Rainbow Chevron Thrinchie

 

Good Monday Morning Ladies, 

We had a lovely first day on the beach with the girls,  we were down there at about 10am and didn't get back until 4.45pm,  we had a good few hours in the sea, which was so nice and I managed to get out ok, which was a relief. 

We are in the midst of a heatwave here, pretty similar to the one you are having.  

TodayI am sharing the first of a second pair on thrinchies, for this one we used,  mowed lawn, Mermaid Lagoon,  Picked Raspberry,  Spiced Marmalade,  Wilted Violet distress oxides, I placed the Chevron Stencil over the thrinchie and blended a little bit of each colour through two of the chevrons that I had masked off, I then spritzed the inks with water and let the colours blend together,  after they were dry I inked up Tracey Evans background stamp and picked up a little bit of each colour and stamped onto the background to add some delicate colour and detail,  I finished by stamping the two birds in black ink and allowing them to sit for a minute to let that ink transfer.  The finishing touch was some white splatters and a black mat. 

I hope that you all managed to keep cool and comfortable in the heat! 

Love & Hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx 

Your TicTacToe Challenge cards

 

Good Sunday Morning Ladies, 

We had another warm one yesterday,  it was 36° when we picked the girls up, it was a bit of a shock to them,  they got off the plain wearing thick hoodies and jogging bottoms,  luckily I had rummaged in their bags and took them some shorts to change into.  It's lovely to have them with us🤭😂

So let's look at what you have been making this week....

Karen

Karen's Description:

Card 1: 

Challenge card 1 

Color Cube - Flowers - Card for Alan’s aunt I used card number 88 and created a few of the colours in Serif 

X-Cut flower dies

Embossalicous folder A variation of one I’ve done before 

I absolutely love this style of card Karen,  this colour way works beautifully too, Aunt Cynth will love, especially with the personalisation. 

Card 2:

Challenge card 2

Masculine - Stamping - Clean and Simple

EF not sure where from in cream matted onto brown

Wine bottles stamp from a magazine

Sentiment Aall & Create

I did a beer oriented one last year for a friend but still wanted to use alcohol as a theme.

Brilliant card, the wine bottles are a great alternative to beer,  see these magazine stamps we hoard do come in handy at some point! 🤣

Two brilliant and inspiring cards Karen,  thank you SO much for supporting the challenge XXX ❤️

Lilian 

Lilian's Description:

Hi, hope the girls arrive ok, I’m sure you will have a wonderful holiday.

Here is my card for this week , kept it simple due to sore fingers.

Categories I used : water colour , stamping, stencil.

Tim Holtz stamp, Parisian garden

 Indigo Blue stencil, Fleur De Lys

Ink is mermaid lagoon oxide

Water colour pencil, also mermaid lagoon.

Oh Lilian I hope your fingers are less sore today, you would never have known you were struggling with sore fingers by looking at your card.  I know I always say it but your colouring literally brings flowers to life,  I really love the colour too, the background is perfect too,  another amazing card. 

Thank you so very much my lovely,  I do hope that you got out in the garden yesterday 😊 XXX ❤️

Maria

Maria's Description:

Here is my card for Sunday. I had this piece of yellow green , the rest as lemon green card already so all I did was to use this old flower stamp and made a little vimple for the sentence. I have loads of these greetings and strips left so as I had forgotten them I used some on this card. Hope you like it and it's ok for Sunday.

Maria I don't 'like' it....I LOVE it,  firstly its green, so that's a box ticked, secondly its a silhouette card, I love your design and lay out.   Now those silhouette stamps look familiar for some reason,  I really like them, they are so detailed,  stamped perfectly too, which can be tricky with silhouette stamps!

Thank you so very much my lovely for creating an awesome card for the challenge XXX❤️

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I hope this uploads ok, its currently almost 1am, we lost power and water earlier,  there was a 30 second power outage that for some reason caused the water to go off too, it was across the whole resort, Paul thinks the power outtage must have tripped the water pump and it didn't reset.  Anyway it took the WiFi out too, so I was panicking that I wouldn't get the todays post done,  patience paid off though, we sat and watched choas take over for a few minutes,  the water was off for about an hour, the only inconvenience we had was soph had soaped her hands up ready to wash them,  they tried both of our sinks but there wasn't a drip, so they went off to the bathroom blocks on site,  which also had no water, the girls said there were ladies with hair fully shampoo'd with no way of rinsing off, now that would be a nightmare,  we have plenty of bottled water as we use it every day so we could use that.  It came back on after about an hour and 20 minutes, thankfully   being in this heat without the ability to shower would have been awful. 

