A tag inspired by Karen's Colour Cube

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

Well I got my 'comeuppance' yesterday, I had a lovely day out with Lucy on Tuesday,  she took me to get some Terracotta pots, now, I didn't do any lifting or anything, the pots wouldn't fit in the back of Lucy's car with my wheelchair taking most of the room, so they had to go in my foot well in the car, I had my legs either side of them for the journey home,  I felt tired from the day out and a little achy but otherwise ok, forward a few hours and as I got out of bed I felt that tell tale Sciatica 'twinge', I managed to gety breakfast and sit at my desk but oh my word,  I went to get up and that electric shock pain shot from the top of my bum cheek down my leg, the pain was that intense I literally couldn't move my leg, I was stuck,  I could neither sit back down or stand up,  Paul just looked at me and said 'what can I do' , sadly there is nothing that anyone can do, he fetched my crutches to my side and I have made my way to the sofa, I have no idea if i will be able to get into my bed tonight!!  I haven't had a sciatica flare up for a long time, thankfully,  I am hoping and praying that this is a brief flare! 🙏 🤞

Now onto today's tag, Karen was telling me about asking 'Alexa' or 'Sirri' to pick one of the cards from her 'Color Cube'  038 was picked, Karen shared the card with me and I thought I would have a go. 

I had a play and came up with Distress oxides Spun Sugar, Saltwater Taffy,  Abandoned Coral,  The brown I mixed Vintage Photo and Gathered twigs, the last colour Tea Dye, I mean they aren't exact but a good comparison. 

I blended the 3 pinks onto my tag, the used the Tea Dye through a stencil to give interest  

To decorate the tag  I used a die set I have only used once,  I created the vase by blending browns and spritzing with water, to give it a glazed effect I added clear embossing ink and clear powder and heat set, I did a couple of coats to give the right texture. 

The finishing touches were the branches and tiny flowers that I cut from that colour swatch I did at the beginning,  I used dark brown card for the branches, sentiment and flower centres.  I picked a couple of ribbons that worked tonally with the chosen colours. 

Thank you Karen for inspiring me ❣️

I hope that you all have a lovely day,

Love and hugs, 

Sandra xxx 

Things with Wings...

 

Good Wednesday Morning Ladies, 

Thankfully thr glorious weather returned yesterday,  Lucy and I went out in search of Terracotta pots for my Dahlias, I needed three more, I saw the big ones online advertised as by Wilkos, I think all of their shops have closed down around here,  when I clicked on them it took me to the Range, so that's where we went today, It appears that The Range have taken stock from Wilko's and Homebase, as well as having Iceland in there too.  The shop is so muddly to walk round though, so we got what we needed and left, called into Home Bargains as since moving I seem to have lost all of my plastic food storage boxes,  I got those and we headed home, it's quite the journey so it was about 4pm when we got home. It was lovely to get out of the house though. 

Today's card is another from the Creative Stamping Magazine that I shared with you a couple of weeks ago.  I only used the little butterfly stamp for this card, I will say that both the stamps and the sentiment where not the best quality, if you pressed anything more than extremely lightly you get double line,  it took many attempts to get clean image with the Hummingbirds yesterday,  several attempts with sentiment too,  even using a platform.  

I stamped the butterfly all over my card piece and coloured using Distress Watercolour pencils and a paint brush.  I then did a light wash of Tumbled glass around the butterflies and added some splatters or 'dots' 

I coloured and fussy cut 3 more butterflies and adhered them and added some clear glitter pen over the wings (not that it shows).  

So I used Things with Wings/ink/ dots

I Hope that you all have a glorious day,

Sandra xxx 

Hummingbird card

 

Good Morning Ladies,  

Thank you for your lovely comments on our garden photos on yesterday's blog.  Gardening is one thing that Paul and I both love, which makes it even more enjoyable.                                                                 It's a good job we took the photos on Sunday as we had a huge storm yesterday afternoon,  it started with continuous thunder, with no gaps between the rumbling, after about half an hour it got even darker and the wind picked up, there was an almighty crack of lightning and then even louder thunder, then the heavens opened and we have torrential rain and hail stones,  I don't even want to look at the flowers now!  I'm sure they'll all recover. 

