Rubber Stamping - North Wales

Recently I weakened & bought some John Next Door flower stamps with matching dies.  Ooh - by the way - Good Morning everyone. Now, I love making flowers & I already have a mixture of stamps that have to be hand cut & stamps that can be die cut - but you have to do each one individually.  John Next Door, & I am sure you have seen them, came up with the idea of plates of stamps with matching die plates.  So, you can stamp & die-cut multiple flowers.  I am all for saving time & theses work a treat.  Since buying them I have been looking at images of cards made by other people - mainly because over the last week or two my creative mojo has once again flown out the door.  Perhaps that should now read - had flown. On Thursday I finally sat down & made my first JND card & here it is; There is quite a bit of die-cutting but I can still use my favourite craft - stamping. The flowers is his blossom flower both stamped ...

Good afternoon ladies (& gent's if any are reading this). Happy Valentines Day to you all - I hope you had nice cards & perhaps some other nice surprises as well.  I was a very lucky lady - I had a beautiful card & 24 red roses. This afternoon I have another one of my recently made cards.  This one was for a friend who lives in France. She is the owner, along with her husband, of the gite where we visit in Brittany with whom we have become great friends. Having started to use stencils on a coupe of my recent cards I decided to make this card with just one stencil. I must have had this stencil a couple of years now & not used it - I am sure it is one of Barbara Grays.  I used Distress Inks through the stencil & was looking for quite a light "sponged" look.  After stamping the Happy Birthday in the corner I felt that there was something else needed.  There was a set of stamps sitting on my desk & amongst them was this little butt...

Good afternoon ladies. Well what a range of weather types we  have had so far today.  I do hope you have all managed to avoid damage to you & your property over the weekend. This afternoon I have another of my recently made cards to show you. On this one I am working with a stencil again & some die-cut flowers. I decided to colour the whole of the front of the scalloped edge card using distress inks  prior to stencilling.  I seem to have got stuck in the lilac/blue colour scheme. After adding the flowers & giving them a bling centre, I decided to put the birthday verse  on the front of the card & just a simple "Happy Birthday" inside I am really trying to use items that I have had for a while & not used or not used much, & some different techniques or perhaps I should say - techniques not used for a while. So! that is what I have been up to.  I do  have some more cards to show you & I haven't yet ...

Good afternoon everyone. I have another fairly recently made card to show you & this time it is the birthday card I made for our son Russ. I used a Kraft card base with a black card layer then the top layer was Kraft card that had been embossed.  After embossing it with the pocket watch folder I used various Distress Inks to add some distress & age.  Finally I covered the whole card in Versamark then heat embossed with clear EP. The little birthday stamp was in a set that I think had come with a magazine. The tempus fugit stamp was from a stamp set I have had a while.  Next year Russ has a "big" birthday so the tempus fugit was a little pointer to that. 😟 Last night was the Mold II May meeting, & we had a new member join us which was nice, & Elizabeth who had recently had an operation was back with us as well.  Carolyn took photos of the Show & Tell cards, also the projects cards so when I receive them I will post them here. ...

Good morning & what a beautiful morning & a lovely start to the Bank Holiday weekend.  I hope you have some nice things lined up to do over the weekend. This morning I have another of my recently made cards - an anniversary card for Russ & Nadine whose anniversary is the same day as Russ's birthday, which was earlier this month.  So I still have his card to show you as well.  It makes it sound like I have been very busy again but they were made slowly & in plenty of time for the events. Here is the anniversary card; Once again a card using some of my HunkyDory materials, such pretty colours.   I am sure as I use it there are craft fairies coming in at night & leaving some more - because it just doesn't seem to be running out. Have a lovely weekend - that's me for today. 'Bye for now.

Good morning everyone I am back today with another recently made card, this time it is the one I made for Gareth's stepsons birthday.  He was 16 earlier in the month. This Happy Birthday embossing folder is coming in very useful for male birthday cards. But I have used it quite a bit during the year - so perhaps time to give it a rest now.  I found this rather nice  - ooh what do you call it - no, I cannot think. Anyway I thought it was quite suitable to put inside his card, as he is currently in the throws of his GCSE exams. That's my quick pop in for today. Have a good day. 'Bye for now.

 Good morning everyone! This morning I have another of my recently made cards to how you. I have used a larger scale photo - because the card itself was large.  More a foolscap size than an A4. It is the card I made for Rita of Mold II club who recently celebrated a special birthday. Rita often puts large flowers on her cards - so I have done a large flower for her. The greeting & number is what I call faux embossing, where I have die-cut the letters & number & then adhered them to the card. Earlier this morning I went for my 4-weekly blood test & then in about an hour I am joining Bob at his business group lunch - twice a year they invite the lades to join them. Tomorrow is the April meeting for the CSNW club so will have photos from that to show you in a day or two. That's me for now.  I am off to smarten up for this lunch. 'Bye!

