So Mulch Love!!

Yay for the weekend!!... the last one of the Summer Hols (Boooo)..... but at least the sun is shining :0)

I expect those of you that indulged in some new Paper Smooches goodies this last week have been getting them inky and creating... yes???  

I couldn't wait to play with the new set called Green Thumb, having a hubby who is an avid gardener, I know it will get a lot of use :0)

To create the rows of veg in the allotment I used the scalloped edge from Border dies 1 and I found the sentiment fits perfectly in the wooden sign from Happy Camper too :0) 

Hehehe ..... I've done a spot of companion planting putting radish and carrots in the same rows and it looks like Mr Mole has been along too, pushing them all out of the soil (just like in our allotment.... Grrrr!!).. but when you open the card.....

... you can see who the underground visitor is!!.... this little guy is from Smarty pants and he works so well with this set :0)...... can a worm be any cuter???!!!

Thanks for stopping by :0)

Jenny x 

A Little Something....

Howdy fellow stamp lovers! Hope you have all had a fabulous week and that you have an even greater weekend planned :) It's Lydia here with you this glorious Friday morning.

Today I have used two sets from my fave stamp company ever.. Wplus9...

Unfourtunatly one of the sets, Blanket Stitch Blooms, is out of stock but as I have only used this for the sentiment you could use a number of different sentiment stamps to get this same effect.

The fabulously cute little sticted flowers are from the set 'Embroidered Bouquet'. This is such a versitile set and I have only used the small little images to get the clusters of flowers either side of the washi tape.

I hope I have inspired you and would love to know what you think!

Hugs, Lydia xx

She's birthday blog hop

Hello :)

Today we have something a bit different in honour of our lovely She.

Having recently stepped down from our DT we wanted to wish her a very happy birthday.

I hope you will all join in with out little blog hop and all stop by and leave a message for She.

I made this card using Avery Elle stamps and went with She's fave colour...orange :)

Here is a list of all blogs in the hop:

Make The Day Special

Emily

Jo

Jenny

Kate

Keren

Lou

Lydia

Hope you all enjoy our blog hop and thanks for stopping by!

And now for something a little different....

Hello!

Lou here,back on Moody Monday ;-)

Today's piece is something a little different to do with your stamps. Needlework. Stamps make PERFECT templates for a whole host of craft with fabric,one of which is mixed media embroidery.

For this piece,I used the inimitable Smeared Ink Elementals 'Water Goddess' stamp (Currently in the sale-wahoo!)

After choosing your fabric (mine is a very hard to photograph without those annoying lines piece of vintage silk),ink up your chosen stamp (remember-simple lines are better!) and brayer the fabric onto the inked stamp. Place your fabric in an embroidery hoop. I was always going to leave mine in the hoop,so you may want to paint the hoop,or make sure you use one nice enough to leave attached! 

Next select your threads. I chose to do this piece with as much texture as I could,so chose as many different blue embroidery floss as I could find,plus bits of thin ribbon,some netting and beads. 

I used a split stitch for the majority of this,simply because it creates a nice solid textured line,splitting off two strands from the palest blue floss to outline her face. And a simple running stitch with metallic blue floss for the frame box.

Her hair was just plain fun! Just go to town on bits like this. I used random thread,ribbon and the netting and interspersed it with seed beads

Aaah,yes, the back. The utterly terrifying spaghetti junction of loose threads!

 To finish this piece,I cut the excess base fabric very closely to the hoop and drew around the hoop onto a piece of thick felt and cut it out. Using a strong quick glue suitable for fabric (I used Glossy Accents),glue the trimmed fabric to the hoop,so it wont pull through and escape,then add a little more to the wooden hoop and fix the felt pad on,like the lid of a pie. If you want to hang your piece up,add a bit of ribbon,lace or trim in between the felt and the hoop. 

It is a lovely thing to pootle along with in the evenings,adding more and more and watching it grow into a piece you feel is finished.

