The Last of our Poppy Challenge cards

 

Good Sunday Morning Ladies, 

I hope it's brighter weather where you, we had lights on from early afternoon yesterday as it was dark rainy & gloomy all day, it felt cold too!  It was quite nice not to have to go out as we got food shopping done on Friday evening!                                We spent the day catching up with jobs that needed doing, I needed to sort more of the boxes of craft stuff that are stood behind me, Paul was raking leaves and putting wardrobes together!  All very exciting 🤣😂

I don't usually mention my Challenge cards but I have to say that I don't think I have ever made 10 Challenge cards, I thoroughly enjoyed making every one of them!  

Your Poppy Challenge cards

Lilian 

Lilian's Description:

Hi, here is my card for this week.

I used my Tim Holtz stamps. Inktense pencils for the base colour, then I used water colour pens.

Oh Lilian I didn't get around to using this stamp but my goodness it works so well as a poppy!  Like I said in Karen's Description, says what flowers they are??  Your colouring is an inspiration as always, I have to say that using the dots in the background was a genius idea!  

Thank you so much for taking part in this weeks challenge XXX 

Maria 

Maria used the beautiful poppy stamp that she bought at the NEC for this Poppy Challenge card, is it a Woodware one Maria?  I love how detailed the leaves are!  You have coloured it beautifully my lovely, thank you so much for taking part in the Challenge XXX 

Sue

Sue used Kraft card for this version of her poppy cards, having the red as a drop shadow really makes the card, as does the red mat, Kraft card is something we don't use enough of in my opinion!  I feel another challenge coming on!!  Thank you so much Sue for taking part in the Poppy Challenge XXX 

Karen

Karen's Description:

I made this card for my aunt yesterday Not poppies I’m afraid Created the background with DO splatters onto a card blank Created the dotty paper on Serif Used Blooming Blooms dies by Julie Hickey Printed sentiment (she will expect a personalised one!)

Will then send photo of the one that inspired me on Pinterest by Mary Irvine

Who says that they aren't poppies?? Blooms could be any flower, so I am officially accepting them as poppies! 🤣😂

Love this card, the wavy border just finishes the card beautifully,  I can see you really getting good use out of those Julie Hickey dies as they are so versatile.  Thank you for sharing your card XXX 

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

I really enjoyed this challenge,  I hope that you all did too, thank you so much for your support ❤

Have a lovely Sunday my lovelies,

Love a hugs to all of you,

Sandra                                                                    xxxxxx 

Mixed Up Saturday

Good Saturday Morning Ladies,

From a rainy Gloucestershire,  we have rain forecast all day today, we really don't need any more surface water around here!  I hope it's drier and brighter where you are! 

Sue very kindly wrote us a Magazine Review for us, the free gifts are really useful, lets have a look.......

Simply cards & Papercraft Issue 251 review

This month has lots of Christmas and winter crafting ideas. The free gifts are both snowflake themed. One set of 11 stamps includes several sentiments and borders and from Pinkfresh studio there is a set of 4 matching stamps and dies

The first article using the freebies are cards designed by Nicky Gilburt. These cards are great for both Christmas and other winter events. The pink, blue and silver colour palette makes for some pretty cards. 

Tried & tested this month is the Spellbinders Betterpress letterpress system. 

The system helps you get a quality deep debossed letterpress effect simply. The basic set includes everything you need including a gorgeous floral Press Plate. You only need to add your die cutting machine. There are other Press Plates and starter set’s available too. You can use other card stock and inks but you may not get such a good result. I’m not sure I would use this system very often but maybe for those of you that make cards to sell you may find this is a handy addition to your stash. 

Claire Rhodes Brandon shows several different ways of adding colour to your embossing folders. They include using a brayer or paintbrush to roll ink onto the e.f. before adding your card stock and putting it through your machine as usual. Claire also uses watercolour paints to cover the embossed side of the card. I have tried that before with no luck, maybe I should have another go.

Here are some great off the page items designed by Sarah Jackman Read. Gift tags, gift boxes, gift card wallets and napkin rings are all made using the freebies and also the free downloadable matching papers, toppers and sentiments. In particular I love the unusual shape of the Snowflake wishes gift bag. I will definitely be making that. The gift card wallet is always handy and much nicer than just putting the gift card into an envelope isn’t it.

 As always if anyone would like more details about this issue please let me know.