The girls are hoping for a beach day today, fingers crossed thats what we'll do, 

I hope you all have a lovely Sunday,

Love and huge hugs to all,

Sandra xxx 

Mixed up Saturday

Ggģg

 

Good Saturday Morning Ladies, 

I hope that today finds you as well as can be, have you got anything fun planned for the weekend??

We are picking the girls up from Girona Airport today, now the fun will begin 🤣😂, goodbye peace and tranquility!!  Paul will be getting dragged out on the paddle board and allsorts. 

We were up and on the beach early yesterday morning as the wind had died down,  we were in the sea by 10.30am, had a lovely hour floating about,  frustratingly a wave caught the back of me as I was getting me out,  luckily Paul had hold of me but it didn't stop me stumbling forward falling full force onto my knee,the pain was immense,  I thought for a minute that I had dislocated either my knee of my hip!! Paul helped me up and luckily we were close by our towels,  we decided to go to the pool and relax on the loungers for the rest of the day, which is where I am writing this post. 

Creative Stamping Issue 149 review

I spotted this issue of Creative Stamping just before we left for Spain so I photographed it to share with you, its the first one I've seen in a while that I've liked the free stamps on and the projects featured.  The stamps are designed by Chloe's Creative cards.

This first feature shares some super sparkly, Very 'Chloe' glittered cards.  Pretty floral cards. 

These cards have all been created using the free downloadable papers that are also free, they are lovely pastel shades that you can stamp and ink onto.

I know that some of you have Gelli plates now,  so you might find this feature interesting.  You can use many different things on your Gel plate but for these cards she used dye based inks.   Blending colours with a brayer , then pressing a stamp onto the smooth blended background,  be careful not to move the stamp.  Now add a piece of white card, pressing evenly all over the background and then gently lift the card and look at your background, it's very addictive!  

This feature uses the sentiment stamps to create lovely backgrounds for your cards   

These lovely silhouette cards have all been created using the little silhouette stamps in the free collection.   I made one of these a week or so ago. The stamps are actually decent quality and stamp crisp silhouette images. 

Mirror stamping is a great technique to master, it enables you to get so much more from your stamps,  I used my Gelli plate to create my mirror stamped image, you can even buy small round and square gel plates for mirror Stamping.   There is a step by step tutorial above to help you to get the perfect image.  

There are plenty more features in the magazine,  I want to leave some surprises in case you want to buy it 😀 

I think its good value, the free stamps are great additions to your stash. 

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I hope that you all have a lovely Saturday, 

Love and hugs to all, 

Sandra  xxx 

A different technique Im not sure I like it!

 

Good Friday Morning Ladies, 

I am in shock that it's Friday already,  it literally feels like it was 2 days ago that we set off!  

We had a quiet day yesterday,  we went and did a 'big shop' in the morning,  its currently 3 30pm I am sat reading, Paul was reading but he is now having a well deserved nap in his sun lounger.  We may go to the beach for a couple of hours later.  Its 32° at the moment so its a bit warm for being out in the sun.  

Now I'm not really a fan of this card, but sometimes we have to show the things that don't work as well as we'd hoped.   I used the dies from the IndigoBlu magazine to cut a pile of leaves and flowers in white and then adhered them to the card base and gave them 5 minutes to dry, the next step was to blend Seedless Preserves Distress ink from the bottom of the page and Kitsch Flamingo from the top, its really hard to blend over the die cuts, which create a 'faux' emboss, I was trying to get the perfect blend to the point that my arm ached!  I will add that this was a technique featured in the magazine!  I then did emboss resist on oval label and inked the same as background,  I followed the design 

Clean & Simple card

 

Good Thursday Morning Ladies, 

My goodness this week has flown by,  we arrived at 4pm yesterday and had the loveliest greeting from Muhammad & Alma, they were our Reps last year and they were incredible,  I wrote a long glowing email to their head office saying that they were the best reps they had had here in the 25 + years we have been coming,  I knew they both wanted to come back here this year so I wanted to do my bit to help them.  They must have told him that we emailed and he gave me the biggest hug,  which made it all worth while.  He said he was excited to see and chat to us for the next 19 days!  When Paul gave him the Cadbury chocolate he bought him he about did a dance,  bringing a smile to someone elses face had to be one of the nicest feelings in the world.  

Today's card is one I made using the freebies from the IndigoBlu magazine that I bought a couple of weeks back.  I used the stencil and Wilted Violet distress ink to add detail to the background then stamped the lavender stamp in black and used the same ink to add colour to the flowers.  I stamped of of the free sentiments under the flowers added a fine black mat to each layer to finish off the card. 

