Quick post - Craft Barn

Had a lovely day today at the Craft Barn in Lingfield, Surrey at their annual Extravanganza, where they invite - this year 28! - demonstrators to delight us.

I got soaked on the walk to the station here in Sutton but after that it was ok and the sun (as usual for this day in the calendar) came out!  I met some ladies at East Croydon who I often see, up from the Isle of Wight and we chatted on the train.

Once I got to Lingfield, I headed to the shop..... oh dear! Well most of it was on my list!!! Knowing from previous years just how busy the shop gets once the demonstrations get going, I shopped first... sometimes a mistake because you "want" loads of other stuff later.... here it is!

 there is also some grungepaper and grungeboard which I was running low on, and wondertape...


Had lunch with Anna and Kirsten who I had arranged to meet (we are twitter friends already - although I'd met Anna at Ally Pally and are both lovely) and sat outside in the sunshine... which was lovely after the earlier rain. Anna brought some gorgeously wonderful chocolate brownies.. yum yum yum!

The demos were all fabulous.  Early on , I found Lin Brown and settled in.... she surprised me with this beautiful gift for my birthday earlier this week. How cool is this?!!!Those poppies on the front are a fab Memory Box die (now on my wish list!)

This is the inside... note the H for Helen and the number - for my age which I announced to the world on twitter and my blog, for some reason, lol!!

Anyhow Lin, it is fantastic, thank you SO much.

It was lovely to meet Kay and Alison again, too. Also nice to finally meet Neil Walker (of Neelz Expressions) and Jo F-y.  Leandra was also there in fine form with paint and wonderful techniques.



Right. off to whack a pizza in the oven and then it's Andy Murray at Wimbledon in the tennis... laters!!

Will be playing with some of my new stuff tomorrow!!

Simon Says Show "Depth of Distress"

This week Simon Says Stamp and Show are challenging us to show "depth of distress".  When I think of distress, I immediately think of Lord Tim of Holtz - but which products to choose?!  

I decided to make a canvas and grabbed the tattered leaves and florals and birdcage dies.

 The birdcage and bird are cut in black foam and painted with Paperartsy Fresco paints - 'old gold' for the cage, and Mocha Mousse and London Night for the bird.
The flowers are cut from papers from the Vintage Shabby and Lost & Found stacks and the leaves from a very old loose sheet of Tim's paper in green (well the reverse is green!) and some core'dinations distress paper

I sanded the leaves and added some vintage photo ink to continue the distressy theme.

 the canvas is painted with distress stains, tumbled glass and bundled sage, and vintage photo on the corners and edges.  Blotted the ink slightly and sanded it.

Made up some flowers and added them to the corners.  Finally used a word band which is also sanded.

Hope you like this!

Simon Says Stamp are providing a $50 voucher for their amazing store to one lucky winner. Good luck!

TIO- 119 - Don't Fear

Hello, and welcome to another DragonsDream Tag it On Recipe challenge - thanks for your lovely entries last time! This round, sees Silvie setting the recipe "don't fear" and your ingredients on your tag are - a scary image; a crowd of purple, and textures.   Well, Silvie you really really had me struggling with this one! I almost didn't get a tag done - not because there aren't things I find scary, but I don't have the stamps to represent them....or could find any images I could print or cut out.... but.....never call me a quitter!

The purple was no problem, one of my favourite colours, the texture was ok... my spider image is a teeny tiny totally non-scary stamp by Wendy Vecchi, but it's the only one I could find!! The bird is a kind of scary image to me (part of a Crafty Individuals stamp) so hope Silvie lets me off!


I used some viva Croco paste, magic mesh (found whilst rummaging for some inspiration - never used this before, but it's good stuff) and part of an embossing folder of a spider's web (which caused another hole heap of problems as I only wanted to use part of the folder... ended up cutting it out and discarding the rest.)

 The text is a Tim stamp and I stamped some background text onto a couple of flowers for more texture.

Good luck with this challenge, I am sure you will have much better tags than mine to show, I look forward to seeing what you do. You have a fortnight again. Ready, steady, GO!

