Guest designing for Ink Art Designs

Good morning or evening if you are in Australia. The reason I am saying that is today I am guest designing for the lovely Dot who owns the Australian craft business "Ink Art Designs" and she will be 11 hours ahead of me here in the UK.

Ink Art Designs stocks lots of international brands of stamps, including some of my favourites. She recently added some great mixed media inks and products too and is constantly increasing her stock.  She used to be on the Visible Image design team with me which is how I got to know her. Do check her out via the link above.

My favourite brand of stamps Dot stocks is of course Visible Image.  I am using 2 of their new sets called Night Owl and Erika's Maple to make my GD card, which Dot will have in stock very soon. I checked out first that Australia has owls and yes not only do they have owls but maple trees too! If you have not visited my blog before you will not know that I am totally influenced in my crafting by the seasons and Mother Nature. I have a local flock of Dino Ducks (they are called Egyptian Geese really but to me they are like friendly dinosaurs). On one of my walks last week I took these photos and used them for my inspiration for my card.

 2 of the flock

 Lots of leaves are on the ground now that the weather has turned very autumnal.

So these are the 2 stamp sets I used.
Night Owl (these 2 sets are winging their way to Australia as we speak)

and Erika's Maple

This is what I got up to.

First I made an inky background using Infusions

and I added silver ink spray to a scrap of black card to create a night sky.

I die cut a tree aperture and placed the black night sky behind

Next I stamped, coloured with watercolours and fussy cut out the owl

 and also stamped and embossed some of the small leaf from Erika's Maple.

I also stamped a few leaves around the card background

and stamped the sentiment and distressed the edges

Then it was time to put my design together. Here is the finished card;

and one last shot;

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

Unicorn 1/3 winter/Christmas

Dragonfly Dreams 2/3 winter/christmas
Sweet stampin 1/3 all things bright and beautiful
Crafter's Castle 1/3 anything goes
More mixed media 1/3 anything goes

Thanks so much for stopping by today. If you are a new Australian visitor, a very warm welcome and I hope you enjoyed your visit. This is a direct link to the Visible Image stamps Dot stock "Ink Art Designs" you will be spoilt for choice. I will update the links to Night Owl and Erika's Maple as soon as they have flown into Australia.  

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Guest designing for Less is More

Hello, yes I know that I don't often blog on a Saturday but I was delighted to be contacted my fellow Visible Image DT buddy Sharon, who leads the Less is More Challenge, and asked to be one of their Guest Designers in March. 

 For my non paper crafting friends Less is More is a challenge where the nature of the challenge is to make clean and simple or (CAS as they are known) cards with minimal or no embellishments and lots of white space. Now I am a girl who loves creating in all genres, from CAS right through to full on mixed media. I also find that a lot of my customer's at Dotty's Tea House where I sell my card like CAS cards too so I make quite a few of these. 

Visible Image ( I am on their DT) are sponsoring the challenge so there is a really good reason to try your hand at a CAS card and enter. 

The theme for this new challenge is horoscopes and before you throw your hands up in the air to say that you don't have any horoscope stamps, you can also use anything to do with the theme...i.e constellations, stars, zodiac signs and their associated animal or characters; lions (Leo), scorpions (Scorpio) etc etc. Just let your imagination run wild! You can find all the details here

Now I am lucky enough to own some fantastic Visible Image Zodiac stamps so I knew just what I would use for my card.

I used the zodiac cancer set as I love the crab in this set.

I did a bit of brainstorming and woke up with an idea for my design...what I call my light bulb moments...my brain obviously designs in the night while I am asleep!

I know from previous projects I have made that the zodiac stamps work really well with a galaxy background so I got out my Distress oxides and made a background on black card.

I use a star die and cut out some stars (in the final design you will see that I didn't use the medium size one).

I also stamped the large crab using some sparkly embossing powder and cut him out. It looks white below but IRL it is very sparkly.  I embossed the words in gold onto the large star.

 I also stamped the small and large constellations from the set in gold ink.

Here is my finished card.

with a close up.

and one last shot.

