Kingfisher Blue

Hello

I'm sharing some of my cards made for the May show on Hochanda.
The stamps I used are from the Kingfisher Song, Sticks and Stones and Trees a Crowd stamp sets.

I love Kingfishers. I live close to a canal and have been lucky enough to spot one, but not for a long time.

My first card uses the lovely medium sized Kingfisher from Kingfisher Song, I've stamped in Memento onto smooth cards and coloured with alcohol markers.I've die cut a simple frame and layered onto some design paper.

My next card I have used the same stamp along with some elements from Sticks and Stones and the main tree from Trees a Crowd. I stamped them all with VersaMark and embossed in silver. I made a moon by sponging VersaMark through Triple Circle stencil and embossing. I mat and layered onto some silver Mirror card and then put onto a black 8x8 card blank.

My last one is on a canvas board. I stamped the large Kingfisher using my stamping platform. I left the stamp in place on the platform whilst I coloured the image in with acrylic paints. I then re-stamped to get all the detail back. I masked the Kingfisher and repeated the technique with the other stamps.

Thanks for looking
Sandra x

Cornflower Blue by Brenda

Good morning everyone. I hope you are all remaining safe and well and coping during these strange times, today should have been our eldest Granddaughters wedding, then COVID-19 came along, who could have foresaw such change in our lives. But there's always craft!!

Today I have a few more cards using the Blueprint stamps, starting with a blue and yellow creation, it's a colour palette I always enjoy working with. A Distress Oxide background created simply by dabbing ink onto a piece of acetate, spritzing with water and placing over the card giving a gentle rub on the back to release the ink. Then repeat the same process with the second colour, but this time bending the acetate to make contact with the card to get the colour exactly where you want it. 

Some stencilling using Strip Stencils and Wild Cornflower Blueprint Sketch stamped in Versafine Clair blue.

I used the smaller flowers from  all four sets here Freesia Blueprint, Sweet Pea Blueprint, Wild Cornflower Blueprint and Cala Lily Blueprinth stamping around the edges of the card and colouring in with pencils. I then used several of the sentiments from the same stamp sets and cut a circle to place in the middle.

Finally a soft yellow Distress Oxide background with a little pink as well, stamping around the edges with elements from Wild Cornflower Blueprint and then Sweet Pea Blueprint focally and coloured with pencils.

My thanks as always for your visit today.

Colour bursts by Brenda

Hello everyone, I never make any secret of the fact I love using colour in my work and today I have a collection of vibrancy to share.

Starting with the Whiteboard tag at the top which I treated to generous amounts of acrylic pain and gesso added with a brayer, pattern added using the square mask from Strip Stencils and random patterns using Make your Mark. Next I stamped seed heads from Glorious, sentiments and flicks of white pen.

The background was the brayer 'waste' from making the above tag and the same stencil set used to add some patterns, I like to apply paint or ink or in this case gesso to the stencil, dampen with water and then place onto the background and gently rub to release the patterns. The flower is from Glorious and some added background using Make your Mark. The sentiment is stamped onto a lolly stick which I painted with gesso to bring down the colour.

A Whiteboard Tag inked with Oxides and stamped with Floral Study coloured with watercolour pens. Again I have used the Strip Stencils in the background. I added some seam binding and a few sequins.

The seed heads from Glorious stamped onto a Gelli Plate background, coloured with pencils and stamps from Make your Mark around the edge. As with one of my cards earlier in the month the strip across the bottom is a scrap of pea netting from the garden, I rather like the organic feel it gives.

And finally there had to be another using the lovely Poppy Ledger which I stamped with Versafine Claire, coloured with Distress Markers and used a die set to create the card.

Stay safe and well everyone.

Poppies by Brenda

Good morning, I hope you are all keeping safe and well during these very troubled times across the World.

