Tim Holtz Bird on a twig

I have to say that my card is based on Lucy Abrams far more superior version here. I really love the twig. That's one of Miaowski's. One of my neighbours gives little twigs to Miaowski thru the window. She loves taking them in her mouth and running off like a little dog. I find twigs scattered all around the carpet! Very handy for my bird cards :)

My new phone doesn't take very good photos compared to my old phone so I might have to go back to using that instead. I've tried adjusting the light levels in photoshop but don't really know what I'm doing. This is the best I could come up with.

Interestingly the colours seem to go better together here than in real life! I embossed the musical notes (Allegro by Cuttlebug) onto a Nestability circle and rubbed over it with Stampin Up's Whisper White and layered it on a Nestability Big Scalloped Circle. The background was made with TH distress inks, Crushed Cordroy and Mahogany and overstamped with nice swirls from TH's Artful Flight stamp set.

I was only saying to Miaowski the other day, we take life too seriously, so better lighten up. She agreed ...
Ooops, just messing with the clipart on the phone. Little things amuse me, probably too much!

Thanks for stopping by ...

The Dragons of Doom :)

I'll be honest, I'm not keen. It's just one of those cards I made hoping for the best but it just didn't do it for me. And right at the end I decided to add distress stickles arounds the edges and ended up smoodging it over the edge! Yes, 'smoodging' is my new word of the day :)

Not sure what 'Hope' has to do with dragons but I liked the font so I used it.

The dragons are from here and the leaves are an old Posh Impressions stamp I've had for ages. I used tumbled glass distress ink and Adirondack Twilight lavender for the ink. And the punched out ovals are from Stampin Up.

Hopefully tomorrow I will come up with a better creation.

It is very damp, wet, rainy, dark, gloomy AND cold today. No sunbathing today then. Tomorrow it's meant to be lovely again, hurray!

Wishing you a day of sunshine, thanks for stopping by ...

Serengeti Sunset

There is an obvious mistake with this card and even though I try and ignore it, it is bugging me. Instead of masking out the giraffe and brayering over it, I embossed it after I'd coloured it, and used a Versamark clear embossing pen. Trouble is, it's clear and I didn't have my bright light on so I embossed over the edges. So when I brayered over it, it's left lines around the legs - aaargh!!!!

I still like the background though so I kept it as it is. The inkpad colours from top to bottom are TH distress inks Barn Door, Mustard Seed, Adirondack Sailboat Blue and TH Distress Crushed Olive. The giraffe is from Stampin Up 'In the Wild' set. I got the set second hand from ebay and it was an absolute bargain. All the stamps in the set are gorgeous and I'm planning to make a similar card with zebras soon.

The other day I was annoyed about the lack of choice of colours in the shops. For instance I wanted a nice dustpan and brush set but all the local shops only seemed to have beige and grey on offer. Well thank goodness for the internet and Amazon as this is what I found in the end...Now that is what I call bright and cheerful. They had a cool stripey version too and I was also very taken with the leopard print broom! A company called Vigar seem to know some people want pretty things to clean with :)

Not sure what's going on with our Spring - we have all been freezing our socks off over here in the UK, and in Scotland it's snowing! The temperature this morning is 8C which is definitely not impressive for May.

Happy Monday everyone and thanks for stopping by ...

Fly little bird

I thought I'd try out the Barn door distress ink by Tim Holtz. My favourite colour combo is red, black and white so I thought I'd use that for this card. I think it might be okay to enter this for the black, white and red challenge too over at Inkurable Stampers.

I really love the effect water has on these inks and especially spraying water onto an uninked stamp and then stamping onto the inked page because it gives a lovely bleached out image of the stamp as the water reacts with the ink. Well that's what it's supposed to do, and I have watched the genius Tim Holtz do it and it worked for him. But did it work for me, or did it splash water in big splotches all over the place? The latter of course! And that's why you can see quite a lot of white splotchy bits on the background. Ah well never mind, I think it gives a kinda batik effect.

