Monday 27 June 2011

And the Winner is ...............................

Well, I obviously made that much too easy didn't I, lol!  Thanks to Sue, Aquarius and Veronica for having guessed correctly.  Sue, of course was the first to guess within minutes of my posting really but I didn't get chance to publish the comment until this evening.  So can you email me your snail mail addy please Sue.  I'm sure I have it somewhere but for the life of me can't find it and this is Sue's blog,  http://suzib1b.blogspot.com/ which is well worth a visit.  She has some lovely artwork on there and I visit often.

Thanks for having a guess ladies and look out towards the end of the week as Jo finished her project first so just needs a bit of time to be able to do the post and I will follow soon after with mine which I finished on Saturday.

Well I hope you haven't melted today.  I don't think I've ever drunk so much water (which I hate) to stave of dehydration.  'Normal' temperatures on the way for Wednesday though thank goodness, lol!

See you in about a week's time all.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

A Little Poser For You ...............and a friendly competition. (posted by Lesley)

Happy Monday Morning Everyone,

I sincerely hope the temperature is not too much for you this morning.  I have had the fans going from first thing this morning and to be honest, I could have done with keeping one on all night.  Phew, it's blooming hot around here and I'm not a happy bunny in the heat, lol! 

Anyway, enough of my English obsession with our weather, as the title says I have a little poser for you.  If you remember when Judith announced our project for this month she had chosen a colour combo for us from the talented Rachel Jackson's article on page 76 of the May issue of Craft Stamper.  Judith gave us licence to choose our own project to use this combo on so I decided to work backwards through my CS mags until I found one I thought would fit the bill. 

Now, when I was looking through my many stamp sets trying to decide which I was going to use on my project I realised that I had doubled up on a little set of Paper Artsy stamps so I decided to have a little friendly competition.  I want to stress that you do not have to be or become a follower of our blog to enter.  All you have to do is have a guess at which project I have chosen from looking at the pic below and leave your answer in a comment.  The first person to guess correctly will win the set of stamps (and I might find a few other bits and pieces to put in the envelope too).  As a clue so that you don't go trawling through tons of past issues I will tell you that the project is in a Craft Stamper issue from either February, March or April this year.

This is the useful little set of stamps.


and this is a peek at some of the stash I used to make my project.


Even my buddies don't know which project I've chosen but they're not eligible, lol!  I hope someone guesses correctly.

Have a good Monday everyone and as always thanks for your lovely comments.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx

Friday 3 June 2011

Have Book Will Travel (posted by Judith)

Oh dear, the time just flies, I'm last to post as per usual, I'm afraid. I have had a very hectic few weeks, and had almost made up my mind not to take part in this particular challenge. However, a trip to the Happy Stampers Show a couple of weeks ago changed my mind, as I bought some fabulous stamps, that enabled me to finish this project in just the way that I wanted to.

My poor Husband broke his collarbone recently; he has to take things easy and be careful. I decided to make a Father's Day gift for him with this project. Because of the book-like nature of the card, I decided very early on to use the Tim Holtz bookplate stamps. It's not going to be very often that I can use these, and this seemed like an ideal opportunity. I chose a theme of olive green, blue and brown for the project.
The front cover sets the colour theme straight away. I have added a fabulous steampunk style butterfly from a relatively new company called Indigo Blu, their stamps are just so useful, and I really like them.
For the inside covers, I wanted my book to have the feel of lined Italian papers, I bought the perfect stamp at HSNW from a company called Stamp Camp. I coloured some white card with my Distress Inks, then brayered the stamp with Versafine Ink. These were the inside covers before I had added anything else;

I had to stamp an extra piece on the bottom, but most of that would be hidden once the project was finished.
My box section used the smaller bookplate stamp for the front, in an olive green colour this time. I had to trim the stamped images each time I used them, but only slightly, they worked out realyy well for this project. For the sides of the box, and the spine of the book, I chose to use Tim Holtz tissue tape, and coloured it with Distress Ink. It was just the right thickness.


I used a bookplate shaped Nestability to cut the window in my box, keeping in with the book theme. I had planned to put a large bag of Galaxy Minstrels in the box for my OH, but the bag is way too big, even folded over or scrunched up! I will just put a plastic bag inside the box, and tip as many as I can in there. I have already added an acetate window to the box, but I don't want melted chocolate inside the box!
I added a pocket to the left side of the inside, using Kraft card, second stamping a lovely crackle stamp from Indigo Blu. I have added more Indigo Blu stamped pieces, and an Ideology tag to the pocket, which I have painted with Guacamole Fresco Finish paint, and then rubbed off the excess. The green paint then just goes into the lettering.

I made a tag to go inside the pocket, using another Indigo Blu stamp with Italian script and a beautiful building. I stamped this onto Kraft card, after colouring the card slightly with Distress Inks. I added a bit more of the crackle stamp, and some tissue tape.

I am also adding a book token from a certain bookstore so that my OH can go and buy himself a book or two and maybe relax a bit. He has come to enjoy reading in the last couple of years. He needs to slow down, and how better than with a good book?
My final picture shows the back cover, where I have used the bigger bookplate stamp again, the bookplate Nesties, and a great stamp from The Artistic Stamper. (The 'Travel' stamp on the front is from the same set).
So there you have it, fingers crossed that he likes it! He doesn't generally check this blog out, so I don't think that he will spot his gift, as long as I hide the actual card well at home. Thanks to Debbie Dolphin for such a great project, and to Jo, for choosing it for us.

Now, onto our next project!!! I chose this project a few weeks ago, so we have been thinking about it for a little while. I was very conscious that we were falling behind in our magazines again, so I skipped up to the May edition of Craft Stamper, but gave the girls a bit of a twist. I chose Rachel Jackson's Designer Palette on page 78. The colours are Cream, Latte and Bordeaux. However, I told the girls that I was dipping back in time to make a project in one of the magazines that we had skipped, using those colours but I wasn't going to tell them which project in advance. They were welcome to do the same. It would be amazing if any of us picked the same project, wouldn't it?

I know that one or two of the girls are definitely planning to show you sneak peeks this month, remember those? We used to do those when we weren't so busy, those were the days. Anyway, look out for some crafty snippets coming your way. Thank you for sticking to the end, if you are still reading this, Judith xx