More ballerinas....

Evening all....been a busy old day here....with a trip to see Glynis at CJ Cardcrafts in Edgeley and then onto see Maggie at Crookilley Craft Emporium in Bramhall...

I thought I would show you some of the items that I took to Maggies...

You see it is Maggies shop where I sell , my pyrography items, altered art, cards etc...

This ballerina just had to have her own frame....

She has some friends with her too....I was so thrilled that the first frame that I took to the shop sold straight away....

So I decided that each frame needed a matching card....

As I told you yesterday I really love these stamps...and I secretly want to be the ballerina in the pink dress....

Karl has just left to go and watch some football team!!!! So it is a pyrography evening for me...

Must get on....

Thanks for looking in and as always I appreciate you taking the time to comment. ...

Much love and hugs.

Jo. xxxx

 

A ballerina in full Color....

Good afternoon , hope you are well....

Thanks for looking in today, I am sat in the hairdressers at the moment....and you know what busy people are like....I just can't sit here and do nothing....

So I thought I would have a catch up with you....

Did you watch my boss lady on Hochanda on Sunday.? ..oh my...what great shows....Well Done Barbara....they were brilliant.

There were some wonderful new stamps and stencils...and so today I thought I would share one of my samples with you that that uses a stamp and a stencil...

Do you know when I was little ( o.k. I know I am still little...!!!, ) when I was younger I always wanted to go to ballet lessons...and I used to dream about being a ballerina....

So I just love these stamps.....

I started by stamping the ballerina using VersaMark ink and then white embossing powder....

This really is one of my favourite techniques....

Then out came the wonderful Color Burst powder....by Ken Oliver..

And some water spritzing...

Now you can faux bleach using water, but for this sample I actually wanted to get right back to the true white of the card underneath....

So for the skin on the ballerina I used am inexpensive bleach and old paintbrush.....

Next for the background.

And introducing the heart background stencil, Raspberry Adirondack ink and a stencil brush ...

Then it was just a matter of putting the two together..and using my charcoal pencils....

See how they add such depth to the design...

Here is a closer look..... See how she pops off the page now.....

And those colours......I so love the Color burst powders....if you haven't tried them yet....I do urge you to get them ( available on the Clarity website) and have a good play....

Before I leave you, I just wanted to share a couple of photos from our dog walk yesterday....

I had the feeling that we were being watched.....

And we were...

I do love to see Mr Heron....

Especially when we are down at the fields and he isn't in my garden near my pond......!!!!!

Better go.....enjoy your afternoon...and call in again soon...

Love and hugs

Jo. xxx

 

Sneak peeks....

Good morning all, hope your Saturday morning is going well, as promised I am dropping in today with some little tasters of samples using the new stamps and stencils that will be on tomorrow's show on Hochanda...

Do join Barbara from 10 to 11 and 2 to 4.....

There will be something to suite everyone...

With a great mix of styles and products...

.

And some great demos.....

Enjoy the rest of your day.....oh and Happy Birthday Cindie....have a wonderful day ...you so deserve it..

Love and hugs,

See you soon,

Jo. xxx

 

Say it with Flowers.

Good afternoon, yah it is Friday...and the start of the weekend...I do hope you have something wonderful planned...

Today I am going to share a project with you that uses flowers from Sweet Lilac Flowers...they have a wonderful blog Challenge where one lucky person will win a hamper of flowers every month...

The theme at the moment is ......Say it with Flowers.....

And here is my mid challenge inspiration...

Remember it doesn't have to be a card, it can be a canvas, a tag, an altered art piece....as long as it fits the theme and used the flowers....

http://sweetlilacflowers.blogspot.co.uk

I started it this great little calendar block...

And added some Inka Gold wax....very randomly with my fingers.

Next I added some stamping....with these brilliant stamps from Clarity ...they are part of the journaling set.

I stamped organically...that is without the use of a clarity handle...in order to give this shabby effect.

I chose some flowers from my stash of Sweet Lilac Flowers

And glued them into place with a hot glue gun. I also added a metal embellishment...

Then out with my spray booth and I sprayed all sides with the Spray'n'Shine from Crafters companion...

Here is a closer look at the flowers..

Now the date is carefully set to today....

A special day for me as it is my sisters Birthday....and she really is the best sister in the world....

Happy Birthday Sheila....have a great day....

Oh and she bakes amazing cakes too.....

On that note it is time for some lunch.....

Do remember that Barbara is on Hochanda on Sunday with some brilliant new products....

I will blog some sneaky photos tomorrow...

Enjoy your Friday evening...and see you tomorrow..

