Birdworld antics

Yesterday I enjoyed a delightful day out with my daughter, Daisy and Jack. We are making the most of the last few months before Daisy goes to school to have some week day trips together. We have visited Birdworld in Farnham several times and it was Daisy's choice for our day out.
We were so lucky with the weather as it only poured down with rain when we went inside for lunch and then again on my drive home.
Daisy and I even found a crafting tent!

 and she coloured in a pelican which we cut out and put together.

She loves the flamingos there, some had just had babies and others were on their nests.

We took the little train ride and yes Jack had to grab the chain...he is hilarious.

He also loved looking at all the animals but signed "dog" rather than "bird to everything! He even signed plane when he saw one bird...but that's not a bad guess really is it?
Both my grandchildren attended signing classes and it is amazing how they can communicate with us before the age they can speak. I wish this was known of when my kids were babies.

And of course we had to see Nanna's favourites.

My card today is a Father's day card as we are hurtling towards June now and it is one of my latest for sale at Dotty's Teahouse, Carshalton High Street, SM5 3AE.

I just love this vintage image. I teamed it up with a Clearly Besotted stamp, some die cuts and scrabble letters.

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

Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes
Simon says stamp  Monday masculine
Happy little stampers anything goes with dies
As you like it 1/3 flora or fauna and why. For this card it is fauna, dog's (and cats in my books) are man's best friend. Unconditional love and trust from them.
Little Patch of crafting friends anything goes
Simon says work it Wednesday summer

Thanks for stopping by and for your kind comments. Blogger seems to be going out of its way to make commenting more difficult and I apologize  that they no longer allow an Open ID form of commenting. I can't allow anonymous comments as it releases the spammers but I really appreciate your ongoing support. It looks like the new privacy laws have affected even this. Enjoy the last day of May tomorrow and I will be back on Friday with my 1st of the month post for Country View Challenges.

Bye for now,

Jane x

Choose happiness

It's the last Monday in May...how on earth did that happen? The wonderful realisation though is that summer is very nearly here. I recently potted up my pots in the garden with summer bedding and looking out at them really does make me smile.

 Raspberry ripple ice cream comes to mind and thoughts of long summer days ahead...bliss

It's also time for my weekly inspiration for Visible Image. Today's piece is very apt as I used the new Choose happiness sentiments set. This is one of the 3 fab new release sentiment sets. There are so many great sentiments in this set and also a really fun smiley face both as positive and negative stamp.  It takes me back to the late 1960s, I can remember them as badges in bubble gum machines. My brother and I got so excited when occasionally out came a badge as well as your gum! 

I decided to make ATCs using the sentiments and display them on a wall hanging, using the smileys to decorate it.

This is what I got up to;

I blended some "happy" distress oxide colours onto a sheet of smooth card stock...squeezed lemonade, picked raspberry, fossilized amber and dried marigold . I then stamped using the shapes from the shape it up set to make a masterboard. This set is brilliant for all sorts of backgrounds.

 I stamped using oxides.

Once my masterboard was finished I cut a strip 

and from that strip I cut 3 ATC sized pieces. (An ATC size is 2 1/2 by 3 1/2") 

I then white embossed the 3 sentiments from the set and added some extra colouring using an orange gel pen.

I took a sheet of watercolour paper and altered it using the awesome new collision stencil

I sprayed squeezed lemonade distress spray first onto the blank paper and then added carved pumpkin distress ink through the stencil.

 I moved the stencil down as I worked. 

 I rounded off the corners of my ATCs

I then stuck the background onto a piece of grey board and added some eyelets so that it could be hung as a "Choose happiness" wall hanging.

I also had fun stamping out lots of smileys. I stamped the negatives in the same oxide colours and then added the positive in black. Here are my yellow ones.

This is my completed wall hanging.

I would like to enter my happy wall hanging into the following challenges;

Simon says stamp Wednesday use more than 1 stamp I used 5!
Simon says stamp  Monday inspired by a song my song just has to be "Happy together" by The Turtles, yes I am showing my age, such a fun 60s song when
 these fun smileys were everywhere!
Pixie's snippets playground #327 I made my smileys from snippets of card

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! There is an 11,000 followers celebration running at the moment, you could win a £100 coupon to spend on their website! 

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 are 6 new stamp sets and 8 new stencils...all totally amazing and uniquely Visible Image.

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope my wall hanging made you smile....choose happiness is a pretty good mantra to have, in my humble opinion.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Colour in the garden

I finally found the time this week to plant up the gorgeous bedding plants I bought from our local nursery. 

I filled my trolley with fuchsia, geraniums and lots of annuals as well as 2 little gardener's delight tomato plants (my favourite variety)

It was time to wash out my pots 

 and work out my colour and plant groups.

 I also have a hanging basket which I put my gorgeous trailing begonia into.

It is always hard work getting these done, but they will give me colour and delight right through to the first frosts. I have such a tiny garden that pots are the only way to get lots of colour in my garden.

Here they are potted up

and my gorgeous begonia swinging in the sunshine.

I get so much inpsiration for my crafting too just by being outside in my tiny garden, delighted by the flowers which surround me.

My card today is a new one taken down to sell in Dotty's Teahouse using an old Crafty Individual's stamps which I love. I stamped it onto book pages and coloured it using distress markers. The sentiment is an old LOTV stamp.

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

Stamping sensations 3/3 close to nature

Crafty Calendar 2/3 things with wings

Penny Black and more 3/3 anything goes

Happy little stampers anything goes with dies

Fashionable stamping Floral

Simon says stamp  Monday inspired by a song as I sat in my garden studio my favourite summer song "Summer Breeze" by the Isely Brothers came on, this was my inspiration for my card!

