New Blog Layout

I am just playing with a new layout at the moment as if I haven't got enought to do!!!!
It may stay like this for a while, it may not. But just so that you don't think you are in the wrong place. I am a person of change - nothing stays the same for too long with me.
LOL B xxxx

MAWTT DT Team

I just can't believe it. I find buried in all my emails from the weekend an email inviting me to be a DT member for Moving Along With The Times (MAWTT), how amazing is that? I am so excited to be on another team and this will certainly keep me busy. Thanks girls I am really looking forward to getting to know you all and finding out how it all works.
I'll keep you all posted with developments.
Happy Monday.
LOL Bxxxx

Isle of Wight Music Festival 2010

As for the weekend at the Isle of Wight Music Festival - well what can I say!!!!

Friday started OK - music not bad, Mr Hudson was very good as were the Doves, but Florence and the Machine were disappointing and we didn't stay to watch Jay-Z (not our style of music) but apparently he was very good. We finished off by going to see Suzie Quatro but didn't stay long, she didn't seem to have her old spark.

 Saturday improved greatly. A new band (to us) we liked were Detroit Social Club. Old 60's and 70's star Melanie was accompanied by her son and daughter and was great, even though I didn't listen to alot of her stuff when I was younger (showing my age here!!). Paloma faith was just amazing - love her voice and she did a good show. Vampire Weekend were really good to listen to - I enjoyed their Paul Simon Graceland's style. Biffy Cliro were a real rock band and I enjoyed listening to them too. Debby Harry of Blondie still has all the old sex appeal and rocked the crowd with well known favourites.

On Sunday we saw a band called the Coronas that were quite good, Suzanne Vega was not a crowd puller, the Courteeners were good as were Friendly Fires. Then came Spandau Ballet, Yvonne and I got quite near the front to watch them and they were brilliant - just loved by the audience and got a real rousing welcome from everyone. Their old favourites True and Gold were sung really loudly by the crowd. The Editors were next and Ken like listening to them. But the last 2 acts stole the whole weekend. PINK was just amazing - what a show and what a voice. She wowed the crowd with her entrance - lifted in a box by a crane over the roof of the stage and then dropped from a great height to the floor. The theme of carnival fitted it beautifully and she had the whole place enthralled the whole time. For her finale she was in a waist hoist and soared and tumbled above the crowd to the excitement of everyone. How could Paul McCartney follow that??? We thought it would be impossible. But we thought wrong. He too was just amazing, singing old Beatles numbers, songs from Wings, ballads, pop and rock. He played numerous guitars and the piano and nearly lost his voice towards the end. His stage set with background films and graphics were very poignant at times with John Lennon and George Harrison part of them, he also referred to them a great deal. The crowd just loved Paul and the band and the age range was incredible from the real youngsters to us oldies (and older still). Everyone stood and sang with him and he did 3 encores - it seemed no-one wanted it to finish and he played for over 2 hours. What an end to the weekend. The weather was brilliant until we went home and then it started to rain, but once in the car and on our way to the ferry and then home it really didn't matter. Although I must say I felt sorry for those who were camping. So if you fancy joining us next year, we shall be going again, it would be lovely to see you.

I will try and post some photos when I get a chance. Also have a look at the Absolute Radio web site to see and hear music and interviews - you'll hear us all singing along with the stars.

Take care, enjoy what you are doing.

LOL Bxxx

OSAAT DT here we come

Just a short post to say a big thankyou to everyone at One Stitch At A Time (OSAAT). I am sooooo pleased and excited to be joining the new team and looking forward to my new and first DT challenge. I have already started to make new friends so I am sure we will all have great fun.
Stay with me everyone and join in.

Have a lovely day and a great week.

Luv B xxxxx

Shell card a winner

Wey hey, I had to put up a third post today as my shell card won the beach theme challenge at Creative Inspirations Challenge Blog. I am so pleased to be rewarded in this way, and I get to choose $10 worth of goodies from Simon Says Stamp - so I have chosen the Tim Holtz 'Nostalgic' Tissue Tape.

I shall love playing with it when it arrives. Thanks to everyone at Creative Inspirations and Natalie for emailing me all the info.

Bye for now.

Luv and hugs. Brenda xxxx

Miss Sparkle 2

Hi there.
This is the second of my Miss Sparkles and this time I have gone for the vintage distressed look.

The promarkers I have used are Ivory, Blush, Dusky Pink and Pastel Pink for the cheeks. The dress includes Pumpkin, Honeycomb, Peach and Burnt Orange. The wings include Azure, Denim, Powder Blue and Pastel Blue. The head-dress has Burnt Sienna, Cinnamon, Tan and Shale.