I would also like to link my card up to the following challenges;

Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes
Happy Little stampers watercolour challenge anything goes
 Craft stamper Take it make it 1/3 anything goes

Thanks for stopping by today and if you are a first time visitor to my blog it's lovely to see you here. Have a lovely weekend and I will be back as usual on Monday with my Visible Image design team Monday make.  

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

************PS I would like to also give a little heads up that I also have a post up today over on the Country View projects blog showcasing the new Visible Image Wizard of Oz collection. I would really love it if you would pop over and even say hello. I have lots of photos of my projects, including some ATCs and coins made using the Tin Man set. Here is a tiny sneak peek

just click here if you would like to see more********

Guest Designing for the November Craft Stamper take it make it challenge

Good morning.

Today I am delighted to be the Guest Designer for the Craft Stamper Magazine take it make it blog challenge. I love winning challenges and I won their September challenge. This was extra special to me as they choose the winner on merit not randomly. As part of my prize I was invited to feature with them today.

Below is my winning card.

made with Visible Image's "You are not alone" stamp set. If you would like to see my original post with a step by step of how I made it you can find it here

The November "Take it make it" challenge is up and running and as always the theme is anything goes so please jump right in and join us. You can use any projects as long as there is some stamping on them.
All the details are here

I decided that as we are now into November that for my GD post today I would create a Christmas card. I had a winners profile on the blog there in October and it is no secret that I adore Christmas...I really love everything about this wonderful time of the year. I also need to get my Christmas card stock made for Dotty's Teahouse in Carshalton, where I sell my cards,  very soon.  Instead of making a distress ink oxide background this time I used regular distress ink to create a Christmas inspired background. The stamp set I am using is called Peace, hope and Love by Visible Image stamps. 

This is what I got up to;

I used some classic Christmas distress ink colours; Pine needles, Candied apple and  Evergreen bough on watercolour card to create my festive background. I then stamped and white embossed the star from the stamp set.

I then embossed the "bauble" from the set in gold sparkle and some snowflakes in white. I also stamped and white embossed one of my Visible Image Christmas sentiments. 

I then added a satin ribbon bow and matted and layered up my card in coordinating colours.

Here it is.

with a couple of close ups

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

Simon says stamp Monday make your own background

Christmas at sweet stampin 3/3 anything goes

Dragonfly dreams 2/3 anything goes

Happy little stampers Christmas 2/3 anything goes

That's Crafty 1/3 Winter wonderland
ABC Christmas challenge 1/3 W + X mine is W for wishes and X for Christmas 
Crimbo crackers 1/3 anything goes
CRAFT 1/2 Christmas present

So yes my favourite time of the year is just around the corner and I hope that you too can believe in the magic of Christmas.

Thanks so much for stopping by and thanks again to Trish and her team over at Craft Stamper magazine and blog. I was thrilled to be chosen as their winner and for inviting me to Guest Design for them today. You can see mine and all the rest of the current DTs inspiration for the November challenge over on their page here. The theme is always anything goes so as long as you feature some stamping you can enter with any project. It would be great to see you join in. 

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Using my snippets, guest designing in the playground

Good morning, it's been a chilly weekend but fortunately my garden is still making me smile from my kitchen window. Even on the dullest of days my winter flowering violas are smiling at me from their baskets and pots.

and under their leaves my bulbs are sending up shoots.

My title may seem a very strange for my blog post today,so unless you already join in with the challenge, Pixie's snippets playground, let me explain. A couple of year's ago I discovered Di's delightful blog Pixie's Crafty Workshop and her fun fortnightly Pixie's snippets playground challenge. Here is the link for this fortnight's challenge. In a nutshell Di like many of us likes to hoard use all those little snippets of card, ribbon etc which we all have in abundance. Her challenge allows us to use those snippets. Di makes such beautiful cards but recently has found that time has been her enemy, as it is for most of us, and asked for some guest designers to help out. 

Over the years I have got to know Di pretty well by email, she is such a kind and super generous lady and offers incredible prizes from every fortnight. Her postage bill must cost her a fortune. I contacted her last year to say that of course I would be delighted to offer my services as a guest designer. Di being Di waited until this year before taking up my offer as she knew I had a lot on my plate. I don't do deep personal stuff on my blog but there were some family health issues which really did knock us sideways last year. Thankfully though things are on the up now.

