The Stamp Man ATC June Swap - Trees

The month of June is upon us and time for another ATC swap at The Stamp Man. This is my DT contribution to this month's challenge.

I used AIs to create the background. In the mix of gold, red and yellow colours I created a desert scene.  Can you make it out? I accentuated the mountain ranges with some gold and copper rub 'n buff then stamped the trees over the top using DI and Rubber Stampede (for the darkest tree). I think there is a red river running through the canyon between the trees. The tree stamp is from the TH collection Mini Holidays 2.

I found the quote that fitted, printed it out on A4 paper only to feel disappointed that it would look odd attaching it somewhere on the card. Taking a risk I used spray mount to stick the ATC to the A4 paper in exactly the place it had printed out before and ran it through the printer again. Phew it worked and placed the quote neatly at the top.

It says -
For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree
is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.
Martin Luther

Inspiration was take from Gingersnap Creations - Stamp a scene and I am entering this for that challenge.

Before you go, I would love you to go over to Dezinaworld where the fabulous June has a new designer, Kim, whose work is just amazing and also June has a freebie just for today only. It is a collage sheet of vintage ladies which is well worth having. June is re-starting her Spot Prize challenge tomorrow and there is also a $10 shop prize for her monthly gallery challenge. Lots to take a look at - have fun.

Hope you had a fabulous May and here's to a warm and pleasant June.

luv and hugs {brenda}xoxox

GiveAway Winners

Hi Everyone

Sorry I am a little late in publishing my Giveaway winners but I have been having technology problems – it started with my Iphone crashing and having to re-set it to factory settings and losing everything. Luckily I had backed it up, but it was quite a few months ago so I have still lost some phone numbers and email addresses etc. Then my usb ports were causing power surges when I plugged anything into them and I couldn’t sync my iPod until I used a port on the back of the computer. Even now I have lost my printer network connection, it really frustrates me when my days get high-jacked with trying to sort out something I know little about. So that will now be a job for tomorrow.
 Onto the winners then. Firstly a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to enter and join in the fun. I had lots of lovely comments and some of you became new followers, which was fabulous because this wasn’t a condition for entry. There were 36 entries altogether of which 21 were followers, so they got an additional chance in both of the draws. 15 of you matched or improved on my 6Bs.

The winner of the first Giveaway prize – which includes


Two Books and a Box for altering
Blue, Brown and Black papers
Black (and white) Buttons and Bows
Bling - to include adhesive stones and glamour dust
chipboard Buttons
Butterfly 3D stickers
Beads

          Is number 42 and that is …………………Rebekah at Berrylicious.

The winner of the second Giveaway prize – which includes 

Butterfly stamps (papermania)          
Bare chipboard album
A Box canvas
A Book for altering
Black and white tags
Chipboard Buttons

    

 and that is ……………………..    number 15
    

Claire at Claire’s Crafty Creations.

Congratulations to you both and if you email me your address I will get these in the post to you as soon as possible. brenda_brown25@hotmail.com

Can I say a big welcome to -
cv.nikolaeva, buswellclare, shercauble455, Dragonlady, AK Hoynes, (sorry I do not have a links to your blogs from my followers list and cannot get over to see you). Rusty, Silvia, Debra, Noukie, Josie, Dawn, Sarah, Trisha, Zahreen, Chriisy, Emma, Gina, Debbie, Susie, Sue, Esther, Gayle, Lucy and Tammy Louise.

I am getting used to using Windows Live Writer and find it has so many more options for formatting text and changing the sizes of photos, so I shall continue to explore what else it has to offer.

Have a good week and look after yourselves.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Wendy Vecchi Style

At Simon Says Stamp and Show, the theme this week has been to show some Wendy Vecchi style. This was a real challenge for me as I only have one set of her stamps which are heart based so I didn’t feel they were appropriate. But I utilised lots of others as well as these and this is the result.

 
I have had the art parts since Christmas and just not got round to playing with them, so this was a real treat. I mixed DIs with Adirondack inks and PaperArtsy Fresco paint and household paint. Stamps came from Wendy Vecchi, PaperArtsy, Paper Relics, Creative Expressions  and The Artistic Stamper

                                                       A PaperArtsy moth covered in distress stickles and gems added to the body. The perfume bottle is from paper Relics.

