I took advantage of being at Susan's - Country View Crafts - for the weekend and bought a fabulous new set of Vault dies that included this gorgeous little clipboard. After an eventful Saturday I sat down Sunday morning to make this little beauty, 

Having die-cut the clipboard pieces from kraft and black card I made up the clipboard.............

............ then used distress inks to make a background 

.............and to finish it off I added a paper doll and some snippets. 

I can see this clipboard being used to make toppers for some of my panels.

Supplies

TH Sizzix dies - Vault Noteworthy

Th Snippets

Flowers CVC March #1

 Floral Outlines with pressed grasses

A card for the Country View Crafts Challenge for March. Combining both Tim Holtz and Alson Bomber stamps was a dream. They both design stamp sets that I love but for different reasons. Tim has vintage and natural images and Alison uses her own drawings and sketches of nature and botanicals etc for her sets.

Take card, paint over a layer of white paint, leave to dry.  Dip in puddles of green and pink distress inks to create a lightly coloured distress background.

Use the grass stamp to create more depth for the focal point.

On another piece of card stamp the floral outline in brown distress ink and watercolour with distress inks.            Cut around the image.

Stamp the words on white card with archival ink and dabble some inks around the words.

Put the card together.

Here I ran into a time consuming problem.I wanted to add more to the stamped images.

I first diecut some white leaves, blended with the green inks randomly over them but they didn't look right, I stamped and fussy cut some of the pressed grasses stamps, I wasn't happy with those either so I stamped the floral outline twice more and watercoloured them and cut off some of the leaves and buds - so much better.

xx

Supplies

TH Stamps - Floral Outlines CMS430

Alison Bomber stamps - PaperArtsy EAB40 Pressed Grasses, EAB1 (words)

TH Distress Inks - Age Mahogany, Saltwater Taffy, Worn Lipstick. Rustic Wilderness, Bundled Sage, Forest Moss Ground Espresso

Ranger Archival Ink - Coffee

Watts Gallery Sketch Saturday March 2025

Watts Gallery, nestled in the Surrey hills on the 

North Downs Way

Had an amazing day at Watts Gallery today attending a workshop that I thought was going to be just about sketching but actually turned out to be an brilliant mixed media session. Kerry, our tutor, took inspiration from the gallery and 'The Spirit of Charleston' exhibition, building sketchbook pages with a variety of studies influenced by the decorative Bloomsbury style. This style is completely new to me and outside of my comfort zone but I still enjoyed using a number of photographs, Kerry provided, to do some pieces of my own. We experimented with watercolour paints, acrylic paints, oil pastels, watercolour pencils, gelli plate, a technique new to me called Dry Point using a water based oil paint, so here are all my designs and a couple of the photos I used for inspiration.

Dry Point

Painting on a gelli plate.

Everyone's finished art.

xx

Constructing Vintage Photo Cabinet Card Collage

Gelli printing, stamping and mixed media

A gelli print, a stamp and the idea of creating a mixed media cabinet card brought this project to fruition. 

Played with Alison's poppy stamps on the gelli plate using Fresco Finish paints and ended up with a lovely design that I enhanced with a brown drawing pen. I cut it in half ........

...... and used one half as a wallpaper for the photograph, edged with a dark flowery paper that makes it stand out more.

I stamped the corners of the main card.

Next, gathered items to bring the design together including some embellishments, but knowing me these could change as I move things around to get a design I'm happy with.

Eventually happy with the design and the idea.

Supplies

TH Stamps - Victorian CMS300

Alison Bomber- EAB37 Poppy

TH _ Found Relatives

PaperArtsy Fresco Finish paints - colours not recorded, probably Buff, Toffee and Snowflake 

CVC Challenge February 2025 #3 - Romance and Friendship

Happy Valentine Day 

I am sneaking in a third project for the CVC February challenge which is a last frame and this one is made for my 6 year old grandson who wants to be an Astrologer. I picked out what are the nearest products I could to fit in with his story and this theme.

I began by taking these metal elements found in my supplies and used the shown products as a play time to give a rusty look to them. Cogs and gears to represent machinery, spectacles because he loves Harry Potter, a compass to help him look in the correct direction when looking for stars and planets with his telescope and propellor as he also has a love of aeroplanes. (I just couldn't fit his love of lego into this project but he's a genius with it).

For the background I used the gears embossing folder and swiped the rusty ginge embossing ink pad over to create a rusty look but as always with me everything changed as I played with different products in the process of creating the layers.

I can't honestly say what I did for each layer to end up with the design below but I had fun.

These are all the products I used and there must be at least another 4 layers on top of the rusty hinge that I started with. It certainly doesn't look like I expected it to but just experimenting always takes you down a different path and that's the excitement of it all.

Things came together well as I collected together elements to sit in the ledge at the bottom of the frame. and added words to bring it all together.

A couple of bulbs to light his way, clock gears and clock hands in the bottles represent time, time he spends creating things (he loves his arts and crafts), time he will spend gazing up at the night sky. (I already have a fabulous photo of him out one clear evening last week where he was looking for the alignment of the moon with Saturn, Venus, Jupiter and Mars). Spectacles to represent his love of the Harry Potter books, and hearts for Valentine's day.

I made up small labels to add to those bottles, bulbs and heart.

xx

Supplies

TH- Distress Spray Stain -Faded Jeans,Stormy Sky

TH - Distres Spritz - Uncharted Mariner, Vintage Photo, Crackling Campfire

TH - Distress Inks - Faded Jeans, Rusty Hinge, Uncharted Mariner

TH - Collage Medium, Crackle Paste

TH Foundry Wax - Statue

TH Embossing folder - Blueprint and Gears

DecoArt Fluid Acrylics - Quinacridone Gold, Prussian Blue Hue

All & Create Rub-ons - Acid Blends, Wanderlust Passport