So back to snippets....I always have lots. As I do a lot of design work I regularly need to create an inky backgrounds and I often have snippets left over which are large enough to use for card bases. This means that I have a good supply of spare backgrounds. I also use lots of card to mop up my inks left on my craft. Here are a few of those snippets and I chose 2 to make my Guest design card with.

I also always have spare Visible Image sentiments stamped for making cards for Dotty's tea rooms. They are one of my most popular sellers. People love to send a card with a great inspirational quote on and these fit the bill perfectly.

 I went through my snippets backgrounds and found these 2 below...the left one was made with distress oxides and the right with sprays and acrylic gold ink. I chose 2 of my Visible Image sentiments which I thought went well with the backgrounds and then got down to designing my cards.

I decided to dig out a lovely Memory box trees die I have not used for ages for the "smiles" card and make a happy "bird" card. For the turn back time sentiment I decided to use my all time favourite Tim Holtz weathered clock die.
I had a snippet of faux metal, which I had made using aluminium tape and embossed on card for another project, which was big enough for my die.

I had enough left over to die cut some cogs too (another Bigz Tim Holz die)

Here is my bag of inky mop up snippets...just odd bits of card which I use to mop up the inks I use on my craft mat.

I found a perfect snippet for die cutting my birds.

So then it was just a case of putting my designs into reality, adding a few extra embellies and matting and layering them.  These are the 2 cards finished. First up is my "happy birdie" snippets card...pun intended! 

 and this is my turn back time love snippets card...finished off with some heart die cuts using even more snippets of card.

I would like to enter my turn back time card into these challenges;

Pixie's snippets playground #319 how could I not!
Frilly and Funkie 2/3 all you need is love
Simon says stamp Monday love is in the air
Let's craft and create 1/3 anything goes
Pile it on 2/3  3D embellishments
Deep Ocean love is all around
Try it on Tueday's 1/3 love is in the air
Allsorts 1/3 love is in the air
That's crafty 1/3 I heart you

They have both gone down to Dotty's Teahouse. I often get asked about Dotty's (people think she is a person not a shop...well actually she's a vintage caravan, but that's another story) and in case this is your first visit here (apologies to those of you who have seen these photos) this is a gorgeous vintage tea room in Carshalton High Street where I sell my cards. These are a couple of photos from the opening day May 2016

Below is the lovely Rebecca (the owner) in pink in the centre with the Mayor of Sutton and our MP having fun with the balloons.

and below was my view of the ponds as I walked down on Wednesday with my latest batch of "freshly baked!" cards. It was a real land mark too....I took card Number 600 (gulp) with me...now that is a lot of snippets baked  used.

I really hope that you might look at all your crafting snippets in a very different way now...no piece is ever too small in my books not to use again.

I would like to thank Di so much for inviting me to guest design for her and to thank her again for the incredible amount of time and effort she gives to running her delightful challenge single handed.  She would love to see you join the happy band of crafter's already playing in the "playground" and always gives a very warm welcome to all new crafters. Tell her that Jane sent you 😊 Here is the link again It really is such a kind, friendly place to share your snippets' makes.

For those of you who have popped over from the playground today to see what I got up to it is lovely to see you here and although I rarely have time to leave comments on everyone's lovely challenge work I do visit to admire your lovely projects shared there. There is lots of fab talent around.

Before I close I gave  a heads up in my Ovo post on Wednesday but just a little reminder again today that Visible Image Stamps are back on your TV screens this weekend (10/11 Feb). The shows are on Create and Craft TV (channels SKY 674, Freeview 23, Virgin 748 and others) Saturday at 4pm (UK time) and Sunday 10am (UK time) They are launching the Zodiac stamps with some fab demos by Mark and Pauline...

I will be waving at my samples.  Once aired the shows can still be viewed for the next 7 days on catch up on the Create and Craft website here  Enjoy your Sunday. I will be back in the morning bright and breezy with my weekly design team dose of inspiration for Visible Image.

Thanks so much for stopping by and for the kind comments that you take the time to leave me.

Bye for now,

Jane x