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

See through crafting

There are several fun challenges going on at the moment asking us to be inspired by glass. bottles, transparency etc etc.
I had a quiet Sunday and was able to run some of those ideas through my head. The weekend weather was dismal, rain rain and more rain so it was good to escape into the world of crafting.
I also needed to make a birthday card for my Hb's upcoming birthday in a few weeks so it was time to use all this inspiration to make him a card.

Billy did not want to join me and preferred to sleep in his box...Oh to be a cat ;0)

I treated myself to a packet of acetate and I had also bought a fun pack for male themed card blanks in a sale.
I decided that my theme would be a bottle of bubbly to celebrate my Hb's birthday. I am very excited as we have a meal booked at The Shard so I am sure some bubbly will feature there too.

I was able to partially cut the acetate with some of my dies...I then finished the job with my scissors.

I also used my Tim Holtz bubbles embossing folder to give me a "bubbles" background.

I used Sharpie pens to colour the hearts and bottle and a gold Krylon gold marker to add some finishing touches. 

I cut an aperture out of my card blank

 and stuck the embossed bubbles behind

I also used some alcohol inks on a focal and swirled them around.

I also stuck a large coloured acetate heart over my stamped and embossed sentiment for the inside of the card. This is the same shape as the front aperture using gold card.

So then the creative hat was put on......and I came up with this. It is so hard to get a good photo as the acetate reflects a lot of light.  This is looking at the front of the card with it open.

and this is the inside.

The bubbles came out really well.

and here is the bottle of bubbly specially created for my Hb...a vintage 2016 year and his very own initialed label ;0)

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges

PaperArtsy Transparent art I was inspired by Keren Baker's post and the way she added colour to her acetate, especially the red behind the word courage but instead of paint I used Sharpie pens.
Country View crafts Be inspired by Bottles
Pixie's Snippets playgound 1/3 #211 I used lots of snippets of acetate
Anything but cute Ring out the old...bring in the new this is the first acetate aperture card I have made.
Crafty calendar something new  as above
Simon says stamp Wednesday something new my acetate sheets.
Love to create 2/2 anything creative/mixed media #27
Crafty friends something new my first aperture acetate card
Noor anything goes
Bunny Zoe 1/3 hearts
Crafty boots something old something new my old is my ribbon my new is the acetate

This relentless rain came to a halt today here in the south. The wind direction is forecast to change this week to cooler weather so hopefully an end to the rain for a while.

I was so shocked to wake up yesterday morning to hear that David Bowie had died. What a rock legend....his music was a huge part of my teenage...RIP one of my music heroes. His music will certainly live on forever. Thanks as always for your kind visits and comments.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x