A quick post

Hi everyone! It's ages since I last blogged but it's still chaos here while the pipe leak under the kitchen floor continues to be sorted. We have chosen the floor tiles but now have to wait for the tiler to lay them. At least the pipe is mended and the floor re concreted. Hopefully, it will all be completed soon and we can stop 'camping' in the lounge! Dining room floor still needs levelling before new underlay and carpet can be cleaned. Will we ever be back to normal?? Not sure it will be done before Easter. Hey ho! But at least I can squeeze into the limited space I have left in the craft room to escape and make art. I've been busy making lots and lots of birthday cards as I'm fed up of leaving it till the last minute then begrudging the limited time I have left myself to make a friend a card! I loved making these! Used a combination of Stampendous, PaperArtsy and Crafty Individuals stamps, old and new. I also used various background stamps: Crafty Individuals CI- 430, Indigo Blu: CDB1 (Circle Dot background), PA HP1501EZ. The text stamps also include Hero Arts and Dark Room Door.

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The Crafty Individuals floral stamp is CI- 385, designed by Linda Edwards. I really love it. It's the stamp shown in the bottom left hand corner card coloured in greens and yellows. The poppy one next to it in yellow, pink and purple is from one of the new PA stamp sets: HP1605. A lovely new assortment of gorgeous images! Almost all the others is an assortment of randomly chosen JoFy floral stamps, selected from a range of her sets. I have so many of her sets I can't remember which sets I've selected from lol! To create the background and colour the images I've used 'Wink of Stella' pens. I watched a demo by Sheena Douglas who made a washy background using Spectrum Noir Sparkle pens to create a multi coloured background. She scribbled the pens directly onto the paper then blended the colour out with a water brush. It leaves a lovely sparkly wash across the paper. So I tried the same with these gorgeous sparkly pens. I added more colours and they blended beautifully with each other, overlapping to create more colours. Now it took some experimenting to find a watercolour paper that would allow for a good blending of the colours and not leave streaks. Amazingly, the only one that worked was the cheapest watercolour pad that I'd bought from 'The Works' for my Grandfairies to paint on! 'Crawford and Black'. I tried Ranger, Crafters Companion, PA and even Arches hot pressed. None of these blended the streaks out! So, there we are! Lots of cards in stock for all the birthdays still to come. The photos certainly show how bright and Spring-like the colours are but I haven't managed to catch the sparkle. You'll just have to believe me that it's there and it's gorgeous!

Hope you like them. I would appreciate you leaving a comment just so I know who has popped by! Have a great weekend!