Take care. Love Sue xx

Thanks Sue for another great Review,  the free gifts are worth the cost of the magazine, there are some great features too xxx

Some Colouring Techniques

I had a play with some ink pads and tissue paper to create backgrounds, I saw Marion Emberson try this technique with different products.  I used SU ink pads for this first one.  With the addition of some Gold Watercolour paint for added sparkle. 

Its so simple.....

Take some Tissue paper and scrunch it up, the more creases the better,  you then tap your scrunched tissue into your ink pad and randomly tap it onto your card, I masked off a square for a neater look, it dries quickly, I wanted a touch of shine, so I scrunched another piece of tissue and dipped it in my gold watercolour paint and did the same as with ink pads, I wasn't sure at first but as soon as I peeled the low tack tape off I loved it !! 

This second piece was inspired by Karen,  she had had a play with doing ink splatters with a fan brush, I have used mine to add finishing touches but never a full background.

So I took the same inks as before, squished them onto my glass mat and then spritzed with water,  i dipped my brush in and tapped the brush onto my scissors, the lighter you tap the finer the splatters.  I hope you can see the gold speckles in the close up, for those I used Gold Posca pen, I pumped it a little onto my glass mat and again spritzed with water,  then dipped the fan brush in and tapped away, I loved the delicate effect.  

Just a couple of different Colouring ideas for this weeks challenge, I have made these two pieces into cards that I will share with you next week ❤

I hope that you all have a super Saturday, 

Love and hugs to all of you,

Sandra

xxxxxx

A Colouring Challenge

 

Good Friday Morning Ladies,

Here we are at the end of another week, it's time to think about a new Challenge too.  I have been thinking about challenges all week and for the most part I'd like to set challenges to encourage you to use things that you already have in your stash but you don't get around to using as much as you would like to.  I would love to hear any suggestions, if like me there are plenty of things that you have bought and not got the use out of and would like to make some projects, even journal pages experimenting with different products then please let me know. 

I have chosen our next Challenge but the one after that I was thinking of doing a 1 week challenge where you take just one stamp or die set and use it as many ways as you can.  I recently did that with a Poppy stamp set and now feel satisfied that I have gotten good use out of it, it has also given me more confidence to pick that same stamp up again and play with it.  

Our Next Challenge

For our next Challenge I thought that it would be fun to experiment with different ways of colouring our projects, whether it's colouring a stamped image or creating a background with different mediums, we have so many to choose from too. I think most of us have a few different options.

Below I have listed a few different methods of colouring, some I know that some of you have, others you may not,  it's helpful sometimes just to have a reminder.  I think that we could all have a go at the pencil shading, those little stubby paper stumps are a handy tool but you could achieve similar results with a cotton bud.

Pencil Shading

Using a Waterbrush with colour pencils or ink pads is another great way of colouring stamped images, you can use a really light ink to stamp with and it gives the impression that you have just drawn the flowers freehand! 

Using Waterbrush with Colour Pencils

Watercolour paints can be really inexpensive, I bought a little round stack from a company called Koh -i-Noor for less than £10, they have decent pigment, I will say that I have been really enjoying experimenting with watercolour paints at the moment. 

Watercolour Paints

Watercolour Markers are another great way of colouring your stamped images, I haven't tried out any background techniques with them yet, I know a lot of the stamp companies use them, Amanda at HoneyDoo does and so does Jenny Mayes at HobbyArt stamps,  

Zig Clean Colour Markers

I think that most of us have Distress Inks or Oxides, there are so many different ways of using them, you can use a waterbrush and colour with them or there are so many different methods for background techniques you could spend a week purely using them in different ways.

Distress Oxide Colouring

I have a few Posca pens, I haven't used them to colour images with so far, mainly just for background techniques, I know that you can use them in a similar way to the Zig clean colour pens, although they don't have the best nibs for fine colouring, you could use a waterbrush though, the flowers below are really pretty.

Posca Pen colouring

I hope that has whetted your appetite and maybe given you some ideas as to what you could use, I have barely scratched the surface though, I will maybe add some more inspiration on tomorrow's blog post.

I hope that you all have a fab-u-lous Friday Darlings,

Love and hugs,

Sandra

xxxxxx

A Blue version of yesterday's card

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

How are you all this Thursday morning,  I hope that you all get to see some sunshine today, it really does lift your mood,  we have a new routine now, Paul will open the curtains at the end of our bed so that I can look out at the distant hills and hopefully get a glimpse of the sun to start my day, however it's equally as enchanting watching the mist or fog get melted away by the sun, or blown away by the wind!  