As you like it 1/3 flora or fauna and why...a hard choice but for this card I have actually managed to have both but for me the little bird (fauna) is more important as I could hear a bird singing from my garden studio as I made this card!

Thanks for stopping by and for the kind comments you still take the time to leave me. I really appreciate them.  Enjoy a lovely bank holiday weekend ahead. I had a lovely lunch date today with my dear blogging friend Brenda Brown at Wisley RHS gardens...the weather held up and we stayed dry. The flowers we saw were awesome. I will share some photos soon. We have had some incredible thunderstorms over the past few days but at  least my lawn is looking lush.

I am back on Monday with my weekly Visible Image DT inspiration.

I also need to inform you of the new Privacy Policy for Jane's Journal which has been set up in my side bar and reads;

"Jane's Journal does not and never will share your personal information with any 3rd parties.

If you subscribe to my blog by email, you may unsubscribe at any time. Emails are managed by Feedburner and your email address will only ever be used to notify you of a new blog post. Blogger and Feedburner are both managed by Google which has it's own privacy polices which you can read here; 

Occasionally I will have 3rd party affiliate links to companies whose products I use. These companies will have their own privacy policies over which I have no control.

My privacy policy may be updated at any time"

Bye for now,

Jane x

Fun at Antonis Tzanidakis' mixed media workshop

2 weeks ago I travelled up to  Country View Crafts HQ to attend the Saturday workshop by Antonis Tzanidakis'

 For those of you who may not yet have heard of this incredibly talented man, he is a mixed media artist from Athens who travels the world to share his talents. For the first time I got to work with oil paints...incredibly messy but incredible fun! He really is a delightful person and like all Greeks has a very English sense of humour.

I attended both the morning and afternoon workshop. 

In the morning we made a 3D steampunk panel using some very cool techniques...I will obviously not share his teaching but these are a few of my work in progress photos. I started off with 2 completely bare boards and started to layer them up.

and this is my finished work.

with a close up

I would like to enter my mixed media wall hanging into the following challenges;

Mixed media world on Facebook May challenge
Emerald Creek Guy style
SanDee and Amelie's steampunk challenge May anything goes

In the afternoon we altered a book, mine was none less than Lady Chatterley's lover!!

 We altered a clay heart on the cover with lots of rusting techniques.

and this is my finished book; the cover...

and the inside.

I would like to enter my altered book into the following challenge
Mixed media Monthly challenge  Rust

It was a superb workshop, Susan of Country View Crafts was the perfect host. She offers lots of fab workshops..do check out the website here.

One last photo shows our group...lots of happy crafters here! Susan kindly allowed me to share this photo she took as we said our goodbyes.

Thanks for stopping by.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Into the bluebell woods

A couple of weekends ago my Hb and I went for a walk in our local woods. I shared a post here where you can see some photos of the gorgeous trees newly leaved in their lime green colours. I promised I would be back to share the bluebells that we saw too. This annual spectacle is something I wait for and never miss. It is just magical. 

Whilst we were there we took a moment to sit on a log and gazed up into the tree canopy above us through to the blue sky and sunshine. 

When I got home I decided that I needed to make a "Moment" for Jane's Journal to remember that time. 

I knew that the fabulous Into the woods stamps set from the brand new Visible Image release

would be perfect so I decided to make my weekly DT piece for today using it together with the beautiful new butterfly ink stencil

I started with a piece of watercolour card the same size as my journal and added some drips of Salty Ocean, antique linen and cracked pistachio distress oxides to start off my background. I then used a corner of the stop meshing around stencil 

 as the sun using yellow Distress inks

 I added some more "sunlight" using the take my hand stencil...the hand of Mother Nature perhaps? 

As you can see English bluebells are not blue at all but more a shade of mauve.

so I added this colour through my butterfly ink stencil

I added 5 butterflies around the page using Wilted violet distress oxide and then added some more depth using the circle stamp from the Hummingbird set

Once I was happy with my tree canopy it was time to stamp the woods....first the under canopy in purple, to represent the drift of bluebells.

 Then the top line in green, to show those brand newly unfurled leaves. I took the stamping around the sides of the page as I wanted to give the impression that we were sitting down and gazing up from the floor of the bluebell wood.

So here we are.......let me set the scene again......"It is a glorious blue sky morning. The sun shone out like a ball of lemon fire. 

 It was the kind of day that makes you glad to be outside, hand in hand with Mother Nature.

 Into the woods we went 

to be greeted by the splendor and scent of bluebells, their drifts were everywhere, like a carpet of purple.
We sat down for a moment to pause and looked up through the canopy of the newly leaved trees to the clear blue sky above...a Moment in time to remember. "

Below is my Moment in it's entirety. I think the words I chose to use from the set summed up how we feel about our life. It was a blissful Moment there, among the bluebells.

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

Craft stamper Take it make it anything goes
Stamping sensations close to nature
Simon says stamp Monday stencil it
Simon says stamp Wednesday stencil it
Creative moments 2/3 anything goes
Cute card Thursday 1/3 the great outdoors

All the Visible Image links are 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! There is an 11,000 followers celebration running at the moment, you could win a £100 coupon to spend on their website! 

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 are 6 new stamp sets and 8 new stencils...all totally amazing and uniquely Visible Image.

I'd also like to give a quick heads up too. Myself and 2 of my VI Design Team colleagues have a stamping feature in this month's (June edition) of Making Cards Magazine. We all used the Seahorse and Dare to swim Visible Image stamp sets to make 3 very different red, white and blue cards

and here is a teeny weenie sneak peek of my underwater card......do check it out!

Thanks so much for taking a walk in the bluebell woods with me. I have so many ideas for using this amazing new stamp set....
I hope you all had a fab weekend, wasn't the royal wedding a total delight and Windsor looked stunning in the sunshine too.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x