for great value. The irritating thing is that a really can’t remember who I got them from, sorry. At the bottom right are three tiny Lavinia Stamps images, small toadstools, a bee and a flying dragon, all £1 each.

Last stamp I bought, Tim  Holtz/Stampers Anonymous Postcard images. I have had my eye on these for a while now, and finally gave in to temptation.

Moving on from stamps, I wanted some metal embellishments for my cards/tags. I found this great company, Riverside Beads, as you can guess from the name, they specialise in beads for jewellery making. However, they have chain, metal charms etc , in a variety of finishes, ideal for adding to your tags and other projects.
You can see one or two price labels there- they are a really good buy- you can have a lot of different embellishments for very little money. For instance, the bag of coins you can see at the top, contains 6 coins- the brass colour cost me £1.20, and the antiqued silver ones £1.35. I think this place was my best find of the day- it shows what you can discover by a visit to a craft show, I doubt I would ever have found them otherwise.

I’ve pictured them against a ruler so you can get an idea of their size.This is just a small selection of what they have, by the way.

 
Paperartsy pen nibs, and some really neat penny farthing bicycles, by Route 52, which I got from The Artist Trading Post.

 Some Tim Holtz game spinners, chains and 7 gypsies cogs.

     
You can see I also bought a Tim Holtz paper pad, the Winter Distress Inks Limited edition, and also Stormy Sky.

4 new embossing folders, a Cuttlebug one featuring cogs & gears, and three generic ones. One of them has what I think will make a good background for Oriental designs.

At the top of this picture is the clear stamp set that came free with Debbie Moores new Stamping Inspirations magazine- a nice set that are all going to be usable. Some black & white spotted organza ribbon, mica flakes, 3new (to me) Stickles a bottle of Black Cosmic Shimmer Pearls, I assume this is like the Liquid Pearls, and a Karantha mould of a face.

Almost at the end, some spray mini-misters.

Two Tim Holtz
dies, Tickets and Rosettes.

Two great storage containers, A4 size, filled with smaller ATC size boxes. These came from Samuel Taylor.

And finally, some Klingon for those u/m’s, and on top of that a selection of acrylic hearts/circles etc from a place called Add Some Sparkle– sold as a pick & mix, you fill the little pot you can see with your selection, for £2! They do this pick’n’mix online too. Not just these stones I bought, they have loads of other styles/colours/designs too.This place was another great find.

WOYWW #104

At last I seem to have Blogger working properly,yay!!!!! I haven’t been able to log in, let alone post for a couple of weeks. This week I updated to the new Firefox4, and Blogger seems to be working fine again.So if you use Firefox as your browser & are still getting Blogger problems, this may help.
I’m on a bit of a mission to use up some of the images that I have stamped in the past, so the last few posts use up stuff you have probably seen on my desk at one time or another.
 So, on my desk this week are a couple of cards:

 I used three versions of the Crafty Individuals Treeline stamp, and the base card was covered with a sheet of Papermania paper from the Simply Elegant pad, which I overstamped with a tree from Crafty Individuals Elements plate CI 209, in Adirondack Espresso. The three versions are: brayered background using Latte & Sandal  (top left), oil pastel in oranges and yellows (centre) and sponged Adirondack ink in Sunset Orange and Red Pepper, with a Post-it mask for the setting sun (bottom right). The sentiment was stamped onto a scrap of brayered card ( Latte &  Hazelnut) in Black Soot then heat embossed. It is all one stamp, I masked off one half of the sentiment with low tack tape, inked the part I wanted, peeled off the tape and stamped. That way I could place them separately.

 I brayered white card with Adirondack Lemonade and Distress ink Wild Honey, with a Post it mask. The Fennel Heads stamp was stamped in Black Versafine, and I added a Dandelion head from Lavinia Stamps, part of a set of three, all slightly different, called Dandelions, lol. I cut the image to a tag shape, added an eyelet & some narrow gold ribbon. From the leftover piece I cut another tag shape, and overstamped this with an Artifacts Stamp, from the Stamp Bug, called Darting Dragonflies. I used Wild Honey again, but stamped off first, to get a paler imprint.The sentiment was stamped over the top in Black Versafine- this is another e-bay buy, so I don’t know the maker, sorry. The base card uses some free paper with Making Cards magazine, a strip of gold vellum run through the D’vine swirls folder, and a strip of Black organza ribbon, then gold  organza ribbon over the top. The tags were mounted with sticky tabs.

For quite a lot of years I worked in the Retail trade, so I know only too well that people are quick to complain, but very rarely praise service they receive. So I try to give praise when its due, and to this end I want to say a big Thank You to Inkylicious. You will have seen I use a lot of Adirondack & Distress inks, and this is where I buy them from. For two VERY good reasons. Firstly, their prices – Adirondacks are £3.79 and Distress inkpads are £3.90- best prices I have found anywhere. Also, their postage is a very reasonable £1.50 for orders under £50, free above that. Secondly, their service is second to none. I ordered four pads last week, on Thursday evening at 5.15. As it was evening, and a Bank Holiday weekend as well, I expected ( and would have been happy) to get them during this week. I was astounded then, when I got home from work at midday on Saturday, to find them lay on the mat waiting for me! This is definitely a retailer who will get my custom time & time again- so Thanks again guys! Oh, they do lots of stuff besides inkpads too!

Talking of inkpads, I thought this might be useful. I downloaded the inkpad labels from Ranger inc, for Adirondack pads & Distress pads, then printed then out onto a label sheet- I used one that has 4 labels on an A4 sheet. I cut them down to size, then before I stuck them on the pads I swiped each label across the inkpad it was meant for.I really recommend wearing gloves to do this bit!  Now I don’t have to unstack them to find the one I want. The two links take you to the respective Ranger pages for the pads- you can click on a link on the page to download the labels template. You can also download the colour charts, and ones for the Alcohol inks too.