Milo always ends up sleeping at my feet, he is sleeping in this photo,  however he usually lays there watching the leaves get blown from that tree or the birds landing on the roof outside the window,  he will launch himself onto the windowsill in an attempt to catch them, bless him 😍

Today's card is a bit of a cheat really,  (I hope you don't mind) as it's so similar to yesterday's card. 

I used the same stamp that I ordered from amazon and coloured it using two shades of my Gansai Tambi Watercolour paints in Blue and green for stem.  This time I used an oval die to die-cut the poppies, then I matted it onto a Basic Grey oval, the background was stamped in Basic Grey using my SU 'En Francais' background stamp.  I finished the card with a seam binding bow thatcI coloured to match ('ish)! 🤣😂

I hope that you all have a terrific Thursday, 

Love and hugs to all of you, 

Sandra xxx

My Attempt at Watercolouring

 

Good Wednesday Morning Ladies,  

We had a very wet and dull start to the day yesterday but the sun blessed us with its presence late morning and through the afternoon, the amount of standing water on the roads is unbelievable.  Matt was caught up in traffic from two accidents on the M25 yesterday, he was surprised at the amount of cars that had no lights on, he said they were virtually invisible in the spray from lorries and traffic!   I was relieved when Sonia said that she was back safe from Dorset yesterday.

Karen I hope that Alan is feeling a bit better today, I have only had Tonsillitis once, my goodness it was dreadful,  I had previously thought that it was simply a sore throat,  boy was I wrong,  I don't think I had ever felt as unwell,  your whole body hurts and it was agony to swallow anything.  You can get a numbing spray for your throat that does help with taking pills etc.  Wishing Alan a speedy recovery, I'm sure your being the perfect Nurse Karen xxx

Now today's card was my first proper go at colouring with Gansai Tambi Watercolour paints, I have used my metallic set before but not these Watercolour paints, I really enjoyed the colouring process, although I need a lot of practice blending colours together etc but it's fun practicing!   I decided on a grey background,  so I inked up my SU 'En Francais ' background in basic grey ink and used the matching card to make the card base and layers.  I coloured a piece of ribbon with alcohol markers to create a similar shade to the poppies. The poppy stamp was from Amazon. 

I hope that you all have a lovely Wednesday, 

Love and hugs to all of you,

Sandra xxx

Another Papaver Poppy card

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

What a wild and windy start to the week, we did get some bedding dry between the showers as the wind was so strong and the sun shone between showers, Paul just managed to nip out before the rain got to heavy and 15 minutes airing in front of the Aga had them lovely and dry. 

We were back to full house last night, Flynn and Lewis stayed over, so we had happy girls!  I haven't cooked for 6 for such a long time, Lewis is a fussy eater so I went for one of his favourites, Spaghetti Bolognese which everyone likes and is easily scaled up for a crowd. 

Today's card is another Tracy Evans tutorial,  I really enjoyed creating this background, although I did question the process a couple of times but just 'trusted ' the process and loved how it turned out.  I great tip was to leave the low tack tape in place while you draw a border around the painted background,  the tape acts as a guide, it certainly gave me more confidence to draw a border freehand !                                                                           I couldn't decide on a sentiment so I have left it without one for now. 

I hope that you all stay safe, warm and dry, 

Love and hugs to all of you,

Sandra xxx

A Tracy Evans Inspired Poppy card

 

Good Monday Morning Ladies, 

I hope that you are all relaxed after the weekend and are ready for the start of another week.  It would be better if the weather was a bit brighter, we had a very wet and dreary weekend.  In fact we drove past Manor Lodge yesterday and out over the bridge over the Thames, the river had of course burst its banks but we had never seen it as flooded, the floodwaters had completely filled fields on either side of the main road through to the point that the water has breached the fields and covered the roads between them, the ditches alongside the fields were also overflowing onto the roads, it was unbelievable!  Oddly we didn't have any feelings of regret as we drove through the village which must mean that we made the right decision to leave when we did. 

Today's card I made last week, after being reminded about my Aall&Create stamps by Karen, I decided to look at what cards Tracy Evans had made with her Papaver Poppy stamps,  I saw a couple of cards on YouTube so followed the tutorial for this one, so I had my acrylic paints and my brayer and I really enjoyed making the background and colouring all of the elements to finish the card off.  I love how striking the red poppy is against the green background !  I was very nervous about doing the white posca pen splatters at the end incase I over splattered and ruined the card !  But I didn't thank goodness! 

I hope that you lovely Ladies have a great start to the week, 

Love and hugs to all of you, 

Sandra                                                                    xxxxxx