Summer days with Visible Image

 Good morning all and welcome to my fortnightly blogged design team make for Visible Image. Summer really is in full swing and I am loving the flowers in my garden and the insects they attract. One of them is my favourites, ladybirds but also bees. My make today was very much inspired by my tiny garden which is blooming beautifully.

 I am using the

 Little Ladybirds set

with Daisy Grunge

the small bees from Bee happy

the birthday sentiment from "Go to words"

and the Flower ink stencil. 

to make a very summery birthday card.

This is what I got up to;

I used a distress oxide ink background from my stash (squeezed lemonade and picked raspberry) I placed the Flower ink stencil on top

and used a blend of mustard seed and abandoned coral regular distress inks through the stencil. I then cut the panel down to a square.

I stamped the large daisy from  Daisy Grunge into the centre of the stencilled flower using Versafine Clair nocturne and clear embossed it.

I stamped the large and 2 small ladybirds from the  Little Ladybirds set onto white card and again clear embossed. I coloured them using distress pencils and cut them out minus the legs.

I then stamped them again onto the card background, to get the legs back, 

and glued the cut out bodies on top. 

I stamped the happy birthday sentiment from  "Go to words" at the top and 2 small bees from  Bee happy each side. 

I then coloured the Daisy grunge petals and bees using distress pencils, adding glossy accents to the centre of the daisy for some extra dimension. A little sparkle pens was also added to the bees wings and my signature sequins for a finishing touch.

I matted onto red card and then onto a 6" square white card blank.

Here is my finished card

with some close ups

and 1 final shot;

All the Visible Image links are listed below;

The Visible Image Group page is over on Facebook. Our friendly Group is here ...it would be lovely to see you join us.  You will be warmly welcomed and see lots of inspiration from the DT and customers to inspire your own creativity. 

 I also organize a monthly artist trading card swap in the group.  We celebrated 2 years of swapping in May. Whether you are a new stamper or a seasoned one you are most welcome to join us. Over 140 members, worldwide, have taken part since it started. It's been such fun and it's so lovely to receive a unique piece of art from your partner in the post. The details and sign up for each swap are posted in the group on the 23rd of the month. So the next sign up for August opens this Sunday, 23rd July, if you would like to join us.  There is no "monthly" commitment, just join in when you have the time and if you live in the UK can you choose to post to the UK only if that suits you best.

The main Visible Image Facebook business page is here

Visible Image also has its own You Tube channel here where you can see videos and Lives to give you lots of inspiration and ideas. 

Their Instagram page can be found here 

Pinterest here

and their website is here. 

 You will also find me on Instagram here; @jane.tyrrell where I share many more samples than I have the time to blog.

Back soon, 

Bye for now,

Jane x

Things with wings for the April Country View challenge

Hello everyone and welcome to April and the new challenge from Country View. It is also my birthday today and no, that's not an April fool! Our challenge for my birthday month is "Things with wings". This could be animals, insects or even planes.  You can enter a maximum of 5 times and into a maximum of 10 challenges, including ours. As always there is a fab £20 voucher up for grabs for one lucky randomly selected winner to spend on the website.  You can find all the details of the challenge and more examples made by my talented teamies here.

  Remember that when you buy from the Country View Crafts website UK postage is FREE on orders over £20.00 I have added some live links within my post to take you to some of the products I used.  

I have a real "thing" about ladybirds and I was delighted to see a gorgeous ladybird set in the newest Visible Image release. The stamp set is A7size and called "Little ladybirds" . These sets are really versatile and very reasonably priced at only £6.99 each. They are on the website here So of course today on my birthday I had to make a ladybird birthday card didn't I. 

I used it with the Distressed brick stencil 

and a sentiment from "Lost for words" 

This is what I got up to; I used a piece of inky mop up card from my stash 

I added wild honey and fired brick distress inks through the stencil

and cut the card down to 5 1/4" square.

I stamped and clear embossed the Little ladybirds and coloured them with distress pencils. Susan has all 3 sets here as a special offer, or she has the sets individually too. I love these pencils and use them so much. I cut the ladybirds out minus their antennae and legs. Don't worry they get them back when the card is put together!

I stamped the sentiment and re stamped the ladybirds again on the background. I then added the cut out ladybirds on top to give them their legs and antennae back. 

I added some sequins as a finishing touch and then matted up and adhered the card to a white square card blank. 

Here is my finished card

with a couple of close ups;

and one last shot;

I hope I may have inspired you to join in with the challenge this month? Once again here you can find all the details for our April challenge here.

Susan has all the new Visible Image release in stock and many more of their fab stencils, coordinating dies and those hard to find in stock layering dies...do check them out here

I'm off to get ready for my family lunch and enjoying having all the kids, big and small coming up to spend the day with us.

 I'll be back with my 2nd things with wings card on 15th April.

