Mixed Up Saturday

 

Good Saturday Morning Ladies,  

We had another chilly day yesterday,  the sun was beautiful though, part of the garden in the shade stayed frost covered all day.   We are forecast a wet and cold weekend,   Soph is off today and wants to go to Costco (Experience has shown that Saturday is not the best idea)!  The things we do for our children!  🤣

I picked up two Poinsettias the last time Lucy and I popped to garden centre,  these ones were reduced to £4, I couldn't resist them because of their colour,  I haven’t seen a Pink Poinsettia before and the variegated leaves really appealed to me, I don't think I've ever had a Poinsettia,  it does sound like they are tricky keep though. 

My Bargain

I love the sentiments and that string of lights, 

All with matching dies!

These lovely Tree stamps & sentiments plus 

Matching dies

The sentiments are really useful too.

The String lights have a matching stencil

Mistletoe sprig stencil with matching die.

Some body was selling the whole collection for £33 posted on a Facebook Destash group,  I really like Gina K stamps as they are great quality,  it's harder to find them here, so I wanted to snap it up!  I'm pretty sure one stamp and die set would be more than that price,  even if I used only the sentiments I'd be happy!  

Karen

Karen has shared her crafty Birthday gifts with us,  WOW Karen that lovely set of Pencils is an amazing gift,  its lovely to know you have every colour you'll ever need !  I have read really good reviews on these pencils too,  I can't wait to see how you get on with them and see what you create.  

That Crackle stencil is great,  a good size too,  I totally recommend that Winsor & Newton Calligraphy ink, its perfect for splatters, less messy the flicking those posca pens.  

Thank you for sharing your birthday gifts with us XXX

Sonia 

Sonia ordered these lovely stamps from Inkylicious,   I really love how the sentiments are worded in all of them.  These are perfect for journal pages too. 

Thank you so much for sharing your lovely stamps with us. XXX

I hope that you all have a great Saturday,  

Love & hugs to all of you, 

Sandra xxx 

A new journal page...

 

Good Friday Morning Ladies, 

I hope that you have all had a good week.  Lilian I'd like to congratulate you and Roger on your Diamond Wedding Anniversary,  what a huge achievement,  I hope that you have a lovely weekend celebrating with your family.  

Bladder Clinic was ok yesterday, she agreed with me that the uti is still there despite 16 days of Antibiotics!  So I contacted nurse and she has prescribed different antibiotics for me to pick up this morning,  fingers crossed they work. 🤞🤞🤞

I am sharing a new journal page today, made using Stamperia products.  

I painted the journal page with gold paint, then added a few patches of vaseline (after it was dry) next came a layer of 'Ivory' acrylic paint,  

As it dries you can see the little cracks appearing...

So after it had dried completely I took a piece of kitchen roll to rub gently over those little cracks to discover the gold underneath....

After all of that was dry I added some background stamping.  

Then I used a variety of paper die cuts to build the focal point,  for a change I used my wax stamp to add a different texture and to give a perfect a

sentiment. 

 Thanks to Vicki P for inspiration! 

I hope that you all have a lovely day, 

Love & hugs to all of you,  

Sandra xxx 

Christmas Bells!

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

Oh my its a chilly one today, we have to be up and out as I have Bladder Clinic and there is a road closure, which makes things fun!!  

Today I am sharing a Christmas card that was part of Tracy Evan’s Workshop (121), let's just say it was a long make!   The poinsettia took me a good two hours to colour and I didn't do aa many layers of colour as I should have,  but I think it looks ok.  Making a mask for the bells was a pain, you have to trace and cut the bell  centre out  using copier paper so its thin enough to stamp over,  I ruined two lots of blended bells by not having the mask exact.  The last labour of love was colouring and fussy cutting those holly sprigs!  I will only be making one of these! 🤣😂

I hope that you all stay warm and cosy today, 

Love and hugs to all of you, 

Sandra xxx

One Colour Thrinchie part 2

 

