Sheena Douglass - Back in the Room

Hello Readers! Once again the amazing Sheena Douglass is on our TV screens demonstrating her little socks off. Tune in at 11:00 and 18:00 to see her on Create and Craft TV, Sky 671. There are some NEW products on these shows. Sadly not new stamps this time but some essential (hint hint) new H₂O paints and a popular type of crafting card (may have got my spelling a little wrong with that one!) 'The clues are there!' Of course you will be able to buy the featured stamps to add to your collection if you don't already have them!

With the launch in mind I was tasked with making a few samples for the show, which was harder than you might think for me this time. I had originally said that I was too busy to help what with it being Birthday week for several family members, but then I got itchy fingers and made some anyway!! It was a quick turn around, but that is what made it exciting. It was lucky for me that Sheena was doing a workshop locally so I was able to hand them over in person saving the postman the trouble of lugging the haul up to Douglass Towers!

Better show you a few of the cards I made then I suppose, it is very easy for me to get carried away with the back story and completely forget why I am here!!

This first one features stamps from the 'Happiness' plate, the extremely versatile crackle from the Ageing Beautifully plate, Wine + Roses H₂O, a little Tim Holtz distressing ink Antique Linen if I remember correctly, and a touch of Gilding Wax. I painted the dove (Hobbycraft, fabric covered wood) with the H₂O and gilded the edges. I 'pulled' some of the colour off the card in the area of the window to make it lighter simply by wetting and blotting the paint. This has the effect of bleaching without the smelliness! For the glass in the window I simply sanded a bit of thick acetate (probably cut from packaging - never waste a thing!) to give the look of aged glass.

This next one uses some of the new Silks paint, in my favourite colour Bolivian Blue teamed with the luscious Olive Vine. I painted a border using the Olive Vine on the black base card making sure it was just slightly bigger than the next layer which was the same type of black card stamped with the Bolivian Blue using the linen stamp from the Ageing Beautifully plate. I love the way the Silks work as a stamping medium. I then took the Destinations stamp and stamped onto some Neenah card using black StazOn and water coloured the elements with H₂Os in the same colours as the Silks. A bit of fussy cutting held on with silicone glue and there we have it. The shimmer of the Silks and thes is lovely. 

Then just because I had the idea in my head I simply had to do a mono-chromatic card. I wanted to do a black and white water colour thing, sticking to just the black, but something made me add the Sunflower H₂O coloured bits to the street lamp and windows! I used the linen stamp again to make the background and added some lovely yellow ribbon. The sentiment from the same plate was added using Silicone Gel glue.

All in all a varied selection of cards. I hope you enjoy watching the shows tomorrow. I know I will be sitting comfortably with my cuppa, feet up and 'phone off the hook!

If you have any questions for me or Sheena feel free to get in touch. 

Cheery bye for now! Kim xx

Fabulous NEW Stamps - Cheering me up a bit!

Been a bit off colour these last few days. Sitting looking at my craft desk and not much happening in the way of inspiration. Kept fiddling with things, trying to tidy up, having a tinker with Twinchies, but nothing 'HUGE' was happening in my head.

Then I remembered I had some new stamps arrive the other week from London. London ONTARIO that is. I had opened the packet, given them a quick trial stamp and them promptly lost my mojo!!!

With a big NEED to do something crafty running around in my head I cleared the decks, placed the stamps, black ink and white paper firmly in front of me and told myself I WAS going to make something!!

First I just stamped the images using black ink on white card. When I saw all these black on white images I felt the urge to do some 'colouring in'. Always good for the soul, who doesn't feel calmer, happier, and comforted when they do some colouring in? I used H₂Os - Wine & Roses and Ginger Peach for the leaves which led on to the creation of the background which was those 2 colours plus Sunflower and Hot Cinnamon. I used the droplets stamp to a little more interest to the background stamping in a red ink.

Having coloured all the leaves in I decided to cut them out and it was during this process that I decided to make a flower out of them. It has a sort of poinsettia look about it don't you think? I am still not sure if I should add something; a sentiment somewhere or a single leaf. I will just wait and see what happens. With my mojo being on some sort of sabbatical I think I might wait till it returns before making any hasty decisions.

If you like the stamp why not pop over to the web site Designs by Ryn and take a look at the other fantastic stamps there are. FYI HERE is the one I used for this card.

Hope to be back soon with more makes - mojo willing! 

Kim xx

TWINCHIES GALORE! Bling, Animals, Animals with bling - all rolled into one blog post!

So, call me lazy if you like but I wanted to get these beauties in a blog as soon as possible because very soon I shall be working my little fingers to the bone on a new project which will need my full attention and time.

By the way, did you know it is only 51 days give or take a few hours, until Christmas? Check here for current status. You can see now why I shall be busy!!

The challenges in the Twinchie world this time are ANIMALS for the Twinchie Challenge and ANYTHING GOES plus BLING for the Show us your Twinchies.

I started the Bling challenge with a particular stamp in mind, the lovely bee from the Sheena Douglass stamp set Floral Fantasy Violets. It looks like a jewellers plan for a gem encrusted brooch. I wanted to use a combination of colours that I like but haven't used for a while, purple and lime green. 