To achieve the sparkly look I have used Broken China Distress Stickles on the wings, Cosmic Shimmer Autumn Twinkles on the head-dress and Sakura pumpkin coloured Gelly Roll glitter pen on the stamens.

I am not so happy with the face this time, the colours seem to have bled in with the photocopy ink, and what annoys me is I am using the real Epson inks and not the look alike ones. Anyone know how I can stop this please?

I really like the Nellie Snellen embossing floral punches and have used them on both cards 1 and 2. On this one I have used them with bought ones (no name on the box I am afraid). I have included my usual butterfly and bird, both cut out and covered with glossy accents. I edged the scalloped die-cut with clear crackle paint and rubbed in Interference Blue Pefect Pearls. The edge of the circle die-cut was distressed with Vitage Photo DI. The flourish is TH Swirly. I also tried something completely different again on this card. I had a frame downloaded on my computer, so I printed it onto the DP as part of the background. Backing papers were edged with Star Dust Stickles and Frosted Lace sprinkled with glitter.

Well that's my second sample for the OSAAT DT call. Wish me luck.

Have a great weekend when it arrives, the weather looks quite promising for the festival, so fingers crossed.

Luv and hugs. Brenda xxxxx

Challenge List
A Spoonfull of Sugar #107 - Floral Delights
Tuesday Taggers - All that Blooms
Everybody Art #94 - Things with Wings
The Crazy Challenge - Distress It
Pollycraft Challenge - Ribbon and bling
Corrosive Challenge #67 - Die Cuts
Bee Crafty #31 - Bloomin Marvellous
Stamp, scrap, doodle #43 - Handmade Embellishments
Stamp Something - Digis

Miss Sparkle 1

Good evening, how have you been today?

This is sooooo exciting. I have created a couple of Miss Sparkle cards for a DT call at One Stitch at a Time. This one should be sub-titled 'Almost clean and simple' could also be known as 'Dare to dream' - dare I?????

This lovely stamp is from 'Stitchy Bear Stamps' and is called 'Sparkle'. This is not my usual style of card but I have been collecting promarkers for a while, so this has given me a good opportunity to play with them. I think the colouring has worked quite well. I approached the making of this card in a different way to usual and have learnt many lessons. Usually I collect all my papers and things together first, but for this one the beautiful image reminded me of one of my favourite flowers, the Fuchsia, so I set about gathering the colours in promarkers and completing the image only to find it has taken me days, literally days to find the papers and layout I am happy with and yet it is so simple. But I have got there in the end - perseverance is the name of the day. Because of this pretty fairy's name I have used Sakura glitter pens and Stickles on the image and green mount and the sentiment is from Raindrop Echo Designs, where Ann often puts out some freebies.

I am experimenting with some other layouts and am posting another design using the same stamp. I have been having great fun, so have a look and see what you think.

Have a lovely week. I am really looking forward to the weekend - Ken, my friend Yvonne and I are off to the Isle of Wight Music Festival. I went last year for the first time in my life and enjoyed the atmosphere and listening to some fabulous music, so I just had to do it again. Of course there is a treat in all of this - on the IoW you can get bed and breakfast and not have to sleep in a tent. Yeh, music, fun and a decent bed to sleep in.

Take care, have fun and let me know if you are going to the festival as well.

Luv and hugs. Brenda xxxx

Challenges
The Creative Cottage #14  - Pink
A Spoonfull of Sugar #107 - Floral Delight
Tuesday Taggers - All that blooms
Everybody-Art-Challenge - Things with wings
Ooh La La Creations #55 - Colours of their blog
Cupcake Craft #94 - Dazzle Us
Corrosive Challenge #67 - Die Cuts
Bee Crafty #31 - Bloomin Marvelous
Stamp, scrap, doodle #43 - Handmade embellishment

New home card

Hi Everyone

Sunday after a great BBQ with family and friends last night. We sat outside and lit all the candles we could find, it was a lovely evening. So relaxing, just wonderful.

 I found a free pic on the internet, printed it off, cut it out, then stamped the cage over it which is from the TH Artful Flight set. The background was rubbed with distress inks very lightly then spritzed with water, dabbed off with paper and heat dried. This has given it a light but vintage effect. I used Spellbinders and TH dies to cut the shapes to mount the parrot and cage on and the backing papers again are downloads. I used Photoshop Elements to crop the little butterfly and darken it and printed it out separately. having covered it in glossy accents I added it to give more dimension. The sentiment is from Raindrop Echo Designs, Anne often offers freebies either on her challenge blog, Sentimental Sundays, or on her own blog, they are easy to use in Photoshop. The ribbon was pleated and sewn to cover the join in the two papers.