Good Wednesday Morning Ladies, 

We had another sunny but very cold day yesterday,  I let Milo & Bella out and even the decking had a layer of frost on, I thought the cats would take a step out on the frost and run back in,  they both ran off to explore,   Bella came in and Milo followed a few minutes later, I could hear him in the lounge getting all excited,   I thought he was fighting with Bella so shouted for them to quit it,  but Lucy shouted down that Bella was upstairs with her,  So I looked round to see what he was up to to find he was 'playing' with mouse!  I squealed to get Lucy's attention, which spooked Milo who picked up his mouse and ran out of the back door,  where he continued to play with his mouse, despite Lucy trying to enticing him in with treats,  the mouse was already expired but it he wasn't done playing,  he did eventually give in to the lure of treats, left his mouse and came in,   Lucy quickly shut the door, we decided to not let them back out until Paul was home.  🐈🐀

I started a Christmas card that is part of Tracy Evans Workshop 121 yesterday,  with all of the steps and colouring each element it took me hours,  I got to the point of wanting to give it up,   by 6pm I downed tools, my fingers sore from fussy cutting!!  Hopefully I will finish it today 🤞

Today I sm sharing the 2nd Thrinchie of the pair, again made using Blueprint Sketch,  stamping flowers in white acrylic and then using pencils to add colour over the acrylic paint, just like yesterday's I used an indigo and denim coloured pencils,  the background was done by spritzing water on a diamond stencil, laying it over the background and leaving it to react with the Oxide ink,  always use a piece of kitchen towel on top of the stencil to absorb any excess water.  I left the stencilled area wet and let it air dry as it becomes more intense the longer you leave it.  A little background stamping and some shading followed be white splatters finish the look.  

They always look better when you see them as a pair! 

I hope that you all have a lovely day,

Love and hugs to all,

Sandra xxx 

Another One Colour Thrinchie

 

Good Morning Ladies,  

Yesterday was a beautiful looking day,  the sun was beautiful,  my goodness it was cold though!  After Paul finished work (from home)  he managed to get all my pots in the greenhouse,  just in time as between the girls getting home from work and 6.30pm (about 2 hours )  Lucy's screen was frozen and had to be scraped.  

I sat at my desk from about 11am,   but didn't start crafting until about 2pm,  I was looking at River cruises,  we watched someone doing a review of one and it looked lovely,  so I started looking into it, picked one that we liked the look of,  so went to look at finer details,  dates etc,  only to discover that they don't cater for people with 'Poor Mobility ', they have no lift, no accessible rooms,  even if it weren't for stairs (which would have been a no no anyway) they wouldn't accept me on crutches either as you have to be independently fit to evacuate if necessary, which I do understand but its still disappointing.  I will try other companies to see if they have different options.   I've definitely seen people on mobility scooters on cruises. 

When I did start crafting I decided to create Thrinchies,  so I went to YouTube and crafted along with Tracy Evans. 

I covered the Thrinchie in Blueprint Sketch, then stamp the flowers onto the background using White acrylic paint.  It gives you a light outline of the image, I then painted over the flowers with Acrylic paint and a paint brush.  After drying them I took a diamond stencil, spritzed with water and then laid it over the thrinchie,  I took a piece of kitchen roll to blot it, lifted the stencil and allowed the water to air dry. I took a script stamp and added little bits of stamping in Versafine Clair Twilight ink, the next step was to add some colour to the flowers, I used Indigo & Washed Denim pencils to add some colour and shade.  A few white splatters finish the Thrinchie.

Part 2 tomorrow! 

I hope that you all have a lovely day, 

Love & hugs to all of you, 

Sandra xxx

Arden Rub on card

 

Good Monday Morning Ladies,  

Here we are at the start of a new week, this one is set to be a chilly one!  We even have snow in our forecast for later in the week 😲  I don't really mind, I love the snow, I do have bladder clinic thst day though,  I very much doubt we will get anything more than a hard frost. 

What have you all got planned this week??   Nothing much happening for me other than clinic on Thursday.  

We got a good few garden jobs done yesterday,  I put some more bulbs in the pots out the front,  that's all I could manage, I'm not sure if its the infection or the antibiotics that's making me feel so weak & exhausted.   Paul was a trooper he got loads done, we now have a massive leaf pile waiting to be bagged up, it got dark so fast he had to give in before he finished. 

While Paul was finishing in the garden I thought I'd make a little something for today's blog post,  I picked out the floral 'rub on' I wanted to use and set out to find an ink that would match the purple in the rub on,  I decided on Villainous Potion Oxide, I smooshed it onto the background with a stamp block, adding the ink to the block and spritzing with water and smooshing it onto the card, I dried it off and repeated twice more.  I dried with my heat tool and then added some background stamping.  I added a lace sticker on the top and bottom of the card and then added the rub on flower in the centre, the rub ons go on so easily, they are really detailed too. 

