A hummingbird thank you

Hi again, I am back with my second design team post for our April challenge over at Country View Crafts. We would love to see all your animal creations for our April challenge and one lucky randomly selected entry will receive a £20 gift code to spent on the website.

All the details can be found here;

After using an owl for my first card today
I used the gorgeous Visible Image humming bird set life is beautiful. I also wanted to make a thank you card as there as so many people at the moment I would love to thank.

with the new thank you sentiment set. 

This is what I got up to. I sprayed a mix of green and blue distress ink sprays and then added brushed pewter spray to give a silvery finish.

 I stamped the sentiment in place. The lovely thing about this set is that the thank you is separate from the words so you can place it wherever you wish.

I stamped the wing of the hummingbird onto a piece of left over alcohol inked card.

 and then cut it out.

I then stamped the whole hummingbird onto my background and added the wing raising it up slightly on foam fixers. I also stamped some extra detail onto the background using archival ink and the circle stamp from the same set.

Here is my finished card.

and one final shot

I would like to enter it into the following challenges;

Through the purple haze 3/3 anything goes
Craft stamper take it make it 2/3  anything goes
Penny Black and More 3/3 anything goes
Allsorts 3/3 something old, something new... my old is my hummingbird, my new is my Thank you sentiment set.
The cutie pie challenge Bunnies, bear and Bs my B is my bird

I hope I may have inspired you to join in with our April "Animal magic" 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 April challenge can be found here.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.

So my thank you card is a virtual one to say thank you to all the people in my life who are helping in so many ways. There are some truly awesome selfless people out there.

Stay safe, stay at home stay and a big thank you to everyone who stops by here too! 

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

No April fool here

Good morning. Happy 1st April or April Fool's day. There is never any chance of fooling me as it is my birthday today. Yes seriously. My Hb has the day off and we are heading out to enjoy a birthday lunch and potter and perhaps a meal out tonight as well. 

It is also time for our newest challenge over at Country View. For April we have a nice easy theme of Spring/Easter. We look forward to seeing lots of lovely spring inspired creations.

You can enter our April 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 is absolutely FREE! All the details for the challenge can be found here.

For my design team projects for April I decided to make my Easter tags which I make every year for my big and little babies.

Today I will share the first tag, the second will be coming up on 13th April. 

This is what I got up to.
 I make tags for my big and small children for their Easter bags and this one is for Jack who will be 2 on Easter Day. He adores birds and so I knew I had to made a bird based tag for him. The birds around here are certainly paring up. I spotted these 2 sweethearts down at the ponds.

First I made a tree lined setting.
I added twisted citron and squeezed lemonade oxides to make my tag base.
I got out my small tag sized Tim Holtz stencils.

 I took his tree stencil and added vintage photo oxide

I also added some blue leaves with broken china distress ink using his leaf stencil.

I added some bird remnant rubs

I also altered a die cut from my favourite Tim Bird branch Bigz die, sadly long discontinued using paints and a little crackle. 

I finished off with some butterflies from his butterfly frenzy die.

Here is my finished tag.

with some close ups

and one final shot

I hope to see lots of you joining in the fun..the details again are here.

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

Pixie's snippets playground #349

Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes

Alphabet challenge A is for animals

Crafty Catz 1/3 anything goes

Uniko 1/3 Spring/Easter

Polkadoodles anything creative/mixed media

Crafty friends 3/3 spring

My 2nd tag for CVC will be on 13th April.

This is the link again for our April challenge. 

 

I have second post coming up in an hour as being Monday it is also time for my
Visible Image DT Monday make...busy busy!

       Back very soon!

Bye for now,

Jane x

Bird spotting with Bear

I am really enjoying Bear staying with us and we have been on some long walks. One lovely park near us is Beddington and we took a long stroll over there. He loves sniffing around in the woods.

 We also took a walk around the lake

 and spotted these cuties.

 Yes 8 fluffy goslings with Mum

and some cygnets too.

There was also Joe Crow looking down at us from a tree.

All these birds inspired me to come home and make some Artist trading coins with a spring bird theme.

I had a piece of paint resist card in my stash made with Tim Holtz' Urban tapestry stamps so I made a background by blending some blue and green distress inks onto it. I also added some Broken china ink through my Tim Holtz bark stencil.

 I added some stamping using my treasured Bronte verse from Visible Image, sadly long discontinued but one of my fave script stamps.

 I die cut some of my CL birds and coloured them with distress inks.

