Craft A Scene - Week 3 Favorite Technique

It's week three over on the Craft A Scene blog and we are still asking for you scenic cards using your favourite technique. Like before I've made a card using a background that I had made for stamping scenes onto. As soon as I saw the colours on this piece I thought of Storms and this wonderful Oak Tree stamp from Sheena Douglas, along with the words. With the wet and windy weather we've been having here in the UK recently it seem quite apt. Along with the swirls of blue on the background I also over sprayed with some Glimmer Mists, then stamped the tree with Versafine Black Onyx. The couple standing under the shade of the tree was from a set from Inkylicious. I then went around the outside of the page with Chipped Sapphire distress ink, and put in the shadow of the tree with Black Soot. There are so many areas in the UK that have flooding at the moment the shadows could well be reflections. I hope any of you that are reading this have not been affected by the awful flooding and that you are all keeping safe and dry.

Thanks for taking the time to look, and you kind comments which are always appreciated.

Fantastic Day Out

Sunday morning my alarm clock sang out at me at 6.30 a.m. Just as I was about to turn over I remembered that I was going to Kent to attend another of Eileen Godwin's wonderful Journal Workshops.With Eileen, there we only five of us but what a fantastic day we had. I'd gone armed with my Gelli plate and a lemon, both of which Eileen said we would be using. However once there Eileen showed us two wonderful projects, one she made while attending a workshop held by the talented Karen Buckle, and one Eileen had made herself very similar but using a different technique that she found on You Tube. Both were stunning and of coarse we wanted to know how she had made them. She gave us a rough idea on Karen's method and then set about instructing us how she made the second. What better way could there have been than getting our hands dirty and trying it out for our self's. I'm not going to go into lengthy details but it involved, White Card stock, Embossing Folders, Black Gesso, Glue and Seal and Inka Gold paints, oh and some die cuts. The picture below was my result, which was done in my new larger Art Journal. Eileen has posted the other three ladies pages on her blog, we all done some thing different so do pop over and take a look and don't forget to take a look at Eileen's project that she made, or Karen's workshop photo's. Needless to say the Gelli plates were put away unused.

Thank you for taking the time to look, and your kind comments which are always appreciated.

Sue

Lavinia Challenge - Blue, Lilac or Both

I missed the last two challenges over on the Lavinia Challenge blog, so I was determined this month to get something made. The challenge is use Blue, Lilac or Both, and I just happened to have a background made with Blue and Lilac (I made some Christmas cards using this colour background). I used the Creeping Vine, Felicity, Cobweb and Fern stamps and black versafine ink to stamp them. I'm hoping that I've given the feeling of dawn and Felicity sprinkling fairy dust onto the cobwebs.

I'm counting the days down now until the big day when my Daughter gets married on the 1st March. Tonight we are off out with the female family for a girly evening meal, then she's got her Hen Night next weekend with her friends and the bridesmaids. There seems to be a hundred and one things still left to do, but I'm sure that everything will go fine on the day.

Thanks for taking the time to look, and your kind comments which are always appreciated.

Sue

Craft A SCene - Make A Scene Using Your Favorite Technique

The beginning of February and it's time for a new challenge over on the Craft A Scene blog, and this month we're asking for you scenes to be made using your favourite technique. My favourite technique is making backgrounds to stamp scenes onto. I start with my glass cutting mat ( a heat resistant mat would do just as well), and then either using spray inks or ink pads I put the colours I want to work with on to the mat. I then spritz with water and take the card and lay this onto the colours, you can re-spritz with water and the affect you get will be a lighter shade of the one taken previously. I love the random look that this gives and after stamping and bit of shading with distress inks you can make scenes just like this one. The stamps I've used are from Chocolate Baroque, Sheena Douglas and Inkylisious and they were stamped using distress ink pads. I hope that you'll have time to pop over to the blog and take a look at the cards that the rest of the design team have made for your inspiration, and make a scene for us using your favourite technique.