In the end with this Twinchie I didn't think I had really embraced the bling enough, so I have simply made this for my own library of Twinchies. Mind you, the shine on the black embossing and the reflectivity of the mica in the H₂O paint is quite good.

This led me on to the next version of the bee, this time I went all out with the faux gems! It isn't really my thing to use this many gems on a piece but hey that is what the brief wants so here it is!

Show us your Twinchie - Anything Goes + Bling

I don't have many green or purple gems so I had to use a different colour combo. This time I used gold embossing powder to give the look I described earlier of a real piece of jewellery. (I still prefer the purple/green one!)

And then there is the final Twinchie I made which is for the Animal challenge. I used one of the free Craft Stamper magazine stamps of the boxing hares. Somebody needs to tell me if the Twinchies came first or did the size of their free stamps launch the whole Twinchie thing? I did my usual moon and dimensional thing on this one. It is nice to be able to use up those little scraps of card that have interesting designs and colours on them. I used a little circle punch for the moon. I was amazed to find one that was exactly the right size! I stamped the moon part of the image again onto another part of the paper so that is was a different colour from the background. 

Twinchie Challenge - #8 Go Animal

That is all for today my lovelies! I need to get my work space cleared down for some serious work next week. Don't expect to see me for a while as I will be VERY busy!

Pop along to the Twinchie blogs and see the other wonderful entries and be inspired by the DT samples. Have a go yourself, you will be amazed at how much pleasure you get from making little pieces of art.

Thanks for dropping in, please leave a comment, I love reading them.

Have a great November! Kim xx

CATS - KATZEN - MOO MANIA #47

Yippeeeeee! It is Moo Mania day again already. 

 I just L O V E this challenge. 

As the title suggests it is all about cats this time. I don't have many cat stamps but I recently bought a magazine with a free set of cat/dog stamps on and what do you know? They are just the right size to fit on a Moo. Well, almost!

Those of you that also bought the magazine will probably notice that I have cut the party hats off the heads of the cats! Rest assured it didn't hurt them one little bit! To be honest the hats made the cats toooo big to fit on the Moo so they had to go. To make up to the cats for the loss of their party hats I gave them some lovely 'nearly real' black whiskers. (The paper ones also got chopped off in the process of cutting out the heads!!!)

The usual fussy cutting and 3D glue gel are in evidence but rather unusually for me the Moo is in landscape orientation. The cats are coloured with H₂Os and the background is stamped with grasses and leaves.

Hope you like my cute cats? They all look like they are sat waiting for their dinner! 

Go see the other entries into the challenge and check out the DT samples over at Moo Mania. Why not have a go yourself?

Thanks for dropping by. Please be kind enough to leave a comment for me, I love reading your views.

Happy Moo-ing!  Kim xx

I'm in the MOO'd for some Sewing

Yipeeee! A new Moo challenge. You just don't know how much I love Wednesdays!! This challenge is such a lovely theme, my second crafting hobby, SEWING. As soon as I saw the theme I knew exactly which stamps I was going to use and which little elements I would put on. How sad am I? It does help with the time it takes to make something like this to have a photographic memory of everything you have in your stash. What messes it up is not being able to find the items in a hurry! 

SEWING #44

Once I had found those little tiny thimbles and the cream shrink plastic I was off and running. Jokes about 'stitches' are welcome, you know running stitches and stitches with running, but I don't have time to come up with any just now. (Job interview this afternoon eeeeek!)

Right, back to business, the latest MOO challenge can be found HERE. Go see all the lovely samples the DT have made and then why not try one of your own?

Mine features silver stamped elements coloured with Royal Satin H₂O, a cute little shrink plastic tape measure and a real needle and thread. I am actually amazed, as I always am, about how much you can squeeze onto such a tiny piece of card.

Hope you like it? It would be nice if you left me a comment now that you are here. Thanks for reading!

Kim xx

Was Starting to Panic!

For a few days now I have been a little worried that something had gone missing. Thankfully today it has come back. Was it ever gone? Or was I just getting anxious at not having Twinchie'd for a while?

I am talking about the Twinchies Challenge blog.

This month the theme is Anything Goes. So here is my Twinchie, a little shrink plastic butterfly, glazed to make it jewel like on a background of Honesty painted with H₂Os and shading added with a grey ProMarker.   The Honesty is from the Sheena Douglass stamp plate of the same name from the A Little bit Magical range. It is nice to be able to use these stamps 'publicly' now. I had them for weeks before the launch to make samples but was not be able to show them off! 

Twinchie Challenge #5

And there we have it! A little bit of 2" x 2" card. How much fun can you have with such a small piece of art? My answer is LOADS!!! Check out the other entries and the DT samples over on their blog. (Link is at the top^^^^^^^).

Have a go yourself, go on I dare you. 

As always I love reading your comments.

Have a nice Crafternoon (Thanks to Deano on Create and Craft TV I don't actually use the word 'afternoon' anymore!!).

Kim xx