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

Love and hugs to all of you, 

Sandra xxx

A look back at this weeks makes. .

 

Good Sunday Morning Ladies,  

From a very wet & soggy Gloucestershire,   Paul is wanting to rake the last of the leaves that Storm Claudia stripped from the trees,  he's welcome to that job with everything being so wet and slippery out there,  I will support him from inside in the warm and dry and make sure he is fed & hydrated!  🤣😂

I may just sit at my desk and create between making pots of tea of course,  I got buttermilk to make some Scones too.  

Lilian & Sonia have both made incredible Journal pages this week.......

Lilian 

Lilian's Description:

Here is my journal page for this week 

Started with wall stencil and some grit paste it’s good but takes quite a while to dry.

Then added some colour, blue and a bit of green kept it very pale 

Next used my Stamperia vintage library and cut out all of the pieces to cover the page, all the fussy cutting took ages.

If it’s still the tic tac toe I used : stencil, journal page, and a medium (grit paste).

Have a lovely weekend.

Forgot to say first time I used white splashes, not really my thing but thought I’d give it a go. No won’t do it again.  

I immediately thought it looked like a Harry Potter themed page, Lilian it's amazing,   your background inking works so perfectly with the brick work in your fussy cut pieces,   this would make a perfect card for anyone that's mad on Harry Potter too.         I love your white splatters but I will say that it would look just as good without them 🤣

Thank you so much for supporting the challenge XXX

Sonia

Sonia's Description:

Journal page/ Inks and colouring/ Die cuts

I started by adding distress inks in Tumbled Glass and Walnut Stain with a brayer. I added some stamping using a Woodware text stamp, and some stencilling using a Lavinia Stamps stencil. I stamped the Inkylicious sentiment on the blue card and inked around the edges, doing the same with the words which are part of another Inkylicious sentiment stamp. I die cut the photo negative strip and the Tim Holtz butterfly which I inked over. The strips of words are from a paper pad. I finished off with some ink splats from a Tattered Angels shimmer spray. 

My first page in my new journal and I’m happy how it turned out 😊

Oh Sonia I was so happy to see that you felt like getting in your craft room and creating something,   Oh Boy did you creats something!!!  

What an amazing journal page,  there is always something special about the first project in a new journal,  it's like a fresh start.   I really hope you get the journal bug,  I find it so quick and easy to do a journal page knowing that really its just for me, so if it's not perfect I'm not as worried. 

Every technique you have done is perfect, I love that Script stamping,  its there but doesn't dominate, so that its not obscuring your pretty stencilling.   I recently bought a Negative photo strip die,  they are a great background element to display things on.  The sentiment is perfect and it wouldn't be a Sonia page without a butterfly! 🤣

Thank you so very much for creating a lovely page for the challenge. XXX

*****************

I hope that you all have the best day, 

Love & hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx 

Mixed Up Saturday

 

Good Saturday Morning Ladies, 

I saw this picture above on Facebook yesterday and it made me chuckle so I thought you might find it amusing too! 😄 🤣

Well I was worried I wouldn't be able to get a blog post up for today as we kept losing power yesterday afternoon,  it was off for most of the afternoon and for some reason both Sophie and I lost our 4G/5G phone signal too,  we did laugh as Soph said well we are going to sit and talk to each other!  🤣😂

My photos won't do Sophie's latest art piece for the Wildlife park justice but I am bursting with pride and want to share it with you. 

This piece to go with the last one she did on the large pillars by the servery in the Restaurant,  it's about 5ft tall. 

This is one of the Red Panda's that live at the Wildlife park,  just look at those incredible brush stroke details on its tail.  

Ring tail Lemurs in that amazing forest canopy, their enclosure at the park isn't quite as beautiful,  Soph has somehow captured the 'atmosphere' of the rain forest, the foliage looks so realistic, the reflection in the water isn't a main feature but she has captured it perfectly.

How adorable are this pair of Otters, so detailed right down to the twinkle in their eyes, I love those ferns too.  

This part makes me want to grab my bottle of Timotei shampoo ! 🤣😂 Do you remember those adverts!! 

This gorgeous snake is an Eyelash Viper, I think this took a good majority of the overall time, as you can see every scale on its skin and again look at its eye!  