                                             The flower is Artistic Stamper then over stamped with PaperArtsy, the long leaf is Wendy Vecchi and the small leaves are Artistic Stamper.

The bird cage is PaperArtsy.

If the format looks different for this post it’s because I am using Windows Live Writer, recommended by Shirley and her husband, so I will see how I get on with it.

Happy Sunday everyone and take care. Thank you for stopping by and many thanks to all of you who leave me lovely comments.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Grungy Monday - Brushless Watercolour and meeting up with blogging friends.

Hi All

I have had an amazing week meeting up with fellow bloggers. Last Wednesday Ken and I drove to Maidstone to meet up with Joyce at Gram's Treasures. We all went for a meal and had a fabulous evening getting to know each other better and the men chattered away and got on really well too.  I met Joyce on-line over a year ago when she won my first blog candy and we have stayed in touch ever since. Joyce lives in Canada but has been visiting  England as this is where she lived as a child. Joyce, if you read this, thankyou for your great company, it was lovely to meet you in the flesh. Then I had a great time this morning - I went and had coffee with Shirley at Shirl's Cards, who is on the LIIU with me. Shirl lives in Ireland but originates from my neck of the woods here and is off on holiday today with her family who still live in this area. My goodness, again it was fantastic to meet up and the time just passed far too quickly, hopefully we will get together again sometime when she is back.

Well I have been very busy with projects that you will see coming up during the month of June, but I had to have a go at the challenge that Linda has posed us at Studio L3 this week. Thanks for keeping this going Linda. You need to go take a look at Tim's great tutorial where he shows us how to use stamps and inks to produce a brushless watercolour effect on watercolour paper. It's a fab technique and produces great results - but you will need to have a practice at it - well I did!!!

 I haven't made my piece into a card, I'm not sure it should be, just leaving it as a piece of art - I really quite like it just as it is.

 As you can see this gives a great blurred, watercolour effect and I love the mix of colours you can achieve.

Great saying eh?

Linda has told us on her blog this week of two recent cases where people have been using Tim's work and claiming it as their own. One person has lifted Tim's tutorials and not given him any credit for the them at all and someone else has scanned or photographed his ideaology keys and is selling them as a pdf file for use in blog work. How can anyone do this? As Linda says we are a sharing community and will give anyone help, ideas and inspiration, we look, we learn and we create our own which could be similar in style - but actually taking and using others work for our own personal gain is completely different. I really hope these people can be stopped.

You may have seen that I have stepped down from the MAWTT design team. I am moving so much more into the artsy, vintage and shabby styles that I am unable to work with alot of digi images and do not get pleasure from using many of them. But I will miss my DT team mates hugely. They are a great bunch of girls and have become such good blogging friends. Thanks girls for all your love and support over the past year and please stay in touch.

I hope you have had a good week, even with all the Blogger problems again. What have you got planned for the weekend? We are going to a wedding reception that Richard and Sal are holding for all their family and friends who didn't go to Cyprus. I haven't seen them since we returned and I want to find out all about their honeymoon.

Take care, enjoy the Bank Holiday weekend if you are in the UK.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

More Blogger Problems and Good News for it.

First the bad news - I must apologise that I haven't been able to comment on your blogs, but I am one of those who cannot leave comments at the moment as I don't seem to be able to sign in or sign out of Blogger and I know they have posted that there is a problem.

BUT the good news is that I have moved from Internet Explorer to Firefox and hey ho I have been able to catch up on design team commenting without any problems. So hopefully I will be able to get round all my friends blogs very soon.

The next lot of bad news though is that I am having problems writing this post in Firefox so I will have to monitor the situation carefully.

So if you are one of the ones who is also affected - try changing your internet browser and see if that helps.

See ya later.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

A Thank You card

Hi All

I am working on some projects at the moment so I haven't had much time to make cards, but I loved the colour theme at Play Date Cafe this week and just had to produce something for it.

This is a thank you card made from papers from my bits box. The layout is quite simple and I have used a MS punch and nesties to create the main shapes.

The flower is made of layers of uneven circles cut from patterned paper with the edges inked and then scrumpled and layered and sat on a scalloped circle of music paper.

 Now I normally hate peel-offs but I couldn't find the sentiment I wanted so I used butterscotch alcohol ink on a silver peel-off to create this one. With some lace and pearls this is quite a quick card for me.