I hope you have enjoyed that rather long winded tute! Now go see which stamps would make for nice needle work ;-)

Lou

Fun in the Waves

Well this seems like the perfect card to post for this Bank Holiday weekend when many of us will be grabbing a chance to visit the coast if the weather plays ball!!
It's been a hectic week of activities so I'm cheating a bit today by sharing this card I made for the Ready Set Stamp feature in the July edition of Craft Stamper magazine...

I've used stamps from Lawn Fawns Swimsuit Season, colouring them with Promarkers and blending three colours of distress ink for the sea...... I love how curving the sentiment on the acrylic block means it fits just right into the cluster of images too :0)

I've just had a look at the forecast and it seems I may have jinxed the weather already !!.. oh well I hope it will remind you instead of the lovely summer we've had so far :0)

Thanks for stopping by today and have a great weekend whatever you're doing :0)

Jenny x

Strawberries and Milkshake

Good morning stampers, are we all ready for the weekend? It's Lydia here with you today and I am totally ready not to make Will's sandwiches for two days .... yay :) 

So I have created a card to share with you today that uses the super cute stamp set from Wplus9, 'Milk and Cookies' and the matching die set.

I just love this set, it is sooooo super sweet and can be used for either a masculine or feminine card. there are so many choices and themes that this set can cater for and .... I really need to play with this set more!

Well thats it from me - see you same time, same place next week!!

Butterfly Garden

Hello everyone, it's Emily here.  I am now back on a more regular basis due to the sad departure of a couple of the lovely DT.

Sorry that this post is coming rather late in the day, the summer holidays seem to have lead to complete mayhem here, even my smallest helper was in on the stamp action.

I have a tag to share with you today using a favourite Unity stamp set.

I used a Prima tag and stamped onto it the large circle stamp and a few small stamps from the 'Butterfly Garden' stamp set.  I also stamped the butterfly stamp four times onto an old dictionary page.  I used sepia archival ink to stamp and then coloured with distress markers.  I layered up the butterflies and glued them on along with dew drops and pearls.

Thanks for visiting today, you can find this stamp set and many other great Samantha Walker sets here

Emily x

Summer Burst!

Morning! I'm squeezing every last bit out of summer because it looks like it might be disappearing fast! In the strange thing that is my mind, I wanted to create a Christmas bauble with one of the cookies in the set. Sadly it wasn't quite the right shape. but I'm still working on that one! So, instead I've eschewed the biscuits & gone for summer bursting out of the bottle- using the drink 'line' stamp to act as movement or 'burst'. I've stamped the bottle in acetate & coloured the drink and fruit with Copics. Here's the set

This is such a versatile set- there's a few left- but don't all rush at once- leave a few for the late-comers!

 Will catch you next Tuesday-

Love, Keren x

A pocket full of lollipops!

Happy Monday! Tracy here!  Feeling all chirpy this morning! Bringing you a sweet start to the week with my pocket full of lollipops using the gorgeous Wplus9 stamps, A Pocketful: Valentine, and Strictly Sentiments 2.  Great stamps and so much you can do with them!  I fancied the lollipops so I chose to colour them with some new Tim Holtz Distressed Markers.

This is such a flexible little set - good for so many occasions - from true love to just saying hello!

 

 

Hope you like the card and have a sweet start to the week!

 

Tracyx

 

Seize the Cupcake

.... and whoosh we're back round to Saturday again! .. these weeks are just whizzing by!!

It's Jenny here again and this week I've been playing with another stamp set from Wplus9...Sweet & Treats.
I've used the dies and fillers sets too, they work together really well but are equally fun used independently from each other....

I used the fillers set to add colour to the outlines after die-cutting and they match up really well. I wasn't sure about the white edges on the die-cut pieces at first but I'm coming round to them and they're such fun to mix and match colours and toppings... only drawback is you can't eat them afterwards :0(

...mmmmmm yummy :0)

Thanks for stopping by :0)

Jenny x

Lots of Wplus9 ....

