Summer fair

Hello Lovelies... how are you? I hope you are okay. Today I have two quick cards to share with you that are being shown on the 15 min card feature over at chocolatebaroque blog today. They are both made using the beautiful summer fair stamp.

Both are super quick!

This one was simply stamped and coloured in distress pens. I then added distress ink around the outside of the lady and stamped around her using more distress ink and part of the stamp.

A more CAS card this was stamped and coloured in the same way then I added a simple border and another stamp from chocolate baroque as a sentiment!

I can't wait to use the other two season ladies - I am sure I'll get around to that soon!

Here's to a happy Sunday!

Big hugs

Rachel x

Bye bye dad and a day with the lovely Jo Rice

Morning lovelies! How are you? We are good and survived my dads funeral yesterday. My sister and I did a tribute - I only stumbled when I mentioned Shaun so I was quite pleased. Both my girls did a tribute too. I was very proud of them. My friend Liz is a florist - she did the floral tributes - they were beautiful ... I love the teddy bear in his green tank top!!!

  

My mum is doing okay - we'll see how the next week goes on!!!

On Thursday I went to Kendal to the GHP paper Factory and had a lovely day with the beautiful Jo Rice. We made lots of wonderful goodies!

It really was a lovely day - thanks Jo - you are a very special lady!!!

Big hugs to you!

Rachel xx

Lucy's trip under the sea!

Hello Lovelies! How are you today? I hope you are fine and well. Its not going to be a good day for us today - we have my dads funeral. Fingers crossed that things will be okay - I know my mum will feel better once today is over. We want it to be a celebration of his life - here's hoping it is!

Today i want to share with you my canvas I made for Lucy - of course she needed one as penny had one and this time I needed to go with the green and purple colour scheme for her room.

I love the result this time - she did ask for her to be cut out rather than the photo being added as a square so thats what I did.

This ones a bit out of focus but you get the idea...

I decided to add more chocolate baroque stamps to this one - and since one was an octopus - it made me think of that old song....

here it is ...Octopus' garden

I would like to enter this canvas into the following challenges...

mixedmediaworld-under-sea

welove2create challenge-15-anything-mixed media

fashionablestampingchallenges113-under-the-sea

happylittlestampers-july-anything-goes-with-dies.

I read this on Barbara Grays blog yesterday ...

I intend to do this!

Have a good Friday!

Hugs

Rachel x

going with the flow and some experiments ...

Hello there - I have a step by step project on the stampsandstencils blog today - this is the project I end up with ...

see you over there?

Rachel x

Under the sea - Penny canvas

Hello there! How are you? I hope you are well. We are good and managing to keep smiling. I had more crafting time in the attic last night - after mowing the lawns ... I used one of the pictures from Center Parcs as inspiration for a 12 x 12 inches canvas for Penny's room. I wanted to make something for the under the sea challenges around at the moment. Here's what I did.

I started by using stencils to create texture in the background....once dry I used distress paints in mermaid lagoon, lucky clover and salty ocean applied with a wet wipe.

Next I added the photo and the shells which have been sitting on my dexk for a while now....

I cut the 'garden greens' from some distress paint mop ups and also the seahorses... these were painted with clear rock candy crackle and when dry I applied expresso distress stain to highlight the crackles.

This one gives you a better impression of the texture in the background. The fish came from fussy cutting a stamp from chocolate baroque.I added glossy accents to their eyes. The SEA word is another Tim goodie!!!!Penny Loves it - I have to find room to put it on the wall later.... I'm hoping to get chance to do Lucy's version of this later.

I would like to enter this into the following challenges:

mixedmediaworld mmw16-under-sea

welove2createchallenge-15-anything-creativemixed

fashionablestampingchallenges challenge-113-under-the-sea

happylittlestampers-july-anything-goes-with-dies

Have a great Tuesday - I think we're going to see finding Dory today - more fish lol!!!

Big hugs

Rachel xx

Tims tag July

Good Morning lovelies! Well I went into my attic last night and had a little play - oh beautiful therapy! I felt so much better afterwards...you can imagine I am sure. Thanks so much for your kind words and thoughts yesterday - I really appreciate it. My dad was a good man and he would have appreciated it too - thankyou.

I would like to share my make for Tims tag July with you today - I followed all the techniques set out by Tim here. I used completely different stuff - but am pleased with my tag - this is tims ...



and here is mine ....

I used words from the family set and cut out word from a christmas set...

The stamps are from the ladyrose set and also a smaller die and stamp set that includes the bird.

I have also used carved pumpkin, mowed lawn distress pens and a water brush, plus mermaid lagoon ink.

I would like to enter this into timholtz -12-tags-of-2016-july

I hope to see you again soon!

Big Hugs

Rachel xx

traditional colours at Christmas card club

Hello there! Apologies for being AWOL - there's been much going on - some good and some not so good. We lost my poor dad last Tuesday morning. It was a relief at the end but its going to take some getting used to him not being around. Especially for my mum. Luckily my sister came back from New Zealand. She got a flight as soon as she heard how bad things were and managed to make it home just an hour after he died. It was a shame she didn't get to say goodbye whilst my dad was still breathing but perhaps better in some ways. Anyway she has been great for my mum and has helped her loads allowing me to rejoin my girls on holiday at Center parcs - more of that later.

Today is a new theme for the Christmas card Club and that theme was traditional colours - I took that to mean red and green. My cards are far from traditional -

This is a mop up page from distress paints used in the second set of cards. I have trimmed them to size and stamped the new angel stamps from Visible image on them in black. I also used another visible image stamp in green archival to complete the card.

This is the original background page made and cut to size. Afterwards I stamped paperartsy stamps in versamark and set with white embossing powder. I used posca pens around the edge and to add details.

Thats 4 more cards made!

My holiday was good fun despite being a bit odd. Here's a few pics!

Lots of activities and lots of fun! We went with two other mums and three other daughters from school. It worked well!

I hope to have more to share with you soon!

Big hugs

Rachel xx

Summer florals at Indigo Blu

Hello Lovelies! I hope you are well and happy. I am good and looking forward to the new challenge at indigoblublogchallenge which starts today - the theme this month is summer florals. 

I had lots of fun making a new mirror for Lucy's bedroom - the colours are dictated by the scheme already in place - green and purple! It was  a mirror from IKEA and here's what it looks like now...

I used the following products that can be found on the Indigoblu website.

indigoblu-english-cottage-artists-acrylic-paint-wimberry-pie

indigoblu-english-cottage-artists-acrylic-paint-peppermint-tea

indigoblu-artists-acrylic-paint-emerald-city-metallic-green

indigoblu-artists-acrylic-paint-aladdin-metallic-purple

rose-dinkie-a7-red-rubber-stamp

flutterby-dinkie-a7-red-rubber-stamp

stencil-floral-fantasy

boadicea-a5-red-rubber-stamp

I started with a layer of the aladin paint and when dry used the stencil and the peppermint tea paint.

Next I used the emerald city paint to freehand draw a rose stem around the mirror. I also stamped the rose dinkie stamp x 5 plus one of the the dinkie butterfly onto paper.

Next I used winberry pie, peppermint tea and a sparkle pen to paint the roses and butterfly. Then I fussy cut them.

I added them to my design and then stamped and fussy cut the sentiments. 

I added the sentiment and flowers and butterflies then used the peppermint tea paint and the end of a paintbrush to add some dots.

I thought these were great sentiments for my daughter!

I hope you like the mirror as much as she does!

Please come and join us at indigoblublogchallenge where I know my buddies will have put plenty of inspiration! There's also a chance to win a a lot of lovely stamps from the indigo blu store!

Big hugs and hope to see you again soon!

Hugs

Rachel x

Clarity Cumbria - July

Hello lovelies - how are you? I do hope you are fine and happy. Things here are up and down - we had a lovely day at Clarity cumbria yesterday - more to follow. Today I have spent with my mum - the doctors think my dad has days at most left - he's certainly gone down hill in the past few days since I saw him last. My sister is on the way from New Zealand. The timing is not good as I'm supposed to be going away tomorrow. My mum wants me to go - and I probably will - just for the girls really - they have been so excited and I don't want them to be sad. Perhaps taking them away from the situation this time is good. I don't know. At least my sister will be able to be there for my mum. Its all a bit of a mess really.

So onto brighter things - Clarity Cumbria with my girls was lovely on Saturday - they did really well too.

This is the first card I made - and here's the ones made by the girls...

Next we went a bit brighter ... we used aquatints to create the backgrounds.

This one is mine - those meerkats are huge!!! Lol! Got my perspective a bit wrong there.

Here's card 3 ...

Here's mine a bit closer.....

Finally it was aquatints again ...

Here's mine closer up ..

It was a lovely day and I think both girls did remarkably well - a few more visitis and they'll be really rocking the techniques!!!!

Thanks for your visit - hope you like what we've made!

Hugs

Rachel xx

Proud mum

Hello lovelies! How are you? I hope you are well! As I write this (Friday afternoon) I feel pretty exhausted. Its been a busy last few weeks of term even for me - and I can't wait for school holidays to begin - for us thats very soon! Yay! I had the pleasure of going into school Friday morning and saw my big girl awarded with a cup for good citizenship ...

I am so very proud of her - and so pleased that the school recognises what a fabulous little person she is! I also got to see both girls singing in the choir ...

Penny 2 nd from left ...

Lucy with Alec ...would you believe he's older than she by 3 days!

So time for a make share - this is another one from coffeepot on Monday when I was using infusions ...

this was using the violet storms infusions - and TH bubble stencil plus distress inks.

A more arty shot.

Me and my girls are all off to Clarity Cumbria today - my mum is too tired to have the girls so they get a chance to come and play with me - we'll visit my mum and dad tomorrow.

Do take care and enjoy your Saturday!

Hugs

Rachel x