I hope that you all have a good day,  we will be mostly relaxing today! 

Love and hugs to all of you

Sandra xxx 

Thrinchie partner to Mondays

 

Good Wednesday Morning Ladies, 

Last leg of the journey today,  it will be a hot one, it was 36° here yesterday afternoon,  it was still 30° at 9pm.  Thankfully this place has Air conditioning, so it was much more bearable inside.   

Today I am showing the Thrinchie partner to Monday's tree Thrinchie, I embossed the whole thrinchie with the bubble stamp and heat set,  this one used a chevron mask,  I used the same paints as Monday,  using cut & dry foam to pounce the paint through the stencil. I stamped and coloured the flower stem with the dark paint, I fussy cut it and added it to Thrinchie,  then I stamped a Chevron and fussy cut and tucked it behind the flower.  I stamped the pheasant to finish,  added white splatters and mounted on black mat. 

Maria, glad to hear Mum's cancer hadn't spread from her bladder, I bet she's glad to have your dad home too, sending hugs as I know you are worrying my lovely XXX 

Sonia working in the heat must be so exhausting,  make sure its feet up and relax when you get home XXX

Lilian I hope R got home safely and there were no hold ups, the house can be too quiet when you are home alone, sending hugs XXX

Karen the Service stations here are incredible,  they have proper restaurants in most of them,  so you can get a proper dinner.  The big one we stopped at today had so much local produce it took us almost 1/2 hour walking round it, everything from Lavender bags to sheepskin slippers, the concerning thing was that you can buy anything from a small paring knife up to some of the hugest knives I have ever seen, alongside pen knives, lock knives, you name it, you could just buy them over the counter!!!! I hope you enjoyed Craft tea XXX

Sending my love and hugs to all of you, 

Sandra xxx 

Gina's Masculine Card

 

Good Morning ladies, 

I am writing todays blog as we drive from Calais to Orleans France, we were delayed by around an hour and a half on our channel crossing (before boarding) we didn't ask too much as I did not want to be thinking about trains breaking down miles under the English Channel!!!  The day will have us hitting Paris at 6pm .... Rush hour!!!!  I will let you know how we get on.

Today's card is one that Our Gina's,  it's a perfect card for a male of any age, adding the football team was a brilliant idea!!                                                        Gina's Description:

Here is my  football card for a young boy who loves football.  The backing paper I made in Word art and took it into serif, the football I downloaded from pngwing the footballer silhouettes are from craft addiction.

Thank you so much for sharing your card with us Gina, I bet the recipient absolutely loved it.  I really appreciate you sharing cards to help me out while we are away XXX

I hope that you all have a lovely day 

Love to all

Sandra xxx 

A Thrinchie to start the week!

 

Good Monday Morning Ladies, 

As I am writing this we about 40 minutes from our hotel in folkestone,  we are trying a new hotel tonight,  as the last two years at the Premiere Inn have been a complete waste of money as the rooms are so hot, the heat wafts in your face as you open the room door,  both last year and the year before people were sleeping on picnic benches in the onsite pubs garden!! It's over £100 a night too, fingers crossed this one will be different.  

Today I  am sharing a Thrinchie I made last week, now I had to improvise as I didn’t have the mask for the wider tree, so I stamped the tree stamp onto masking paper and used a knife to cut the tree out, leaving the square around it to mask off the rest of the thrinchie.  Ooh but first I stamped the bubble stencil onto the thrinchie,  added white embossing powder and heat set.  Then I put the tree stencils over the area and pounced 3 colours of Dina Wakely paints through the mask, keeping the paint light so it doesn't leak under edge of mask. I had the skinny tree stencil/mask so I positioned so it looked like the skinny tree was behind the bigger one.  Once paint was almost dry I went over the embossed areas with damp kitchen paper to remove paint from the embossed areas.  I stamped some tree twigs at the top of the card and stamped the cat.  I grounded the cat with shading and added some white splatters.

I will update you as our journey continues,   the cooler weather was very welcome yesterday!

I hope you all have a great start to the week, 

Love & hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx 

Our Crafts this week

 

Good Sunday Morning Ladies, 

I will be glad to get on the road, i keep thinking of things that i think we'll need.  We take are own plates and cutlery, as the ones there never look clean enough.  We have melamine plates that look like china.  It makes it easier when we leave too as we don't need to clean all of their stuff.  Ooh we take our own frying pan too!  

