Bad Timing...

It's time for a new challenge over at Craft-Room and the lovely Suzanne has chosen the theme of 'Time'. Suzanne says Time is something she never has enough of and I can definitely relate to that ! We would love to see projects inspired by 'time' with a 'timepiece' on them.   Our sponsor this week is the wonderful Crafty Individuals

I have had a bit of a technical hitch this week and when trying to take photos of my inspiration piece my camera died - talk about bad timing! So,  I know that we don't allow back linked entries but for the purposes of inspiration only I have fallen back on an old project I made earlier this year.

The main panel is distress inks on a chipboard square, covered with several layers of UTEE, into which I've sprinkled Egyptian gold embossing powder and  watch parts. I also stamped into the layers while still hot and fluid. 

The bottle and wings are shrink plastic (stamps from The Artistic Stamper). 

This distinguished gentlemen is a stamp from indigo Blu. I don't have many shop bought embellishments so made my own 'watch fob' with a type charm, clock face cut from some Tim Holtz paper and a piece of chain from an old key ring. 

Apologies for sharing an old project, but I thought it was better than not sharing anything at all !! I really hope you join us and look forward to seeing your Time pieces...Esther xx

Christmas Easel Card

Phew - what a busy couple of weeks, it's been mad at work and I had a christmas card order to finish for my best friend who has been to stay. We had a fabulous day yesterday at Lakeside shopping Centre starting our Christmas shopping and enjoying some girly time.  Which all means I haven't had any spare blog/crafty time so here is a card I made a few weeks ago but haven't shown yet -

I watercoloured the image, printed the nativity story on my PC and used distress inks and stamps to make a background paper. The ribbon is recycled from last years Christmas presents and I've  stamped a star to which i've added lots of stickles....gotta have glitter for christmas!

I kept the colours neutral with the touch of blue and they happend to fit the colour story over at the Play Date Cafe so I'm sharing this there as well as at - Allsorts - Christmas easel Card,  The Friday Mash Up - recycled materials and Totally Papercrafts - Glitter it

Hope you're enjoying the weekend..Thanks for looking...Esther xx

New Stamp Addicts Stamps

Hi all – I’ve have a hectic couple of weeks with weddings, work and my mum’s birthday but I have somehow found time to make a few samples for the next Stamp Addicts show on Create and Craft which goes out on Thurs 26th May @ 12.00noon   This chappie looks very comfy having a country snooze.  I have stamped him in Jet Black Archival ink, masked him and used Stamp Addicts scenic stamps in the background, water coloured with Distress Inks. I'm going to enter this card at Gingersnaps Creations in the Random Redhead challenge which is Scene stamping, and also at Sir Stampalot's Magical Worlds challenge.  I’m having a major tidy up in my craft room thanks to some new storage that arrived yesterday so better get back to it! Thanks for looking and enjoy the weekend…Esther xx

Rock Chick Birthday

This year seems to be one of big birthdays- My mum is 65 in a couple of months and myself, my other half and my best friend are all hitting 40! I'm the youngest of the three of us - my friend and partner are both 'celebrating' this week (spooky my other half and best friend of 25yrs were born in the same week!). Needless to say my weekend has been focused on creating cards for them and this is the one I've made my friend. She's a bit of a rock chick and so I've used a recently purchased (from E-Bay, is anyone else addicted?) set of stamps from Inkadinkadoo and my fav distress inks in milled Lavender, Dusty Concorde and Pumice Stone.  I coloured with Milled Lavender first, then clear embossed the stars to create a resist before adding the other colours and stamping with Hero Arts dots.  My trusty Tattered Florals die provided the feminine touch and a computer generated message finished off.

The guitar is embossed with black glitter EP - (you can see it if you click to enlarge the pic), and for the other images I've used Opaque Pewter by Stamp 'N' Stuff which is a gogeous EP for distressed looks but one I tend to forget about.  I made this card purely based on what my friend would like but it does happen to fit a couple of challenges by coincidence so I thought why not...over it goes to -

Simon says Stamp and Show - Stars

Simon says Challenge - Happy Birthday

Lets Ink it Up  - Die cuts/punches

Charisma Cardz - 'to die for'

Sunday Stampers - '(I Just) died in your arms tonight!'

Now I must dive over to Facebook to remove the Network Blogs post before my friend sees this!! And I better think about what I'm going to make for the Other Half - not so easy...Men are so difficult (and tricky to make cards for too!!)

Thanks for visiting - Enjoy what's left of the weekend....Esther xx

Splash of Green

Do you ever have an idea for a project, and enthusaistically get going only to be interupted by your mum phoning, distracted by your OH fiddling abut in the same room on the computer and just generally get frustrated when things are not going to plan! Well this is what happened during the creation of this Easel card for The Play Date Cafe.