So then I stamped some flourishes from the Tim Holtz Artful Flight set in both Barn door distress ink and Versacolor over the background. And added the Hero Arts branches (from a set I can't remember the name of!). The bird is also from Artful Flight and what I did was ink around the edges of the stamp and then stamp it on the back of some text I'd typed in Word. The other words I typed in Word also but in different fonts.

Here is a closer look...
Will the little bird escape or will he be captured and caged forever? We will never know.

Have a lovely weekend y'all!

Lucky me and a visit from a dragon

Well yesterday it definitely felt like my birthday as I had another parcel arrive. This time it was from my sister Ady. OMG it was full of Tim Holtz products and a lovely gift voucher! The gift voucher above, is beautiful as it is handmade. It is from Art From the Heart a shop that sells the most gorgeous craft things. It is run by the very talented Dyan Reaveley who is very good at art journaling. I've only just discovered her and am intrigued by what she does.

THANK YOU so much Ady for such a wonderful treat!

Here are the gifts she sent me ... distress inks, distress stickles and Glossy Accents - I can't wait to play with them. I was so excited when I opened the parcel. Aaaargh I forgot to take a photo of the Salvage Stickers - they are so cool, I have ideas for them already! I'm so lucky :)


And then, later in the day I had a visitor. My friend Bert bought his very handsome Bearded Dragon (called Junior) to see me - isn't he lovely? I'd love a little dragon, so sweet. Don't think Miaowski would be impressed. She didn't show any interest in our visitor but then she was nuzzling up to the radiator at the time.
So far this week has been lovely and it's only Tuesday! Hurray, things are looking good. I'm in such a good mood. It's another time for a lovely quote and here is my most favourite by Woodrow Wilson ...

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light, which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.

Amen to that!

Playing withTags

I'm enjoying reading Tim Holtz's book 'A Compendium of Curiosities'. It's full of interesting techniques and is more of a 'how to create' rather than 'how to make' book. The lovely thing about my order is that the book came with a few accessories which made it more fun, as it meant you could start right away with experimenting.

I thought I'd use a few tags to try out some techniques on. I used the sponge applicator tool to applied distress inks. Love the new Brushed Cordroy inkpad I received AND the most gorgeous Perfect Pearls Antique Gold powder. I've never used Perfect Pearls before but you brush it lightly onto the wet ink you've just applied, and WOW ... the shimmer and sheen of the gold is very impressive but you can't see it in these pics ... it's a shame but my camera is just not picking it up. Trust me, get some Perfect Pearls, they are great and you can add a few sprinkles to water and spray it on for another shimmer effect.

Here is a tag I made with the Elegant Birds set from My Cute Stamps. Another lovely product I received was Rock Candy crackle paint - this is different from Crackle Accents as it provides a sheen over your image with small crackles as opposed to big crackles. I love that word Crackle! Anyway after I applied it, I let it dry and then smeared over it with my finger, some distress Rocky Candy Stickles which, when dried, gives a vintagey glass like effect. Think I might have gone overboard with that. You can see it looks like sugar in places...

And here is a tag I made using the Brushed Cordroy distress ink with the Antique Gold Perfect Pearls brushed around the edges. Then I repeated the crackle effect and added distress stickles. The rubber stamp image is from Memory Box.
Well no doubt you will be seeing more of my experiments soon.

Have a lovely Sunday...

Yesterday I was inspired by Jennifer McGuire's beautiful butterfly card so I thought I would give it a try. Had a few bubbles in the glossy accents unfortunately but I think it adds to the butterfly's pattern :). The butterfly is from Hero Arts Winged Friends digital set, I resized and printed it out. It is coloured with Tim Holtz distress inks Shabby Shutters and Broken China - or green and blue as I sometimes call them!

I love inspirational quotes so I will leave you with one

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen. - Frank Lloyd Wright, 1869-1959

Yay! I find that to be very true...