Some Spring Cards

 Hello on a rather rainy and cold day. I have a few photos to share of some Spring and colourful cards I recently made as well as some photos from a walk over Easter to cheer up a dull day.

These all use my current favourite technique to use up scraps of hand decorated papers using ink sprays, stencils and stamps and the second two use leftover bits of papers designed by Amanda Southern and Melina Dahl for That's Crafty!. As you can see, they're all very bright and cheerful.

These photos were taken over the Easter weekend when we went walking at Angmering woods hoping to find some bluebells but sadly we were a week or so too early as everything is late blooming due to the cold weather we've had this last winter.

Have a great weekend and see you soon.

Fliss xx

Bad Blogger Again!

Hello everyone, despite my best intentions blogging and visiting has gone out of the window again over the last few weeks.
It's partly due to my DT commitments as I've had lots of samples to create which is the good bit as it was lovely to get some crafting done (although I had a bit of a struggle as my mojo has been somewhat reluctant over the lockdown).
I have been out walking as much as I can which was necessary as it helps when I have to deal with difficult accounting stuff.
I have some artwork to share which I hope you like.

Another one that's part of the journal I created for the recent One Day Special That's Crafty! had on Hochanda with quite a lot of steampunk and industrial elements and I couldn't resist calling this Einstein A Go Go as it contains what I know will be my new favourite text stamp - can you guess what it is?

 

I'll be round to catch up over the Bank Holiday weekend and in the meantime, have a great weekend and stay safe and well.

Fliss xx

Back Again!

Hello everyone, apologies for being missing over the last few weeks. I've been having a very stressful time dealing with the furloughing of some of Andy's staff who ran out of work and no more had come in to give them due to the ongoing pandemic.
I've had to do webinars with our payroll software provider and do a lot of reading up via the HMRC website and various other sources on how to deal with the Job Retention Scheme and calculate what can be paid to the staff and reclaim.
It's lucky I checked the calculations on the HMRC calculator before finishing the payroll as I discovered the payroll software was not using the right calculation method so I had to try and find out if they were going to sort it out. There were lots of complaints from other users but no explanation forthcoming so in the end I amended the figures to agree to HMRC's before making the claim. I was glad I did as they paid the grant in 3 days!
Our payroll provider said today that we would have to amend the figures to make them agree to HMRC's which is what I suspected as I couldn't see any other way of getting them correct due to the way the payroll usually calculates pay. I don't want to change providers as their accounting software is very good so I guess we're stuck with it!

Anyway enough whinging and on to much happier things as I've been crafting to keep me sane so here are some of my recent creations:

A tutorial for the following 4 floral note cards can be found on That's Crafty! blog by clicking HERE

Hope you like these and I should be round to catch up over the weekend as I have mostly finished with my payroll and accounting duties for the moment - luckily doing what I do, I'm the only one that won't get furloughed as someone has to work out what to pay everyone else!!!

Stay safe and well,
Fliss xx

IndigoBlu Stamp Play

Hello!

I hope you're managing to have a good weekend in spite of not being able to go anywhere, in fact such lovely weather today, going in the garden if you have one is what I would recommend as a spot of weeding and digging is a really good way to get some much needed fresh air.

I have been doing that but also fitted in a bit of crafting to finish off some of my works in progress as I have quite a few on the go which haven't quite got there yet! These were made with the stamps I got when I attended the IndigoBlu weekend in Brighton last November/December and I've only just managed to get them inked up!

The tag uses up quite a few bits from my scraps box that were all in shades of spring green, some stencilled and some ink spray overflow and so on. I stamped the dog rose spray and coloured it with flat matte sprays, using rose, basil and saffron then cut it out. I brushed 3D gloss gel over the top after shaping the flowers and leaves with a large embossing ball tool.

I added some die cut pieces created with pink and dark green card and a Kaisercraft grungy lattice die together with a scrap of green dyed old crochet lace and the text from another IndigoBlu set which was stamped on an ink spray overflow scrap in shades of pink and green.

The card contains the stamped image I originally intended for the tag but turned out too pale - it was stamped with VersaFine Clair Shady Lane ink and coloured with Zig markers. I tried out lots of different backgrounds from my box but this one seemed to work the best. It's just another overflow piece that has flat matte sprays on in rose, lilac, aqua, bluebell and a tiny bit of walnut. The text is from the same stamp set and is on a further scrap of overflow paper.

I hope you like these and there will be more to follow once I finish them off!

Stay safe and see you soon.

Fliss xx

Creating Grungy Background Papers

Hello! It's been ages since I've done some creating just for me so over the last week or so I've snatched a bit of time and managed to make some rather grungy mixed media backing papers so that I had some to put some cards together for those occasions when time is short - most of the time in my case!