I also used the owls and sentiment stamps from Visible Image's Into the Woods. stamp set. I stamped and embossed a nest using one of the stamps from their Organics stamp set.

This is what I put together.

There are 3 as they were made for an Facebook UK swap group that I am a member of.

Number 1

 Number 2

 and number 3

and here they are as a group.

I would like to enter my A T Coins into the following challenges;

Penny black and More 1/3 going round in circles
Through the craft room door 1/2 anything goes
Happy Little stampers watercolour anything goes
Mix it up 1/5 anything goes
Pile it on 1/3 favourite colour mine is definitely blue
Addicted to stamps and more 1/3 make your mark

Thanks so much for stopping by today,

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Watch the birdie

A couple of weeks ago I met my darling daughter and Jack at Birdworld for our catch up. We really love this spot in Surrey, it is perfect for children. Out of season it is also incredible quiet, we almost had the place to ourselves. There are birds of all shapes and sizes and I thought I would share a few photos today of our fun day out.

Jack was fascinated by the pelicans.

You can buy pots of meal worms to feed them which he really loved doing. 

There is also a sweet petting farm at Birdworld where Jack saw sheep

the cute resident reindeer

and lots of chickens.

We had such a lovely day together.

My card today just had to feature a sweet creature and is a very spring themed new baby card which goes down for sale at Dotty's Tea House today.

The image is a favourite of mine, a sweet Penny Black hedgehog.
I coloured it with Promarkers and highlighted with pencils. The paper is First Edition (I think) and the dies are a mix of Memory Box, Cheery Lynn and The Works.

I would like to enter it into the following challenges;

I love Promarkers 1/3 anything goes
Passion for Promarkers 1/3 colour it
Crafty sentiments 2/3 spring is springing
A gem of a challenge 1/3 anything goes
Crafty Hazelnut's patterned paper challenge February
Everybody art 1/3 animals

Thanks for stopping by and for your very kind and supportive comments you take the time to leave me. Enjoy this gorgeous weather, let's hope it lasts for the weekend as we will be celebrating my baby boy's 30th birthday on Sunday! Have a great weekend.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

A thank you blog hop for Di

Good morning, what a wild week is has been so far weather wise. We have had sleet, sun, rain, wind and more here. I have not been able to test my new camera out very much but I did take these photos the other day on my twice weekly walk to Dotty's Tea House, with my latest cards, via the ponds.

I've had a couple of questions regarding my camera...it is just a newer version of the cameras I have used for the last 10 years or so. It's a Panasonic DMC-TZ80 Lumix with a fab Leica lens. I have not edited any of the above photos. The only photos are edit here on my blog are my cards etc. I just don't have the time. So to answer another question I regularly get asked; No I do not use Photoshop etc for these shots, they are literally downloaded and added here. I just use Ipiccy to crop and watermark my card and artwork photos.

So back to the main theme of my post today. The lovely Di from Pixie's crafty workshop has run a fab challenge called Pixie's snippets Playground for the last 7 years. The current one is here and Darnell, a fellow playground playmate, has organized a thank you blog hop to help celebrate such a momentous occasion. I first "met" Di about 3 years ago and I have loved getting to know her through our blogging. Her challenge is to use up snippets of anything on our projects. She devotes so much time to the challenges and offers prizes paid for out of her own pocket. Thanks Di for your blogging friendship, kindness and generosity. Do pop on over and say hello to Di, she would love for you to join in the fun and games. This is the link to her blog.  Just say that Jane's Journal sent you 😃, she will welcome you with open arms.

Darnell suggested that we all post a snippets card on our blogs as part of a blog hop to celebrate this lovely occasion and to thank Di for all her hard work over the last 7 years. That is such an achievement, well done and thank you lovely lady. 

  

This is my card I am linking up made with all the snippets from a card I made here for STAMPlorations using their lovely stamps. So it is most definitely a snippets card! I used some book pages and a Noor die cut. The background is spray inks.

You can see the cards everyone else has made for Di over here on Darnell's blog here.. 

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

Crafty Catz 2/3 anything goes
Allsorts 2/3 friends

Cute card Thursday 1/3 critters
Crafty friends 1/3 animals/birds

Thanks so much for stopping by today and for the kind comments you take to leave me, especially when life is so busy!

I am back on Friday when unbelievable I have no less than 3 posts to publish. Yes a bit of a clash but plenty of Design Team work to share for Country View Challenges, STAMPlorations and a Blog hop for the Turner Syndrome awareness group..Stay tuned!

Bye for now,

Jane x