Blooms and bugs

The glorious weather recently has brought on my blooms incredibly in my garden. Day after day of clear blue skies and sunshine has been the perfect growing conditions.

I love the colour below of these begonia leaves

I have also seen some lovely bees and bugs 

As I have a lot more free time to craft I have had fun experimenting with some "me time" projects. I have also been watching the weekly Facebook Lives by Tim Holtz where he has been covering a different medium each week. He encourages us to "play" and be creative and to share our work on Instagram under the hashtag #timholtzdemo. Each week he selects 3 winners.  Last week it was part 1 of alcohol inks and as this is a medium I love working with I challenged myself to do something different.

I made a tag from acetate.

 I embossed the acetate and then added alcohol inks to colour it. I have been adding my work on Instagram (you can follow me here if you are interested) and to my amazement I found out that I was a winner with this background! I can't wait to receive my prize which is on it's way from America.

I decided to make my background tag into a finished tag to keep, so I then stamped some labels from my new Field notes and Entomology sets and die cut the bugs to finish it off. 

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

Sweet stampin 1/3 create your own background
Creative fingers 1/3 anything goes
Crafty catz 1/3 anything goes
Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes
The house that stamps built anything goes
The funkie junkie boutique cattywampus, most of my bugs and my moth are cattywampus!

We finally had some rain this morning which my garden is grateful for. I am looking forward to this evening when I will be watching Tim's part 2 om alcohol inks. It is such a fun medium to work with and he is the most inspiring of teachers!

Thanks so much for stopping by, 

Have a lovely weekend.

Stay safe,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Dragonfly days with Visible Image

Happy summer! Yes we have enjoyed our longest day too and the long summers days loom ahead. I live very near the River Wandle as it winds its way back up to London and I delight in my walks along it.

As I walked along yesterday I saw a flash of colour in the undergrowth

I only had my phone with me (very unusal for me!) but I managed to snap a very summery visitor, a shimmery dragonfly.

This leads in perfectly to my fortnightly design team post today for Visible Image and I am sharing another sample I made using the brand new stamp release which can be pre ordered now here. The release  date is just a week away now on 26th June.

I made a summery card using the lovely dragonfly from the 

summer wings set

I decided to get out my alcohol inks and made a summery background

I cut it down for a 7X5" card

I stamped all the images onto acetate which I had also added alcohol ink to (I will use the butterflies for another project). 

I also gold embossed some of them (sorry no photos!) I decided to use just the wings of the gold embossed acetate dragonfly and gold embossed another on some inky mop up card. I used the 2 together to make a really statement dragonfly.

This was just right for my alcohol ink background.
I also decided to use one of the fab sentiments from the new
Equality, hope and Love stamp set

Here is my finished card.

with some close ups

and one last shot

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

Simon says stamp Monday Sprays and splashes
A bit more time to craft 3/3 anything goes
Through the craft room door anything goes
crafty sentiments 2/3 anything goes
Crafty catz 1/3 anything goes
As you like it 1/3 digi or rubber mine is rubber (or clear in this case) every single time! You cannot stamp on acetate or indeed anything with digits. They limit my creativity.
Cute card Thursday 1/3 summer
Simon says stamp Wednesday summer fun

All the Visible Image links are listed below

Visible Image group page on Facebook. Our friendly Group is here ...it would be lovely to see you there. You will see lots of gorgeous makes by the DT and customers to inspire your own creativity.

The main Visible Image Facebook page is here; there are regular giveaways...open world wide. Do check out the Facebook LIVES and videos where you will be able to see lots of the samples we have been making with the new release in the flesh!

Their Instagram page can be found here

Pinterest here

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

I have LOTS more samples to share over the coming weeks and do keep an eye out on social media where mine and my teamies samples are being shared.

Thanks so much for stopping by.


Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Walking in the summer fields with a "Country View"

Hello I am back with my 2nd DT post for Country View Challenges where our theme for June is Summer fields.

I am missing the country walks we usually take with my daughter and her family. Over the years I have so many fond memories and I just hope it is not too long until we can be together. This was one of our walks we took last year, the fields surrounding these trees were so beautiful. 

 My grandchildren are just too small to understand or even want to socially distance and they live far too far away to just "pop in" and see for 10 minutes. But I still know how precious life is however long we have to wait to meet up. 

I decided to create my own "Country View" using alcohol inks for the background. Susan sells lots of colours and accessories on the website here  I used Yupo paper available here.

I then used the lovely background stamps from the Visible Image Life is beautiful set

I die cut my old Tim Holtz wallflowers

 which I coloured up with distress inks and then gave a spritz of water.

 I also stamped the words from the Visible Image Life is beautiful set and cut them out.

I then put my design together;

and a couple of close ups

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

Creative fingers 3/3 anything goes
Simon says stamp Monday Sprays and splashes
A bit more time to craft 2/3 anything goes
Through the craft room door anything goes
crafty sentiments 1/3 anything goes

I hope I may have inspired you to join in with our June "summer fields" challenge. You can use any stamps/products, the choice is yours. 

You can enter our challenge as many times as you like and combine with other challenges. There is also a £20 crafting voucher up for grabs to the lucky randomly selected winner to spend over on the Country View Crafts on line store. Remember that UK postage and packing from CVC is free on all orders over £7.50! Once again all the details for the June challenge can be found here;

Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Back soon

Bye for now

Jane x

Putting on my CRAFTplorations ballet shoes for STAMPlorations

Hello I am back again with a new post for STAMPlorations

using another design from the awesome new CRAFTplorations shapes. There are some really gorgeous shapes over there. Today I am using the delightful Ballet shoes in 1.5 mm MDF which are 3" high. In this material you get 15 in a pack. I decided to incorporate mine into a special card.

My daughter has always loved ballet and danced to quite a high level when she was younger. My little granddaughter Daisy also dances and loves her ballet lessons.  Let's hope it's not too long until classes can reopen.
As you well know I am not really a very pink girl but being the Mum and Nanna to 2 ballet dancers I know that ballet shoes just have to be pink (and in real life satin!)

So I got out my Paperartsy fresco paints again and painted a pair of pink ballet shoes with pale pink ribbons.

I wanted to make my shoes stand out on my card so I die cut the smallest rectangle from my
crazy double running stitch die to make a focal for my card.

I used red foil embossing powder and stamped a greeting from the
birthday bash stamp set

 and then attached my ballet shoes with some pink satin ribbon.

I created a very simple Infusions background to finish off my card.
Here it is

with a couple of close ups.

 and one final shot.

Once again Shery has very kindly agreed to host a little giveaway on my blog here.

If you would like to win a pack of 1.5mm MDF ballet shoes for making your own projects, all you have to do is;

1. Leave a comment at the end on this post.
2. Pop on over to the STAMP post on the main blog here and leave a 2nd comment.

It's as simple as that and the prize will be posted worldwide so everyone has a chance to win. Remember that Shery posts at a very reasonable cost worldwide. Also if you use my special code STAMPGIRLJANE you can get 20% off anything on the website on top of any current discounts on offer. Now that is a win win in my books!

This is my second project with these lovely products and if you would like to see my previous one making this non Christmas bauble do check out this post here too.

Thanks so much for stopping by and do remember to leave a comment to be in with a winning chance for a set of your own ballet shoes. The giveaway closes on July 8th and the winner will be announced over on the main STAMPlorations blog here soon after.

Bye for now,

Jane x