Little alpaca herd

I've been having a play with one of the stamps in the 'Friends' set by Tracey Hey and made myself a mini herd of alpacas.



The one on the left is the image as it comes in the set, I used masking and mirror stamping to do the other two. 

Special Auntie

Hello lovely peeps

I've got a tri-fold to share with you today that I made for a commission. I'd been dying to use the Large Birthday Sentiments* from Lili of the Valley with some flowers and I'm quite pleased with how this turned out.

The Magic of Christmas for Leonie

Hello lovely peeps

I've got a pastel Christmas card for you today made with one of Leonie's Magic Masks.

Howdy for Leonie

Hello lovely peeps

I've got another men's card for you today, using Leonie's stencils and her second set of doodle stamps.

For the sand background I stamped one of the images in the Lots of Texture stamp set onto Sheena Stamping Card with Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide ink and spritzed with water.

I added another layer of colour by stamping with Vintage Photo onto my craft mat before spritzing and pressing my card down onto it.

For the sky I dabbed Faded Jeans Distress Oxide onto my craft mat and spritzed with lots of water before smooshing the top half of my card through it.

I dabbed it with some kitchen towel while it was wet to give me some clouds.
For the sun I took another stamp from Lots of Texture and inked it with Fossilized Amber first, then just the edges with Fired Brick

I gave it a very light spritz after stamping to blend the ink slightly and drew the colour into the middle with a damp paintbrush.

Next for the cacti :o)

I drew a few cactus shapes onto some copy paper with pencil.
If you would like to take a copy of this picture please feel free - click on the image to bring up the large version then right click on it and save the image to your computer.

After carefully cutting them out I put the shapes to one side to use as masks later

I covered the sky/sand background with my homemade stencil and sponged through some Peeled Paint Distress Oxide ink.

I dried these with a heat gun before stamping through the stencil several times with one of the stamps in the Flower Burst set, inked with Black Memento ink.

The tops of the cacti are highlighted with a white gel pen.

I used one of the masks that I'd set aside to cover one of the cacti so I could stamp a 'snake' behind it with one of the images from the Super Swirl set. I coloured it in with a red Promarker.

For the frame around the picture I cut some lengths of Sheena Stamping card and ran the Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink pad along each one before spritzing with a little water. I then ran these through my Ebosser with the Wood Grain Textures embossing folder from Crafters Companion.

For the 'howdy' I used the Home and Adore stencils to trace through onto some spritzed blue card and then cut the letters out.
ho is from home
w is the m from home turned upside down
d is from adore
y is the h from home turned upside down

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:-
 Simon Says Stamp (Wed) Emboss It (dry embossed the frame)
Moving along with the Times #47 embossing
SSS Work it wednesday sunshine
Crafty Purple Frog Make it manly
Unicorn Challenge #22 For the guys
Glitter n Sparkle #244 Father's Day/Masculine
Colour Crazy Challenge #24 Anything Goes 

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x

Dreamcatcher for Leonie

Hello lovely peeps.

Leonie is back on our screens today with her fabulous products. Her shows are on Hochanda at 8am, 11am and 3pm and the team have all made some new samples.

The first show will be featuring Leonie's Stencils/Masks and doodle stamps so I wanted to show you a card that I made with the paisley feather in the Bohemian Doodles set (the one I used on my peacock card).

First I took a couple of spritzer bottles and made my own colour sprays. For the purple one I squeezed some 'Iris' Glitter Brush Pen (from Leonie's Wrapped Up set) into a bottle and added a few drops of water. The green I wanted to go with it was from a Brilliance Pearlescent inkpad - I dragged the ink pad over the lip of the bottle a few times before adding a little water.

After testing on some old newspaper I spritzed a couple of times onto watercolour card - I dried the first colour with my heat gun before spritzing the second colour to make sure they didn't get muddled.

Next I took the Dream stencil and spread some modelling paste through. You can just about make out the green sticky note that I used to mask off the centre of the D below. This was easily removed with my pokey tool before the paste started to dry.

Once this was dry I drew a small circle in pencil near the top of the card to start building my dreamcatcher - I used one of the circle dies from Leonie's Floral Bursts set.

Annoyingly the purple pigment seeped up through the paste as it dried, but I'll fix that later.

I took the net stamp from The Deep Blue clear stamp set and stamped at the top and bottom of the circle with Black Archival ink

 then on the left and right edges

and then filled in the gaps

For the centre I pencilled in another small circle using the cap of an alcohol marker as a guide

and masked off the outer part of the dreamcatcher

I used the same stamp to build a pattern in the middle

and joined the lines up/doodled in a few extra circles with a black fineliner pen

Now for the dangly bits :D
 I masked off the circle and stamped the feather from the Bohemian Doodles set underneath.

I added four in all, then coloured them in with a small paintbrush and the same inks I used for the background

There's a lovely dangly stamp in the The Deep Blue set, so I stamped this in between the feathers.

The tiny circles in the dreamcatcher were too small to colour with a paintbrush so I coloured them with the ends of a cocktail stick

To fix my blotchy texture paste I cut another mask for the middle of the 'D' and covered the background with the stencil again.

