For Two challenges

Hopefully I'm catching up with myself a bit but only because I was awake soon after four this morning with no chance of getting back to sleep so I decided to get up, have breakfast and then into the craft room.  Mind you it feels like almost lunch time now (or at least elevenses!!).  I think I'm in time for the Make My Monday challenge which is to use the complimentary colours of  PURPLE AND YELLOW  and because I've used an embossing folder which has lain unused for such a long time and a small dragonfly X-cut punch equally neglected I am putting this card in for Judith's Forgotten Friday challenge as well. Background paper was a piece from my scrap box and of course the die cuts and punched elements used more scraps.  Embossing folder is from Cuttlebug, as is the word die, the large dragonfly was cut with a Sizzix die and Memory Box Tessatina die for a border.. The yellow card is from Coredinations whitewash range and has been sanded and inked with Lemonade Distress ink to bring out the colour.

I'm off now for early elevenses!!

Zentangle Inspired Art

Another tangle has been added to my Zentangle page.  Hopefully I will be able to catch up with some of my usual challenges tomorrow before it is too late - this week seems to have passed me by far too quickly somehow.

Twinchie challenge week 2

The challenge this week on the Twinchie blog is SUMMER - what summer I say - it has been raining steadily here again although thankfully looking a bit brighter now.  Anyway back to the twinchie and for a bit of fun and because I seem to be having a muddled week somehow I had a very quick play in Craft Artist and produced a summer scene which I then shrunk down to the regulation 2" size.  With hindsight I think I should have started with a square of the correct size but sadly more time to play at the moment - some weeks are like that I find. All in all this wasn't terribly successful but at least I've managed one challenge so far this week.

Edited to add one which is a bit more colourful and I started with a 2" 'canvas' on the screen in Craft Artist - pure fantasy of course and very quickly cobbled together.

This one looks smaller but in fact prints out at exactly 2"

P is for Poppies

This is the second of my tags for this month and predictably it is poppies - well there was a new stamp plate with them on from Chocolate Baroque which was irresistible!!  This one reminded me of the explosion of poppies which arrived uninvited all over my garden (including paths and the gravelled area as well) and they are various shades of pink and red.  Stamped onto watercolour paper and coloured with Coloursoft pencils, the seed head in the background is also a CB stamp which I've had for many years.  Quite a simple tag but then it is nice to have some less elaborate ones amongst the collection which is growing as the year progresses.

O is for Owl

Time to send off the Alphatags for this month and this is the first of them.  I'm all behind with posts and so on because I lost my internet connection (again) for most of yesterday - I do hate being cut off from the world!!  Who would have thought a few years ago that I'd be feeling like that because we'd hardly believed that we would be able to communicate so readily with people all over the country and indeed in far flung places too.

Anyway back to the tag - the large owl (a stamp from Chocolate Baroque) was gold embossed, coloured with Distress markers and cut out so that he could sit on the die cut fence.  Background was coloured with distress inks and the teasel and leaves were also stamps from CB.  Finally I squashed a bottle top, added another stamped owl (CB) and used Glossy Accents to make it into a nice embellishment.

It so happens that I've not used this owl stamp for a really long time so this qualifies the tag to appear on Judith's Forgotten Friday challenge.  Could this be a sign that I maybe have too many stamps??  The theme on Sunday Stamper this week is Embellishments and I know there is only one embellishment here (unless I can count the letter O at the top) but I did make it myself so hopefully that will be OK.  I hope Judith and Hels will forgive me for doing another 'three in one' this week.

Aura Knot

This is my first attempt at a tangle not confined to the square format and also the first time I'd tried any pencil shading - could do better I think but we all have to start somewhere!!

Well I set up a separate page for these but must have got it wrong somewhere because this has appeared on my main page as you can see.  Hopefully I can work out how to move it!!

So far no success in getting the posts to appear on the Zentangle page apart from including the images as part of the post on there so maybe that is the way to go for the future unless I can work it out  when I have a bit more time to play around with the settings.

Feeling Blue?

No I'm not feeling blue but the team over at Addicted to Stamps are asking for a predominantly BLUE project this week.  I've used a two step stamp from the Simply Soft set by Stampin' Up and repeated it three times.  Background paper is from the Vintage Shabby pad by Tim Holtz with edges sponged using distress ink.  A stamped sentiment also by SU, a ribbon bow and fancy corner die cut (Cuttlebug) were the finishing touches to this straightforward card - not exciting but definitely BLUE!!