Been playing again!

I have been playing with my new Spectrum Noir Pencils again, and I am quite pleased with the result.

The image (gorgeous!) is a digi stamp from Aurora Wings called Poppies, and I love poppies (may have mentioned that before). There are a lot of absolutely gorgeous images on that site.

I printed it onto Neenah Desert Storm Kraft Colouring Card (I added a background in Photoshop), went through the printer a treat.  It is brilliant to colour on, and the Spectrum Noir pens do not bleed through to the back.

I used the pens for the base colours, using FS2 and FS4 for the skin, CR1 for the poppies and DG2 for the pods and leaf.  Then I added the detail with pencils 004 and 009 for the skin, 024 and 027 for the poppies and lips,and 108, 059 and 044 for the pods and leaf. I also used white for her eye.

The Earth Laughs in Flowers stamp is part of the Nottingham Lace set from IndigoBlu, I thought it fit well - certainly fit in the space I had left so that was a bonus!

I am really enjoying these new pencils, they add so much more depth to the already awesome pens.

I really must try and get back into blogging!!

I must try and get back into blogging, it is a seriously long time since I did any.  I read all my favourite blogs every day, but never get round to updating mine!

So here goes.... Just to break me in gently, here are a couple of cards I made recently.  I have made these using my new Spectrum Noir pencils to colour the images.

The bird one is the Large Blue Tit from Clarity Stamps, and the Poppy is a digi stamp.

The apertures were cut on my Brother ScanNCut, and the photographs were taken by me - the bird picture at Burton Mere Wetlands, and the poppy at Chester Zoo.

You might recognise the Poppy picture from my previous post, I love this picture!

Winter Friends

Wow, it is a seriously long time since I posted anything on here!!  Where does the time go???

I just spotted a challenge over on Crafters Companion Monthly Challenge Blog, and for once I actually had just done a card that kind of fits!

The decoupage image is from Paintbox Poppets, and the card itself is Centura Pearl.  I embossed the card using my brilliant new eBosser!  I just love it, almost all my Christmas cards this year were made using it.

All I need to do now is try and remember how to enter the challenge, it has been a very long time!!

I love Poppies!!

I just love poppies, so when I saw the challenge over on the Stampalot blog, I couldn't resist! The challenge is to use the picture of a poppy field for inspiration.
I was lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time to take this photo of a beautiful Poppy, and just had to use it. It was taken at Chester Zoo. My family laugh at me because, while everyone else is looking at the animals, I am usually looking the opposite way at the flowers. I think it must be a throw-back to my childhood, because when we went to the Zoo my Dad only ever looked at the flowers, and my grandmother never went there without a pair of scissors in her bag for cuttings!
The background paper I used is from Joanna Sheen's Jane Netley Mayhew 2, and was just perfect. I used my beloved Nesties for the layers, and added a red silk flower. I had a bit of a problem as to the centre of the poppy, but then hit on the idea to use black stick-on gems!
Trouble is, I love this card so much I don't want to part with it! Maybe I could send it to myself in November for my birthday!!

A Winter's Tale

I came across a challenge over on Sir Stampalot, which, surprisingly, I am still just in time to do! It is called "A Winter's Tale", and inspiration is to be taken from either Queen's 1995 song, or Shakespear.
Now, I am a big Queen fan, and thought I knew most of their songs, but this one had escaped me. I Googled it (where would we be without Google?), and loved it. To me it cried out to be used with this image from Joanna Sheen's Enchanted Dreams. Everything seemed to fit!
I used the background that went with the image, and which just happened to have swans on it. I Googled (again) the lyrics for the song and used the first verse. Then I layered the image onto silver holographic card. Trouble is I love this so much that I can't bear to send it to anyone, so I will just have to keep it!

Another challenge....am I actually getting my act together?

Over at Anyone for Anya, the challenge this week is to make a calendar page for February. This caught my imagination, even though I hadn't done a page for January.

I love the poem "January brings the snow....etc.", so had to use it. I found the rainy background and the mountain scene on the internet (how can we live without Google?), and I stamped and scanned my Anya so I could use it like a digi stamp. Of course she was coloured with my beloved ProMarkers, can't function without them!

Here's to 2011 and getting my mojo back!!

For pretty much all of 2010 I seem to have been completely without my "mojo" as far as blog challenges are concerned, so my resolution this year is to get said "mojo" back and get into challenges again!

So, for my first entry for this year I have decided to have a go at the Passion for ProMarkers Mega Challenge, after all I won it last year, so you never know..................

I am also entering it into the I Love ProMarkers challenge for this week.

The theme for both of these challenges is "Anything Goes", and I am afraid that when I hear those words I always think of the song "In olden days a glimpse of stocking..........etc.), so I just had to do an Art Deco-ish lady. I am a bit limited in "stash" here at home, most of my good stuff being in the shop. I close between Christmas and New Year, so can only play with what I have here. For that reason I made up my image in Photoshop, then coloured my lady in with ProMarkers. I think she is gorgeous. I have the stamp in the shop, but, because I don't have stamping stuff here, I usually stamp my stamps, then scan them so I have digital images to play with at home.

Well, enough of the waffle, I had better get this posted, then go join my husband who is patiently waiting for me to watch a film with him! Can't seem to convince him that crafting should take precedence!! Still, back to normal tomorrow, back to work and normality!!