I made today's card yesterday,  using the free stamps that came the last magazine I reviewd.  I cut a 3 1/4 circle out of a piece of copier paper and placed that over a 5 x 5 inch piece of white card, I blended Scattered Straw Distress Oxide through the aperture blending out towards the centre, keeping that lighter, I removed the copier paper and placed the circle aperture over the piece I just blended,  I held the circle down and blended Peacock Feathers around the rest of the card, again keeping the centre a bit lighter,  to add definition to the corners I blended Uncharted Mariner around the corners and down the sides.  After drying the ink I stamped the circlular dot stamp over the Scattered straw area in the centre of the card and edged the sides of the card with Versamark ink and then added Gold Embossing powder and heat set.  

Next I had to do a reverse stamp of the humming bird so that I could have two facing each other, I did this by stamping the bird using Versafine onyx black (as it was a bit wetter than my Versafine Clair) onto my Gelli plate, I then put a piece of card over the stamped image and lifted the reversed image, I quickly added clear embossing powder and heat set, this makes colouring with Distress Oxides easier,  otherwise the oxide dull the black ink.  I then stamped the other bird and coloured both with Abandoned Coral,  Fired Brick, Scattered Straw and Peacock Feathers Distress Oxides.  To finish the background I stamped one of the flowers  around the bottom half of the card. I finished the birds with a quick coat from a clear glitter pen (although it doesn't show up on camera). 

To finish the card, I mounted the inked front piece onto a mat of orange card that matched the Abandoned Coral,  I edged this with a black pen to give a faux black mat, I then created a yellow card and after winding some black cotton around the top of the card I adhered everything to the card base, I stamped the sentiment onto the orange card and edged with gold embossing and then popped that onto a black mat and adhered it over the cotton.  The last job was to add the hummingbirds, I added foam tape to the backs of them and placed them either side of the circlular centre piece. 

I hope that you all have a lovely day,  

Love and hugs, 

Sandra xxx

A day in my 2nd favourite place...the Garden

 

A beautiful Marguerite

Beautiful Geraniums 

Begonia

Clematis (new last year)

African Daisy

Beautiful Azalea 

Rescued l

(Last year for 50p)

Another gorgeous Clematis 

Same clematis has grown almost 20ft up a tree 

At the end of the garden.

This Montana Clematis was new last year, 

It has reached about 12ft already

Princess Margaret Rose

The perfume from this rose is incredible, 

Pretty little alpine, 

(Another rescue 20p)

More Clematis 

Beautiful white Clematis 

Good Monday Morning Ladies, 

I didn't get chance to  create anything 'crafty' these weekend as we me made the most of the weather and spent most of the weekend in the garden, so I thought I'd share some photos of the beautiful flowers that bring me joy every time I get outside.

When we moved in the garden here had been largely neglected,  the previous occupant were just not interested in gardening of any kind, not even mowing the lawn.  Lynne & Bill who had the house built were keen gardeners, particularly Lynne who loves Roses,  we have felt that we wanted to nurture the roses that are dear to Lynne back to life, many of then were that covered in bind weed that they were bent double,  slowly they have come back to full glory, the one I shared above 'Princess Margaret ' was a gift from Bill's parents 30 years ago, we have pruned her and fed her, we have gotten rid of the Black spot that it was covered in,  it is full of buds and will bless us with beautiful big roses all summer long, every one a different shade of peachy orange,  the roses have so many layers of petals, so beautiful,  the smile on Lynne's face was worth every moment that we have put into taking care of it.  I will share the other roses as they come into flower. 

The flowers that bring the most joy are the ones we have rescued, from the dead and dying area at the Garden centre, the Azalea and Alpine above were bothe rescued, a little bit of tlc and they have rewarded us with a gorgeous display of flowers.

