Where flowers bloom

When we got back from holiday last weekend our front lawn was a sea of beautiful flowers - white clover, daisies, and what my Dad tells me is birdsfoot trefoil. Unfortunately our neighbours are very keen gardeners whose lawns are always perfect - literally they go round the edges with scissors! - and have been known to moan to our landlord when we don't keep the garden as neat as they'd like. So the pretty flowers had to be mown :-( It was almost heartbreaking, but I'm sure they'll grow back pretty quickly.

I took this photo before we got the lawnmower out (sorry for the quality - I don't think photography is really my strong point):

Anyway, this inspired me to make a flowery tag. I coloured an ATC sized piece of white card with butterscotch and stream alcohol inks, edged it in vintage photo distress ink and stamped 'Where flowers bloom...' a few times also in vintage photo. The stamp was from the flower fairies lavender set by Crafters Companion, which I got as part of some blog candy from Craft Stamping Magazine. When I first saw it I didn't think I'd use it as cutesy isn't really my style, but I've ended using it a few times now.

The flowers were cut from grungepaper using the Tim Holtz tattered florals die and coloured using alcohol inks (butterscotch, and wild plum) and distress inks (wild honey and vintage photo). I also stamped a Hero Arts script stamp over them using various different inks. The letters spelling flower were stamped in black in the center of each one.

I curled the petals a little and mounted them to the background card using foam pads. The whole thing was added to a plain kraft tag and to finish it off I added some ribbon and an acetate butterfly (stamped from the Tim Holtz Papillon set in black stazon and coloured with wild plum alcohol ink).

I think this tag fits the new Sunday Stampers challenge over at Hels Sheridans blog. The theme is writing and this tag has both the script stamp on the flowers and the phrase stamped on the background.
And the current challenge at the Stamp Man is alcohol inks so I'm going to enter it in that too.
Oooh and not to forget the Grungy Monday Challenge at Studio L3 where the theme is also Alcohol Inks - check out Tim Holtz's demo here!
...And finally Simon Says Stamp and Show - A word!

Thanks for reading and I hope you're having a good Sunday

Sarah
xx

All the write postage

Just a quick post to share a tag I just finished for the Dragons Dream Tag it On challenge - all the write postage.

I also want to enter it in the latest Stamp man challenge - this is a recipe challenge where you have to include three of these ingredients:

Blue	Embossing powder	Stitches (real or faux)
Torn/ripped	Ribbon	Red
Die cut	Homemade background (no patterned paper)	Sparkle and bling

As you can tell I chose the top line.  Not sure how easy it is to see in my photo, but the large stamp image and some of the post mark images are clear embossed for texture. This tag was good fun to do as I've not really used stitching in my work before.

Hope you're all having a relaxing / crafty sunday :0)

Sarah
xx

Embossing on a sunday

I've been having a lovely relaxing sunday, basking in the glorious sunshine though the windows and making some ATCs.

I have a drawer full of embossing powders but haven't used any of them for ages - mainly because its very difficult to do heat embossing on a lap tray in front of the telly :-(  However, the latest challenge in on the Stamp Man Challenge blog was embossing...and I just got the Tim Holtz compendium of curiosities book... so I was inspired to have a go at some new techniques.

Here are two ATCs I made (I think I like the red one best!):

I'm going to enter them into the Stamp Man challenge and I'm also going to enter the blue one into the Sundays Stampers challenge (although it's definitely not a patch on the gorgeous tag Hels Sheridan has made!)

To make the background I stamped the script and embossed it with clear embossing powder, then inked over the top with distress inks. I created the hearts from some Maya Road chipboard hearts and the triple embossing technique described here (thanks to Vix for the fantastic tutorial). I love the texture it creates. The blue heart was using some moonglow embossing powder and has produced a lovely shimmery effect thats maybe a bit hard to see in the photos.

On an unrelated note, tip of the week is that glossy photo paper and rubber stamping don't mix - unless the aim is to spend 20 minutes scrubbing your stamps to get rid of the layer of paper now stuck to them!  Ooops!  Should I have realised that would happen?

xx

Beautiful butterflies: part 2

I was determined that this week I was going to enter my first crafting challenge, so, after staring in awe at my Tim Holtz crowded attic papers for a few days, I got started.

So... here is my entry for the Anything Tim challenge at the Stamp Man Challenge Blog. There's already lots of stunning entries up there so I just hope my simple piece doesn't look too shabby next to them.
I'm also entering it into the Once in a Blue Moon - Gingersnapper's Choice challenge on Gingersnap Creations - inspired by the previous chestnut theme of wings.

I mostly used the crowded attic papers with brushed corduroy distress ink. I love the little 2x2 snippets in the paperstash - so useful when I just wanted a little bit of something to make the text without cutting up the big sheets. Even the letters from 'the' are cut from one of these snippets.
The darker background paper is from the Prime Moulin Rouge range and the 'journey' and 'remember' stamps were from a Making Memories Set.

Hope you like it.
xx