Anyway lets look at your TicTacToe cards this week...

Karen

Karen's Description:

Card:  Here’s a challenge card

Stencil Flowers Color Cube

Number 220

Used Spun Sugar DO for the Light Pink

Worn Lipstick DO for Salmon Pink

Victorian Velvet DI for Burgandy

Loved how the colour turned when I heat embossed the sentiment So I tried layering the stencils again - big mistake The powder glossed in places but went dimply in others

Card 2:  

Did a blue/purple one as I enjoyed doing the pink version

So Tumbled Glass Shaded Lilac and Villainous Potion DO I matted it on a piece of card inked with Villainous Potion and sentiment inked in Villainous Potion

Stencil-Flowers-CAS this time 🤣

I really love this stencil Karen, it doesn't seem to matter what colour way you use, it just works, Its definitely on my wishlist! 

Thank you so much for taking part in this challenge XXX 

Lilian 

Lilian's Description:

Hi, here is my card for this week, late again I’m afraid.

Paper from the indigo blue magazine, 

Flower dies from Stamperia 

Embossing folder from Amazon not sure of the name.

I used flowers/clean and simple/ card.

Beautiful card Lilian it looks clean and fresh , love the flowers too!  The colours are lovely.  

As always thank you so much for supporting the challenge XXX 

Maria

Maria's Description:

 I started the card by cutting out the flower from Altenew and coloured it in with TH oxide inks. The frame in green and the sentence is from Temu. Stamping/ Flower/ CAS . 

Such a pretty card Maria, the flower & leaves are beautiful 😍.  I really love that lacy frame die you have used, it reminds of the original Sue Wilson dies.  

Thank you so much for taking part ans supporting the challenge XXX 

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I hope that you all have a cooler and more bearable day,

Love and hugs to all of you  

Sandra xxx 

Sophie's Fathers Day Card

 

Good Saturday Morning Ladies, 

Well its go go go in our house today,  although if it's the same heat as yesterday it will be go go slow!! I had to shower twice yesterday as I felt gross,  I think its partly menopause I think because even my arms were sweating, so gross!!   Paul will get the car mostly packed today, so we don't have as much to do tomorrow. 

Today I as sharing the card that Sophie created for Paul for Father's Day, I absolutely love this one,  mind you that smile will always melt my heart ❤️  Dad absolutely loved his card Soph, you are amazingly talented XXX

I hope that you all manage to stay cool today, 

Love and hugs,

Sandra xxx 

Another Emboss Resist card

 

Good Friday Morning Ladies,  

This week has absolutely flown by, I feel like I have achieved nothing.  It's just been too hot to rush around.  

Paul has been working all hours to get caught up before we go away but other people's hold ups mean that he has to take a laptop with him(with special security clearance), he will have to do about 2 maybe 3 days work while we are away,  what frustrates me is that he hasn't had one day off since Christmas!!  He is doing the work of atleast 2 people!  

Today's card is a DL size card with three emboss resist panels.  I used stamps from a magazine that I will share with you tomorrow.   The colours used are Uncharted Mariner,  Wilted Violet, Picked Raspberry & Spiced Marmalade oxides. 

I hope you all manage a good night sleep in this hear, 

Love & Hugs

Sandra xxx

My first card from IndigoBlu magazine

 

Good Morning ladies,

Did you all enjoy the sunshine yesterday,  I didn't venture outside until watering the plants in the evening,  It was just too hot to be outside, thank goodness for fans.

Today's card is the first card that I have made from the IndigoBlu magazine that I shared with you last Saturday.  This card was classed as a Masculine card, 

So categories:  stamping/flowers/Masculine card

I hope that you all have a good day, 

Love and hugs to all,

Sandra xxx

Clean & Simple leaves

 

Good Wednesday Morning Ladies,

Welcome to Blog Post 4,001, can you believe we are at over 4 000 blog posts!!!! Thank you ladies so much xxx

I hope that you managed to enjoy the sun yesterday,  Lucy and I did some last minute shopping and the heat was ridiculous!  We were glad to get home and cool off  

Today's card I made using an old piece of background that I made using Spray Mica stain, so it has a lovely gold shimmer.  

Trying to capture shimmer is a task in itself!! 

I used Tim Holtz Artsy Leaves dies, to cut the background and then matt gold for the stems/stalks and sentiment. 

I embossed the background to give a linen like texture to add some interest.  Then mounted onto a cream card base. 

Clean & Simple / Masculine/ Card

I hope that you all have a lovely,  sunny day, 

Love & hugs,

Sandra xxx