Mixed Up Saturday

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

I hope the weekend finds you well, what are you all up to? We will be mostly catching up with garden jobs, the lawns are so long, well the clover is so long so both front and back need cutting, I did dead head all of my pots yesterday afternoon,  if I am lucky I may get another show of flowers from some of my Geraniums. The 'Bird & Butterfly ' seed mix came into full bloom will we were away, I will share some of the pretty flower heads below..

This 'Pheasant Berry' or 'Himalayan Honeysuckle' is by far the biggest and has more berries and flowers than ever before, it looks incredible,  the common name 'Pheasant Berry' comes from the fact that pheasants really enjoy the berries, so it looks like we will have some happy pheasants this Autumn.  

These tiny Cyclamen are just so pretty, we only have a few and they are definitely more evident since we cleared the densely congested border on front of a hedge of fir trees earlier this year, the most prolific weed was clover, it took us (mostly Paul) over a week, the problem is you can't dig it because of all the tree roots, so its a case of using a weeding tool to individually pull weeds out.  We have planted a ground cover plant 'Creeping Thyme' randomly to try and kerp the clover roots in check, the variety we have used gives a carpet of bright pink flowers,  so fingers crossed it will look better.  Seeing these tiny cyclamen made the hard work so worth it. 

A selection of Marigolds that are dotted all through a side border,  I was by the colouring and gentle patterning in the petals. I also thought thst these photos would give me a lovely colouring reference to follow. 

Now I don't profess to be as professional as Michele at Magazine Reviews but I had the latest copy of 'Creative Stamper' Magazine waiting for me when I got home so I thought I would share it with you because it has some lovely Christmas cards inside (to inspire you). The free gifts are actually really nice stamps, four different collections!  So here we go...

Creative Stamping Magazine Review 

As you can see there is a Stamp set for every kind of Christmas card,  Traditional,  Religious,  Modern (silhouette trees, stag etc) and  Cute Christmas too, those penguins are adorable.  

In this first feature Vanessa Hodgson uses the Cute stamps with a variety of stamping techniques to give some lovely cards.  

I love this cute first card she made just using the Masking Technique and Distress Oxides, so simple but so effective!

This feature is all about Crafters Companion 'New Releases ' This particular issue is very 'Crafter’s Companion '!! I love that first card with the vintagw postmark background,  I'm pretty confident that most of us have, 'alternative ' stamps that would work perfectly.  😉

In this feature Nicky Gilburt encourages you to get your Distress Oxides out and play with them, I have picked a couple if cards to highlight.. .

I'm not keen on the T shirt,  but I love the background so I have shared with you the little tutorial that Nicky used to colour Texture paste with Distress Oxides, I am happy to do a little video for you if you can't see the instructions very well. 

I really love this card, its a gold embossed outline and the Distress Oxide have been blended over the background with finger  dauber, then she has take  a clean water brush over the petals to 'faux bleach ' the petals, using kitchen roll to lift the excess water/ink, she has then flicked water over the background and blot again to lift the water and colour, this technique gives texture and extra interest the flowers were finished with a gold glitter pen. 

These cards have all been made with the Downloadable Free papers that you can access (I never think to do it).  One of the cards features the 'Arrow Fold' we did earlier this year. 

This card features the Free NOEL die and downloads included in the next Issue of 'Simply Cards & Papercraft ' Magazine due out on 29th September. !! 

This Lady is the 2021 Cardmaker of the year and she has used the 'Nativity ' themed collection of the Free stamps to create some lovely Christmas cards,  the first card uses DO's the second uses Pixie Powders,  the third is a lovely pop up box card.

Theresa Morgan shows you different ways to take your Heat Embossing to the next level,  the little tutorial shows you how to Create a Glazed Tile Effect, basically you score the tile lines in and then add layers of clear embossing powder.  It does look really effective.   The other two cards use a Distress Resist Spray, which is something new to me  I am tempted to have a play, the third card uses Glitter Emboss Resist technique. You basically die cut a circle and randomly stamp the snowflakes,  add Hologram Sparkle Embossing powder and heat set, then blend two different DO's over the circle, the Hologram powder gives the Resist and Sparkles at the same time. 

These two cards use different techniques again, the tree card has you very carefully adding your embossing powder in stripes (sounds like a lot of work)! The final card uses Tone on Tone embossing,  I really like this effect! 

Oh my goodness,  I absolutely love the Pearlywinks Be Bold stamp set, that Dragonfly is just so beautiful! 

It's wings are like lace, so delicate!  Oh I just might have to buy it ! 

I love these cards they all have fairly simple backgrounds allowing the stamps to take centre stage! 

Now I love the idea of a Box card that has tiny lights inside, how amazing would it look on the Mantelpiece!? You stamp your focal piece on Vellum and cover the edges with a mirror card frame, which allows the light to shine through,  it would look lovely with a Star as focal point or the Santa on his Sleigh flying in front of an illuminated moon!! 

John Lockwood demonstrates how to build scenes with with Winter Themed 'Two Jay's ' Finger Stamps. I'm guessing they are similar to the 'Cardio' stamps?! Some nice cards to inspire us. 

Ruth Hamilton has created some lovely 'Clean & Simple ' cards that can be made in minutes!  The first card uses two stamps from the free gifts, the background is made by flicking a Nuvo Aqua Marker over the background! Infact the first 4 cards are same technique,  I love the one with the baubles! 

Final feature is shows some lovely cards made with Lisa Horton's new Festive products, I love that Sketch Poinsettia and some of her new Embossing Folders are amazing!! 

That's all for this review, if you have any questions about anything I have shared please don't hesitate to ask. 

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Ladies that is all for today,  this has turned out to be a very long post,  hopefully you will enjoy it.

See you back here tomorrow for your favourite day of the week....

Love and hugs to all of you,

Sandra                                                                                xxxxxx