Sunshine and Sicily

As promised I am back with my first installment of photos from our recent wonderful holiday in Taormina, Sicily. This was our 3rd visit there and we stayed at the same hotel. As you can imagine it was hot hot hot and blue skies and sunshine were the order of the day. At the far end of town is the ancient Greek amphitheatre.
It is wonderful that shows are still held here..just look at that view with Mount Etna in the distance. They were just putting up the staging for the film festival when we were there.

 This is the view looking out and back to the coast and Etna.

And below is looking back up to where our hotel is nestled in the hills. Just imagine how many thousands of people over thousands of years have looked at this view and how the buildings have come and gone over time.

The streets of Taormina are narrow and cars are not allowed.

I can imagine in ancient days that horses must have ferried people around.

My card today is a sample made to show at the Stamperama show at the Newbury Racecourse this  Sunday, 7th July.
I will be demonstrating  for Stampers' Grove again who are on stand 16 using Visible Image stamps and stencils.

As the show is at the Racecourse I thought it would be great fun to use the Stay Wild Visible Image stamp set. I created a very sunny background using a combination of distress oxides and brushos, showing the sea and the sky.

With a couple of close ups

I will of course also be demonstrating using all the brand new Visible Image stamp release too. If you are around do pop by. It would be so good to put faces to names.

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

Creative fingers 1/3 anything goes
Inkspirational 1/3 3 or 5 of anything I have 3 horses
Sweet stampin 1/3 you are my sunshine
Through the craft room door 1/3 anything goes
Crafty sentiments 1/3 bright colours
Simon says stamp make your own background
Love to craft 1/3 anything goes
A bit more time to craft 1/3 anything goes
Happy little stampers 1/3 anything goes

Thanks so much for stopping by,

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Home from sunny Rhodes

I have had a couple of scheduled posts on my blog over the last week as I have been in Rhodes with my Hb. We have been staying at the same apartments for over 10 years now and it is like going home. We seem to have brought the sunshine home as there are blue skies here this morning but rather a temperature drop from 32c yesterday to 20c today!

I will sort out my photos and write a couple of posts over the coming weeks but here are a couple of sunny ones just for now to make you smile. I never get bored looking out from our balcony. 

and the beach is a 1 minute walk away..just bliss.

My card for today is another of the Clean and Simple new stock I have taken down to sell at Dotty's. This one is going up for sale today...using one of my bright happy Visible Image stamps with their fab sentiment too. 

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

Fashionable stamping 1/3 quote away
Dragonfly dreams 2/3 anything goes
Not just cards 1/3 anything goes
Simon says stamp Wednesday pop it up my smilie is on a pop up dot

I will be back very soon,
I am off to Dotty's and then to collect Billy, who has been on his holidays over at my Mum and Dad's.

Thanks for stopping by.

 Keep smiling.

Bye for now,

Jane x

Keeping holiday memories alive

Good morning, it is time for my 2nd design team inspiration post for Country View challenges. The current theme for this month is very apt and is called "Sun, Sea and sand" . We would like to see anything summer or holiday related.   As always you can enter our challenge as many times as you like and combine with any other challenges. Your make can be anything creative! You may even be the lucky random winner of the £20 CVC voucher.

All the details can be found here.

If you missed my first post, sharing my holiday photo journal  you can see it here

Today I am sharing the page I made to add to the holiday journal that Daisy made whilst we were away.

There was so much to inspire us. Daisy and I bought a postcard everyday. I used mine to record the day's highlights. Daisy stuck her's into her journal and then dictated to me what she would like to remember. I wrote this on a record card for her and she often added little illustrations like this one. 

We also took an Instax photo every day

 and some days she added stamping, stencilling or some of the die cuts I had packed.

I decided for my page I would use a stamped postcard as my focal.

I used the brilliant rubber dance one.

I also used another of their stamps from their seaside sets.