Wow! where did the last 3 days go? Well for me I did use up quite a bit of Tuesday having my CT scan. I now wait until Thursday next week for the result. Yesterday I sorted out some notes for a forthcoming demo I will, all being well, doing at the HSNW club.  I am going to be part of a multi-evening I think there are 2 or 3 other ladies showing techniques as well.  I will tell you more about that later. In the meantime another recent card - or as I did a few days ago - two recent cards. They are both made using the watercolour mono colour technique that I have taken to. The top one in shades of blue & the lower in Sepia tones. I made them for 2 ladies of the Mold II club that were having birthdays early this month. I do like the sepia finish it was the colour I first saw the technique done in. Again, like the one for our daughter, the backgrounds had been made before when I was showing the technique & so for the 2 birthdays I added some more det...

Good morning & isn't it good to see the sunshine again.  Mind you it is still rather blowy - but never mind - it feels like a nice bright day. Here is one of my recent cards that I have made; I say recent card - the front piece (the main image) I actually created in December for samples for the Mold club in January as this was to be their project.  During January I mounted it onto blue card & then base card in order to send to our daughter who lives in the States for her birthday in February. I do like this technique & will be going on to use it more. I have a visit to the local hospital this morning for a blood test, prior to hospital visit on Thursday at Glan Clwyd. Have a lovely day whatever you are doing. 'Bye for now.

Good afternoon everyone I hope you are all having a great weekend. One again I am not sure where the days have gone since my last posting - well I do sort of know - I was out to lunch on Tuesday, had a craft day on Wednesday, fairly lazy on Thursday with some crafting & then yesterday (Friday) Bob & I went over to a farm shop centre near Northwich.  Where we had a nice lunch then stocked up on food for the freezer. The card I have to show you today is a card I made for Bob's cousin & his wife for their golden wedding anniversary which was celebrated at the beginning of the month. I used Crafter's Companion "hint of gold" pearlescent card & a matt gold card.  I used my memory album dies to make the shape of the card & its layers & also one of the small sizes from the set to put the little card on the front which held a photo of them on their wedding day & one taken sometime last year.  I was very pleased with the way this came ...

Good afternoon everyone - where has that lovely sunshine gone? Today I have a photo of another recent card that I have made - this time the wedding anniversary card for Garth & Elayne who celebrated 3 years this week. I wanted a clean & simple design but with a little bling. I started with a 5x7 card in landscape orientation & once I had started on the design it was a case of cutting the various layers. I rounded the corners of the card & each layer to soften the look.  The top white layer I put through an embossing folder with a swirly vine style background, & a doily style circle to hold the sentiment.  The "Happy Anniversary" was from one of my older wood mounted stamp where the 2 words were on the one block & also at a slight angle.  I managed to carefully cut between them & because of the sloping font I cut the ends of the card at an angle.  A few matching flat backed gems to add a little bling. Goodness where does th...

Good morning everyone. Today I have another of my recently made cards.  This one was for our son & daughter-in-law (Russ & Nadine) for their wedding anniversary which is on the same day as Russ's birthday. I found this card style whilst having a good look around the Internet for inspiration.  I thought it looked a little different - so chose to try it for their card. This is the card laid flat on my desk. This is it stood up.  I was a little disappointed that it leant forward a bit.  But Russ & Nadine were pleased with it.  I made it using a plain 6 x 6 card & some pretty designer paper layered on to silver mirri card.  I added a few flat back gems for some bling & die-cut the greeting out of the same silver card. After making it I had an idea how to do a different version of it but retaining that arrow head type fold at the front. I will show you what I came up with in a few days after I have tried it out....

Good afternoon everyone. This afternoon I have the second of my 2 recent work in progress cards; The card this time has a lovely large poppy image; I think this is a Stamps Away poppy which I have had for quite a while.  I coloured the image with my Promarker pens after stamping it with Memento black ink.  Once coloured in, I trimmed it to size & then very carefully cut around a couple of the top petals behind which I put sticky pads for them to be dimensional. It was then layered onto a black card leaving a very narrow border. When deciding what size card to put it on I rather liked it on the larger card but not sure about all that white space.  White space is good on a card but I felt there was just a bit too much.  I knew that somewhere I had various border stamps, so had a look through them all & decided on this rather flamboyant one. Now! my photo is a little fuzzy but the borders are meant to look the way they do - slightly messy....