My shares today use the new stamps Lesley launched in the March Hochanda TV shows. The beautiful Poppy Ledger features on my card at the top, stamped with Versafine Clair onto an acrylic pain background and coloured with pencils. Random stamping using Make your Mark........this is such a useful stamp set and an essential in your crafty stash, I used some sticky EP to stamp the coffee stains and added gilding flakes.

Here I have used the flower from Glorious, stamped onto an Oxide background, dots added using one of the stencils from the four set Strip Stencils and some doodling around the edges. The random numbering is using one of the stamps from Edgy Edges.

As you will guess from this post the Poppy Ledger is a total favourite with me......they 've not called me the Poppy Lady for nothing all these years! Stamped onto an oxide background, the flowers bleached out and then coloured with Distress Markers and the stencil set used again to add texture paste dots and DI for the squares.

Lesley's beautiful seed heads from the Glorious set have been stamped onto a piece of card that was the waste from my brayer after doing some Gelli Plate backgrounds. I also stamped one of the images from Make Your Mark into the background.

This card features Floral Study stamped first onto the base card using Versafine Claire and then again onto a Whiteboard Trading Heart to create a spotlight. The spotty stencil features in the background again and I used the same colour Distress Markers to just one of the flowers.

Finally Poppy Ledges again.....I did say I like this stamps. A scored and inked base card, circles added using the large coffee stain from Make Your Mark, part of the Poppy images stamped onto a Whiteboard circle and some garden gleaning to embellish......A plant tag for the sentiment and a piece of pea mesh across the bottom.

Stay safe everyone and thank you for your visits today.

Engineered Florals (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I have some projects to share with you today using the fabulous stamps and stencils that we brought to you during last month's TV shows on Hochanda. I hope that you managed to catch the shows, they were a whirlwind of activity, as the stamps sold out very quickly, but Lesley and I enjoyed ourselves enormously trying to keep up with what was happening!

My first card was created using the beautiful Freesia Blueprint stamp set. I used the Dotty stencil from the Strip Stencil - Collection 1 set and added some texture paste to a piece of drawing cartridge. I coloured the background using Distress Ink once the texture paste was completely dry. I added some background stamping using one of the smaller images from the stamp plate.

I stamped the main freesia image onto another piece of drawing cartridge, and coloured the image with Koh-I-Noor watercolour pencils. I stamped a sentiment onto a small piece of card, coloured in the same colours as the main background, and edged all of the pieces with brown ink.

To create my second card, I took a piece of glossy card, and embossed a couple of images from the Wild Cornflower Blueprint stamp set using white embossing powder. I then covered the background with blue Distress Ink and polished the card. I stamped the main image from the stamp set onto a piece of smooth stamping paper using blue ink, and coloured the image using pencils as before. I added a sentiment, and some shading with blue ink, before edging the paper with dark blue ink.

Using a piece of drawing cartridge, I added some yellow Distress Ink to create a background, and then drew lots of postage stamp shapes using one of the inserts from Triple Postage, another one of the Strip Stencil - Collection 1 set. I stamped the smaller images from all of the stamp sets into the postage stamp shapes, and coloured them with pencils, adding a sentiment into one of the shapes. For extra definition, you could add shading around the shapes to give a 3D effect, making the postage stamps look as if they had been stuck onto the background.

My final card was created by adding one of the beautiful Designer Papers A5- Background Splash, designed by Lesley, onto a card blank. I stamped one of the engineer's drawings from the Sweetpeas Blueprint stamp set three times across a piece of drawing cartridge. I varied the height of each image. I added some foliage in between the images and coloured everything in with pencils. I stamped the small sweetpea flower head onto a scrap piece of the patterned paper three times, and cut them out. I stuck each flower head into the top of a 'bulb'. This piece of apparatus is actually a flagpole, but I thought that it resembled a quirky specimen jar and made a perfect home for the flower heads.

I edged the card with black ink before attaching it to the coloured bakground.

I hope that you have enjoyed my first batch of cards this month. I will be back later on with more inspiration to share with you. Thanks for stopping by,

Judith xx