Good morning inky friends! Yey it's Friday so that means it's my turn to post over on the Make The Day Special blog today. My card today features quite a bit of my new obsession.... Wplus9!

Firstly I stamped the little bottle from the Milk and Cookies set on to a post-it note and cut out two of the lil beauties to use as masks.

I then stamped the first bottle in the foreground using black ink, covered it with a mask and then stamped the other to the side. I then covered this one up with a mask so I could stamp the cute little polka dots from Borders and Backgrounds (sadly out of stock at the moment, but there is a Avery Elle set 'Ikat' that you could use to get the same effect ) in a light pink chalk ink. 

Then I added the lemonade using a yellow chalk ink. As I figured you should be able to see through the first bottle I over stamped the second bottle in a grey ink so you could see the whole of the bottle but lighter through the first. Straws were added from the Milk and Cookies set and the fab sentiment is from Strictly Sentiments 1 (also out of stock but this could be substituted for Strictly Sentiments 2 or even Quite Like You). A bit of washi and twine and its all finished.

So so loving the milk and Cookies set at the moment so this is not the last time you will be seeing those cute little bottle from me..lol.

Have a great day.

Wplus9 in da house....

Well I really starting to think that the couple of weeks of summer are well and truly over. Its looking like autumn is all ready to start so it won't be long now before wellys and hats have to come out of the cupboard.

Well some new stamps dropped through the letterbox from the lovely Lou and I was so so excited to play with them so I whipped a card up as soon little Minty went for a nap...

I used the Embroidered Bouquet stamp set from Wplus9 and how beautiful does that sentiment look? This is actually in three separate parts that you can combine to look like this- stunning and I totally love the font. 

After stamping the sentiment in navy I stamped the large image stamp from the set and stamped over the sentiment in a really light grey.

Off to go play some more as Milk and Cookies was also in my package so have a guess what I'll be sharing on Friday... have a stampy day !!

Sketchy Unity and Quiet Essence

Good morning y'all! This is a card using two sets of lovely Unity stamps. The first set is a gentle lovely one called 'Quiet Essence' and I've added the Itty Bitty set 'Tell Me More'. 

The fab news is that they're both in stock and just pootle over to the store and get yours!

 Quiet Essence looks like this:

It's gorgeous isn't it. You can get it from the Unity section.

The Tell Me More stamp is one of the bargain priced Itty Bitty single stamps and looks like this

I've made this card in response to the Unity Challenge blog. It's a great idea to join in with these as they're great for kick starting those 'minus the mojo moments'. If you want to join in, you kinda need the stamps- but then, you knew that already!

Treat yourself to a set and join in- who knows- you might even win ;-) 

See you soon,

Keren x

Strawberries and Oreos for breakfast

Hello!

Today's card is made with a whole lotta joy at finally getting this set from Wplus9 :-)

I have been SO excited to get playing with it and this was the first thing I did (still feeling my way around my newly acquired love of CAS-but I took the plunge with this one...that is a LOT of white space! :-o  )

The matching dies line up beautifully with lots of options,even including two versions of the cookies,so you can have them facing one way or the other-genius! 

I stamped the milk container onto the card,then another onto vellum and embossed this with white,tucking the straw between the two layers.

Hope you like it!

And a close up...

Thats all from me for now :-)

Grab yourself some milk and cookies,go on-you know you want to ;-)

Lou

A Sweet One Layer Card

Hello there.. are you in the mood for a sweet feast this Saturday morning???

Well, I saw this Lawn Fawn set in the Sale section on the website but there's only one 

left so lets hope it's still there today as this post is scheduled!!!

I was inspired by the current Lawnscaping challenge to make a One Layer card so I teamed up the 

yummy desserts from Here's the Scoop with a sentiment from Many Thanks,which is currently 

out of stock but with all the lovely alphabets LF produce you could easily make your own!!