I would also like to enter this into the following challenges:

Stamping Sensations - Wings, Fantasy and Fiction
Creative Inspirations - Stamping

Thank you for taking the time to look, and your kind comments which are always appreciated.

Sue

Inspired By Our Recent Holiday

When we returned from our holiday, I had a small pile of stamps waiting to be cut out. Some that had been waiting from before Christmas, some that arrived while I was away. While cutting them out I was reminded of our trip by these beautiful shell stamps by Sheena Douglas. So when I had finished cutting them all out, my journal was taken out and I did this page. We have been many time to Florida, but this was the first time we had been to the west coast. It's such a beautiful area, I know that we shall go back again. The west coast also has lots of small islands just off of the main land, and to get to them there are lots of causeways and bridges built. As you go across the causeways you can park along them, and get out. So many of the locals fish off of the causeways, and as hubby is a fisherman had to stop and take a look. All along them there are shells, some big, some small and all different types.

Along with the fishermen and the shells there were lots of pelicans. These are such a common sight along the Florida coastline, but it took me nearly 2 weeks to get a photo of them. While we were stopped, we saw fish jumping out of the water (too fast for the camera). Hubby says they were being hunted by something bigger than them under the water, we never saw what that was though.

Thanks for taking the time to look, and your kind comments which are always appreciated.

Sue

CD Sunday - Year Of The Horse

This week the new challenge on the CD Sunday blog is The Year Of Horse, and was chosen by Jocelyn. I will admit to having made this in advance of the challenge knowing that it was coming up. The calender has now been given as a Christmas gift. I used Joanna Sheen's Time's Gone By CD for this project. I took an A4 sheet of card and made it a square, then using silver mirri card as matting I printed off and layered the backing paper that matched the images used. With the image sheet I used the largest topper and then the three small toppers with the horse's separated. I then made a rosette with some red card and made a 1st circle to pop onto the front, and added the calendar to the bottom by a couple of pieces of ribbon. Do pop over to the blog and see the wonderful inspiration cards that the B team have made for you this week.

Thanks for taking the time to look, and your kind comments which are always appreciated.

Sue

CD Sunday - Here Kitty Kitty

I can't believe that I've been back at home for a week and this is the first chance that I've had to blog. I think the washing and ironing has all been done and put away, and the cases have gone back into the loft until next time. I managed to find time to make this card to join in with Team A's challenge over on the CD Sunday blog this week. The theme is Here Kitty Kitty, so it was a perfect chance to get out this new CD that I bought at the NEC last year. It's Crazy Cats from Card Creations plus, with the wonderful art work from Linda Ravenscroft. As normal I've chosen the decoupage option, and it's been put together with glue gel. The backing papers were from the matching section on the CD, and I added some matching ribbon that came wrapped around a box. Finally I added some stickles to the bubbles, I'm not sure how I got them to dry like bubbles too.

Thanks for taking the time to look, and your kind comments which are always appreciated.

Sue

CD Sunday - Tantalizing Turquoise

Well I think this is probably my last scheduled post before our return later this week. This weeks new challenge at CD Sunday is chosen by Wendy and it's Tantalizing Turquoise. I had several ideas for this one but in the end I went for Fairy Gemstones by Card Creations plus. A wonderful CD covering so many of the wonderful gemstones that are out there. My card is an A5 white card base, and I've used navy card for my matting. The backing paper is one that matches the main image, the topper was cut out and decoupaged before being mounted onto the card. The flowers were some that I had in my stash and are from Prima, I finished by adding some white leaves that were cut out using a crealies die. Please pop over to the blog and take a look at what the rest of the DT have made for your inspiration.

Thanks for taking the time to look, and your kind comments which are always appreciated.

