A beautiful end to April

Good morning, despite the weather taking a down turn, we have reached the very last day April. And what a beautiful April it has been, it started with my birthday at the beginning. We enjoyed a taste of summer in the middle as well as Jack's 1st birthday and special family time together. I also love being  back outside working in my garden studio.

 Mother Nature has woken up and the sun when it shine has real warmth.

 So on this very last day of April I am able to share something very exciting....my very first DT project made using one of the brand new May stamp release sets from Visible Image. I have oooohhhed and ahhhed at this amazing new release and I will be sharing lots of makes with them over the coming weeks. If you would like to see the whole of the release do have a look here. There are 6 fab news stamp sets including some brilliant words set and also 8 gorgeous new stencils. They are all on pre release so if you want to get your order in now they will be delivered to your door immediately after their release on May 11th.

Your local stockests will also be receiving them very soon.

So first of all....drum roll..  I would like you to meet...

 Mr Hummingbird from the wonderful new life is beautiful set.

This gorgeous inky hummingbird is certain to take the stamping world by storm.

For my fist make I wanted a very striking inky background. I took out my alcohol inks, from yellows through to amethyst and added them to Yupo paper using a felt and blending tool.

I wanted a real glow behind him so I kept the centre fairly plain and used yellow and orange hues.

This is a quick snap taken in my studio showing the gradual build up of ink on the Yupo paper.

I kept my design fairly simple as I wanted the background to show off Mr Hummer.

Here he is;

and some close ups.

The words are as they say, just "beautiful". I distressed the edges and added some ink to make them pop.

The little circle accent stamp works so well with the image. I can see me using this a lot on other makes too. 

Here is one last full shot.

***EDIT I have been asked about ink not drying on Yupo paper on the VI friends Facebook page.  Yes it is a real challenge to get any ink to dry..I have tried everything and the one which is most likely to dry is Ranger Archival if you heat set it. However I don't like to take the risk and for this card I used Versafine Black Onyx ink which I then embossed with black embossing powder. This gives a gorgeous sheen too. HOWEVER beware when heating the Yupo as it is not that heat stable. You need to heat quickly and move your heat gun around and even off the paper so as not to risk melting your background. I hope that helps?***

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

The Artistic stamper birds/bees

Love to craft 3/3 anything goes

Lil patch of crafty friends 2/3 anything goes

Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes

Sweet stamping 1/3 circles

Crafty catz 1/3 anything goes I have also gone with the optional twist of using purples and mauves
Try it on Tuesday Nature's beauty

All the Visible Image links can be found here;

Visible Image group page on Facebook. Our friendly Group can be found here ...it would be lovely to see you. You can add work to the "Show and Tell" album where one randomly chosen winner each month wins a £25 coupon to spend on the website.

The main Visible Image Facebook page is here; there are weekly stamp giveaways...open world wide!

And the shop web site is here; where all these gorgeous stamps and stencils can be purchased. 

You can also follow via:

 Pinterest

Twitter

and

 Instagram

There is also a Visible Image/MISTI blog hop running at the moment.

 All the details are here but you need to be quick as you need to hop and leave a comment on each of participants blogs by midnight tonight. You might even be the winner of the Visible Image $50 coupon and could then treat yourself to Mr Hummer and lots of other goodies over on the website!. Good luck if you enter....the winners will be revealed on the Visible Image and MISTI blogs tomorrow.

 Thanks so much for stopping by and for all your very kind comments. I would also like to extend a very warm welcome to my newest followers. Enjoy the very last day of April, I am back again in the morning with my first post in May.

Bye for now,

Jane x