What's on your workdesk Wednesday (160)

Happy Wednesday everyone! First off, an apology, as I didn't get to visit many of you last week, I will try harder this time...Don't know what I am talking about?  What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday, where we all show off our crafty spaces, chez Julia.  check them out!

By way of further grovel, please help yourself to a birthday cake (it was my birthday yesterday)

some 'jubilee' coloured fondant fancies.. very sweet but yum!! I may be 53 (gulp!) but love sweet things..shame I also have a real fear of the dentist...

My "desk" proper (oh that I had a desk!) has a part done background for a journal page, my ticket for the Artstamps show at Newbury on 7th July (I love that show!) and an ATC that I received from Cardarian in Slovenia from the anniversary swap. And a Jubilee rubber duck. I saw these on twitter after the Artsycraft weekend as Lin and Leandra were given one, and had to find out where they came from - Morrisons supermarket - and eventually my local store got some in! (thanks, Neet!)

Oh, it looks a bit blurry, sorry! (promise I hadn't been drinking when I took this!)

and my lovely handmade cards from some dear crafty friends. Thank you SO much!
I went to Kew Gardens on Saturday, and there are a gazillion photos here

Not sure what time Julia will link up this morning, or I will join her - depends when I wake up. Why is it, when you wake at the time the radio alarm turns on, as opposed to beforehand (which is what I usually do) you feel like you are LATE?? How does that work....Ok, so this isn't short (sorry, Julia!) hope you'll let me off cos it was my birthday... please?!

EWV challenge - "brights"

Once again I am sneaking in almost at the deadline for the Yahoo group Everything Wendy Vecchi, this time round Lori challenged us to go bright. So, bright it is!!

Took advantage of my new Dylusion sprays that arrived last week, and the new summer distress inks that arrived last week (do you spot a trend?).... and played!

I used blue, red and yellow sprays on the tag, spritzing and blending with water and adding more spray to intensify the colour.  Then I stamped the letter background from Wendy's 'artfully said' set in the new salty ocean ink. Stamped three of the larger flowers from 'accents for art' in the picked raspberry ink ( love that pink!) and coloured them with shaded lilac and squeezed lemonade.

This challenge runs till Thursday so you've just got time to pop over to the yahoo group, join up and join in!

Crafty Boots challenge - Sport

Those of you who know me know that I love my sport, so you would think that the latest Crafty Boots challenge - a theme of 'sport' as chosen by Zoe, would be a doddle. Not a bit of it.... but it's Olympic year, and Olympics in London so I took that as my theme.

I made a card with strips of card with the colours of the Olympic rings and drew (badly) some Olympic rings (how hard can it be to draw round a bottle cap and still get the lines wonky?)

I took my 'art sayings' stamps which I still haven't mounted, or cut apart but cut out some of the more inspirational ones, edging them with vintage photo distress ink, to wish Team GB the best of luck next month. Go GB!!

A little journal play

It has been weeks since I played - properly - in my journal.  I've done some mopping up of ink (as in fact these started out) but nothing more.

So as a treat after I finally finished a tag for a DT piece (check back on Wednesday!) which I found a real struggle, I allowed myself some playtime!

 This is the left hand page and uses stamps from the Wendy Vecchi set Accents for Art, I love them.  Way underneath the layers of smooshed about sprays (Dylusions) is the background stamp from that set, and which I just inked to try out the  Peacock Feathers DI.  I'd added some white paint (Fresco) and tried to get some drippage down from the top but it wasn't hugely successful - I think because the paint is translucent (doh!!)

Today I went in with gesso and smudged out the background and then overstamped the other images.  It's all a bit of a mess but I was just playing!!

The right hand page started a few days ago, with mopping up some of my newer Dylusions sprays, red, blue and one of the yellows, and then today, again smudged them around with gesso to blur and blend.  Used Dina Wakley stamps on this page.  Thought the page needed some white, so added some splatterings of white paint (fresco again) by flicking the paintbrush.

Thought it needed some more white so added the solid white flower (Hero Arts) and the white fresco paint.

Neither page is beautiful but I prefer this one!