House of Bears challenge

After mulling over what I can craft, doing something I hated, I turned to my good friends over at The House of Bears they came up with this challenge. Based on the book The Secret Garden (the bears favorite book), the inspirational words were:
Re birth
Outdoors
Nature

The rebirth - butterfly

Outdoors - summer colours/qoute about sitting on grass making daisy chains

Nature - flowers

Thank you bears for the inspiration.

I used Tim Holtz Distress inks and alcohol. Inks, gold glimmer mist, Marianne Designs butterfly, Indiogblue. Stamp and flowers. And gems.

'

The Alice and Rabbit situation

Was very excited about Wednesday coming this week as it was challenge day on Dragons Dream blog. The theme this week was Alice in wonderland. I was even more excited by that. I have some very old, but much loved and used Non Sequitur stamps, actually having just seen the range, there are a lot more available now and I NEED them all :)

Ok, enough chat. Here is my entry for this week's challenge, photo taken from the top doesn't show the gold glimmer mist, but have taken a second photo to show that.

Used JoSonja's amethyst paint over red irredscent paint then stamped over with script stamp to remove paint (you can't really see this), then stamped and coloured Alice, the rabbit and the watch and cut out. Inked edges in various colours and tried to create a shadowed effect around outside, like Alice looking into the picture, stamped stretched Alice added glimmer mist in gold, gold edges and attached a chain to the watch. Phew!

This photo gives a much clearer view of the inks. Really enjoyed these challenges but must go and buy more tags now :).

Thanks for looking x

Ordered new stamps!

Oops! How did that happen then? I love stamping, always been 'my thing ' so after much persuasion from a furry friend (see The House of Bears Blog) I was forced (ahem!!!) into buying new stamps. I ordered Indiogblue unmounted stamps Grand Tour 1 and Take the Time from That's Crafty

Bit of eye candy for sure!

So many more stamps I wanted but I'll need to just buy some at a time!

Reading! another passion

I love reading, although normally painfully slow, I have astounded even myself with my latest books.  

Tideline - Penny Hancock this book had me hooked from the start! I downloaded it last Sunday evening, and have been out of the house unable to read it for three days, but finished it last night! I am, as I said previously, an extremely slow reader, but I just could not put this down. I loved it, the only down side to it I'd say was the ending was slightly weak, but well worth reading to the end.  Disturbing on so many levels, but intriguing at the same time, shocking in parts. Here's the blurb about it:

One winter's afternoon, Sonia opens the door of her beautiful riverside home to fifteen-year-old Jez, the nephew of a family friend. He's come to borrow some music. Sonia invites him in and soon decides that she isn't going to let him leave. As Sonia's desire to keep Jez hidden and protected from the outside world becomes all the more overpowering, she is haunted by memories of an intense teenage relationship, which gradually reveal a terrifying truth. The River House, Sonia's home since childhood, holds secrets within its walls. And outside, on the shores of the Thames, new ones are coming in on the tide...

SO! now what? Well I went through all the books I already have downloaded on my Kindle, and just couldn't find something I wanted to read, so decided to go back to my 'I'd like to read' list and picked The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

So, I'm now 14% through this having downloaded it last night, and been out all day, so another one I appear to be instantly hooked to. Completely different to Tideline, set in the 1800's - here's the blurb on this:

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
The black sign, painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, reads:
Opens at Nightfall
Closes at Dawn
As the sun disappears beyond the horizon, all over the tents small lights begin to flicker, as though the entirety of the circus is covered in particularly bright fireflies. When the tents are all aglow, sparkling against the night sky, the sign appears.
Le Cirque des Rêves
The Circus of Dreams.
Now the circus is open.
Now you may enter.

http://www.richardandjudy.co.uk/home great place to go to when fancying something new to sink your teeth into. i have NO idea why blogger keeps highlighting paragraphs, it is not playing the game and I have been unable to post all of my text because of it!

Anything Goes/Summer Colours

The challenge from The Stamp Man challenge blog


I liked the sound of this challenge, but actually, this is nothing like the entry I was intending to put forward. My usual Tim Holtz Distress inks, spritzed, dried and stamped with background stamp in black. Making memories foam stamped flowers two with distress inks one on an old book. Sentiment coloured in same way and mounted with silicone gel.

I tried to keep this as obviously the sentiment states, simple, but I'm not 100% happy with it either. I may try something completely different just to satisfy myself, but being very critical it takes a lot for me to say 'yeah I'm happy with that.

