CAS Birthday Fishes

Hello lovely peeps

My panda card from a couple of weeks ago won the 'Hugs' challenge over at 
Clean and Simple on Friday so this week I have the great pleasure of being their Guest Designer.  

The challenge theme this time is 'Nature'.

Feeling fall

Hello lovely peeps

It's coming up to that time of the year - the trees are starting to shed and I'll soon be like a little kid kicking up the leaves on the pavement :D

He's a Lumberjack

Hello lovely peeps

I bought these fabulous stamps a few weeks ago (Aall & Create set #463 'The Gentlemen')

 and was having a play swapping their heads around as the beardy guy is my favourite.

Sebastian the seahorse

Evenin' all. A late post today because I've been down with my lovely Mum for a couple of days (now we're allowed to stay overnight again) and I wanted to get this one blogged for a challenge ending tomorrow. 

The stamps are from Lavinia - I've used Sebastian the Seahorse (for the main image and also some of the seaweed at the bottom), plus a trailing vine stamp from a really old fairy set.

Finger Painting

A bit of finger painting today, lol.

I've been watching an old Art Journalling DVD by Kate Crane where she does painty backgrounds with her fingers and thought I would have a go. 

Angel Fish

I've had a play with Craftascope's All the 8's stencil to make the background for today's card.
 

Leonie Pujol did this technique on hochanda a week or two ago - you put inks on your craft mat and spritz with water then put your stencil in the ink and 'stamp' with it.

Every cloud

Hello lovely peeps, I do hope you are well in these troubling times.

Every cloud has a silver lining. With my hours cut at work because of the coronavirus pandemic I now have some spare time to craft.

I made this card for my nephew's 21st, using stamps, stencils and distress inks.

Thanks for stopping by, stay safe
Katrina x

Retro Fun

Hello lovely peeps

A really quick post before I dash off to work to share the last two cards I made with the Retro Collection from Craftascope.

Retro Fish

Hello lovely peeps and a very warm welcome to my new follower :o)

Well I'm not getting very far through my list of cards still to blog so I think I'll have to go with shorter posts if I'm going to get my Craftascope cards all published before the next collection launches :o)

Disco Fever

Hello lovely peeps

Another card today using the Retro collection from Nick Roberts at Craftsascope. I absolutely loved making this one.

Cutaway Card

Hello lovely peeps

Just popping in with a couple of quick cards I made with Craftascope stamps and stencils.

Rainbow Socks

Hello lovely peeps

On today's card I've used one of the sentiments from Nick Roberts' first Craftascope collection - the Profile stamp set.  I just love the grungy look, I thought 'graffiti' as soon as I saw it.

Birds on Branches

Hello lovely peeps and welcome to my new follower :o)

Another Craftascope make to share with you today, using the Weeping Willow stencil.

Such a hoot

Hello lovely peeps

A fun little ATC to share with you today, using the latest Craftascope products from Nick Roberts.

Through the Maze

Hello lovely peeps

Just popping in to show you a maze card I made with one of the Craftascope stencils designed by Nick Roberts -  it's called Retro Fun 2, part of a 2-pack. You can get these and lots of other items in Nick's Etsy shop (where you get free p&p 😍) or at Hochanda.

Howdy Nick

Hello lovely peeps

If you've not seen the news on my Facebook or Instagram pages, I am delighted to say that I was invited by the lovely Nick Roberts to be on the Design Team for Craftascope.  Nick is on Hochanda TV today at 10am and 3pm to demonstrate his fabulous new stamps, stencils and dies, as well as bringing back his first collection

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