 

Bye for now,

Jane x

Garden friends

The weather over the weekend has been really was perfect...glorious warm sunny afternoons which we spent in the garden. My Hb and I spend as much time outside at this time of the year and at the weekend eat out lunch and if possible dinner outside ( as well as any tea breaks of course). Daisy and Co came to stay and we enjoyed some R+R in the garden. I have some lovely garden photos which I will share with you very soon.

Whilst we were sitting having lunch recently I spotted a garden friend...a lovely ladybird...on a journey around one of my pots.

 Do you think he/she realised they were going round in circle ;0)

Ladybirds really are our friends in the garden and will keep the greenfly numbers down for us.

I always have my best friend in the garden too....my sweet Billy...

and when it gets too warm in the sun I get the cushion out for the seat..

and he has a snooze.

I have enjoyed making some cards in my studio and the bright sunshine has brought out my glitter embossing powcer. I have seen my first butterflies too and hopefully on a day out will glimpse a dragonfly or 2.

The dragonfly stamp is by Visible Image. The background is glitter embossed using their butterfly stamp. The die cuts are Tim Holtz.

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

Pixie's snippets playground #231 I used tiny snippets of card for my flowers
Simon says stamp Wednesday 4/5 anything goes
Crafty friends 3/3 summer time
Crafting for all seasons 3/3 anything goes
Noor spring flowers
The Craft Barn weekly challenge 2 different papers I created my backing paper myself and used a second to die one of my flowers.
Mod Squad  2/3 use it or lose it  I used embossing powders a lot but I have not used this holographic one for years! I think it will get lots more use now.
Little Claire's 1/3 butterflies
Crafty boots 2/3  butterflies and/or bees

Thanks as always for your kind visits and sweet comments you take the time to leave.

I am back on Wednesday with my first DT post for Country View Challenges as unbelievably it will be 1st June.

Bye for now,

Jane x

Billie Bear with Watering Can - my GD card for the Lovely Ladybug girls

I am delighted to have been asked again by my blogging buddie Kerry to be one of their guest designers for her newest Ladybug Crafts Ink digi stamp release. For those of you who are visiting my blog for the first time may I give you a very warm welcome to Jane's Journal. This new release is called Billie Bear and she is a real cutie. There are no less than 16 Billie Bear's in this collection, one to suit every occasion. I have to be careful to say "she" as I must not get mixed up with the other Billy in my life, my sweet boy cat.

So meet Billie Bear, a sweet girl teddy ................my image is called Billie Bear with Watering Can.

and then meet  Billy, my sweet boy cat.

He was very sleepy the day I made my card so he  just opened one eye to say hello.

Now that we have got that confusion out of the way ;0) I would like to show you how my card came into being. I used my Spellbinders 17 labels to cut out my stamp and then chose my papers. I decided to go for something very girlie. Everyone knows that I am not a pink girl but I do love using pink with other colours, especially blue.

I found this pretty paper in my stash and decided to pick the blue out for matting. I also picked out the green for a few accents.

I wanted Billie to be a more orangey brown to pick up the other colour in my paper so I had play with my Promarker pens and came up with this...

Next it was time to colour up the watering can and flowers so I went for the blue, pink and green in the paper. I coloured the image using my Promarkers and Flexmarkers  and highlighted with my Prismacolor pencils.

and here she is...meet the lovely Billie in colour. I made my card on a very wet Sunday when we could not even get out of the house so I spent hours being creative. I decided to make another stepper card as these are really fun. 

I had an early birthday present of some Cheery Lynn dies from my Mum so I cut out some samples to see which I wanted to use on my card.

Aren't these gorgeous, they really look like real lace.

I decided to use the second border down called Francesca (B159)

I also decided to make some hand made flowers using my very old floral punches.

I also used my fun Marianne watering can and wheelbarrows dies (LRO260) and one of their leaf dies (LRO227)

Lots of fiddly  play here.

So finally I put everything together .....here is my card.

and a side view to show the steps

You can see that I even used 2 of my very special ladybird wooden buttons which were given to me by a dear blogging buddie ;0) I tied them with Baker's twine. You will also see where I used the Cheery Lynn die cut border,  it looks like real lace next to the gingham ribbon, doesn't it. The ribbon border around my image is the MS punch my daughter brought me home from her honeymoon in the States.
The round birthday sentiment is LOTV

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

Cheery Lynn Celebrate #73
Marianne Design Divas At the bottom of the garden
Charizma Cards Die cuts #11
Crafty Katz sparkle with a bow #175
Pretty Little Ribbons Happy Birthday #20
Forever Friends #58 Girls
Bearly Mine Girlie pink #79
Party Time Tuesdays anything goes
Make it Monday weekly linky party #133
Sweet Stamping Many layers

Thanks so much for visiting and thanks Kerry for asking me to be a GD for this release.
If you would like to take your own Billie home to colour just visit the web site.  All the digi stamps are only £1.75 each and are instantly downloadable.
If you would like to see the whole new range do also stop by the Challenge blog here.There will also be an new challenge starting today and runs for the next 2 weeks.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x (and Billy)