Much love and hugs.

Jo. xxx

 

Craft and cake for a good cause...

Good evening and good to see you today.

It has been a lovely sunny day here in Cheshire, I even managed to have my coffee in the garden this morning....hope you have had some sun too.

Yesterday it was workshops in Hazel Grove...and we made a card and jigsaw combination.

I do like to make gift ideas as well as cards.

The ladies made fantastic pieces

We also had cake for a good cause

And more cake,

Thanks Chrissie these were yummy and she even made some gluten free ones....bless you lovely lady...

Soon the donations were adding up nicely for the Macmillan Cancer Charity...

What can be better, crafting with friends, eating cake and giving something back to a good cause...

If there is a coffee morning or an event near you , I do urge you to join in....in my past life I was a Radiographer at the Christie Hospital so I know how important the donations are....and how many lives the dreaded disease touches...

Time now to walk these two....and get the washing in...the sky has clouded over...mmmm wonder if it will rain....

Enjoy your evening....and do call in again...

Love and hugs

Jo. Xxx

 

In the Countryside...

Good afternoon and thanks for looking in on a Sunday afternoon...it is a catch up sort of a day for me...you know the sort where you try to do all those little jobs that you didn't do during the week...I really need to tick some jobs off my list....ready for Monday and another busy week ahead..

I hope you had a good Saturday.... It was Clarity Cumbria for me..and boy did we have a great day...talk about enthusiastic...we were all ready to go 15 minutes early....so we did...

It was lovely to have another three new ladies joining us....

We started off with a warm up Christmas card...well I have to get mine made where I can...

I do love to see how all the cards are so different...

After coffee it was stencil work....with the outer and the Inner...( you get such different results depending on how you use them )

Gill made a good point that it would make an ideal New Home card...

Then it was lunch....and the sun was shining...

 

Full of energy we created our very own Lake District scene

Now , I have to confess that I was suppose to take a photo of the cards at this point but I got a bit distracted with the fact that it was tea and cake time....

It was Debbie's Birthday , and Peter had organised Sheila to make this yummy cake....so you can understand how my mind wandered...!!!!

 

Our fourth design was a nice quick and easy card that would be suitable for so many different occasions...

It is amazing how just changing the colour can change the whole feel of a card design...

We had a few of our regular ladies who were away on holiday....now...although we did miss them....

It did mean that there was extra cake......

All the stamps and stencils are from Claritystamps....and if you check out Barbara's blog from yesterday you will have a sneaky little look at some new stamps....mmmmmm...they will be on Hochanda next Sunday....

Back to today and more ticks needed on this list....

Enjoy your evening all,

Take are.....much love,

Jo. xxx

 

 

Morning all...

Good morning , hope you all slept well....

I am still a little fragile after my visit to the Dentist yesterday but I am hopeful that the extraction mean I don't have to have an operation on my cheek.....got everything crossed.....

Back to last weekend, and here are some more pictures of my samples...

These little bottles of ink are wonderful and hold so many possibilities....

VersaMark Ink , white embossing powder for a resist....wonderful technique....

This one is my favourite....hope you like it too.

And close up....the colours are just fab...

It works well with the Parakeets....

Spectrum Noir pencils are great over the ink...To add some shade and depth..

Remember your stencils work well with this technique ...

I would love to hear about how you use them....

I have a day of sample making with new stamps and stencils....oh what a shame....but someone has to do it....

Have a great day....whatever you are up too...

Thanks for looking in....

Much love and hugs...

Jo. xxx

 

Back home.

Good evening and thanks for popping in. I do hope that your day has gone well.

I had a wonderful weekend with Barbara, Dave and the Clarity Team..

I met lots of old friends, some new ones, had lots of hugs and oh yes we did laugh and laugh some more.

I was demonstrating using the Distress reInkers ...Have you used them? They really are fabulous and you can use them for so many different techniques ...They are available from the Clarity website...along with all the stamps and stencils...

http://www.claritystamp.co.uk

 

So today I thought I would share a couple of my samples with you..

Watercolour painting.....

 

Shaving foam technique....

And spritzing through a stencil...

And yes I did add some shading using my Charcoal pencils...you know how I love them...

I even got some of the ladies to join in and do some crafting...

I had a good journey home and boy did I sleep last night...

Today I spent the day with Mikey and it was lovely to spend time with him....and look what he bought for me...

This evening Karl and Adam are back home and we have collected Tess and Eric...In fact Tess is sat on my knee as I write this ...she really has missed her mummy..

Time now for a cuppa....

Have a lovely evening whatever you do

Much love from me...

Jo. xxx