I made then more vintage with my distress inks. All the other stamps I used are also Rubber Dance

I decided to make a masterboard.  I started making my inky seaside background, I created a splattered background with my distress ink.

 and added lots of stamping

I also made some die cuts from Tim's amazing new 3D impresslits

as well as other seaside die cuts including some fun Memory box flip flops,

which I then altered with inks. 

I cut a piece of my masterboard and then put my design together,

 I would like to enter the page I made for Daisy's journal into the following challenges;

Rubber dance 1/3 colour palette or nature

Penny Black and More 2/3 I spy something beginning with B My Bs are beach, branch (die), brown , buoy (stamp), borders (for my 2 focal images)and blue

Pile it on 1/3 new technique mine is using these 3d dies for the border and branches. The texture and depth they give is awesome.

Lil patch of crafting friends 2/3 anything goes

Simon says stamp Monday sprinkles and splatters

Happy Little stampers use dies cuts 2/3  anything goes

Happy Little stampers watercolour 1/3 anything goes

Here are some close ups

 Here is the page inside her journal.

With the off cuts and spare elements from the masterboard I made a couple of pages for my own journal too...shown below, fondest memories of such a fabulous holiday. It also links our 2 journals together.

We hope to see lots more lovely entries to our sun, sea and sand challenge over at Country View ..and you may even win the £20 voucher! Here is the link. Good luck.

Thanks for stopping by,

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Crabs in hiding

Good morning it's time for my Design Team Monday Make for Visible Image and today I am sharing an art journal page I have made for my holiday journal I am putting together after our recent wonderful Majorcan family holiday.

Daisy and I loved collecting shells from the beach but most were tiny. I did spot some bigger ones in the sea. However we soon found that all of them had brilliant hermit crabs in them...so we left them be and made do with small shells to decorate the sandcastles we built.

 We even built a moat which Daisy filled..but bless her she could not understand that no matter how many buckets of water she collected, no water stayed in her moat..bless!

But how about this for a castle, she was so proud.

So my journal page had to feature crabs and the sea. I reached for the brilliant crabs stamps from the Zodiac cancer set to work with.

 I used some "blue sea" distress inks and blended them onto some watercolour card as well as adding some "waves" and shafts of light using the ever versatile fibres stencil on its side.

 I stamped fibonacci

to remember the shells by and of course knew just the right sentiment to use. 

Good times from the No regrets set

We also saw lots of shoals of fish swimming in the sea so out came my fish stamps and bubbles from the dare to swim set

I also stamped and fussy cut the amazing camera from Capture the moment

So here are my crabs and camera ready to add to my page

and here is my finished page.

and as Daisy  loves to add wobbly eyes to things whenever she crafts with me I thought they would make a really fun addition to the crabs.

Here are couple more photos. I added some white pen highlights.

and one last one;

I would like to enter my art journal page into the following challenges.

Creative Artiste 2/3 anything goes

Simon says stamp Monday summer fun

Crafty Catz 2/3 anything goes/think summertime

Fashionable stamping 2/3 use those inks any way you want to

Simon says stamp Wednesday fun in the sun

Not just cards 2/3 anything goes
Studio 75 1/3 summertime
Crafteezee summer

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. 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 and stencils can be purchased. 

You can also follow via:

 Pinterest

Twitter

and

 Instagram

If you follow Visible Image on Facebook you will have seen that there is a very exciting re release coming..with a slight twist.

Yes the characters from Wonderland are coming back with new sentiments and some additional little stamps. They are available for pre ordering from Friday...keep watching for all the sneak peeks and info over on the Facebook page here . I have been very busy over the last few days working on some samples and all will be revealed on the Facebook Live which is being aired on Friday.

Thanks so much for stopping by. The heatwave here continues and the heat over the weekend was quite incredible, it reached 36c on my patio and was far too hot to sit out in. I'm not sure how they managed to play tennis at Wimbledon!

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x