Ribbon Inspiration

When I unpacked my last Papertrey order I pulled out these three ribbons in one handful and thought they looked so pretty together that I determined to make a card with them as soon as I got home. Raspberry Fizz, Summer Sunrise and the newest colour Simply Chartreuse.

I wanted something bold to reflect the colours and so went to one of my older PTI sets - Beautiful Blooms. They are not colours I would think to put together but it's good and sunny!

























I'm very glad that PTI are sending free re-inkers with their new formula inks right now as although the Chartreuse is a lovely colour the pad is very patchy - you can see that the leaves look more like they have been coloured with Copics rather than stamped in a solid colour - still I suppose it gives a bit of variation!

I hope you have all had a good holiday weekend - we have spent most of it in the garden planting out the bedding plants - well at least they are getting a good watering!


Stamps: Beautiful Blooms, Butterfly Dreams, Fillable Frames #1

Papertrey Pixies

Over at Papertrey Pixies, Teresa set us a challenge for May to create our own background paper - as you can see I took the easy option!

I used Sweet Blush and Ocean Tides along with my Butterfly Dreams and Background Basics: Retro stamps and I have stopped hoarding my Kaiser pearls and splashed out with three on each butterfly! I think I'll recover!

Favourite Colours

I would use Aqua Mist and Melon Berry all the time if I could - there is just smething about them together! This is for the favourite colours challenge over at a Passion for Papertrey this week and fitted well as I needed a little note card to send to a friend. I couldn't choose between the two colours so used them both!






















The layout is from an old Mojo Monday sketch - last December I think, and all the papers, ribbon and card are from Papertrey with the stamps from Verve.

I hope you have had a great weekend - it's been so beautiful and hot here in London and I hope it stays for the next Bank Holiday weekend.

Round & Round No.1

The challenge over at A Passion for Papertrey this week is to make something with a friend in mind. I broke out my anniversary set for this one tonight.

I don't often use Spring Rain and Enchanted evening even though I wear a lot of blue - it goes with my eyes don't you know! I do love the In Bloom paper but not my Enchanted Evening ink cube which is another cube that refuses to stamp nicely on the cardstock - so I resorted to versacolour Night Sky instead.

Such a cute little butterfly stamp in the set!

Poppy Background

When I saw this stamp I just had to buy it - I've loved every example that I've seen made with it. When I got it though, and stamped it off, I felt really intimidated by it and I put it to one side.

This weekend I felt it was time to get over my fear and get busy! Here is what I came up with first -

I stamped it in Memento Rich Cocoa ink and then coloured in with the Copic markers below. The sentiment is from Through the Trees by Papertrey and the cardstock is Hibiscus, Dark Chocolate and Spring Moss.

Whilst I had the stamp on the table I also made a quickie set of notecards to send to a friend - not a great picture but you get the idea! They were stamped in Papertrey's new inks - great for big stamps.

Thanks for stopping by this weekend and I hope it's been a good one for you!

Irises for May

It's May and so it's time for another page of my Flourishes - A Year of Flowers calender.

Still staying with the theme, this month is a mix of Papertrey papers and cardstock (Sweet Blush), copic markers and a touch of hodge podge hardware.

Here is a little close up of the flowers - I really like these colours!

Sweet Peas

After peonies, sweet peas are my next favourite flower - my Dad and I grow them every year on wig-wams in our gardens and there is nothing I love more than cutting bunches of them and having them all around the house - the smell is just wonderful!

That made this new set from Papertrey an absolute must for me and it was hard waiting for them to cross the pond after they got delayed by that volcanic ash somewhere over Iceland. I couldn't wait to play and even inked this up before the new anniversary set - shock, horror!

I went right out of my comfort zone with this red one - I hardly ever use red but I think the best sweet peas that my Dad grows with great long stems and the best perfume are red - Winstons I think they are called.

I used the Pure Poppy collection of Copic markers to colour these and married it up with Pure Poppy bits and bobs.

So I'm sitting on the sofa with Felicity on Saturday night watching a weepy film (My Sister's Keeper) she is painting her nails and I'm colouring the sweet peas below. Paul comes back from his blokes night out and sits himself down and says "Which direction is the light coming from then?"

"Pardon" I say, "What light?".

"On those flowers - which direction is the light coming from as some of those petals on this side look dark and dark on the other side too".

"Have you been on a Copic certification course lately?" says I.

"What's a Copic certification course when it's at home then? " he queries.

I reply "If I could get on one here in London I would, but I can't as they don't do them, so that's why the light is coming from the wrong direction"

Forgetting for a moment that he is a trained draughtsman and a design engineer I go off in a huff. He promises me that he will show me how to do it "properly" sometime soon! Well that will be cheaper than a course I suppose!

So after boring the pants off you with my ramblings here is the offending colouring made into a card with matching Sweet Blush card stock and a hint of spring moss and ripe avocado!

























Both of these cards were made from sketches in the Paper Crafts Go to sketch book - I'm still loving them!
I think they go well with the Passion for Papertrey pretty petals challenge so do hop over and see the other beautiful cards here.

If you are visiting form the UK have a happy May Day holiday tomorrow. I haven't seen any Maypoles to dance around this side of London so I'll be crafting away instead and trying to work out which way the b***dy light is coming from......

Blue Dahlia?

Is it allowed as I don't think I've ever seen one in nature?

I just love this layout that Debbie Olsen used here to make a card with the Violets Year of Flowers set and thought I'd give it a try with the Delightful Dahlia set and dies. The flower is stamped onto the Bitty Box dp in memento ink and touched up with copic markers.


























The little words along the scallops are from the mini scrapbook series: tabs - fun aren't they?

Waiting for Butterfly Dreams

I have the die but not the stamp set - it was constantly out of stock when I wanted it! So I decided to go ahead and play with the die using some pretty pattened paper as I have seen on many blogs of late.


















The paper is from a really pretty pack from Papermania that my friend Lynn sent me and the quote is from a set by Stamp Camp.


Funnily enough the stamp set arrived this week after a little delay because of one volcanic ash cloud - so watch this space for many more butterflies!