I hope your day has been good.

To all of you lovely people who leave me comments, please accept this as my Thank You for staying in touch and letting me know your thoughts on my creations.

Take care.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Other challenges to have fun with -
Creative Craft - Blue, brown and cream
Bunny Zoes - Lace
Pollycraft - Embellishment Bingo - mine is lace, button (chipboard), flower

Folklore, superstition and old wives tales

My Mum used to live by a number of old wives tales and she totally believed in them. I take most of them with a pinch of salt.

When I saw that the theme at Simon Says Stamp and Show was precisely this I had a think about the ones Mum used to say. We were never allowed to put shoes on the table; breaking a mirror is 7 years bad luck she used to say; a bird that flew into the house meant a death; it is supposedly good luck to find a 4 leaf clover - and I used to spend hours as a small child looking for one; spilled some salt - then throw it over your left shoulder; we could never cut our nails on a Friday or a Sunday because it was bad luck; if you have an itchy right hand you were to soon come into money, but if it was the left hand then you would be parting with it; and if you dropped a knife on the floor you had to stand on it and she would never ever receive a brooch (or something sharp) without giving some money in return.

Anyway - I used to love the nature ones - a patch of blue sky before noon meant you would see the sun for the rest of the day, in the autumn it was good luck to catch 3 leaves from the trees before they hit the ground, three butterflies seen together would bring good luck and if the first butterfly you saw in the year was white you would have good luck all year.

Wo I could go on, but here is my take on the white butterfly tale.

Inspiration has been drawn from -
Simon Says Stamp and Show - Old wives tales
Grungy Monday - TH colour blocking technique
Craft Barn - using gesso
Just for fun - make a postcard (mine is 6 x 4 ins)

Creating and making-
I made 3 different butterflies, all stamped onto fabric, one without gesso, one stamped into wet gesso and one stamped onto dry gesso to choose the one I wanted - chose the dry gessoed one and highlighted it with promarkers.

Stamped butterflies on wet and dry gesso

Bottom butterfly stamped straight onto the fabric and highlighted with promarkers.

Background colour blocked using Tim's technique - see Here. Edged with DI,

splashed with water and heat dried.

Overstamped with DIs, edges stamped with gesso finished by painting edges with crackle paint.

Trinket pin and bird pinned to the butterfly.

Metal flower primed with gesso and then crackle painted, mini rosette with additional small flower also gessoed and gem added. String, pin and ticket added.

A close up of the buterflies.

Supplies -
Studio - gesso
Idealology - metal foliage, adornments bird, trinket pin
TH - mini paper rosette die
Stamps - TH nature's moments, urban grunge, papillon. La Blanche swirl
DIs - bundled sage, tattered rose, antique linen, pumice stone
Adirondack dye pads - lettuce, cranberry, caramel
Distress crackle paint - picket fence, old door

Well I hope you saw a white butterfly this year - do you know what I bet that this colour is the first of the season anyway!..

Enjoy your weekend. I am off to Sue's 50th birthday party this afternoon and at the moment the sun is shining, let's hope it stays that way.

Take care and thanks for dropping in.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

The Stamp Man Challenge # 19 - Recipe

Hi Everyone - it's Friday, and time for the next Stamp Man challenge. This week Lisa S has a recipe for us to follow, but it's in the form of a bingo card and you can choose which line you would like to use.

I have included all the things on the bottom left to top right diagonal line and so I have a die-cut, ribbon and stitching. I drew additional inspiration from the Simon Says Stamp challenge of sparkle and shine, The Shabby Tea Room with monochromatic and Sketch Saturday.

This card is for my good friend Sue who has a mile-stone birthday next week and we are joining her tomorrow for her celebrations.
The stamped image is one of Jill's Framies which she has designed and sells exclusively at the Stamp Man shop. This one fits perfectly with the Nestabilities Labels 4 set.
I stamped the image twice then diecut the image with a slightly smaller die than the background one so it provided a different colour mount but with the stamped edging. I also used the faux nestie technique by drawing round the largest one and cutting it out to give me a further mount.

You can just see some butterflies along the bottom of the TH backing paper which were embossed with a glittery embossing powder.

I also used a glaze pen on the 50 embellishment to give it some shine.