I have this cute little bird feeder so I took a photo of the card behind it.

Neat eh?

Other materials used

Distress inks - black soot, shabby shutters and aged mahogany

Stickles - cotton candy and star dust

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening and hopefully shower free, though the rain and clouds are starting to roll in here. I can just hear some thunder in the distance, but otherwise we have been lucky and had quite a nice day. I managed to get lots more gardening done.

Take care. Luv Brenda xxx

Challenge List

Creative Card Crew #51 - Pink and green

Gingersnap Creations #57 - Wings

Craftalicious - New
Crazy 4 challenges #40 - Pleats

Flowers and sparkle

Good morning to another bright and sunny day, although thunder storms are threatened for later. Still the garden is looking good and I have nearly finished organising it. So much so I have taken my recent photos outside.

Well you know how I love sparkle, so when I saw Paperplay's challenge was flowers and sparkle I knew I had to design a card for that one. I also saw this sketch at Moving along with the Times and another theme of flowers at Charisma and Nordsalten Hobbyklub so I decided to combine them all. I had downloaded this gorgeous sheet music cover of 'Roses from Picardy' from Antique Images and a pink and green theme fitted perfectly, linking with the Creative Card Crew challenge.

I have used two DPs and some sheet music for the backgrounds. I couldn't make one of my own frames to fit this so I used double-sided tape to frame the green paper and cover it with glitter. I distressed the image, the rose paper and the music paper and used stickles on the edges of two of them.

The roses I had in my collection and I spritzed the lighter ones and the music paper with Tattered Angels water melon glimmer mist. I experimented with several things for the ribbon effect across the lower part of the page, but nothing seemed quite right until I die cut a long scroll shape to look like a stem effect for the flowers....... and so it all came together.

Supplies used
Stickles - Star Dust and Cotton Candy
Mireille glitter
Distress inks - Fired Brick and Vintage Photo
Glimmer Mist - Watermelon
Sizzix swirly decorative strip

Enjoy the weekend. Hopefully we will have a BBQ tonight and sit outside again, as we did last night with the family. Love the summer.

Love and hugs. Brenda xxxx
Challenge List
Paperplay Challenges #22 - Flowers and Sparkle
Moving Along with the Times #49 - Sketch
Charisma Cardz Challenges #22 - Flowers
Nordsalten Hobbyklub #8 - Flower Power
Creative Card Crew #51 - Pink and green

Summer theme - shells

Is it really Friday of half term? Oh my goodness, another week gone. We had a great couple of days with Ben, Bev and the girls last weekend down at Seaton, the weather was lovely and we were able to get on the beach. Fantastic. So when I saw that summer and beach themes were coming through in the challenges I decided to focus on a lovely little vintage picture that I had downloaded from the internet and a sketch that had caught my attention at Sketchy Colours. I get alot of my free vintage pics from The Graphics Fairy.

This is the result. I used a DP with shells over it to give me the colour theme, the picture and the postcard were both printed from my file of free vintage downloads. I made the frame and first of all lightly covered it with blue and green glitter, but it didn't give me the effect I wanted so I painted it with old paper distress crackle paint and rubbed distress inks into it when it had dried. I have some clear square dome stickers, so I put one over the stamp on the postcard to give it some dimension and got out some shells from a box of them that I keep. (You just never know what you are going to need do you???) I love the starfish which I had bought in Swanage the year before last.

Other supplies used

Stickles - lime green and star dust.

TH distress inks - frayed burlap, peeled paint and blue china.

Sakura glitter and glaze pens.

I love the colours and the beachy feel to it.

I hope you are enjoying this lovely hot weather we are having at the moment, must remember to water the plants though.

Take care, enjoy whatever you are doing.

Love and hugs.  Brenda xxxx

Challenge List

Sketchy Colours #26 - Sketch

Cupcake Crafts #92 - Summer Delights

Everybody Art Challenge #93 - Summer

Tuesday Taggers - Touchy, feely, texture   and a great prize this week from Tanda Stamps, check them out to see what goodies they have.

Papertake Weekly - Fun, fun, fun

Stampavie and more #97 - Summer

Crafts and Me #5 - Distressed

Creative Inspirations #63 - Beach theme

The Treehouse #52 - Beach/vacation theme
Raise the Bar #21 - Celebrate Summer