Considering Steampunk

Yet another struggle for me, but then it wouldn't be called a challenge if it wasn't challenging I suppose!  I managed the background no problem last night and was really happy with it, and was then worried about spoiling it!

I swept over the tag with Tim Holtz Distress inks in broken china, fired brick and shabby shutters. I then spritzer it with waster and let run together. I then decided to add some glimmer mist. I stamped clocks background and distressed the edges with TH distress embossing powder. At this point I was happy, I had some of the recipe done as the clocks and inner workings of them covered, to me as best as I could manage, 'industrial' I then had to play about with it to try and fulfill the other elements 'fantasy' the whimsical wings added to 'victoriana' the gentleman at the front.

I used Paperartsy stamp and general clock and cog pieces from stash.

Foccacia - a bit of baking

Well as my blog states I am a bit partial to baking. I don't do it as often as I used to, or as often as I'd like, but today I decided I fancied some foccacia. I've never made it before and have to say that it didn't rise as much as it should have but that is probably due to two factors 1) I didn't have anywhere warm to put it so just used a very low temp oven, but maybe still too hot, and 2) I didn't have enough strong white flour so substituted half with strong wholemeal. I used Lorraine Pascale 's recipe and used sundries tomatoes and basil.

The start of the process in my lovely Kenwood Chef mixer.

Just before it went into the oven (was hoping it would rise more when cooking) I'm not 100% happy with it but...

                                      

... it get the thumbs up from the family so that's good. Dipping in balsamic vinegar and olive oil! THE best way to enjoy! Yum yum!

Make it vintage.

Taking part in, hopefully the first of many challenges. Over on the Scrapology blog. The card challenge for this month was 'Make it vintage. This was a style that 'was' second nature to me, but years down the line I didn't know where to start. Anyway, this was the outcome:

I used the following items:

Various Tim Holtz Distress ink pads (scattered straw,walnut stain, frayed burlap, vintage photo)

water spritzer

Cut an dry foam

Nestabilities frame (Fleur De Lis Rectangle)

Marianne Design roses and leaves (leaves cut from an of book)

butterfly stamp from Indiogblu, free with Craft Stamper magazine Aug 2012

Black Line Design French Script stamp

Lilac spotted ribbon

Pink satin ribbon

Peal ribbon

Image from a 12 x 12 scrapbooking sheet that has been in stash for years.

This, believe it or not took me hours!!! I just couldn't get things to work as I wanted. As I said at start of post this used to be the only style I did and I found it really difficult to do anything not vintage/shabby chic, but after years away it was much harder than I thought! I got there interest end!

A trip down memory lane

I have been looking back through the first few sketches at Pencil lines sketch blog and enjoying my trip down memory lane. I have to say what I have noticed is my change in style over the years, looking back at the sketches, I would defiantly do differently now. I am going to go back through some of them over next few weeks posting my original layout and what I'd do with the sketch now.

This is the very first sketch from Pencil Lines Sketch blog  Original Page here done by the lovely Becky Fleck. Anna Bowkis started Pencil Lines way back in October 2006 and I had the honor of being asked to be part of the team. I had many happy months there before moving on due to personal reasons. Sadly earlier this year the blog came to an end to enable Anna and others to pursue other avenues.

 

This is my very first layout for PL and really enjoyed it, As I do mainly cards now I suppose it will look completely different from anything I'd scrapbook, but maybe, one day I shall have time and patience to get back to scrapbooking.

With that I shall take myself off to play and see what I come up with.


Hello to my two lovely followers Pooh and Tiny Puppy x

Using my new Marianne Designs English Rose die for a sympathy card. The Bazzil card makes wonderfully strong, sturdy flower. The main stamp is Footprints, which I like to use on sympathy cards or whenever someone is feeling a bit low to give the strength.

My first post of my new (but recycled) blog

Well, this is something I never thought I'd be doing agian, but having been inspired by a couple of friends, I thought I'd dip my toes back into the blogging waters.

I am, a sporadic blogger, going weeks/months between posts to posting a few times in a couple of hours, so anyone reading this be warned.  I have no illusions I will have regular followers because of this, but really I'm not that bothered by that.

I had hoped, when deciding to re-kindle my blog, that i'd do a lot of it, if possible direct from my phone, that was until I dropped it head first into a large cup of milk last night, it is now sitting in a bag of rice, in the vane hope it will work properly again!

Thank you for visiting my blog (Pooh) :)