Long time, no blogging!

Wow, I really haven't blogged in ages - what on earth happened to blogger?!  I do have some excuses for my absence though.

Firstly, we've been buying and moving into our new house. There was delay after delay and we eventually just managed to complete the purchase a week before they put expensive stamp duty back on for first time buyers. At one point we thought we were going to get the keys before the  end of february, so we started packing everything up, including all my craft supplies. It then got delayed until the middle of march! I couldn't face unpacking only to have to repack in a few weeks so I had a bit of an enforced holiday from inkyness.

Once we moved, it took a little while to set up our study/craftroom the way we wanted it, but now, for the first time, I have a dedicated workdesk thats all mine (on the left in the picture below)! The shelving under the window is supposed to be neutral territory between my desk and hubbies but his stuff is spreading already!

My other excuse for not blogging is that I have been somewhat distracted by an exciting piece of news - hubby and I are expecting our first baby in September! We found out in january and apart from morning sickness it was a wonderful start to the year.

Anyway, hopefully things are settling back into routine so I can now get back to doing something creative. Having said that, the garden needs a lot of work so I keep getting drawn to garden idea websites (and baby stuff sites!) so I may need to give myself a kick up the bum to get off the computer.

Garden desolation!

I'll make a promise to be back with something to show you very soon :-)

Sarah
xx

Since its been a lot cooler this week there's a strong temptation to veg under a blanket on the sofa, so I've not done much crafting. I've been procrastinating starting on my printers tray - it needs a bit of a clean which would mean spending time in the kitchen where there's no radiator.
The good news is, if our house purchase goes through, we'll have a nice open plan kitchen diner and I won't have to put up with a cold dingy kitchen anymore. We're feeling a bit more hopeful about it working out although it's definitely not certain yet. Basically, the current owners took down the supporting wall between the kitchen and dining room and put in replacements supporting joists without getting building regulation approval. It's probably fine but, there's a risk that the beams aren't sufficient and the house could actually be structurally unsafe. Luckily they have agreed to get it checked and get the retrospective approval so we just have to keep our fingers tightly crossed that it turns out to be OK. 

So anyway, I just have a quick tag to show you today. I feel a bit like it needs something else, but I'm not sure what, so i'll leave it as it is for now. It might have worked better on smoother card too.
 Its been a while since I've done a tag or entered any challenges so I'm killing two birds with one stone here.

Challenges I'm entering this in are:
The Stampman - 'use red'
Simon Says Stamp and Show - 'anything but a card'

Right, next job - make an effort to start commenting again!

Sarah
xx

Ebay listings is anyone's interested

Just a very quick post today to say I have a few craft items, and some other stuff listed on Ebay at the moment.

This link should take you to them if you're interested (sorry for the shameless advertising):
My Ebay listings

I hope Friday the 13th is not proving unlucky for you.

Sarah
xx

Some stunning new papers!

Two posts in one day (can you tell I'm procrastinating the housework)!

I think I've said before on here how much I love the work of the talented Finnabair (see her blog here). She just has the most incredible and gorgeous sense of colour and texture in her work. Clearly I'm not the only one who thinks so, as she has now designed her own scrapbooking papers for 7 Dots Studio.
Her first collection was called Dreamer and her second, due to be released very soon, is called Wonderland, loosely inspired by Alice in Wonderland (see here).

I think my favourite paper from the new collection is this one, called 'Mushroom and Smoke':

I love the large dots and was inspired to try creating some template based ATCs. As usual I've made backgrounds with no idea of what to do with them, but what does that matter :0)

The first ATC was covered with wild honey distress stain the stamped in aged mahogany. I sponged white paint over it all to tone down the colours,  then punched different sized circles out of a separate piece of card and used this as a template to sponge on more white paint. I then sponged on some more aged mahogany round the edges - the paint acts slightly as a resist to the ink. Finally I added the bird in black archival.

The second ATC is coloured with broken china, crushed olive and stormy sky distress inks (finally got away from the aged mahogany for a moment or two!), by applying them to my craft sheet, spraying with water then smooshing the card through it, drying and repeating until I was happy with it. I stamped on some checkerboard bits in the same colours,  then used a die cut from a Tim Holtz on the edge die as a stencil for sponging on white paint. The houses didn't show up too well so using the die cut as a stencil again I sponged on some glossy accents. when that was dry it worked as a resist for some more stormy sky ink to emphasize the houses.   

I may add further embellishments to these later - what do you think?

xx

Making a mess

I have to admit that I have a slight obsession with aged mahogany distress ink - I love this colour!!
Playing around with some messy techniques yesterday, I came up with three ATCs that use this colour in different ways.

The background of the first two is a combination of wild honey distress stain and aged mahogany and dusty concord distress inks. Butterflies and birds were stamped in black archival. Flourishes were stamped using white paint and I also smeared some more white paint on with an old credit card.

I love the way the aged mahogany blends with the dusty concord and zings against the wild honey colours in these ATCs.

The final one was simply aged mahogany and white paint. I smeared paint roughly over the ATC using a credit card and added the ink over the top, blending with a wet paintbrush. It shows up as more intense colour where there is no paint, and turns a lovely pink shade over the paint. I then stamped some Hero Arts heart stamps in the paint and ink.

I think these techniques are great for making backgrounds, but I find it so hard to cover them up with anything - I just end up loving them just as they are. Is it just me that has a love affair with backgrounds?

Sarah
xx

New Year, New Project!

A slightly belated Happy New Year to all! Hopefully it will be a good one.

For the start of the 2012 I thought I needed to give myself a bit of a challenge, a crafty project I've fancied trying for a while:

It's a real vintage printers tray, purchased off Ebay and it arrived yesterday - I was a little overexcited :0)

It needs a bit of cleaning and I'm debating over removing some of the dividers to create larger sections, but it has some lovely brass details which will look gorgeous polished up.

I might have mentioned in a previous post that hubby and I are hopefully buying a house, so I guess I got the printers tray with the idea of it being a nice interesting bit of decor for the new house. However, things with the house aren't progressing quite as well as we hoped, so like the weather, I'm feeling a bit bleak about it today (seriously spooky stormy light outside at the moment!). Going to keep my fingers tightly crossed because I really don't want to have to start the house hunt all over again.

Anyway, at least I've got my crafty project to keep my mind off the house for now. The only question is: 95 sections - where the heck do I start?

xx