A blue Snow Queen

Good morning, wow what a glorious weekend it was here. The sun shone from dawn to dusk in a clear blue sky and on Saturday we enjoyed a trip to the seaside. Blue is my favourite  colour and it was in abundance during our family walk.

 The tide was right in lapping at our feet

People were out sailing, making the most of the unexpected weather.

My DD and Daisy enjoyed watching them.

There was a gorgeous pair of swans with their cygnet

a lovely blue door

blue (and green) beach huts

and even a "Blue" boat aptly named "Blue Monday"

So all these awesome blues and the swans inspired my weekly Visible Image inspiration project which I have called "The Snow Queen".

I used some of the gorgeous new Visible Image Christmas stamp sets
Peace, love and hope

and a sentiment from the Go to Christmas words

and teamed them with one of my all time favourite sets..
Face It!

I also used the mask with my card

I stamped the face and added some Distress glaze to seal the lips.

 I very roughly blended some blue distress inks...making them look quite swirly to look like snow swirls.

I added some shading with Broken China distress ink around her face and gave her some blue blusher too. I stamped and white embossed the small snowflake accent stamps from the Peace, love, hope set. I also added some glitter lipstick and eyeliner

Here she is

I stamped the sentiment with Versafine and added the sweet reindeer and star. The little accents in the Peace, love , hope set are very sweet and I have used them on lots of my Christmas cards.

I also added some DecoArt snow-tex around the edge of my card and sprinkled glitter on top for a really frosty effect.

I love these new Christmas stamps Mark has designed...all the sets work so well together. I have been busy making some other designs too which I will share very soon.

All the Visible Image links can be found here;

Visible Image group page on Facebook. Our friendly Group can be found here ...it would be lovely to see you there. You can add work to the "Show and Tell" album where one randomly chosen winner each month wins a £25 coupon to spend on the website.

The main Visible Image Facebook page is here; there are weekly stamp giveaways...open world wide!

And the shop web site is here; where all these gorgeous stamps can be purchased. 

You can also follow via:

 Pinterest

Twitter

 Instagram

I would like to enter my Snow Queen into the following challenges;

The Ribbon Girl 3/3 any image
Creative Inspirations 2/3 Seasonal my season is winter
Rubber Dance favourite stamp Face It! is one of my favourite Visible Image stamps.
Penny Black and More 1/3 get ready for Christmas
Artistic Stamper 3/3 take a little colour

Thanks for stopping by today and for the kind comments you take the time to leave. We are rapidly approaching October now and it's time to get those Christmas cards started....only 91 days to go...ho ho ho!!

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Singing the Blues with my GD card for Country View Challenges

Today I am sharing with you the GD piece I have made for Country View Challenges. (CVC) Their theme for this month is Monochromatic and you still have until the end of this month to enter so do pop on over and join the fun. Their prize is a very generous craft voucher...I am still keeping my fingers crossed that I will come out of the hat one day. The challenge is sponsored by Country View crafts, a great on line shop which offers free postage on everything. I buy a lot of my craft products from them and receive amazing next day delivery.
                                    
I was thrilled just before Christmas to find that I had been chosen in the Top 3 for their recent  "Letters challenge" with my Daisy accordion card. CVC have a rather nice idea of offering their Top 3 the chance to appear in a later challenge as a Guest Designer (GD)...I think this is great as I cannot commit to regular DT work as my job has to fit into my life in some way. I really enjoy making GD cards. For CVC I decided that as my winning card was an accordion card and I really like making these, that I would make one for my GD spot. I have made monochrome cards in black/greys and sepias but I decided to do something really different and use my favourite colour...blue. Now that posed a slight problem as I wanted to use one of my oldest favourite stamps, Dandelion Clock by Lili of theValley but I have never before coloured a whole image in blue. This was also going to be a really special card as it is for my daughter's birthday in March.

I thought I would share my creative process as many of you really like my accordion cards and are probably intrigued to see how they are made.

I started off by choosing a deep blue for my my base card and cut out my 4 panels. I then made my backing papers by getting inking with my Distress inks (DI) I bought a new blue, Chipped Sapphire which is a really deep colour.

 I only had a couple of pale blues DIs so I bought a new colour ink pad, Chipped Sapphire  (from Countryview Crafts as they always have free postage and are really reasonable. I also originally bought my accordion die there which is how I found their challenge blog) . This is a really gorgeous deep blue and my fingers looked spectacular that day even after washing. My Hb asked me how I had bruised my fingers ;0)
I made 2 sheets of backing papers and after they had dried overnight I cut out the inner panels. I then got inky with some really old PSX floral stamps and some itsy bitsy tiny floral stamps from about 10 years ago. I very nearly recycled these stamps a few years ago, in fact they failed to sell on Ebay...moral of the story...hang on to ALL crafty stash as you never know when you will need it.

I also cut some of my favourite Cheery Lynn butterflies out from the same card and distressed the edges of everything with Chipped Sapphire DI

I recently won the Cheery Lynn challenge and for part of my prize I chose these amazing flowers to add to my leaf border die I already own. You can see I am rather a fan of their dies.







The next big challenge was how to colour up my sweet fairy  Dandelion Clock. I usually colour with Promarkers but I struggled with the blues so I looked at my Prismacolor pencils and found I had 3 blues and a white to use.

 Undeterred, after a few attempts I was delighted how my little fairy came out. I blended the blues with Sansodor and used the white to highlight

It was then the daunting task of fussy cutting her out as she did not fit on my panel unless I did so.
You will also see my finished butterflies in these photos.

Here goes.................the light was awful when I took this photo, she is much prettier in real life. I have never coloured hair blue...I really like it. I also added some Glamour Dust to sparkle her wings, flowers and dandelion





So with all the elements made it was time to get creative and put my design together.
Here are a few peeps...

 After lots of moving things around and changing the order here is my finished card...............

and here are close ups of the panels.  The lovely birthday sentiment is from the LOTV quotables stamps from the Pretty Vintage stamps I won last June. I use all these stamps so much.

I hope you enjoyed my little tut...this really is a sweetheart of a card for my sweetheart of a daughter.


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

Lili of the Valley anything goes
Natalie and Amy one for the girlies
Artistic Stamper love is in the air
Emerald Faeries things with wings
Feeling Crafty butterflies
Whimsy stamp challenge something new my new is the chipped sapphire Distress Ink and the Cheery Lynn flower die
Sparkles show us your new stash my new stash is the chipped sapphire Distress Ink pad and my Cheery Lynn blossom die
Deep Ocean birthdays
Pan Pastel UK anything goes
Crafting for all season's For the Girls
Craft Room Challenge Age of Aquarius I have used water based inky techniques to make my papers
The Cutie Pies Blue
Crafting from the heart anything goes/fancy folds
Divas by design anything goes
Winter Wonderland Butterflies
Crafty catz monchrome
Die cut Divas Make it glitter

Thanks for visiting me here and thank you to CVC for having me as your GD today. Have a lovely weekend.

Back soon,

Bye for now.

Jane x