Remember when?

Hello, 

Today I have a card to share that I made a little while ago and have been waiting for the right challenge to share it. Well, today I have discovered the challenge at Time Out where the prompt is days gone by.

My card is made using the magazine transfer technique with a gelli plate:

I saw the technique demonstrated by Joanne and was motivated to give it a go after I had watched a few YouTube videos to get the detail of how to do it. I was very thrilled that it worked for me first time as I have tried it again since without any luck. The image is from one of my husbands music magazines that I found in our recycle bin.

This photo shows the whole image, but in order for it to fit an A6 card I decided to just use the very retro looking lady, as I love her outfit. The image was cut with a Waffle Flower postage stamp die and mounted on purple cardstock. I then mounted that on a darker piece of linen effect card that I had embossed with a 3d flourish EF by Crafters Companion. I made the sentiment on my computer with an old typewriter font to maintain the retro feel. To finish it off I added some decoration to the insert and envelope with a flourish stencil.

I was very pleased with the result and sent it to an artist friend (she is a proper artist) when we were in the height of our lockdown.  I hope you like it, I would love to know what you think.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today, I really appreciate it. 

 xx

A Special gift from Greece

Hello, 

Today I am sharing the generosity of the lovely Mia who is lucky enough to live in Athens. Back in May Mia celebrated her 3rd Blogaversary by inviting us to make a card using one of her free digital mandala stamps. She has several to choose from. I joined her to help her celebrate and made this card. Then life moved on and I had forgotten that Mia said she would send a prize to everyone who participated, so one day last week a little packet arrived on my doormat.

This is what it contained:

There was one of Mia's lovely cards, a stencil, a stamp and some mdf butterflies.

She had 25 entries, so that must have meant 25 prizes like this. I can't get over how generous this is and how much time she must have spent sorting it all out. You can see all the cards made with her mandalas here, they are pretty impressive so well worth a look.

 Thank you Mia

Here I have stamped the beautiful bears picnic stamp ready for colouring and have made a couple of background panels with the stencil. I used distress inks and a blending brush. I hope to make them into cards soon.

Of course a special thank you card will be winging it's way to Greece soon.

 Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today, I really appreciate it. 

Hilary 

xx

June CCC Reveal

Hello, 

Today is the 2nd of July so it is time for the June Card Chain Challenge to be revealed. After all the excitement of the celebrations last month, it is time to back to normal business. My card this month went to Suze in New Zealand, what a long way it has to travel and I thought it would take a very long time due to the Covid 19 issues, but it didn't, it is nice to know that the card has been received before the reveal post goes out.

I struggled to come up with my card this month. I kept looking at the layout and the colours and just could not find any inspiration but then I realised there is a theme option as well and this month one of them was 'The Beach', so I changed tack and produced this card:

The stamps are from a set that came free with issue 72 of Creative Stamping.

I coloured it with my Zig clean colour pens and a wet brush.

I was quite pleased with the end result, I think my practicing with watercolours might just be starting to payoff.

This month I was very lucky to receive one of Cat's gorgeous cards and it arrived from the US in record time, which was an added bonus.  Here is her gorgeous card:

If you haven't ever taken part in the Card Chain Challenge I would highly recommend it and June was a special celebratory month to recognise the sending of over 3000 cards worldwide in around 10 years, it is lovely to be part of it.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today, I really appreciate it. 

xx

July CAS Mix Up

Hello, 

It's the first of July so time for another challenge at CAS Mix Up. This month it is stencils, our host is Nancy and she has asked us to use stencil tracing. We also have 3 guest designers this month:

Greta

Sandie

Kia

I hope you get a chance to pay them a visit.

I know that this is one of Nancy' favourite techniques to use with stencils so if you visit her blog you will find plenty of examples.

I have kept my card very simple this month:

I started by masking the card front with post it tape and lightly blending distress oxide onto the card. Then I place the stencil (from TCW) and added more colour with blending brushes. Once I was happy with that I removed the stencil and traced round the outline with a fineliner pen. I also used a fineliner to draw the frame. The simple sentiment is stamped in varsafine ink.

I hummed and ha'd for ages about adding embellishments and nothing really looked right so in the end I settled on 3 tiny little star gems, just to give a tiny bit of added interest.

Do check out The challenge blog for much more inspiration and I hope to see your creation in the gallery. This is such a good technique, it has to be worth a try.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today, I really appreciate it. 

xx

CCC Game 4

Hello,

Today I am back again playing Game 4 over at the Card Chain Challenge where the month of June is being spent in celebration of the sending and receiving of over 3,000 cards worldwide. Game 4 is asking us to share the favourite card that we have received. I was hoping we wouldn't be asked that as it is very very hard to do. I have decided to take my lead from Robyn and post pictures of all the cards I have received since I started taking part in the challenge in August 2018.

2018

2019

2020

I have decided to highlight one very special card that I received from Jerrie Mead in March 2019. I don't know much about Jerrie's story except that she was an exceptional card maker despite having problems with her vision, and that she sadly died in May 2019 just a few weeks after sending me this card. I therefore think she deserves to be remembered here. Her card is really stunning and it is my favourite.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today, I really appreciate it. 

 xx