Ahoy!

Recently I was fortunate enough to win a challenge at CASology and was subsequently invited to be a Guest Designer and now is the time for that to happen!

The challenge is WINDY

My very first thought was of a stamp that I have of a boy with a kite, but despite taking it off the wood block, I still couldn't get a clear image of every part of the stamp, so out came this old SU stamp... also on a block, but it worked rather better. I also found the little quote  stamp in a set I had with no name printed on the carrier sheet (I hate that). I remember that I bought it on one trip to Ally Pally. 

I had a fancy for doing one of these flat knots as an embellishment, I always think they look rather nautical and they also lie pretty flat for mailing. I think I may have to try to do a video to show how they are done.  

Here is the video

The twine I selected to use was somewhat off white and looked dreadful against white cardstock, so I opted for this ivory hopsack textured card from Papermill Direct.

My son loves sailing... I have used this image a few times for cards for him!

 

Hope your day is Fabulous

It's already week four of my Guest Designer Spot at Just Us Girls.

There is a picture for inspiration this time and the theme feels decidedly Nautical!

I chose the colours, some elements and the stripes as inspiration for my card.

My son's birthday is upcoming, he is very fond of boats and all things nautical so I think that this card may be finding its way to him!

Do join in  with the fun over at Just Us Girls, we'd love to see your creations.

 

Nautical Twofer

It's time for another Twofer over at Darnell's blog. I find these challenges really ... what shall we say? .... challenging!

The theme  this time is Nautical

 

For the landscape card, I used a stencil from Neat & Tangled called Rice Paddies and I love it. With this I used some home made embossing paste and it worked beautifully. I had added some extra PVA glue to the mix and it was much better. 

Here is my amended recipe

• 1/2 cup of talc
• 1 tablespoon of White Acrylic paint
• 2 tablespoons of PVA Glue

After I had masked and spread paste over part of the stencil, I removed it from the card and sprinkled over some WOW Vintage Peacock embossing powder. I waited until it had dried out somewhat before heat setting. It was a fabulous twinkle.

 

The silver heat embossed sentiment is from The Alley Way stamps. I simply added a whole shoal of little silver die cut fish.
Freshly Made Sketches

The second card uses the same fish over an ocean daubed with Distress inks, and stamped with some white acrylic paint grunge dots. It's topped with a die by La La Land Crafts of Sea Bubbles. The sentiment here was computer generated. As I inlaid this die, I still have the negative die cut to use on another card!

What fun!

Danke

 

Recently we visited Germany with my choir to sing Vaughan William's Sea Symphony, together with some German choirs.

It was a wonderful trip and we made lots of new acquaintances and renewed some old ones. One of the latter was a lady whom I stood next to in the concert we gave 15 years ago on a previous visit to Osterode. It was strange how we remembered each other after such a long time.

She had decided to come to England to hear the performance we were giving of the symphony on our return. In fact she wanted to sing with us and that was also arranged. 

I offered to pick her up from the airport and offer some hospitality and in appreciation of this she made this beautiful painted silk scarf. It's really rather clever how she incorporated our choir logo into the corner of the scarf.

This is the card I made for her to thank her for such a thoughtful and creative gift.

As we were singing the Sea Symphony I thought that the anchor would be an appropriate image and after adding the chain I tried to make a play on words and added one link in the form of a letter 'd' so when read 'd'anchor would sound like the German for thank you!

It's the colours of our choir too... Red and black and here I added a little gold too.

This is a picture of the combined choirs in Osterode.

The anchor and chain are from Creative dies and the Danke sentiment from Mama Elephant.

It's for the challenge at Just US Girls