Sue

Osprey's And Heron's

Well it's been a quiet few day's here in Dunedin - Florida. We arrived and had a terrific rain storm, within minutes of the rain starting we were wading in water. Our first morning we went to the resturant attached to the hotel we are staying in (it's right on the waterfront), and hubby got very excited as he saw an Osprey diving for fish. So that afternoon armed with my little Nikon pocket camera we set off walking to see if we could spot the Osprey. We had not gone far from the hotel gateway when we surprised a Heron who was enjoying the afternoon sunshine

He even posed for us while we snapped away. Next we spotted the Osprey sitting on the end of a dock, I zoomed in as much as I could with my little camera and though I had some good snaps. After walking a little further we could hear some birds calling, and hubby said I'm sure that is Osprey that I can hear. We looked up and on a branch in the tree in front of us were two Osprey sitting watching us walk along.

I did zoom in when I took this as the tree was very tall, but I am amazed at how good the photo has turned out. We walked about one and a half miles along the road to a park at the other end. As well as other species of Heron's and Egrets, we also saw Turkey Vulture's. We walked back the same route as we took, and the Osprey were still on their tree, keeping one eye on us as we walked by. We have since found out the they are very common along the west Florida coast line, also the Heron's, Vulture's and also Brown Pelicans (still trying to get a photo of that one).

We've been very lazy here, we are right on the waterfront and just a very short distance away is the small town. It has lots of small shops to wander in and out of as well as plenty of resturants. We've tried a different one each night, they are all really good so it's difficult to choose a favorite, and the best bit is they are all within walking distance. Yesterday was really hot so we took a trip to Clearwater Beach (about four miles from here) It is said to be the best beech in the US, and from what we saw I would not like to argue. Mile after Mile of fine white sand. We have one more day here in Dunedin before we move on for our final week. This time further south to Fort Myers. I hope I'll have something else to tell you about that area later in the week.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Sue

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Introducing

I thought it was about time that I let you all know what we've been up to the last couple of weeks, and also introduce you to the people we spent our weeks cruise with. So here they all are (well most of them anyway) 140 plus people all from the same family. On March 1st my daughter will become part of this wonderful group of people. We were made to feel so very welcome by all of the members we met, and have had invitations to visit with people in the future. People had come from Canada, America, Bahamas, Singapore as well as the UK and few other place as well. This was the first time we had been on a cruise and I'm sure it's not going to be the last, we enjoyed it so much. Too quickly the week came to an end and we had to say goodbye to our new found friends, but a small group of us went onto Orlando for Christmas week.

Group Photo

My Daughter Vicky and Partner David

 

21 of us boarded a small coach for our journey to Orlando, and our stay in two very large Villas for Christmas. we split the group of us into two smaller groups for the accomodation, the younger 21-40 group in one villa, while the rest of us mainly over 50's in the second. It was in the second Villa that most all of the cooking and socialising took place. Christmas dinner was cooked for 36 people, which was eaten around a very large table (put together with several others) beside the pool. The idea was that we would use the Villas as a base to do other activities. The younger the group doing things like Sky diving, and Universal - Islands of Adventures (this is an all roller coaster theme park), needless to say a great time was had by all. I will say that it did not seem like Christmas at all, even the shops we're open on Christmas Day. However there was a Christmas tree in the first Villa and after a quick trip to the Doller store on Christmas Eve we soon had decorations on the tree, and a festive feel in the room. The 29th December quickly can around and everyone said there goodbyes, Vicky and David along with his Mum and sister climbed into their hire car and headed to the airport in Miami, leaving Hubby and I to enjoy the winter sun here in Florida for another couple of weeks. We stayed on in the Orlando area for another 4 days seeing in the New Year on our own. It was a bit of a let down after the two weeks we had spent with so many other people. Yesterday (2nd) we moved on and have come to Dunedin (just outside of Clearwater) on the west coast of Florida, an area that we have not previously been to. It was not all sunshine though as yesterday we had a terrific storm, lot's rain that falls very quickly here, and again last night with a lot of wind too. This morning the sun is out again but there is a chill in the air. We had breakfast this morning over looking the sea, and the Ospreys diving and catching fish. We're hoping to get some good photos of that later.

Christmas Morning Before The Visitors Arrived

 

I hope that I've not bored you all too much, and thank you if you've taken the time to read through the above.

 

Sue

 

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