Up ,Up and Away

The crop on friday was very laid back and easy going, the good company and sharing of stash definitely inspired me and I completed two cards.

On this card I used a spare stamped image I had created whilst planning tuesdays class. The papers are old ones still available in the shop and I would have overlooked them but they matched the Victorian Velvet coloured image so perfectly, the papers are a mixture of Bo Bunny and Magenta. The butterfly is one of the new laser cut embellishments we have just taken delivery of and the sentiment is by Kaisercraft, this I borrowed from Margaret - thankyou Margaret xxx

The flowers have all been 'Stickled' and all the edges of the papers have been inked with Brushed Corduroy Distress Inks.

*** TIP - to make stickling fiddly embellishments easier, squeeze a large blob of stickles onto a non-porous surface and use a fine paintbrush to apply ***

The second card I made uses one of my favourite items for texture - currugated card.

Anita was busy creating an embellishment for a tag and was using the card and it just seemed the perfect element to finish my card off too. I drew around a die and handcut the heart ( die-cutting tends to flatten the little channels out too much for my liking)

The heart was painted with Gesso and then Tim Holtz Rock Candy crackle paint. Once it was dry I matted it onto a die cut heart, the die for which was lent to me by Anita - thankyou Anita xxx Once again everything was inked with Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink and the sentiment was another lent to me by Margaret.

Another little laser cut daisy just finishes off the flower.

Next I have some ATC's to share, these are for an international swap, the theme for which was chosen by Anita, she chose song titles/lyrics. This had me stumped for a while until Anita showed me one of her new stamps, she suggested the title and it was far better than any of my ideas, so I rolled with it.

The stamps are by Inkadinkadoo, the background was created with Weathered Wood Distress Ink, I cannot take full credit for this background, I saw a similar idea ages ago where someone had done clouds behind a cute girl image, I have no idea who it was, so if any of my lovely readers has seen this or is indeed the original creator of the idea please let me know and I will give full credit to the original artist.

The words were handwritten with a journalling pen and the balloons were coloured with Distress Inks.

I did get a little carried away and made a couple too many, so with one of them I created a masculine style card. I simply left off the handwriting and added a stamped sentiment instead. Papers on this card are by Basic Grey and the background is the new Kraft cardstock we have just received in the shop.

Finally, remember the flowers I received from Beryl this week, the lilies have revealed themselves to me today and I couldn't resist trying to capture a little of their beauty.

As I was taking the photo I realised that although the flowers will not last forever the photo will, and I made a decision to use the photos to make a special little mini-book. I received another gorgeous bouquet from Pat today - thankyou so much Pat, honestly, I have the most loveliest, big hearted customers in the whole wide world. So when the light is good and the flowers are in full bloom I will be adding photos of Pat's flowers to the ones I already have and eventually the mini book will be shared on here too.

Love and Flora

Tracey xxx