70 Years young!

Here is a pic from our recent cruise which was to celebrate milestone birthdays for myself and my husband!

We are now both 70 (well I will be tomorrow)!

Here I am (seated centre) amid friends at the last formal night dinner in the Queen's Grill on Queen Victoria.

In fact at this exact moment I'm on holiday with my grandchildren and daughter in Spain for yet another celebration.

So I'm having a break from "Less is More", but I'll be back next time!

Next week I'll be home for a rest!

Back from my cruise

I have recently returned from a two week cruise in the Mediterranean on the Cunard cruise ship Queen Victoria. We have been on her a couple of times previously and love the elegance of this lovely ship.

Here we are at a cocktail party given by some fellow guests, on the balcony of their suite. This was on one of the formal evenings on board.

Sadly the internet connection was not always very good and I didn't get to leave any comments on Less is More  submissions. If fact we were very busy most of the time with ports of call to be visited most days. It was a wonderful holiday.

Since my return, I have managed to get 56 Wedding invitations made for my DIL's sister. Her fiancé wanted to have a tree on them as it was significant in their courtship... the scene of their first date and the venue for his proposal.

This is what I came up with.

The tree is from Memory Box and the I don't recall the make of the tiny hearts and arrow dies. (I will try to find it)

The font used was Alex Brush.

Here is my card for the challenge at Less is More this week which has the theme Life's a Beach...more thoughts of summer holidays.

The beach hut die is from Joanna Sheen, cut from a piece of card which I had stamped with a wood plank stamp from Impression Obsession before die-cutting it. I simply added more colour with a water brush to the roof and door and mounted it on dimensional pads within a die cut frame.

The sentiment, in !Paul Maul font, reads 'There's nothing like a little vitamin sea!'.

We have our grandchildren with us from today for a week and then next weekend together with our daughter, we'll be taking them to Spain for a week, which is where I'll be for my 70th birthday!

What fun!

Chaps One Layer!

It's one layer time at Less is More again and this time the focus is another tricky one... a masculine theme!

Here is a new set of stamps to me, from Wplus9, but sadly one of them ripped when I was taking it off the carrying sheet. I have never had this happen before and I'm really delighted that Tara from Make the Day Special (which is where I got the stamps from) is organising a replacement for me.

The outline and sentiment is stamped in Versafine Onyx Black and the colour from Shabby Shutters Distress Ink for the pear and Memento Pistachio for the leaf, with a touch of a marker for the stalk.

I'm not sure of the make of this tankard stamp but I've got a feeling it may be Creative Expressions... it's grey rubber from a set of masculine images that I have had in my stash for quite some time. I stamped and embossed in white, then masked it and stamped the Hero Arts background...also another old stamp. I coloured the tankard with watercolour pencils blending with a water brush. When dry I added some Glossy Accents and micro beads for the foam and then covered the rest with Glossy Accents. I shaded a little underneath the tankard to give a little grounding shadow, but it looks rather like a smudge... it was intentional however!

Red White and Blue

We couldn't let this date go by with a little tribute to our friends across the pond, so the colour choice at Less is More this week is red, white and blue.

Here I used a little cruise ship die cut from Quickutz... I'm on Cunard's Queen Victoria in the Med at the moment celebrating a couple of very large birthdays, so I couldn't resist this image!

The sentiment is from Paper Smooches and Tattered Lace, each word layered from several diecuts of card.

This is a simple die cut card using a background layer for the butterflies made from sploshes of Aqua Tint inks, spritzed with water and then sprayed with a little Spray and Sparkle which gives a fabulous sheen!

The butterflies are from Memory Box. The stitched panel is from an MFT die.

I do apologise for not visiting so many of you but I won't be using wifi too much aboard ship!

Happy Little Stampers July Challenge!

I am so thrilled to have been asked to join the team at Happy Little Stampers.

The focus this month is on Stamping.

For my card, I stamped this huge Indigo Blu butterfly with Versamark and embossed it with WOW Dusky Woodland powder.

I water-coloured it with Distress inks adding some Gold and Clear Wink of Stella.

The sentiment is from Lili of the Valley. I tried embossing it with the WOW powder but because of the predominance of glitter in the mix the sentiment was indistinct, so I decided to stamp it in black Memento ink and quickly added some Heat it Up Enchanted gold over it, then  heat embossed. It meant that the sentiment was clearly printed and yet the looks of it tied in with the butterfly.

The front panel was cut with a Simon Says Stamp stitched rectangle, extending it slightly to fit the UK dimension card base.