Inspiration didn't come easily for this challenge, which is a colour splash - Black and White with a splash of Green. I've been thinking about it since the theme was announced and finally had an idea while driving between appointments for work today! Only to find that once home and itching to get started things did not run smoothly. Apart from the previously mentioned distractions, I struggled to get a good clear stamping to emboss - though the white embossing looks better than the black and then I couldn't find quite the right colour ribbon, I stamped my circle slightly off, couldn't find the message stamp that is the perfect size for inside the circle so had to use a smaller one, and to cap it all I creased the card slightly off so the bloomin thing doesn't stand striaght (though I've 'wedged' it for the photo).

But I persevered and the end result, while not perfect, is presentable and I was determined to enter it regardless after it had caused me so much frustration, I had intended to make more with different colours but sometimes you just have to admit it's just not one of your best crafting moments - and quit while the goings good!

I'm off to bed and maybe tomorrow will be a better day as I'm hoping to find time for the Compendiuum challenge from Linda at StudioL3.  Night all....Esther xx

Blog withdrawel...

Oh My it's sooo hot...have been trying to kep cool with the fan but that doesn't work so well when I'm crafting as it blows all my papers about !! And to make things worse our PC went in for a little repair this week so have had serious Blog withdrawel...couldn't get round many desks on WOYWW or do any hopping at all. But..alls well as it's back today and in full working order so normal service has been resumed.  So on to today's creation - an easel card. I really enjoyed making my first one of these the other day so had another go -

I made the cream background paper using the next technique in Studio L3's ongoing challenges from Tim Holtz's Compendium of Curiosities  - Shabby Chic.  I haven't got any black paint, so started off with dark card and used a Judikins stamp  - floral paisley.... (oops...was about to launch into a 'how I did it' then, you'll have to look at P49 of Tim's book to find out!!).  I made the co-ordinating paper by stamping the same design with Versamark - there are so many great things you can do with this ink pad I sometimes forget how effective the the basic watermark look can be (you can see it better if you click to enlarge the photo)! The Image is stamped and embossed on a piece left over from last weeks COC challenge using alchol inks, and is a Magenta stamp which is one of my absolute favourate stamps. I'm also entering this card into the Daring Card Makers challenge 'Silhouettes'. Some punched flowers from the left over shabby chic paper,a couple of paper flowers (don't remember where from) a bit of lace,  and dew drops from stash completed the look.  

Thanks for looking,  happy weekend Esther xx

My First Easel Card

I'd seen these clever Easel cards while on my travels through blog land but never had a go myself - until today that is when I fancied trying something different for a couple of challenges I had my eye on. So armed with a tutorial from Split Coast Stampers I set to work.  I love these little mice from Penny Black and wanted to keep them the focus of the card so have kept the embellishments simple and to a minimum. The mice are very cute and so I think this qualifies my card for the Craftalicious challenge, which funnily enough is 'cute', and over at A spoonful of Sugar the theme is Animal crackers, so am trying my luck here too. Because I've distressed the edges and used my distress inks to make my own background I'm also entering into the 'Distressing' One Stop Craft Challenge (that doesn't sounds quite right but you know what I mean!)

I painted the mice on water colour paper with watercolour paints and used milled lavender, dusky Concorde and spun sugar distress inks to create the border and background papers. For the background paper I stamped with Hero Arts Sparkle Clear – Cupcakes, embossed in clear and then distressed over the top with the  inks.  I also spritzed with Moonglow Dessert Moon wild iris glitz spritz (blimey that's a mouthful!)but you can't really see that on the photo. I distressed the edge of this piece and mounted on dark purple hand made paper (not hand made by me I might add).  A little bow and some crystals finished off the top piece.  The bottom piece is just some lilac card matted on more hand made paper, stamped with a cherry from Maya Road  -  Cupcake singleton and a flower from the Hero Arts set, I then used some cut out stamped images of the Hero Arts cupcakes to hold the easel in place and added the 'Eat your Cupcake' Sentiment from the same set. 

Over all I'm pleased with the result - I don't like filling my cards with oodles of flowers and frills and one of the things I've realised from browsing blogs and seeing all the gorgeous creations is that my style definitely leans towards 'Less is More' and I'm not a crafter who feels the need to fill every available space. Maybe that's because I'm not brave enough to try and just play it safe!   Thank goodness we're all different though, I'm so enjoying seeing all your work and learning as I go.  Thanks for sharing...and looking..and thanks to those who leave their comments, I read them and appreciate them all!  Esther xx