I’ve made a couple of really simple birthday cards recently.  I’m trying to build up a little stash of birthday cards to dip into when I need one.  This first one uses a sentiment from Birthday Words and Crealies Flower die 11.

I found the backing paper in an old paper pack and liked it so much I made a second card with it, this time with (gasp!) no stamping at all.  The sentiment is from Craftwork Cards.

I’ve updated the blog with a little fresh decor – hope you like it!

I bought the original red Keep Calm poster from Barter Books in Alnwick back in about 2002, long before it became a global phenomenon.  I had it on my office wall for many years and still have the poster now.  Many times I have glanced up at the poster and taken a deep breath, absorbed the words and repeated them, mantra-like, while dealing with some petty crisis or other.  I think it stood me in good stead for when the major crises came our way – by then the motto was ingrained and automatic.

The phrase has been so over-used, commercialised and parodied in the last few years that it’s hard to remember its original purpose (to keep the British upper lip as stiff as possible during WW2) and see the soothing common sense of the message.  It’s great life advice for anyone, anytime really.  Having said that, I think my favourite parody is “GET EXCITED AND STAMP SOMETHING”.

Anyway, philosophizing aside (is that a word?), this card is made with the latest stamps from Crafty Individuals which we have just got onto the website today.  There’s a great mix of vintage and retro Britannia – perfect for all things celebratory with the Jubilee and Olypmics here this year.  I stamped the patchwork Union Jack onto a selection of papers from the Essence of Nature CD and cut and pieced the flag together.  I wanted a very simple, faded vintage look.  The card edge is sponged with Stormy Sky distress ink.

We have also launched a new stamp set of our own today too – this one is going to be a well used set, it’s called Artistic Expressions and it’s the little black dress of stamping – it goes with anything!

It’s so new, I don’t have any finished artwork with it yet (lots of stamped and die cut words and sentiments), but the Design Team do and if you check out the DT blog, they’ll be showing it off soon.  I’m also giving away a free set on the Design Team blog, so pop over and leave a comment to be in with a chance to win.  The winner will be announced on Tuesday, so it’s just for this weekend.

I managed to get some better photos of the tags I made last weekend, so thought I’d show you them in more detail.  I’ve angled them so you can see the embossing.

Stencils used were Pomegranate and Circle Explosion

Stencils used were Spring Fling and Circle Grid

This uses the two part stencil Poppies.

Have a great weekend, we’re off to Cumbria to visit St Oswald’s church in Grasmere.  A sentimental journey to visit the place where Adrian and I were married fifteen years ago.   Nothing to do with the Grasmere Gingerbread shop in the corner of the churchyard.  No, not at all.  Honest.

PS – if you are a Guild member, log in to your account and go to the Guild Offers department for special prices on the new stamps.

Yesterday we had a delivery which included a whole load of new Crafter’s Workshop stencils.  Well, much as I love stamping, I’ve been feeling the call of doing some mixed media type stuff, so I had to have a play.

I’m working on a couple of canvases and having a blast trying out the stencils.  They are standing up to a fair bit of rubbing and scrubbing as I’ve been using them with fibre paste and gel as well as paints and inks.

This canvas has doilies and lace attached with gel medium and I’ve used the Circle Grid stencil in the corner.  I applied fibre paste over the stencil with a palette knife.  Here’s a close up.

Not sure where this canvas will go, I might try an image transfer of some trees on it.  Adrian took some photos of trees recently which I think might work quite well.

I’ve also been playing around with the stencils on some tags, just to try them out.

There’s embossing and Perfect Pearls going on here – I don’t have shimmery, coppery-reddish-goldish embossing powder, but by the time it’s been dusted with the pearls, it look like I do.

I love the pointy circles stencil on this canvas and can see me using this one loads.

It’s in the background of the tag too, but after doing the background, I decided to paint a face and covered most of it up!  I drew the face and hair shape and blocked it out with Titan Buff acrylic paint (by Golden).

It’s a fairy heavy body paint so gives pretty good coverage when you need to hide the colour beneath.  I don’t know why I gave her teal hair – seemed right at the time.

So there you go, a brief journey around my current work in progress. Hopefully I can get some of these finished off over the weekend, but I’m much more likely to end up with another batch of half started items – I am definitely not a completer-finisher!

This stamp is from the Fragrant Honeysuckle stamp set and it’s a lovely image to colour in.  I used Derwent watercolour pencils and just went for bright bold colours.  I didn’t quite intend the background to be such a vibrant gold, but I like the way it turned out.  I picked out the bright pink and gold in the layering and with so much colour, kept the rest of the card very simple.

It’s teasy time now – I just got the next few months worth of new stamp plates in and we’re starting to make the boards and test the rubber … There’s one coming out in February that goes really well with Artistic Affirmations and I’m LOVING it already.

Thanks for all the comments about lighting.  I am going to look into getting a decent light for the table, maybe an OTT light.  We swapped over our uplighters, so I now have the two from downstairs with the extra spotlights.  I’m actually pointing the spotlights straight up as I can’t really get them positioned to light up the workspace without them either getting in the way, or blinding me when I look up.  But the extra two bulbs bouncing light off the ceiling does help a lot.  I’ve also managed to keep one of the original uplighters as it is plugged in behind a unit that I really don’t want to move, so I’ve actually gone from two bulbs to five and yes, it’s definitely brighter in there.

So with lots of light and lots of new rubber, I’m one happy stamper!

What, two posts in one weekend, good grief!  Yes, and I’ve done … shhhh … housework.  And I’m cooking lunch for 8 people today!  Don’t worry, the blog hasn’t been hijacked, I haven’t been abducted by aliens and replaced with a clone – it’s still me.  Ok, the card is a cheat, I had this one made already as those of you who read the DT blog may have spotted.

It uses another piece of the white stamped vellum as in the last post and a paper from the Essence of Nature CD.  The stamping is done onto glossy card from Southfield and there’s a story to the card.  Back in 2010, Southfield informed us that they were discontinuing their glossy card as the manufacturer was no longer making it.  There was a lot of disappointment as it was a great card, brayered up lovely and produced a perfect Versamark resist.  They soon announced that they had brought it back so we started stocking that.

Fast forward to 2012 and my pile of glossy card is now well and truly mixed up.  I have bits from the old manufacturer, but obviously a lot more from the new and it’s not the same.  The new stuff doesn’t resist the Versamark, it does the opposite and the ink sticks to it!  Lesley has been writing some brayering articles for the Baroque Guild and ran into this problem when trying to photograph technique pieces for her article.  She had some happy accidents along the way, but when I tested out my card, I realised there’s glossy and there’s glossy.

So this card features the newer glossy card.  I tried to do a resist and it didn’t work. (For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Versamark ink will normally ‘resist’ a dye ink so you can stamp with the Versamark onto plain white glossy card and brayer dye ink over the top to create white stamped images.)  I went along with it anyway and just built up layers of stamping (using Wisteria Lane), stippling, sponging and a bit of brayering – all with Memento and Distress inks.

It seemed like quite a sombre palette until I added the orange which livened it up a bit.  The rose started out cream and was sprayed with Angel Pink.  It turned out a more coral shade than I expected and just added the finishing touch.

I’m off to do my domestic goddess bit now.  That means clearing the craft room table so we can take it downstairs – our little dining table only seats four!

Enjoy your Sunday,