Good Morning Fellow Crafters! I am so excited to be joining Sweet Nothings Stamp Co. and it’s very talented Design Team for a September Creative Challenge. I was lucky enough to be asked to participate as a Guest Design Team member for the month of September, many thanks Lina for the invite. This means I got to play with some of the gorgeous Sweet Nothings digi images and tag along as a DT member this month - heaps of fun,... Read more →

Woohoo - I was able to play along with the regular Sweet Pea Stamps DT for Variations week - you can see everyone's take on using the Toucan image on the Sweet Pea Stamps Blog. What I used: Toucan image from Sweet Pea Stamps, designed by Ching chou Kuik Impression Obsession Cover-a-card stamp - Lg Paisley Paper Doily from eBay (coloured with Bells of Ireland Green Starburst Spray) Flowers from I Am Roses Stickles Glitter Glue - Stardust Wooden Charm... Read more →

This background technique is great for making your coloured image just leap off the page - look at how this image just 'pops'. To make this work, the key is to choose colours carefully so that the image and the background colours match. To get this right I like to colour my image first and then create the background - on this card I picked 3 colours used in the image, blue, purple and black and used these to ink... Read more →

This has to be one of my favourite Christmas cards that I have made - sorry but I only made the one and it went to my Mum. This one is a combination of - 'I wonder what would happen if' and 'wow I love that stamp' the result is a somewhat vintage Christmas card with a little bit of cheeky mixed in. What I used: Distress Ink Pads: Festive Berries and Black Soot (on Santa), Walnut Stain and Brushed... Read more →

I had soooooooooo much fun creating this page - I learned loads of new things about the products I used, tried drawing my first cute bobble headed figure, made my first paper flowers and used charcoal pencils for the very first time. I loved every minute of making this and I hope that shows. What I used: Lindy's Stamp Gang products: Starbursts - California Poppy Gold & Poinsettia Red Gold (flowers), Freaky Franken Lime & Lucky Shamrock (Stems) Color Shots... Read more →

This is probably the Copic technique I am most proud of (this one is all me baby - actually an original idea!) amazing what you can come up with while playing with quality products! I will do a YouTube clip for this as it's a little involved, but here are the basic instructions. I entered this technique in the 'Favourite Copic Technique' challenge over on Copic Creations: Challenge No 47. What I used: X-PressIt Blending card Distress ink pad: Antique... Read more →

I decided to combine 2 things I've wanted to try - colouring something Antique white and colour co-ordinating with unusual coloured background papers. This is the finished result from my experiments, which I was totally thrilled to have accepted for PUBLICATION in the Feb 2011 issue of Vamp Stamp News. What I used: Copic Markers used: Dress - E40, E42 & E43 + Blender pen Hat/ Shoes - G40, G82 & G94 Shawl - E70, E71, E74, R81, R83 &... Read more →

Wow these took a while and talk about LAYERS!!! I won't go into details here about how I created the flowers, as there were sooo many steps and you can see this on my YouTube channel, I will give a full product listing though so you can find what I used if you'd like to try these yourself. Without any more commentary here are my Asian Grunge flower cards using Tim Holtz Tattered FLoral Dies and half my stamping stash...... Read more →

This card was inspired by the stamp plate from Oxford Impressions - Heart of Dixie, the main stamped image in particular, the man's eyes - were just speaking to me :) The stamped panel, was the first element of the card I made, everything else sort of grew around it. What I used: Burnished Brass Moonshadow Mist Ranger Distress Inks by Tim Holtz: Vintage Photo and Black Soot Cuttlebug embossing folder: Script Civil war veteran photo stamp from Heart of... Read more →

Challenge: To step out of my colour comfort zone OK these were a bunch of fun to create! Yellow and Orange are not my most used colours (OK almost never use these), but I love the way these turned out, so bright and cheerful! If you'd like to know how these were created read on, of if you prefer to watch, you can click on the You Tube video clip at the bottom of this post. What I used: Orange... Read more →

OK - something glam, something girly, something green! I wanted to test out my new Albrecht Durer watercolour pencils, so I started small. I'm still learning about lighting and where to place the highlights and shadows - but even so, I'm very impressed with these pencils - they are just soooo smooth, and my favourite thing is that they blend without pencil lines or streaks. I thought that this may also be a good time to test out the 'Glassy... Read more →

OK - anyone who has ever been to one of my classes or demos, would have seen me using at least one of the products from Lindy's Stamp Gang: Moonshadow Mists, Starburst Stains or Moonglow Embossing Powders - yes I love the sparkly shimmery rich colours I admit it! Well I was lucky enough to have the lovely Lindy ask me to make some Scrapbook pages for her, this is one of them. I was so upset to learn that... Read more →

Do something different with a previously made main image OK - a few years ago I made a whole bunch of card fronts intending to enter an African swap - short story... the swap didn't go ahead and I had a bunch of scenic zebra images created. I made some of the images into cards at the time (eg: to the left), but had 3 left over images - coloured, stamped and ready to go. They have festered in my... Read more →