My butterflies are made using 2 different sized MS punches and then I added distress stains and DI before covering them with distress stickles. Some pink hessian, ribbon, pearls and tiny tag handwritten with happy Birthday add the finishing touches.
Supplies -
TH paper stash - vintage shabby
Stamps - The Stamp Man Framies, TH Papillon and City Central
Distress stickles - rock candy
DIs - aged mahogany, victorian velvet, vintage photo, pumice stone
Nestabilities - labels 4
Sakura glaze pen - clear

Do go take a look at the fabulous designs made by the DT, you will see how this great challenge can be interpreted in so many ways and is completely versatile for anyone to enter.

Other challenges to have fun with -
Crafty Purple Frog - Mono moments
Paperplay - Sparkle galore
Creative Craft - Distress/vintage
Sweet Stamps - Birthday card
Crafty Cardmakers - Embossing
Paper Sundaes - Birthday

Have a great Friday and thank you for stopping by to take a look.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

MAWTT Challenge 99 - Sketch

HI Blogging Buddies  - how is the world with you today?

This week at MAWTT our fabulous teamie Hazel has given us a sketch to work with. I set about using the image and made it into a transparent ping file so that I could print it onto distressed paper, made by myself with DIs and sprinkled water - you know the technique. I used some TH text paper and Graphic 45 Steampunk card and bought some ribbon from a craft shop local to my sister when I went to see her on Wednesday. Great - made the tag to go with it added some lace, finished them all off and went to draft my post (actually I couldn't because Blogger had gone down) - but I tried to remember the theme - what was it? No. I had to go and check the DT blog to remind me - hey ho guess what? I hadn't followed the theme (sketch) at all - duh!!!! Where had my brain gone???? So then had to set about making another one. But that gives me even more to show you today.

First my Steampunk Vintage Vamp. I love this image from Stitchy Bear.

Supplies used -
DIs - frayed burlap, antique linen, vintage photo, walnut stain
DSs - forest green, wild honey
Papers - G45 steampunk, DCWV naturals, TH
Stickles - diamond
Sakura glaze pens - green and white
Sizzlits architectural accents #4 die
Steampunk embellishments

So to show you the first card and tag I made where I just got carried away in my own little world. (But that's good isn't it - shows I was in a creative and thinking mood).

Supplies used
Provo Craft corner die
Graphic 45 and TH papers
Stitchy bear image with added text

Challenges to have fun with
The Rubber Cafe - Vintage



I am also really pleased that my shabby recipe card was chosen as card of the week at Sugar Creek Hollow. Thank you girls for choosing my card, I am delighted and feel very honoured. Isn't this a cool badge?

Well I hope to see you over at MAWTT this week.

Take care.

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox

Divas by Design - Challenge 2 - For the Girls

Good morning one and all

Well the Divas by Design challenges are well under way now and the last fortnights inspiration pieces by Team A were fabulous and I am know you will get the same for this next challenge by Team B. We have had an excellent response so thankyou if you have been taking part. I hope you are going to like this challenge with the girly theme.

I really wanted to do something completely different for this one, and I wanted it to be really 'Girly' and shabby chic in style. So here is my contribution. Different eh???? An altered clothes hanger. I have seen there is a 'wood' challenge at Alter it Monthly, so I was keen to get this one in for that too.

This photo shows the hanger as it started out, just a plain wooden one, but with that lovely heart on it.

I covered it with white acrylic paint.

Then I added some texture by applying wood filler through a mask. After letting it dry for a couple of hours or more, I then sanded the textured part and added pink household emulsion with an almost dry brush to get that shabby effect.

When it was dry, I sanded it again.

Lastly I added the lace and ribbon bow and the little hooks to hold some necklaces.

I am really pleased with the outcome and think I will be making some more altered things using the same technique.

So come on over to Divas by Design and join in our challenge this week. Remember it is open to everyone whatever your style or project, we would love to see you join in and there is a chance of winning a prize from Crafty Sentiments.

So if you feel like making something really girly, please show us, we are all so looking forward to coming and seeing what you have made.
Take care and thanks for taking at look at my work.


Other challenges to have fun with -
Bunny Zoe's - Lace
By the cute and girly - Anything Goes

luv and hugs {brenda} xoxox