Phew what a scorcher

I always have to smile at the headlines of the tabloid newspapers when we get a period of hot sunny weather. In the 1970s "phew what a scorcher" was a real favourite. 

Well the forecasters got it right and we have had a week, and more to come, of gorgeous hot sunny weather.

There is nothing quite like an azure blue sky with not a cloud to be seen is there?

I spotted that the ducklings are growing quickly down at the ponds.

 When I was walking down to Dotty's I was stopped in my tracks as I saw that one of the fields had been painted up ready for a school sports day

I was reminded standing there that when I was at school we all took part in races on Sport's Day and found out that you could win or lose...and no one died! These days it's all about team work to ensure that no one loses but I think in the real world we should be teaching our children that both winning and losing is what happens in real life. The younger we realise that the better, in my books. Yes teamwork is important but I think it is sad that we seem to think we are protecting children in some way by not allowing winning and losing in some form.

I was a sprinter at school and standing on the line took me back to those sunny school sports days at primary school. Fond memories...on your marks, get set........GO!

My card today was inspired by all this gorgeous sunshine and heat. I used some hot distress colours to make a CAS card for Dotty's using one of the fab new Visible Image quotes. 

I couldn't agree more with these words, good friends are priceless aren't they.

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

Time out 3/3 warm

Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes

Lil patch of crafty friends 3/3 anything goes
Creative moments 1/3 anything goes
Addicted to CAS 1/2 girl power
Cute card Thursday 1/3 CAS

This heatwave is set to see out the end of June and into July...for once we are enjoying a flaming June here in the UK. Thanks for stopping by and for your kind comments.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

My WI papercrafting journey

Last month I was delight to be invited back to my Mum's Womens' Institute (WI) group as their guest speaker at their AGM. I spoke there 2 years ago about my handmade jewellery and if you missed that post you can see it here. This time I was asked to speak about my papercrafting and I called my talk "My papercrafting journey"

When I was preparing for my talk I was intrigued to see how my papercrafting journey has evolved over the years especially since I retired from physiotherapy. How could I have possible known over 25 years ago when I bought my first stamp that I would be on 3 design teams having  my work on TV and published in several magazines?

Here are a couple of photos from this lovely afternoon.

I asked the ladies to give me a wave before I started

and they were kind enough to clap me at the end

and of course the afternoon had to feature handmade cake, tea

and lots of friendly chat.

I took along lots of projects, from cards to my scrap books and of course Jane's Journal! I gave Dotty's Teahouse a mention as Pett's Wood is not too far away for a visit. 

They even had a write up of my talk in their monthly newsletter which was so kind.

My card today is a new wedding card sale at Dotty's Teahouse as wedding season is in full swing.

I used a Lili of the Valley simply print digi and added lots of white and shimmer white summery die cuts. The stamp is Lili of the Valley and the butterfly is a Visible Image stamp which I have embossed and watercoloured. 

Crafty Catz 3/3 anything goes
Pixie's snippets playground #329

As you like it 3/3 favourite type of embossing and why for this card is it embossing using an embossing folder as it gives the perfect white on white background for my die cuts.

Time out 2/3 warm

Simon says stamp Wednesday bright and cheerful

Lil patch of crafty friends 2/3 anything goes
Die cutting Divas 1/3 add a buterfly

Thanks for stopping by and for your kind comments. This glorious weather continues, it feels like I'm in the Med! I'm off out to meet my dearest friend Karen for lunch and a catch up soon...let's hope the cafe has air con! 

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Eye contact

Good morning, unbelievably we find ourselves past the longest day and in the last week of June. Summer has finally arrived and I intend to make the most of every single second. The weather is just perfect.  I adore being able to be outside in my garden and also to be able to craft in my garden studio. From my studio I can hear the birds sings, the bees humming and Billy can sit in the shade and watch me. My summer pots are just bursting with glorious colour.

It's also time for my Monday DT make for Visible Image and I decided that I would have a play with the awesome Eye contact stencil.

plus some words from the fab Voices in your head sentiment set.

I have always loved all the Face and Eye stamps that Mark has designed and I was thrilled to see that in the new release he brought out an eye stencil too. 

I hadn't played with my Bister and Infusions for a while so I make a background first using watercolour card. I started with a little....

 and just added different colours until I was happy with my background.

I used black sparkle medium through the stencil, below is when it is wet...

 but once dry it  has an awesome sparkle below). I painted the white part of the eye in using white acrylic paint. 

I also added glossy accents to the iris (which you can see in the final photos).

I stamped 2 sentiments from the Voices in your head stamp set and then matted up my plaque.

Here are some close ups

 and one last shot

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

Crafty Catz 2/3 anything goes
Creative Artiste 3/3 anything mixed media
As you like it 1/3 favourite type of embossing and why mine is always heat embossing as it gives a brilliant resist to all my inking.
CRAFT 2/2 summer
Time out 2/3 warm
Simon says stamp Wednesday bright and cheerful

Lil patch of crafty friends 2/3 anything goes
Addicted to stamps and More 1/3 make your mark

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

 Thanks for stopping by and for your kind comments. This glorious weather seems set for a while and I am just loving it. I'm getting back to my gardening and crafting in my garden studio...bliss!

Bye for now,

Jane x

Magical Majorca

As promised I am back to share some photos of our recent trip to Majorca. I thought for my first post I would show you where we stayed. We were in a 3 bed apartment with a gorgeous rooftop terrace just off the Pine Walk in Puerto Pollensa. A most splendid place to stay. We had a large pool on site which the children loved. 

