Swim deeper

Good morning, I am here today with my 2nd design team project for our current August challenge over at Country View Challenges

The theme is a very apt one for summer, it is Oh I do like to be beside the seaside and you can find all the details here. So obviously we would like to see all your seaside themed projects.
I love collecting shell as I walk along the beach and have lots around my house and in my studio.
One of the best places I find shells is down at my daughter's, Lee on the Solent, the beach is literally full of them.

They regularly get put on the sandcastles.

 I just love shell hunting.

For this project I used another of my favourite seaside themed stamp sets.This one is by Visible Image and is called Dare to swim. The seashells are from their Mythical mermaid set
I added some sand texture paste to card and when  dry sprayed with some fossilized amber distress oxide.

 I used the Visible Image fishnet stencil and added salty ocean distress ink.

to make this background

I then stamped the large jelly fish onto a left over piece of acetate and coloured with alcohol ink. When dry I added some glossy accents and a sprinkle of glitter.

I stamped the shells onto mop up card and the sentiment and fussy cut everything out.
Here is my finished card.

and a couple of close ups

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

Gem of a challenge 3/3 anything goes
Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes
A bit more time to craft 3/3 anything goes
The artistic stamper 3/3 anything goes
Crafters' castle 3/3 anything goes
Love to craft 3/3 anything goes
Crafty calendar 3/3 anything goes

I hope I may have inspired you to join in with our August "Oh I do like to be beside the seaside" 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 August challenge can be found here.

I will be back very soon with the winner of my recent 10th bloggerversary giveaway.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Back soon

Bye for now

Jane x

Still warm enough for swimming in the sea

Good morning it is time for my 2nd DT project for Country View Challenges for our current "Under the sea" challenge. I thought it would also be a good opportunity to share the first of my photos from our recent week in Rhodes where where we spend days on the beach in glorious sunshine.

Our balcony looked out the sea and we had just a minute's stroll down the steps to the sandy beach.

and the crystal clear sea.

I love the play of the light during the day, this is late afternoon

 and even at night it is just as beautiful as the sun sets.

I love swimming in the sea and walking the beach, always on the look out for mermaid of course! Now sadly I didn't spot any but I thought it would be a great idea to try to recreate what that might look like with by making a mermaid card.

I used my I used my Visible Image Mythical mermaid stamp set. 

First I added some distress inks, Fossilized amber, Lucky clover, Tea dye and Mermaid lagoon ( of course!) to watercolour paper. 

Then I used the waves stamp in the set and randomly stamped it across my card, just like the waves on the beach.

 I then stamped using the bubbles stamp. 

I stamped, coloured and cut out my mermaid and 3 of her dolphin friends (you get all these in this gorgeous  stamp set). 

I also stamped some of the shells and the star fish too. The little crab in the set I stamped directly, isn't he cute!

 I also used some die cuts including Tim Holtz' old ornate frame and put my card together.

A few close up photos. You can see I added glossy accents to some of the bubbles.

There is also a really wonderful sentiment in the set....

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

I would like to enter it into the following challenges;

Pixie's snippets playground #361
A gem of a challenge 2/2 anything goes
Allsorts 2/3 anything goes +/- a twist
Take it make it craft stamper 2/3 anything goes
Addicted to stamps 2/3 for a lady/girl
Through the craft room door 1/3 anything goes
Papercraft challenges 1/3 no designer paper

I hope I might have inspired you to take up our Under the sea challenge for September and join us. There are still 10 days left.

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 is absolutely FREE! All the details for the September challenge can be found here.

The weather here is still glorious and we spent an awesome day on the beach on Sunday at the south coast with our babies. It looks like it is getting even hotter over the next few days..bliss.

Thanks so much for stopping by today,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Swimming into September

So here we are three quarters of the way through 2019...how on earth did that happen? Although it is September we still have a few more weeks of summer left and the theme for this month over at Country View challenges is "Under the sea".
There is still time to enjoy photos like this...where I will be in a few weeks time.

I love the sea and as those of you who know me well I would love to be mermaid so I decided to make some mermaid themed  ATCs for this challenge.
My backgrounds were made with Brushos. I cut them to 3 1/2 by 2 1/2"

 and used my Tim Holtz splash stencil to add some depth using mermaid lagoon distress ink (of course!)

I stamped the mermaid from the Visible Image Mythical mermaid set and coloured her with watercolour pens. I cut off her trident (and eventually her arm as I put her at the edge of the card).

I die cut some under the sea images and also used the jelly fish and sentiment from the Visible Image Dare to swim set

I stamped and white embossed the jelly fish and added an acetate with alcohol inks "cap" for extra texture. I used the cut off mermaid tail at the top of this one.

These are the 3 ATCs.

Here they are in close up.

I glued the mermaids's tail I had cut off onto the top of the next ATC.

I would like to enter them into the following challenges;

Pixie's snippets playground #360
Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes
Cute card Thursday 1/3 anything but a card
The house that stamps built 1/3 anything goes
Dies R Us Nature I have used Cheery Lynn's seahorse die
A bit more time to craft 1/3 anything goes
We love 2 create 1/3 anything goes mixed media
Happy Little stampers watercolour anything goes

I hope I might have inspired you to take up our Under the sea challenge for September and join us.

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 is absolutely FREE! All the details for the September challenge can be found here.

I will be back with some more "under the sea" inspiration  for CVC on September 19th using the same gorgeous Mythical mermaid set.

Thanks so much for stopping by today,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Swimming towards June

Good morning and for those of you who are in the UK enjoy your day off courtesy of the late May bank holiday. The temperature is rising nicely as we start the last week of the month although it has clouded over a bit today. I can't wait until we can have picnics and ice cream on the beach when we visit our daughter's and paddle in the sea. Summer is just around the corner now. I wonder if we will have anything like the long hot summer of 2018?

We had so many fun days at the seaside last year, even though I did take a dunk from their kayak! 

Daisy and Jack loved it too. What is more fun for a child than sand, a bucket and a spade?

Such fond memories. Fingers crossed we can repeat this again in 2019

It is time for my Monday DT make for Visible Image today and with these thoughts of the sea I used the brilliant 

Dare to swim  stamp set

and the timeless fibres stencil

I used a piece of card made a while back using turquoise and lemon Brushos. I then added salty ocean, twisted citron

and tumbled glass distress ink through the stencil.

I stamped the fish using a rainbow ink pad. 

I stamped the seaweed using Color Box Guava

and I used a sentiment from 

Voices in your head

 It was embossed in yellow onto purple card. I then backed this onto green.

I stamped out some jelly fish onto acetate (I will use the spares on other projects) and added Glossy accents and glitter.

I also found an ideal piece of netting courtesy of my easy peelers!

Then it was time to put my card together. 

Here it is;

with some close ups

I also stamped inside..

and one last shot.

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

We love to create 1/3 anything mixed media
Pixie's snippets playground #353
Pink gem challenge 1/3 anything goes
Crafty catz 1/3 anything goes

All the Visible Image links can be found here;

Visible Image group page on Facebook. Our friendly Group is here ...it would be lovely to see you there. You will see lots of gorgeous makes by the DT and customers to inspire your own creativity.

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

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

I had a great time at the Stamperia show on Saturday demonstrating for Stamper's Grove. I'll be back to share a post later this week but this photo was taken at set up by a lady whose stand was opposite...before the doors opened and we were greeted by so many lovely crafters. It was a really busy but enjoyable day. 

Thanks so much for stopping by today and for the kind comments you take the time to leave me, despite the very busy lives you all lead.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x