I inked the sentiment without the lollipops around it and then using the 'post-it note' masking technique I arranged the ice creams either side of the wording. They've been coloured with Inktense and regular water-colour pencils and the base is watercolour card... I've had it in my stash for 

ages and it really does work the best for this method of colouring. 

A few highlights with a white gel pen and they look good enough to eat :0)

Thanks for dropping by and I hope this weekend brings ice cream weather to everyone..

but especially for us as we're camping... fingers crossed!!

Jenny x

Written On Ribbon Thank You

Good Friday morning to all you lovely folk out there! Lydia here and loving that is FRIDAY !! The new Wplus9 in the store seems to be selling like hot cakes...... but I don't blame you they are gorgeous and I seem to be an addict myself...lol.

For my card today I have used one of the fabulous stamp and matching die sets from Wplus9 .....

This stunning banner is from the Written On Ribbon stamp set and has a matching die., and I'm happy to say it's in stock, although there is only one left :( 

This set is sooooooo amazing, there are lots and lots of different sentiments that you can use and mix and match with each other- and looks FAB embossed in white on black card!! (I made one like this but uses Fresh Cut Florals that is sadly out of stock.... but I will show it on my blog HERE so pop on over if you would like a peek :-D ).

Instead on using the die-cut in the normal way I have used the negative/waste and stamped through it onto the base card.

Before I glued the kraft piece down I stamped onto it using the cute little star bursts from the Cas-ual Fridays 'Loving Thoughts' (again only one left!). 

Add a couple of liquid pearls... that I couldn't do without and that's it.... all finished.

I really hope I have inspired you and that you all have an awesome weekend!!

A Bit Of

Black and White!!!

Hi there.........She here........After my little 'blog break' I decided to ease myself back in gently with some of my favourite things!

Favourite stamps...........Check this out.........BARGAIN...'Milliner Misses' Get them whilst you can.....

Favourite colour scheme ........'Black and White'............

These stamps look fantastic even without colouring them in........I just added some of my 'paper mountain', my favourite corners, punched flowers and of course ribbon!

I hope you like my little card.......

Thank you for looking and I hope to tempt the old 'Mojo' back so that I can see you again soon!

She xx

Guiding light

Hello.

The new Wplus9 are very popular right now.

I have the famous fresh cut floral's that everyone is after but thought i would use another set today.

I have used Guiding light stamps set. 

There are also additional dies and sentiments that match this set.

I kept it simple and used distress inks to make the background before stamping over it with black memento.

i only added some white using a gel pen to the light house and to make some stars in the sky.

Although there are lots of sympathy sentiments i think this could make great nature cards as well as masculine birthdays and fathers day.

For all of you looking for a flower fix why not check out these ?

Blanket stitch blooms , they also have matching dies.

Folk art floral's these too have dies.

Thanks for looking.

More Fresh Cut Flowers & Another One!

It's lovely Tuesday- except it's a tragic Tuesday. Tragic because this lovely set is so amazing it's flown out of the store. I tend to have a backup card to show you- but would you believe it -that set's not in either. So I'll do something different- show you this, with an alternative set & show you another card that I've just posted that most of you won't have seen using a set that IS in stock!!

Right-so onto the alternative for Fresh Cut Florals- how about this one?

This set would look lovely on anyone's card AND it has matching dies too. AND you can buy it too- although the way these WPlus9 sets are vanishing, you'll have to be super-quick!

And onto a project actually utilising in stock items?

Harnessing the power of my fave set 'Oh Baby'- I know, did you think you couldn't get any more cards out of it?!!!

If, for any reason you're fed up of the set (& I fail to believe it!)- go and buy it- there's only a few left and if they're all gone, I can't show it here on the blog. You see, you have muchos power over us Make The Day Special girls!