I hope that they appreciate this incredible piece of art!  

Nobody could be prouder than Paul and I are ! 😍🥰

Now onto our eldest daughter....

These are the hotel rooms,  they look amazing!  

This was the incredible bed art that greeted them when they arrived. 

Their first sunrise taken from their balcony

The incredible views from the deck

What stunning views from the boat trip the went on,  the boat is the same as the one on the right.

She has said that they are having an amazing time, I hope they are making lots of lovely memories 😍🥰

I hope that you are all safe and dry,  we have a lot of flooding around us, the rain was so heavy and didn't stop all day.

Love and hugs to all of you,

Sandra xxx 

Arden Creative Card

Good Friday Morning Ladies,  

Well yesterday was eventful,  I couldn't sleep through Wednesday night into Thursday as my Heart rate was so high, I couldn't relax,  my whole abdomen was so painful too,  the alarm went off early as I had an appointment with my Urology Consultant,  I did consider cancelling it and try and get a Drs Appointment,  I decided to go for the Consultant appointment,  which was the right decision,   he strongly thought that I was suffering and feeling so rough was because I still have the Uti, the 4 days without antibiotics (i finished them on Sunday), the Bacteria was buried deep in the rough surface of my scarred bladder,  so he prescribed 10 more days of antibiotics!   I asked if I should stop the installation treatment, he said no as even if it made my symptoms more bearable it was worth it,  however he wants to add another new treatment,   it's a Uti Vaccination,  you spray the pineapple flavour vaccine under your tongue, it slowly builds up my resistance to the main Uti Bacteria, this should mean that I won't need antibiotics!  I feel like a bit of  a guinea-pig as its still unlicensed,  only a Consultant can put you forward for the treatment,   so I should hopefully hear from them in next couple weeks.  He also suggested that I take high dose Vitamin C twice a day to make my bladder acidic, which makes it unfavourable for bacteria.  

Fingers crossed he is right,  I did start to have the stronger uti symptoms by lunch time,  so last night's symptoms were my body reacting to the infection.  

Today I am sharing a card I made with some of my new Arden Creative rub ons and stickers.  

The background I made using the Lindys Gang Magical Shakers I shared with you last week, I used the lace stickers top and bottom,  the main focus is the pretty flower rub on,   these are amazing quality rub ons, they release really easily and have no clear outline,  the blend into the background really nicely.  I added a couple of laser cut butterflies and a simple sentiment. 

I hope that you all manage to stay dry and save as Storm Claudia batters us today, 

Love and hugs to all of you,  

Sandra xxx

Using up waste paint....

Good Morning Ladies,  

Up and out early this morning as I have an appointment with the Urology Consultant,  I think it must be a 6 month assessment.   I don't think that the Bladder installations have been as successful this time, between them being poorly administered causing my Interstitial Cystitis to flare up and having 3 uti's I haven't really felt the benefit of it,  who knows if it would have been worse had I not had it, who knows,  Im guessing he'll be the one to make that call.  🤷🤷‍♀️

Now I was going to just wash off my little Gelli plate that had the black light bulbs on it,  from where I had added black paint and then added the little light bulbs to create the thrinchies from yesterday.  I had left the residual paint on the Gelli plate overnight so they were nice and dry,  Tracey tried to create another background with the leftover paint but hers were still to wet,  I thought that it seemed a shame not to have a go,  so I added Turquoise paint, brayered it over the black light bulbs, then placed a thrinchie over the wet paint, took a piece of scrap paper and rubbed firmly over the thrinchie to make sure it made good contact with the paint,  the anticipation is crazy, I started lifting the piece and to my delight it lifted everything perfectly,   So I had to decide ...do I bin it or keep it as a reminder that even the left over bits can create something fun.  I chose a fun sentiment,  adding the essential splatters, matted onto black card and added to my journal. 

I hope that you all have a good day, 

Love & hugs 

Sandra xxx

Abstract Thrinchie part 2

 

Good Wednesday Morning Ladies, 

Here is part two if the crazy abstract Thrinchie,   I can't make up my mind if I like them or not,  I still cleaning the paint off of my hands, even after having a shower and washing up!  

The colours on the one on the left look much brighter although they are the same colours.             They are fun more than anything, sometimes it's good to get your hands dirty!  🤣😂

I hope that you all have a good day, 

Love & hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx