Butterfly on inked background

Good Morning Ladies,  

We were quite lucky yesterday,  we did have a few spots at around 1pm,  it was sunny for rest of day although not particularly warm.  

Busy day here,  bladder clinic this morning and then the girls and I are off for a cut & colour! 

I would say that most of us have gone through or are going through different mental health issues,  whether its dealing with constant pain or loss of a loved one, having to learn to live your life very differently after medical problems,  family fall outs are another thing that can bring mental anguish,  depression looks different for all of us, whatever the reason your recovery is really important and matters a lot ❤️

For todays card I took a piece of card (4 x 5 1/4 inch) and masked off a narrow strip down the right hand side, initially I used three strips,  place the two outer ones first, this will determine the width of your stripe. I used narrow washi tape for mine, using the width of the tape as my guide, I placed the third strip up against one of the outer pieces, then blended Peacock Feathers & Squeezed Lemonade Oxides over the strip,  I then lifted the tape carefully and used it to cover the piece I just inked, I inked the same colours but the opposite way round and blended the two colours in the middle.  

TIP:  If you try and lift your masking or washi tape and feel like it might tear your card waft the heat gun over the tape for a few seconds, this warms the adhesive and makes it easier to lift.

Once the ink is dry, take whatever stamp you want to use, I picked a butterfly from my stash,  I stamped and heat embossed the butterfly and sentiment, matted the piece onto black card and then onto a white card base.  This card was inspired by Ciara Davis

I hope that you all have a great Thursday,  

Love and hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx 

A Different kind of Eclipse card

 

Good Wednesday Morning Ladies,  

I hope that you are all as well as can be,  special hugs to anyone that needs one 🤗 

I love this reminder,  we are all different and things can take a lot longer for someone to get over compared another person,  for many different reasons.  I think we just need to be gentle with ourselves 🥰

Today's card is a different 'Eclipse ' card,  with this one the stamped image is stamped on top of the raised area.  Unless you are good at lining stamps up I would say that you need a stamping platform.

 

I stamped the Visible Image flower onto my card, using a stamping platform,  I left the stamp in place in the platform so that I could stamp the image in exactly the same place.  I then cut 27 1/4 inch strips, I think that they are 5 inches long (but you can do whatever size works for your card.  Next step was to glue the strips together in stacks of three.  I arranged them a couple of times over my stamped flower to see which way looked best,  once I was happy I glued the strips into place.  The final step was to put the card into the stamp platform in the same position and stamped the flower again.  

It's like an optical illusion 🤣😂.  The final touches were matting on to black card and then onto my card base. 

I hope that you all have a good day,  

Love & hugs to all of you, 

Sandra xxx 

A quick Stamperia card

 

Good Morning Ladies,  

Well the weather forecast couldn't have been more wrong, which was frustrating as if I had known it was going to be sunny and breezy I'd have put a load of washing on overnight (Economy 7 😉)  It was lovely to see the sun anyway.  I did put a load on last night so it will tipping it down today.  

This one makes me chuckle,  when I asked Paul if he thought that I was 'enough '  he laughed and told me that I was 'more than' enough!!  Not sure if it was a compliment though🤔🤣😂

Today's card is a quick and simple card,  I layered a piece of Stamperia Daisy Art paper onto a Kraft card mat,  then mounted that onto a white card base.  I layered up the tag, the yellow daisy then popped the Kraft card decorated butterfly on top, a few white splatters to finish,  I will add my sentiment when I come to use it. 

I hope that you all have a good day, 

Love and hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx 

Welcome to a New week

 

Good Monday Morning Ladies,  

Welcome to the start of a new week,  not the brightest of starts, in fact we have constant rain forecast until Friday!  We were tempted to put the Aga back on yesterday!! It adds extra warmth to the house and is brilliant to dry clothes over, it really throws out some heat.  I resorted to getting my heated throw out last night as I couldn't get warm. 

You are all so incredibly important my lovely friends 🧡 

Today I am sharing a tag that started out a piece of card that I used to clean my stencil on,  I had used the stencil and sprinkled some Lindys Pigment powders over it and spritzed with water,  I did use paper towel to gently press the water into the powders and through the stencil,  the first tap was quite dark, ( i will share that another day)  for this one I spritzed the stencil with water and laid it onto a piece of card, I gently rubbed over the surface with a paper towel to transfer any residual powder,  I was delighted with what I got, so die cut a tag out of it,   then used Arden Creative Laurel Grove die cuts to embellish.  The black detailed areas are rub ons,  Ardens rub ons are great quality!  I added sentiment strips and some similar colour seam binding to finish. 

I hope that you all have a great start to your week, 

Love and hugs,  

Sandra xxx 

Our makes from this week

 

Good Sunday Morning Ladies,  

This feels like the worst weather we've had at a weekend for ages, so we didn't get outside.  I needed to sit and get some projects made anyway, so that was me most of the day.  Paul was busy getting all the bits together for holiday,  so today I will go through clothes to make sure they fit and put them to he ironed if they need it, I do try and iron them when I pack them away so that it saves time when it comes to packing,  I also put a couple of tumble dryer sheets in the box so that they smell fresh when I open them up.  

We are all capable of somethings,  its a bid of an odd reminder but I guess it's just to reassure you if you are doubting yourself!! 

Lilian 

Lilian's Description:

Hi, here is my journal page for this week.

Must admit I was really stumped for this idea.

The theme is under water so this was the best I could do.

I found the idea on Utube using Lavinia Stamps and stencils. This one was by Jo Rice, a very talented lady. The fish are old dies from Sue Wilson.

Wow Lilian what a brilliant idea,  you have put so much detail into that fish tank, with all the little pebbles and plants,  even the cork looks so real.  

Thank you so much for an inspirational project for the Aall&Create challenge XXX 

Sonia

Sonia's Description:

Challenge: Under the Water

I printed some images I found on Kelly Lou Who Junk Journals Facebook page. The collection is called Vintage Maritime Mermaid Junk Journal Kit.

I distressed the edges and inked with Walnut Stain and Stormy Sky distress inks. I dyed some gauze with shimmer sprays - although the shimmer doesn’t show up - and shaped them to add behind the images. I added some sequins and a bulb pin with tiny beads 😊

Oh Sonia what an incredible journal page,  I zoomed in on the bulb pin and that lovely gauze you have coloured.  It gives such great texture and looks brilliant.  The sequins give little pops of light and sparkle here and there too. 

You must be absolutely delighted how this page turned out, its perfect for the challenge topic 

Thank you so much for inspiring us with your stunning backgrounds and lovely layouts XXX

Karen

Karen's Description:

Card 1: This card uses Serif Craft Artist 

A rectangle in various transparencies and an embellishment

Card 2: All made with scraps, Grey off cut

Blue striped card and patterned paper for tie

Sentiment is a stamp from a magazine.

Two brilliant cards, you'd never guess that they were made from scraps of card.   I absolutely love that Embossing folder you have used on the shirt card.  

Thank you so much for supporting the challenges Karen,  I really do appreciate it XXX

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I hope that you all have a lovely Sunday,  

Love & hugs to you all, 

Sandra xxx

Sonia's Chat GPT tutorial

Good Saturday Morning Ladies,  

Welcome to the weekend,  what have you all got planned?  

Love this sentiment and the lovely artwork too ❤️

Sonia has very kindly put together a Chat GPT tutorial to help you all create your own papers and images.  

Here you go.....

ChatGPT Tutorial 

Firstly just a reminder of what I mentioned in our blog chat. There are lots of Facebook pages offering free Ai images that you can save and print. Most of them are for your personal use, so you can not sell or share them as your own images. (Shaylee Morehouse does allow you to share, but only through the share button on her page and you can sell your creations made using her images)

Copyright is such a complicated issue, so I would always credit the original designer if using any of their images when sharing to the blog or social media, or if in doubt I would ask them.

When I shared the birthday card I made for Scarlett on Instagram, I put on there that the images and backgrounds were designed by myself in ChatGPT, and again I will always mention that when sharing, but that’s my own personal preference.

To get started, download the ChatGPT App which you can find in your App Store, or you can go to chatgpt.com on your web browser. This is what you will see when you open up the page:

First picture is on website.

Second picture on the App.

I use the App and the free version. (The photos I will share here are all from the App on my iPad) 

It does limit you to 3-5 creations in a 24 hour period. (I think it may depend on what you ask, as sometimes I’ve done 5 creations/edits but a few times only 3) 

I have looked into this to find the actual limit, but there seems to be a multiple of answers, but it will tell you when you have used your free limit within the 24 hour period. 

You can get a paid subscription which is £19.99 per month which renews automatically. This is what you get with the paid subscription:

I do find the free version works for fine for me at the moment, but I can see why people would pay for the subscription.

You will find some basics of what you can do on the App: Task Suggestions and Examples:

So, let’s start creating!

To start creating your own backgrounds or images, type what you want in the Ask ChatGPT box:

Start with something basic, but add as much detail as you can (you can always add more to it or change things once ChatGPT has created your image)

Click on the created image and it will take you to the next page where you can save it to your photo gallery by pressing the downwards arrow in the top right corner. You can then save it to your files as well if you wish.

I wanted to add some more flowers and butterflies, so typed this in.

I then decided I’d like a page of elements/emphera to match. I typed in what I wanted. This was pretty basic, but you can add more detail and be more specific.

I love this, and am really pleased with how it turned out, just by using basic instructions. 

I hope this has helped you to get started in creating your own backgrounds and emphera.

Have a play around with it and have fun. 

Be warned - it can be very addictive! 😊

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Thank you so much Sonia this must have taken you ages to put together, the papers and ephemera you created are amazing !!  I am so grateful 🥰  If you need to get a better look at the photographed images maybe click on them.  If any of you struggle let me know and I will forward those bits on Messenger. 

I hope that you all have a lovely Saturday,  

Love and hugs to all of you  

Sandra xxx 

Inky Background Journal page

 

Good Friday Morning Ladies, 

Another wet & wild day for us yesterday,   luckily Soph & I managed to dodge the rain,   we were forecast thunder storms but we didn't see one, Sip was disappointed as she loves a thunderstorm!   Today will be spent at my desk trying to get some projects made to schedule for our holiday.  

This reminder is something I feel strongly about,  for most of us our crafting, whichever form it takes is a kind of therapy,  to quiet your anxious brain or to distract yourself from pain or loneliness,  so we shouldn't feel guilty for buying crafty bits.  I am fortunate (as most of us are ) that Paul never questions what I buy.  That doesn't stop me thinking twice though.    So in our case Self care definitely isn't selfish.  🥰

For today's journal page I used my Visible Image flower stamp as the main image,  I embossed it to give some shine and a different texture. I then used a little square of acetate to add distress ink around the page, with hindsight I could of just smooshed it,  I used Peacock Feathers & Twisted Citron for this.  I then used the little mixed media stamp to add some extra detail.   To finish I added the quote and matted on to black card.  

Maria I hope you are enjoying that lovely warm sunshine,  it feels so much more bearable when you are by the sea.  I hope that you are getting to get in the pool or sea too.  xxx

Karen I hope that it didn't take too long to recover from your pump breaking,  it must be so frustrating, it's a shame there isn't anything more reliable, especially for through the night.  I hope that you managed to get to go to Bowls xxx

Brenda I hope you and john are ok, sadly not the weather to be out in the garden.  Sending hugs xxx

Sonia Enjoy your last day at Centerparcs with your Grandbabies my lovely xxx

Sue i hope you enjoy shopping for new furniture,  it can get quite tiresome shopping for the 'right' sofa etc,  especially when you have to put your needs in with what works for everyone else.  I hope that having new carpets doesn't cause too much upheaval too, it can be a nightmare (from experience🤣)  I look forward to seeing some photos soon xxx

Lilian I'm sorry to read that your legs are so bad they are affecting your sleep,   there is nothing more frustrating than restless legs,  it literally drives you nuts, Paul doesn't complain but my constant fidgeting must frustrate him too.  Sending you hugs xxx

Gina  I hope that you are well, are you managing to get any crafting done?  I look forward to seeing what you create my lovely xxx 

I hope that you all have a good day  

Love and hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx