Creative Stamping Freebie - Vintage Collage

Greetings from Warts an' All towers, I'm not sure what happened to January but it sure flew by, I didn't get to do much crafting for a variety of reasons. Having our 18 month old Granddaughter to stay for the weekend was high on the list, followed by slipping down the stairs, misjudging the bannister and consequently causing my umbilical hernia to flare up making bending, sitting and just about any movement painful.

Plus dealing with a new freak menopause symptom that causes the skin on my thumbs (and only my thumbs) to split open as if its been cut. No sooner does one heal, another happens, rendering me unable to do so many tasks, until recently I really didn't realise just how many tasks you need you thumbs for! I've been liberally applying hand cream and just discovered that I can seal the cuts with a product called Germolene New Skin, this product alone has been the reason I've been able to craft again, the past few months I've ruined so many projects because my thumbs split and blood oozed out all over my projects ruining many of them.

This card is made with stamps from Issue 67 of Creative Stamping there are some fabulous stamps included in the set including 3 by Crafty Individuals, a relatively new company to me that make some fabulous stamps. I used a combination of Versafine Clair inks to do all the stamping and several Distress Ink Markers to colour the flowers and dragonfly. I know I promised a review of the VF Clair inks and as soon as I have all 24 ink pads I will, I'm 2 colours short of a full set so that I can make some swatches and test all the colours.

I started off with a 5" x 5" panel and used the script stamp from the set and 'Morning Mist' VF Clair ink to stamp the background. I couldn't resist distressing the edges a little so I used a little 'Vintage Photo' Distress Ink to take down the harshness of the white card I stamped on. Next I stamped the flowers and dragonfly from the set on to watercolour card using VF Clair 'Nocturne' and covered the stamped images in WOW clear embossing powder and then coloured the images with Distress Markers.

The two large purple flowers were coloured with Wilted Violet and Ripe Persimmon markers, the small photos were coloured with Picked Raspberry and Ripe Persimmon and the dragonfly was coloured with Peacock Feathers and Twisted Citron. I simply scribbled the markers towards the edges of the images and used a water brush to spread the colour all over the areas I wanted to colour.

I added the brown 'dots and squares' texture stamp from the set with VF Clair 'Acorn' ink and used 'Nocturne' again to add the ink blot and ink ring stamps. I used the shaping tool that came with free with issue 61 of Creative Stamping to give the flowers and the dragonfly a little extra dimension then I adhered the flowers to the card base. I added some small 3D foam squares to the dragonfly to raise him above the flowers and glued the finished panel to a homemade card base made from Kraft cardstock.

I added the sentiment 'Just a Note' which is also from the Vintage Collage set, stamping it on a scarp of white cardstock with 'Nocturne' ink before finally adding some shimmer to the centre of the flowers and the dragonflies wings with a Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle pen which sadly doesn't show up very well on the photos, but it adds a lovely shimmery effect in real life.

This set has so much potential and I'll be making lots more cards with it for my stash, the images can be used to make male and female cards and are brilliant for using on mixed media projects. You can see from my close up image just how well the VF Clair inks stamp and the detail they give, they are my new go to ink for this reason alone. I love how this project turned out, and it was rather quick to put together, the bright colours gave some sunshine to my soul on this cold winters day.

I've just got the new Tim Holtz Sizzix Wildflower Stems #1 & #2 sets and plan on using them to make some spring floral cards and some cards for Easter using those and the Cotton Tail die and I think that bright sunshine colours will be called for 😍 This week if my thumbs behave I'll also be stamping some spring cards with my wreath templates using some new stamps I got for my birthday last month. I've set myself the task this month to make a batch of 'Thank You', 'Just to Say' and some 'Sympathy' cards for my box. The plan is to also make 4-6 Christmas cards every month and set them aside for when I'll need them in December.

Coupled with the motivation board I'm making ready for the Live Well programme I start this week, and the cards to make for friends and family birthdays, there will be lots happening in the craft room, I have an MDF storage rack to make and decorate for my Stampin' Up ink pads and I still have to label all my oxide inks and sort out more stuff to give to my niece who is turning in to a fine papercrafter 😍Here's hoping my thumbs let me get on with the things I want to do! Stay safe and warm everyone and keep on crafting!

Salvaged Dreams

Hey everyone, hope you are all keeping well? I have challenged myself to start actually using the stuff I buy pretty much as soon as I get it. What usually happens is I see a project on Pinterest or Facebook by someone using a stencil, stamp or die or medium or a combination of all of them.

I have ideas spark in my head, order the stuff to get going and then when it arrives, I've forgot what I wanted to make, or life gets in the way and what I've bought gets filed away from another day. Which often doesn't come!

I've lost count of the number of times this has happened, but have been reminded of it recently as I've been having a sort out and putting things to one side to give to my niece Zoe who I have successfully infected with the cardmakers bug lol! I'm sensing another no spend challenge coming on, but I've just agreed to join a 10 month 'Stamperettes' club run by a lovely lady that is my local Stampin Up supplier, I go to classes she runs monthly and have met some lovely crafting friends. So I will have to spend £15 a month plus the cost of the class. So maybe this time I will say have a couple of months where all I buy is the Stampin Up stuff? Whatever I do know that I need to reduce my spending again, I have got better, but I'm still finding that I'm spending more on craft supplies than I am actually using!

I sadly cannot resist a crafty bargain, the above is the recent stash I got from BeeBaab Crafting Supplies who I discovered towards the end of last year. I ordered these goodies from the same over Christmas and they arrived on Friday, given the pep talk I gave myself on saturday I had a play with the 'That Special Touch Mask - Wings & Words' stencil that I got and one of the stencil brushes. I broke out the Distress inks and stippled through the stencil with Crushed Olive, Peacock Feathers and Wild Honey inks and Black Soot of course for the words and body details on the butterfly and wasp.

Once I'd laid down the colour with the stencil, I removed it and used some Distress Markers in the colours mentioned above but scribbling on to my glass media mat and then picking up the ink with a water brush and 'colouring in' the white areas around the stencilled parts. Once the colouring was done I gave the butterfly and wasp a coat of shimmer pen to add some sparkle and set to work making the sentiment. In my head I was going to make a 'Butterfly Dreams' kind of card, but it turned into a butterfly nightmare, when I got to the sentiment and assemble stage!

I carefully die cut 7 white pieces using a Crafters Companion die from their new Enchanted Forest collection the die is from the 'fairy Wishes' set. After I'd cut them all out I glued them and stacked them together, all good so far! I let the stack dry and decided to colour it with a Peacock Feathers Distress Marker, it was a good idea, that went badly wrong lol! I must have had glue on my fingers which transferred to the top die cut, and that acted as a kind of resist and the die cut went all patchy. Si came in to see me and I did a dramatic "It's ruined now!" thing and chucked it in the bin and stomped off out of the room and went to play Skyrim lol!

An hour later an idea popped in to my head so I went back upstairs, pulled the piece out of the bin and covered it in embossing ink, sprinkled on some gold embossing powder and heat set it. A vast improvement but the colour didn't pop off the card, so I inked again and this time reached for black embossing powder, that was loads better, it popped but it didn't sparkle. So I took out some sparkly black embossing powder and inked, sprinkled and heated again and TADA, it worked! It didn't pop still as much as I wanted it to so I die cut a piece of gold vellum to add to the front and stuck the words on to that and then glued the vellum behind the words to attach to the card.

I started out with a white card blank but decided to colour it, this time I remembered to cover the back of the card with post it notes so they didn't end up covered in distress ink YAY! I used some Mowed Lawn Distress Ink around the edge and brought it in by about an inch, no point in covering the whole card as only the edge would be seen! The finally touch was to give the butterfly piece a gold mirror card fancy edge which I think set it off nicely and I stuck it all together and we're off with the first card of 2019, plus I used 1 couple of items from the new stash!

I tell myself that I really do need to stop buying more craft things, then Tim Holtz does a Facebook live showing new stuff from his new Sizzix range and I caved and bought 4 of the new die sets. He's still got to do the Stampers Anonymous and Ranger sneak peeks and there are going to be more Sizzix products launched at Creativation 2019 later this month! I am hoping for some new colours of Distress Inks or some Distress Oxide pens, I can hope lol! I really am beginning to believe that meme that's been circulating that says buying craft stuff and using craft stuff are two separate hobbies lol! I need to focus more on one than the other and my purse is crying, use the stash rather than spend the cash lol! On that note I'll go an make something to eat and then look at organising the cardstock by type and making space for the new stash. Have a fab week, stay safe and well and I'll chat to you soon!

Post Birthday Post

Last Monday was my birthday, and I had a fab few days celebrating it, on the Saturday before my actual birthday Simon took me to Coleman's Craft Warehouse. This has become something of a birthday tradition since I first discovered Coleman's back in 2016 and every year now I go along and find goodies to bring home and I end up with lots of bargains due to the fact that the Coleman's January sale always happens around my birthday.

During their sale they have yellow sticker items with reductions from 35% to 70% and their non-sale items or white sticker have 30% off for two days. They also have free cake and coffee, so you can shop, take a break and then shop some more! There are usually some demos occurring on the second floor as well from cardmaking to patchwork and stitching and a whole host of other things.

I skipped the demos this year, mainly due to the fact that there had been a bad accident on the M1 on the way to Coleman's which meant that we were delayed nearly 2 hours, so instead of getting there around 13:30 like we'd planned it was 15:30 when we arrived and they closed at 17:00 so there was only shopping time (although I did fit in a 5 minute coffee and cake break lol). I was thrilled this year to discover that Coleman's are now stocking Lavinia stamps, so I picked up a few of them with my birthday spends. They were white stickered so I got 30% off each of them :)

l came home with some fab bargains as you can see, I realised after taking this photo that I'd left some stuff I bought in a bag on the bed but hey ho, you get the gist lol! This year I've vowed that I will actually use what I buy, I bought goodies in 2016 and 2017 that are still in their packaging and never been used! The space to store craft stuff in my room is shrinking as I bring in more goodies, so I have to use what I buy, their isn't space to buy and not use!

On the Sunday before my birthday it was a stay home and chill day and I watched movies and did some gaming and had a relaxing day. The day of my actual birthday started when I awoke and Simon presented with a big bunch of flowers and a card, he doesn't normally do this so I was very touched. I got some amazing cards from friends and family including several from some of my amazingly talented card making buddies, their talent and creativity never ceases to amaze me, this year I also got my first ever Nanna card, and yes I cried happy tears haha! After opening all my cards and having had breakfast Si took me off in to town, where I got some new trainers, some clothes and some pretty magazine style storage boxes for the craft room - I use them to store A4 stamp sets and card stock. As a treat we went into Marks & Spencer's for afternoon tea which was lovely and helped refuel me for a spot more shopping.

The last shopping trip of the day was to my local Hobbycraft to spend the £5 birthday voucher they sent me for being a member of their craft club. I made a beeline for the sale aisle and was blown away to find a Tim Holtz Butterfly Duo Bigz die that had been on my wishlist for a while for just £5 in the sale, I was over the moon!

I also picked up some new B Plates from my little Hobbycraft die cutting machine and a dinosaur die and stamp set plus a cut and emboss folder. Finally we picked up some Thai food, I usually have an Indian meal or a Chinese but this year I wanted to try something different, so Thai it was, and very yummy it was too! This year I decided not to have a birthday cake, instead I bought a selection of fresh fruit and made a lovely fruit salad and we had that with some yogurt instead.

Having reached 55 years and deciding that the life long battle I've had with my weight (well since my teens) will end starting this year, my birthday kicked off a new chapter in my life, tackling the weight issues and moving more. The day after my birthday I went to the doctors to pick up my regular prescription and plucked up the courage to ask if the clinic ran any weight loss schemes. Turns out they didn't but they had contact details for Live Well Derby a free 12 month programme run by my local council, having decided on my birthday that this year I would get healthy and thinner I walked back from the doctors and filled in the online application form.

2 days later I received a phone-call to say that I'd been accepted on to the programme, it doesn't start until the 4th of Feb though so I have a few weeks to wait. To start there are 4 x weekly meetings to get you on track, at the first meeting they take your height, weight and measurements, and test your blood pressure and find out your general level of fitness, then from week 2 you are given more tools and chances to experience things to get you on the road to fitness. After the first 4 weeks and for the remainder of the programme you get regular support and encouragement to help you self monitor weight, eating and activity levels. There is also an 8-week weight management course to take part in and the team arrange from you to take part in a wide variety of exercise classes from Clubbercise (dancing to 90's club anthems), Spin Classes, Circuit Training and they even get you running and doing the Couch to 5K!

I am so thrilled to have been accepted and I really do believe that with the help of Live Well Derby I will be a totally different person by my birthday in 2020 and that this time I will succeed, instead of the too many to count times where I try, and at best lose a couple of stone have a small set back and pile it all back on and more besides. I also had a sobering moment over the new year, and I realised if I want to be at the wedding (assuming they get married) of my niece and nephews, and my Granddaughter. Then I have to take better care of myself, losing weight and ensuring that those weight related illnesses don't happen to me is a huge step in the direction of living to a ripe old age (I plan on 100 or more!) so its a no brainer really.

My health has really begun to suffer recently, some of the problems are down to the menopause, some of them are weight related, I'm having trouble bending over, get back pain and knee pain and things I won't mention publicly all of it has been having a knock on effect on my self esteem and my mental health. So I've started as I mean to go on and started walking again, I was doing 9,000+ steps a day 6 months ago, but it fell by the wayside and my health deteriorated, I get out of breath going upstairs for example. I started back at 5,000 steps and I plan on increasing by 500 each week until I'm at 10,000 steps a day, I've stripped back calories and I'm trying to make healthier choices less junk and more fruit and veg. So far its working and I have a long, long way to go but little and often will win this race this time. I'll do an occasional post as I progress, I've taken some before photos and when there is a difference to see I'll share them. What I do know is next year, the only thing that will be repeating around my birthday is the trip to Coleman's and not the annual I'm fat I need to be thinner 3 day diet! I CAN DO THIS!

Inkylicious Galaxy Splatters

A quick post from me before the year ends, I posted on my blog yesterday and on a few facebook groups some cards that I'd made using the Inkylicious Splatter Circle Background Stamp that I got at the NEC back in November, and a few people asked how I did the backgrounds believing them to be complicated. In fact that were easy peasy to do, the stamp does all the hard work for you!

I used distress inks in colour combos I like using, direct from the pads to the stamp and spritzed it with some homemade shimmer spray, but plain old water would do if you don't want a shimmery background. Then using my trusty Tim Holtz Stamping Platform I applied the inky stamp to the card stock and left it sitting on top of the card, pressing it down to make sure the ink and water mixed and swirled together. Once I'd done the coloured part, I repeated the process with Black Soot Distress Ink and then left the panels to dry.

I tried applying the colours in two ways initially putting bands of colour on the stamp with small gaps in-between (leaving gaps prevents your distress ink pads becoming contaminated with darker colours of ink), the water helps the inks to pool in to the gaps so you don't get actual gaps.

The other way was to move around the stamp randomly with a selection of colours and spritz. I like both methods but prefer the random application because it looks more natural to my eye.

You can of course apply more colour I think dripping direct from a re-inker would give more intense results, I'll try doing that soon and see what happens. All of the 6" x 6" panels (that gives you an idea of the stamp size) are now ready for me to turn them into cards, I didn't want the colours to be too dark because the stamped images I want to add will be dark and run the risk of disappearing into the background. It took me all of 30 minutes to create 8 lovely galaxy style backgrounds and that included the time it took to cut the 6" x 6" pieces of card. I can see this stamp making lots of backgrounds in the future and I'm going to try the technique on my Gelli Plates to create some square and rectangular versions. Now to turn these in to cards, I have several ideas, just need to turn them in to physical things!

Christmas Playtime

I can't believe that the holidays are almost over, Si goes back to work on Wednesday, the time has sure flown by, we've been generally chilling out, eaten lots of chocolate, watched a lot of telly and done some gaming, between that and visiting family its been relaxing and fun.

I got lots of lovely crafting goodies as gifts this year, stamps, ink pads, dies, a 5" x 7" Gelli Plate, lots of Tim Holtz goodies including a second tin for my Alcohol Inks, a cover for my Stamping Platform, a Sidekick Machine and some Side Orders to go with it.

My niece and nephews got me some stamps that I can use with the wreath maker templates and fabulous set of fir trees from Inkylicious. Simon bought my a superb light that not only gives me additional light when I'm working, it also has a magnifier on it, making it easier to see what I'm working in if it involves fine details. It can be fixed to the desk with a clip or be stood on a stand like a standard lamp and there is a battery pack that can be attached for use whilst travelling if you don't have access to mains electricity. Given that I now have better light I've re-organised the craft desk to make more space, I've added a set of 4 drawers that now house my Embossing Powders, Altenew Ink Cubes, Mixed Media Paints and a few other things, much easier to gain access to them this way and I've put things I don't use as often in the places the ink cubes etc were.

There is still some clutter and things need to be organised a little better but I'm getting there, I still need to label my Oxide inks and thin out some of the other stuff, some of it will be going to my niece Zoe, for Xmas I got her a small die cutting machine and some basic kit (cardstock, scissors, glue, foam pads etc) and I gave her a lot of stuff I didn't use any more like some Docrafts dies that cut circles and scalloped squares, I have larger sets that include all the same sizes so I don't need them.

I also gave her a lot of inkpads that I didn't use, some I'd bought and NEVER used. She has taken to card making like a duck to water, I got a message from her today saying she'd just finished making a birthday card for her Dad, his birthday is on the 2nd January. As Zoe has embraced card making I'll be giving her more of the stash I no longer use, the kind of things I bought when I was just starting out, the basic training wheel stuff, not that I think I'm a professional now, but I use techniques and products that when I first started card making I didn't think I'd ever be using.

After I'd finished sorting my craft space, I decided to have a little play and dug out some of the stamps and dies that I got from the NEC back in November and made a couple of cards. Both of them have the Inkylicious Splatter background stamp on them, I used Distress inks in various shades of blue and a couple of shades of the new Versa Clair inks I got for Xmas.

I have to say that the Versa Clair 'Nocturne' (black) ink is my new go to black ink, it stamps so crisp and clean, picked up details just like Versafine it is smudge proof after about 50 seconds but you can still emboss it for up to 5 minutes after stamping!

The ink dries very quickly and once dry, stamped images are waterproof and will not smear, the images are light fast and fade resistant and once dry you can use water colour pens without any smearing. I'm getting the rest of the colours for my birthday so when I have all 24 I'll do a post on them by way of a review.  If the inks could be use for alcohol inks as well it would be perfect, I will be using these inks a lot more from now on. Look at how crisp and dark the Nocturne ink has stamped on both these cards.

I have a lot of black ink pads and I've always used Versafine 'Onyx Black' for stamping sentiments, but I think Versa Clair 'Nocturne' will be replacing the Versafine. Both cards I made today are part of my efforts to make some flatter cards that cut down on postage costs and also to challenge myself to try and create a cards with layers of ink rather than layers of paper. That's all from me for now, wishing you all the best for the New Year, I'll be back soon with more wreath template posts and a lot of ink ideas to share with new goodies I want to master, HAPPY NEW YEAR from all of us at Warts n All Towers xxx

Concord & 9th Winter Wear

Oh boy has it ever been busy here since I last blogged, we seem to have gone straight from one thing in to another since September, always something happening or somewhere to be.

We added to the workload with the bedroom decorating which now looks lovely I may add 😀 Although the door still needs painting so does the radiator, and those are jobs for the Xmas hols lol! How are you getting on with your festive jobs? I'm down to the general cleaning and tidy up and the food shop left to do, the decorations are all up, all the wrapping, card writing and faffing has been done.

I confess that this year despite wanting to make a lot of gifts to send to people, I just didn't get the time, I had lots of ideas and made a start on several projects which just didn't get finished sadly 😞 So much happened in the last quarter of the year that I found it difficult to keep up sometimes and from mid October to today, there hasn't been a lot of time for crafting. Tomorrow we do our last teaching session of the year, Simon finishes work for the holidays, and aside from a trip to visit my family in Manchester sometime over the weekend we are all done and we can now chill and relax. Time to regroup and plan for 2019, we already have the first Young Roboteers sessions booked early in the year and have had enquiries to run some other events.

I started my chilling session earlier today, I'd done all my chores for the day, so I got out a new stamp and die set I'd recently been treated to, its by Concord & 9th and is called Winter Wear, I fell in love with the set back in November when I saw Kristina Werner use it to make a card as part of her 2018 Holiday Card Series, that's 2 stamp sets I bought as a result of her demos lol! I used Nuvo Alcohol Markers for the first example, they blend very well but there aren't very many colours, I'm hoping they will release more soon as the choice is pretty limited at the minute. Kristina used Copic Markers on her card but they are way out of my price range at the moment, but I would like a set of basic colours, something to collect in 2019 maybe?

I confess that I had a minor fluff up, originally I stamped direct on to the card blank with the intention of making a single layer card, but I stamped the elements to low down and it didn't look right, so I die cut the stamped image using one of my favourite wonky stitched circle dies and stuck it on to a card blank that was sitting on my desk left over from the 2018 cards. I decided not to add a sentiment on the outside, keeping the focus on the images and stamped a nice sentiment inside the card. I didn't get the scarf and face bits lined up and small amounts of white space were left. So after I'd coloured the image I used a black fine liner pen to finish off the lines.

I've got lots of ideas for using this stamp set and I'll be making batches for sending, the two cards in this post are now officially my first cards for posting out for Christmas 2019! I know it may seem early, but I'm taking the stance that early in the year and in parts of the summer nothing is happening. So if I use that time to make my Christmas cards and other items, then I won't be as stressed as I was this year because I still needed to make cards to send instead of having them all ready.

The second card was coloured with Prismacolor pencils and Gamsol, I need more practice with coloured pencils but the finished card didn't turn out so bad. I used an embossing folder that was free with issue 185 of Simply Cards & Papercraft. I bought the magazine for the folder as I'd been trying to find a knitting effect embossing folder for a while. The sentiment is from the Winter Wear set and was originally going to go on the first card, but I decided that it didn't look right so put it to one side.

In 2019 I want to improve my colouring skills, I may even try to take a class either near me or online! I also want to try harder to only buy things that I will actually use, and not buy things just because I think they look cute. Something else I need to do is stop buying all the colours of a new ink pad, embossing powder etc until I've actually tried the product out. I've been caught out on more than one occasion, allowing my "full set" syndrome to dictate how I spend. I started dabbling with Mixed Media this year and bought lots of jolly things to pursue that area of crafting, so over the Xmas hols I think I'll have a play and see what I can create.

I'm hoping I'll have time to make another post before the years out, but in the event that I don't here's wishing everyone that reads my blog and takes the time to comment, a very Merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years. May 2019 be filled with crafting time a plenty, mojo abounding, health and happiness in no particular order. Your lovely words have cheered me when I've been down this year and I appreciate each and every one of you. 💖💖💖