I took some photos of the process as it was kind of one layer a day so thought I would share here how I created them as if you do several at once it's much quicker.

 The first step was to cut an A3 sheet of smooth cartridge paper into 6 pieces as these happily fit card blanks 15cm square, my size of choice.

I took some pastel shades of That's Crafty! multi surface paints - Apricot, Lavender, Light Blue and Teal and put a small amount of each on my glass craft mat. I misted them with a little water to dilute them a bit, then used an old store card to scrape the colours on to the paper squares. You can see the results above, sort of rough stripes.

Once they were dry, I got out the Distress Oxide inks and Melina's new Just Doodlin' background stamps which I know will get inked up an awful lot as they're so versatile. 

You can see below the shades I used and I've put a link to the stamps at the end of each photo.

That's Crafty! Just Doodlin' Clear Stamp Set 2 by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Just Doodlin' Clear Stamp Set 2 by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Just Doodlin' Clear Stamp Set 3 by Melina Dahl

As you can see from the photos, quite a bit of overstamping and second generation stamping came into play here as I was aiming for a grungy textured look rather than an obvious pattern.

I then made a few cards so that you can see what you can do with the papers once you've made them. The colours were kept fairly quiet so that the images on top could be much stronger shades and stand out well.

That's Crafty! Grunge Flowers Set 1 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Grunge Flowers Set 2 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl

That's Crafty! Flowers Collection Set 6 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl
That's Crafty! Grunge Flowers Set 4 Clear Stamp Set by Melina Dahl (for the text)
That's Crafty! 6 x 6ins Mask - Leaf Circle by Melina Dahl


Hopefully I'll have some cards to share soon using the remaining papers and hope you like what I've done so far.
Enjoy the rest of the week!

Fliss xx

Christmas Carded Out!

Hello, managed to get my Christmas cards finished today and posted off where necessary slightly later than planned as we've had yet more drama here concerning my father in law! Won't deal with it here but he's at least on the mend now.
Here are some of my cards which were created with the gorgeous Christmas Time stamp set designed by Melina Dahl for That's Crafty! and I love this set so much.

The card you can see 3 of has a masterboard background which I created by misting Christmas Red and Green, together with a touch of Lemon Lustre sprays through the poinsettia mask on a sheet of A4 cartridge paper.

I then stamped on the fir branch using Shady Lane VersaFine Clair ink. I cut this in 4 and added the panels to square kraft card blanks, trimming if necessary.

I stamped the bird several times on another sheet of cartridge paper using VersaFine Clair Fallen Leaves ink, such a dark brown it's almost black. I coloured the birds with flat matte sprays using ochre, tomato and walnut. I die cut the images into circles in most cases although one is rectangular as I slightly misjudged the spaces when I stamped this one.

I added the images to deep green mats and glued them on the cards, finishing off with text from the Winter Berries stamp set also added to a green mat.

The other card is simply a misted background with ochre, saffron and walnut flat matte sprays with a touch of frost lustre spray. I stamped on the fir branches with the same Shady Lane ink and stamped the sentiment at the top with this ink.

The bird was coloured as before and cut out this time. I glued him in place on the card and brushed his wing with 3D holographic gel medium for some sparkle.

Hope you like these and will be back soon.

Fliss x

Long Time, No See!

Hello everyone!

Just realised it's an absolute age since I last blogged everything and don't know where the time has disappeared to. I've been so busy with various things again and trying to keep up as I used to has been really difficult.

I finally have the house to myself again for the first time in nearly 2 years as my elder child moved out again last Sunday having finally gained a permanent job rather than a contract based one since being made redundant at the beginning of last year. I have to say it feels a bit weird getting used to it again!

The moving out actually coincided with the Indigo Blu Dirty Weekend in Brighton last weekend which I was lucky enough to attend, spending the first day with Leonie Pujol and the second with Kay Halliwell-Sutton. I was really lucky to meet 2 celebrities too, Julia Watts who demos on Hochanda for various companies and Alex Turchyn who's one of their presenters. Both of them were creating along side us. Had a fabulous time and got very messy!

I created the triptych with Leonie and the altered cabinet with Kay. Hope you like them.

 

I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with a couple of frosty Christmas cards that I actually created for the July Hochanda shows (rather than me as I'm still working on mine!) You can find all the details on the blog.

Here are a few more of my creations that you may have missed as they didn't appear on here!

As you can see, there are a lot of bunnies which is because I was lucky enough to get this gorgeous stamp set to create samples with and I just love it! I couldn't stop creating with it!

Hope you're all well and I think my New Year resolution has to be to blog more often as my poor blog has been very neglected this year.

Best wishes.

Fliss x