A sponging of white acrylic paint still didn't cover the purple, so I painted on some more of the green ink, making it lighter at the top.

I finished the card off with a doodled border and a smattering of purple pearls in the corner.

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:-

Stamps & Stencils Words with meaning

 Sisterhood of Crafters  Use your imagination

Southern Girls #162 Stuck on you (pearls)

Eclectic Ellapu - A touch of pink/purple

Ooh La La Creations Pearls
Simon Says Stamp (Mon) Touchy feely
CAS Mix Up Stamping and Embossing paste
Creative Fingers #132 Anything Goes
Addicted to Stamps and More #246 Anything Goes

My teamies have made some fabulous samples so please visit their pages too for more inspiration

Nick Roberts

Jane Royston

Anne Dimitriou

Anne Richardson

You have a chance to win Leonie's Happy stencil/mask set by entering my giveaway
(click on the picture below for how to enter)

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x

Create with all your heART for Leonie

Hello lovely peeps

Just popping in to show you how I made this colourful heART card for Leonie's sale shows on Hochanda TV today.

 First I cut the Funky Heart Base from watercolor card and then placed a few of the Art masks over the top of the 'innie' bit.

I dabbed over with twisted citron Distress Ink

then over-stamped with two of the patterns from Branching Out

masking off as I went with sticky notes

Next for the outlines - I sprinkled Crimson Brusho powder onto more watercolour card

and spritzed with water

then repeated with Purple Brusho

These were used to make the heart outlines, cut with the Funky Heart Base (purple) and Hearts and Swirls Overlay (red) dies

I wanted my sentiment to go around the edge of the heart, so I used the die-cuts as a template to draw in pencil on my card blank roughly where I wanted the heart to go.

I drew another line in pencil a couple of cm away, to stamp the sentiment along.

The sentiment is from one of Leonie's older sets called Flight to Freedom. I cut it up to make it easier to separate the words.

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:-
Simon Says Stamp (Mon)  Young at Heart
Deep Ocean Challenge #148 Hearts
Artistic Stampers  Love Hearts
Daisy Chain #5 Have a heart 
Happy Little Stampers Anything Goes with Dies Challenge February
Creatalicious Challenges #108 - Anything Goes with optional Hearts
Dies R Us Challenge #66 Hearts
Unicorn Challenge #18 Butterflies and/or Hearts

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x

Counting Sheep for Leonie

Hello lovely peeps

Leonie is on Hochanda TV this evening to kick off a new One Day Special - there are great offers on some previously released masks/stencils, dies and stamps.

I wanted to show you how I made my sheep picture using some of the products on offer.

To start off,  I sprayed some Stick and Spray onto the back of one of Leonie's 'Imagine' masks and positioned it on an 8x8 canvas board.

Next I made a pale blue paint by mixing Titanium White and Cobalt Blue acrylics on my craft mat and sponged it over the top two thirds of the canvas, leaving some white spaces for clouds.

 I sponged some Docrafts Artiste Acrylic 'Soft Green' over the bottom third for the grass and built a fence with one of the line stamps in the 'Doodle Drops' stamp set - I used scrap paper to mask off part of the stamp when doing the sides and diagonal. You can see the join if you look closely but I'll be painting over this later.

Now for the sheep :o)

The Tangled Tails set has a fab stamp that you can use as the body for a sheep, but I needed to paint this shape onto my canvas first before overstamping with the pattern. I stamped the pattern onto some card and cut it out so I could use the card as a sheep mask.

I positioned this over my canvas and sponged through some Titanium White acrylic paint

Once the paint was dry I pressed my little finger into a Black Memento Ink Pad and 'stamped' the sheep heads. That took me back to my school days - I used to love finger painting :o)

The ear is one of the stamps from the 'Arrow to the Heart' set and the legs were done with the end of one of the 'Pretty Borders' stamps

Once all the sheep were done I stamped over the top of the 'Imagine' mask with various stamps

The word really pops when you take the mask off.

The flowers along the bottom were all stamped using the Tangled Tails set.

The yellow flowers were stamped with Versamark and sprinkled with yellow embossing powder, with the centre overstamped in Black Memento and white Enamel Accents added when dry.

The red flowers were stamped in Black Memento and coloured in with a Poppy red Promarker, and the tiny white flowers were filled in with a white gel pen.

I added some leaves and grass around the bottom of the fence with a leave stamp from the 'Doodle Drops' set and a black fineliner pen, painted with a mixture of Soft Green and Jungle Green paints. The fence was painted in with Burnt Umber acrylic paint.

To finish off I put the canvas in an 8x8" white picture frame.

 Leonie will be back on Hochanda tomorrow (Thursday 9th February) at 9am, 12pm, 4pm and 7pm.

You can watch Hochanda live online, Sky channel 663, Freeview 85 or Freesat 817.

My teamies have some new makes to show you too, so please visit them if you can. The links to their pages are in my sidebar   ------------------------>

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:-
 Stamping Sensations Animal magic
Animal Friends Challenge  #47 no designer paper 

Thanks for stopping by,

Katrina x