The clematis are just a delight to look at, we have 6 different ones around the garden, the most impressive is the pretty pale pink one that has scaled the fence and the tree next to it, it is a good 25ft up the tree and climbing and is covered i  flowers.  We have 3 that we bought last year, the montana has reached a good 12ft and has an incredible display of flowers, the white one is a bonus that we discovered last year,  it had been overtaken with brambles and nettles, we cleared all of that and have been rewarded with these stunning waxy looking white flowers.

Now here is an example of using the photos as inspiration....

There are so many more colours when you look closely at these flowers than what you see initially,  which I think is helpful when colouring flowers on our cards.  

Sorry that there isn't a card today,  hopefully the beautiful flowers will bring a smile to your face and maybe a little inspiration.  

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

Love & hugs,

Sandra xxx 

This weeks challenge makes

 

Good Sunday Morning Ladies,  

We have a lovely afternoon out yesterday,  we drove over to Pershore to a Nursery (just plants, no cafe,  no clothes boutique or gifts) just very reasonably priced plants, for instance trays of bedding plants for £1.50 !! His petunias were beautiful and already a good size pot for £1 50, we literally got a boot full for £27, that included aRed Hot Poker plant that I have been after for years, its a lovely size and was £5.99,  any of the garden centres i go to with the girls that one plant would have been the best part of £20, we drove into Pershore afterwards for a coffee and cake but it was a bit disappointing so we drove home and had a cuppa and home made coffee or Banana cake.

Let's have a look at what you have been creating this week.......

Karen

Karen's Description: 

Card 1:  Here’s a challenge card

Flowers-Stencil-Inks

It’s the Serif background I created from a Color Box card which I added stencilling and stamping Aall&Create dies 

(The blue in the flower is not as bright in real life it is more like the colour on the card)

Card 2: 

Lilian 

Lilian's Description:

Hi here is my tag for this week, it’s strange as I stamped those branches yesterday, and today you show an early card.

Tim Holtz stencil is mosaic, stamp is Stamping Up, 

Beads I’ve had for years can’t remember where they came from.

So Foliage, things with wings, stencil.

What a beautiful Tag Lilian,  love the colouring in the background and you can never go wrong with a foliage stamp,  what a coincidence that I shared a card that you made using this same stamp from 9 years ago!  SU stamps may cost a little more but they are great quality. 

The lace trim and little flowers increase the beauty of this gorgeous Mixed Media tag.

Thank you so much for supporting the challenge my lovely XXX 

Maria

Maria's Description:

The time again, where the heck did the week go ? 

I had a little play today and got this together.

Stamp and tools for gardening I thought is for Spring/ Summer, used inks by T Holtz for stamping the flowers. So that's the card for Sunday.  I did everything directly on to the card but might transfer it to a larger card at some time ,not sure yet 😊

Absolutely love this card Maria, perfect for any gardener.  I love your attention to detail,  loke adding grass under the wheelbarrow,  watering can etc.  Beautifully coloured too. 

Thank you so much for supporting the challenge my lovely XXX 

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

I hope that you all have a lovely Sunday, 

Love and hugs to all,  

Sandra xxx 

Mixed Up Saturday

 

Good Saturday Morning Ladies, 

I hope the sun is shining where you are today, it just makes the day feel better!  

I shared some of my older cards the other day and asked if you'd liked to see some of your old cards, you did,  so here they are.....

These cards were for our first few Blog Challenges back in 2016, yes 9 years ago !!! 

Brenda

Karen 

Lilian 

Maria

Sue

Aren't they amazing!!! Most of us, with the exception of our Lilian weren't stamping back then, so the majority of cards are made using dies.           Interestingly the styles haven't changed very much, its just the way we create those styles have changed.

Maybe we should go back and do these first challenges again.  They were mostly sketch challenges back then,  a couple of these cards were made for a 'One Die Challenge'.   Today a Challenge using only one die wouldn't be that much of a Challenge.  

I hope that you enjoyed the little stroll down Memory Lane. 

Have a lovely Saturday,  

Love and hugs to all of you, 

Sandra xxx