Oh, and if you want to see us showcase any set that you're hovering about purchasing- let us know in the comments, one of us is bound to have it, and we can see about persuading you ;-)

 

Well, enough from me- have the loveliest of Tuesdays and you'll see me again next week- possibly with Oh Baby (unless you've decided against it!!!)

 

Love, Keren 



 

Hearts & Flowers!

Hey! Happy Monday again! Where do the weeks go!?  Tracy here.. I've been busy playing with some of the many new goodies from MTDS.. This week is the turn of the lovely stamps and dies from WPlus9.  I've used two stamp sets (Heartfelt Mix and Fresh Cut Florals) together with one set of dies (Hearts and Clouds) to make this cheery "thinking of you" card.

 

This was a really fun card to make.  The papers are Lawn Fawn (Daphne's Closet). The little stamped flowers are stamped using Fresh Cut Florals (not in stock at the moment.. but watch this space for all Lawn Fawn goodies!)

Heartfelt Mix is such a gorgeous set and there's no end to what you can do with it..

..it has a great range of greetings in a lovely font, clouds always come in handy (they also make great cupcake icing or ice cream!), and the hearts can simply be hearts.. they can be flowers.. and they can also be arranged to make fabby Christmas trees... (an idea for a future blog post I think!).. and the washing line... a washing line, flower stems or (because the stamps are such great quality and flexible) you can make swirls!   See? no end to how useful this set is!

Hope you like it!
tx

 

A Floral Swag

Hello... Jenny here :0)

I finally broke into my Fresh Cut Florals from Wplus9 and had to have a go at flower arranging!!

Seriously, this stamp set is just amazing and it's so easy to get pretty results everytime,

I made a floral swag along the top of a white piece of textured card.....

I have left my Fresh Cut Floral dies wired together for the time being as it's easier to run them 

through in one go on white card and then stamp out the flowers and leaves afterwards.

I could easily have sat for a while, happily stamping away with different colour combos on the die-cuts

which means you can always keep some extras on hand for a quickie card... just pop them in the 

packet with the stamps or dies for another day :0)

Unfortunately these little beauties are out of stock but the dies can be found here and they 

really do make using the stamps a dream. I used this set for the sentiment.

Thanks for visiting and have a great weekend :0)

Jenny x

A Little Mixing

Way-hay it's Friday!!! Don't you just LOVE having the Friday feeling? Granted it loses some of it's charm after becoming a mum but the start of the weekend is always something to celebrate I feel.

So being Friday it is my day to post over at Make The Day Special, now if you are not already familiar this this awesome store, in the UK it is THE place to get those hard to get stamps from the US and the only place I know of in the UK to sell Wplus9 and Avery Elle. Both of these have quickly become a couple of my fave stamp companies ever!!

On to my card this week...... 

With this card I've tried to show that stamp sets and compains can be mixed. Both of the different types of leaves on this are Paper Smooches but two different sets, Zoo Crew (currently out of stock) and Leafy Greens. The FAB sentiments are Wplus9 and are from two different sets again, Quite like You and Strictly Sentiments 1. I love how well these sentiments compliment each other so well.

The polka dots are also from Wplus9 and are part of the Borders and Backgrounds set. The beautifully shaped frame is from the Avery Elle set Framed Fonts and is another of my go-to sets .

I really hope you have a great Friday and weekend.

Love Lydia xxx

Happiness is having wings!

Just when you thought it was safe- I've popped in this Thursday. I've created the base for this card using this stamp..

Sadly the little butterflies which were part of another Itty Bitty are OOS- but you could get the same look with this little set.

With both sets at only £4.20 each-they're really rather a steal. I've done some hole pricking and sewing as you can see here & just stamped the butterfly several times in different colours & chopped up part of a sentiment.

The paper is from a Lawn Fawn set & you get the chevron styled bakers twine with some of the Lawn Fawn twine here

Well I suppose I'd better fly off- you do need wings sometimes- hoping you each have a set today. See you next... I might say Tuesday, but then we do like to keep you guessing!!

 

 

Love,

Keren x