Our roof terrace had a 360o view and we felt that we were in the tree tops with the birds. 

There was welcome shade for our al fresco dining. 

Down at the pool there were also frog, fish and terrapin ponds, it was such fun seeing these lovely creatures. Daisy was fascinated. 

At dusk the view was so beautiful...red sky at night shepherd's delight.

We could see right through to the marina and the bay.

The ponds inspired to make the card below using distress inks and 2 of my lovley STAMPlorations stamps. I heat embossed the lovely butterfly stamps and coloured them with glitter green ink. I think this is such a lovely quote and yes I certainly enjoyed so many lovely moments on holiday with Daisy and Co. Special family times. 

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

 The alphabet challenge 1/3 Great outdoors
The butterfly challenge V I have gone for vertical pattern and vintage style
Crafty Catz 1/3 anything goes
As you like it 1/3 favourite type of embossing and why mine is always heat embossing as it gives a brilliant resist to all my inking.
CRAFT 1/2 summer
Time out 1/3 warm
Simon says stamp Wednesday bright and cheerful

It looks as though we are at the start of a 10 day heat wave here. The weather has been glorious and the temperatures are due to hit the 30s next week. Summer has definitely arrived.

I'm back on Monday with my weekly Visible Image inspiration. In the meantime have a fabulous weekend. Thanks for stopping by and for your kind comments. I have been knee deep working (in a very nice way) on some magazine designs this week, so I have been rather absent in blog land. I will also share some more of our Majorcan holiday photos very soon.

Bye for now,

Jane x

STAMPlorations 5th birthday June event and giveaway

Hello and a very warm welcome to this special post today. It is not my usual Design team post for STAMPlorations (all the challenges are on holiday until the autumn) but it's a super exciting one as 

we are celebrating STAMPlorations 

5th BIRTHDAY 

Many happy returns to the uber talented and most lovely lady Shery, who owns and designs for this fab stamp company.

There are so many amazing giveaways, sales and freebies that you really must check the links. For the whole of June Shery is hosting a 5th birthday event featuring a designer a day. We will share 3 of our favourite projects plus a newbie for visitors to CASE (copy and share everything). If you would like to join in and have a chance of winning a prize just link up your creations using the celebration linky over on the main blog here.  There are also lots of store specials too here . Some really awesome prizes can be won....over $500 dollars worth (this is open internationally). 

So today it is my turn to be featured as the designer of the day. You can see my post over on the blog here. I am sharing my favourite 3 cards I have made since I joined the Stamp and Sketch design team, initially as a guest designer and then a full design team member. I love working with these fab stamps and I struggled to choose my favourite 3 but choose I must. I am very much a "seasonal" card maker ie I tend to make bird cards in spring, seaside cards in summer etc etc as my inspiration is always from Mother Nature.  I have linked them to my original posts so that you can check out how I made them if you are interested.

They are in no particular order...so here we go.

Number 1

 from my original post here The trendy bird set is one of my all time favourites and I use it lots in my card making. 

 Number 2

I had great fun using an old map to showcase Shery's fab wanderlust stamps. This is the link here

Number 3

Those of you who know me well know that I adore everything about Christmas so I had to feature one of my Christmas makes and this one is my favourite. The original post is here

So what about my new card today? In my recent stash from Shery I received a fabulous summer stamp set which I have coveted for some time called

True North

The images are perfect for summer card making as are the fab sentiments which come with it. I have recently returned from a wonderful holiday in Majorca, a week by the sea. It was bliss.

This is what I got up to for my new card. 

There is no sketch or theme for the challenge but I decided to look through the STAMPlorations archives and find myself an old sketch to work with. I found this one from June 2017 

which I really liked working with. I actually find sketches are a brilliant starting point for inspiration. 

I got out my yupo paper and alcohol inks as they make the most unique of backgrounds.

I pounced on the inks, using blues and green to create the sea with seaweed.

I stamped the lighthouse onto a scrap of inky mop up watercolour paper

which I fussy cut out and added some more colour to

using watercolour pens.

I then stamped out a mask of the compass and added black and grey compasses across the page, using the mask to give some depth to my stamping. 

and added one of the sentiments.

To finish off I popped my lighthouse up on a foam fixer to give some depth to my card. I matted with navy blue card and used a Kraft card base.

So here is a photo of my finished card.

With a close up of the lighthouse and compass stamping

(I am giving this as an anniversary card to my darling Hb on 25th July when we celebrate our 37th wedding anniversary...he really is my true North!)

So if you would like to CASE my card just link up to the birthday linky here.  If (like me) you are not 100% sure what CASEing a card is there is a fab link  here  which Shery gave me and has kindly allowed me to share. It explains it perfectly, in my humble opinion. The best part of the explanation is to have a look at my card, look away and then ask yourself....what do you remember most......the colours, the lighthouse, the compass, the seaside feel, the arrangement of my elements etc. Just share what has inspired you, I would really love to see what you make!

Thanks so much for stopping by today, Happy 5th Birthday again to STAMPLorations, such awesome stamps which I have the absolute pleasure to design with as part of the Stamp and Sketch design team. Remember to check out all the prizes and giveaways over on the main blog. There are even prizes for just commenting on mine or any of the other designers blogs who are taking part, so do leave one here and good luck!

Also, outside of any other offers you can use my special code STAMPGIRLJANE at the checkout to get a 20% discount.

Congratulations to Shery and thank you for having me as a part of your talented design team.

Back soon, 

Bye for now,

Jane x