Good morning everyone. This morning I have another one of my recently made cards for you to see.  This time it is a stamped card. As you can see this card is for our grand-daughter who has a birthday this week.  This little piece of stamping has been waiting around for some time waiting to be finished & used. You may remember quite a long time ago we had a project where you stamped 2 pieces of A5 card with an all over random pattern using many different stamps both in images & styles, just in black ink.  Then the next stage was to randomly colour the pieces of card. Of my 2 pieces, one was partially coloured & waiting to be finished & used, the other was still black & white.  So I finished colouring this piece to use on her card, including adding some extra colour to some of the images with toning coloured pencils.  I used a 6x6 white scalloped edge card, trimmed the patterned piece & rounded the 2 right hand corners then...

Good morning everyone. This morning I have another recent card also made, as yesterday's card, when I was going through my Hunkydory card stock & toppers. Another beautiful Hunkydory topper that helped decide how the rest of the card would go together. An A4 sheet of blue card for the base card with a strip of matching blue card with a dainty floral embossed pattern layered onto a piece of gold card added to the background.  The topper & the greeting were placed on sticky pads to raise them up for dimension.  To add a little bling I put a blue flat backed gem in the corners of the blue strip & finished the card. Another card tomorrow - not Hunkydory this time. 'Bye for now.

Good evening everyone. This evening I have another of my recently created cards to show you. I was in a vintage mood making this one & like one I showed you a few days ago the image is one stamp.  I disstressed the edges of the card, added some partial stamping & texture paste through a stencil. The rose I coloured with my pearlescent water colour paints & added some paper flowers that I had stamped similarly as the background.  I had a couple of those flourish corners left from the earlier card & so used them to embellish the flowers.  Some gems added to the centre of the flowers & along the left hand lower edge of the card to add some bling. I layered the focal image onto some Kraft card & then onto a piece of card I found in my stash that I had treated with gesso & distress inks.  It picked up the grey green shade in the focal image. Then placed the layers onto a basic 7 x 5 Kraft card. That's me for another d...

Good morning everyone - gosh the weekend is here already. I hope you have some nice things planned.  Or, are you still clearing up after Christmas & the New Year? Today I have the other card I made in a similar fashion to the one I showed you yesterday; On this card I used the pink & the white flowers & coloured a background piece of card with a pale pink Distress Ink to tone.  I am trying to remember its name - it is very pale - I think it is Milled Lavender or something similar.  Does this show that I appear to be too lazy to get up & go into the craft room to check what its name is.  I guess it does.  Again I glued the flowers to the background piece using some cut in half to go on the sides or just trimming off the excess once they were all in position.  The next stage was to then run it through the same spotty embossing folder to meld them together.  I had saved 2 of the pink flowers which I cut into & shaped &...

Good morning everyone. This morning I have one of my more recent cards to show you.  When contemplating how to make my first few cards for 2018 (the non-stamping ones), I thought it was time I started using up those pretty papers we hang on to. But I wanted to try something a little different at the same time. This one was made for my friend (& neighbour at our previous house) whose birthday was 1st January.  So, of course I had to start thinking about it over the Christmas period. The first papers I saw were some 6x6 papers with these flowers on.  The background was blue & there were these green/white flowers & some pink ones as well. I didn't want the blue background really so I cut out all of the complete flowers.  I then gave a piece of white card a more suitable colour using distress inks, & followed that with gluing the flowers to the piece of card overlapping the edge with some of them & cutting smaller ones in half to fill t...

Good afternoon everyone - This afternoon I have a photo of another recently made card; It uses one of the papers I made a few weeks ago as the background & layered onto lilac paper. The stylised flower was stamped in Versamark & embossed with white EP.  A little colour added to the leaves & petals & some bling to brighten it up.  The flower is from Indigo Blu which I used during a workshop about 18 months ago & was then able to buy it.  I then stamped the 3 sentiments to complete it.  These were one stamp which I cut apart to use individually. It is club night for the Mold club tonight - so I should have photos for you tomorrow. That's me for today.  'Bye

Good mooring everyone. The card I am showing you today is an Anniversary card.  It is for Sue & Bill (Crafty Sue's!) who are celebrating their Ruby wedding. Some of you may remember that when we were meeting at the Daniel Owen centre I managed to get Bill to come to the meeting just after we had started, & without Sue's knowledge, so that we could present them with a card & a cake.  That was for their Silver Anniversary - who would believe that was 15 years ago - where has time gone!!! Here is the card; On a workshop a while back, with Ali Reeve of "Stamps Away" (aka - Clever Cuts) - one of the techniques she showed us was using the Distress Inks on the stamp & then spritzing them for a watercolour effect. Also using second generation stamping as well.  That is how I got this watery, misty effect.  The 2 wine glasses were die-cut from a piece of acetate & coloured paper placed behind to simulate wine. That was fun cutting the acet...