Summer at the Seaside 1

My first twinchie for the Summer at the Seaside challenge at Show us your Twinchies. I started with a piece of watercoloured background .... and certainly need flip flops for the beach.

Come Fly with Me

Where I play with paper and inks, my mother creates with flowers. I have no card to show today as I'm away visiting my mother. But I went to her flower demonstration morning with the theme "Come Fly with Me". Each hostess decorates her table. My mother and aunt did ours .... we flew to China.

Here we are, from L to R, my mother, me, my aunt

I loved this English garden table 

 My mother loved this one

Once we'd had our tea, the demonstrators (all chic as air hostesses) took us to their destination. They even made planes ....

Absolutely amazing. Helen took us to Monet's garden in Girverny, Paris. Not only creating, but keeping up an informative and fun discourse at the same time.

And some close-ups of the wonderful details 

Vaughn took us to the Philipines with the vibrant colours

And Clasina took us to the city of angels ... Los Angeles ... look at the angels hanging at the back.

And now comes the part that made me gasp .... after 2 hours of work resulting in such beauty, IT WAS ALL DISMANTLED!!! Can you imagine that?! So glad I captured it on camera to preserve some record of it, but photos are nothing to the real beauty. I don't know how these ladies do it. Can you imagine crunching and binning your card or scrapbook page a few minutes after creating it?

When I get back home, I'll definitely be making some cards inspired by these flower arrangements.

You make such a difference

This is my first card for Maddy ... sending encouragement and support during her fight against leukemia. As I'm posting it from South Africa, I'll be making another to post when I'm back home in Mauritius. 

I started with a sketch from Annabelle Stamps, and so will enter it in their Chose your Favourite Sketch challenge.

I had wanted to do this sketch when it first came out, but didn't make it. This was my idea .... and so happy that I could actually get round to making it.

You're a STAR

I love the challenge at Fusion this week. I was really taken with Lesley's photo challenge.

I saw the blue lines and the star. I knew I was going to use the Hero Arts Cornflower blue ink, then I spotted my tweed stamp and it all came together quite quickly after that. The diecut white star is from cardstock that has a shimmer to it - unfortunately it didn't come out on the photo.

I will also enter this into the Simon Says Stamp "S" challenge .... STAR!

And the Hero Arts Stamp your Story challenge.

Welcome Baby

For CASology Wheels Challenge

Using the Hero Arts stamp and matching die cut sets.

Light & Lovely

The Moxie Fab World Tuesday Trigger is so light and lovely

I didn't use birds, but love the blue and yellow, flowers and dots.

First Art Journal Page

I've slowly been accumulating the supplies needed to get into art journals. Although, not everything has arrived, I couldn't resist using what I had to make a start. I've sewn 10 pages of folded Neenah white into a journal and I think I'll be making hard covers. Since it was my first try, I thought I would start with a page of Neenah white which I could use as the cover .... and if it didn't work out, I would just try again. But I'm happy the way it turned out, so I will be using it as the cover.

Entering this for the Hero Arts Stamp Your Story challenge.

Gesso'd the page .... dried ... sprayed 3 colours of Dylusion inks & spritzed with pearlised water ... dried ... used the diamonds of Hero Arts Border mask and applied embossing paste to give dimension and texture ... dried (this takes much longer than you think!) ... painted a circle with white acrylic and Hero Arts Neon yellow ... drew the letters "Words" onto a printed page of an old book and cut out .... coloured with distress markers and blended with water - then added more white acrylic and Neon yellow to the tops of the letters ... stamped the triangle arrows in white ink (didn't come out very well so went over the V's in white gel pen) ... glued the letters down with gel medium (which makes the dylusions ink run - learning as we go along) ... stamped the "of life" and embossed with clear embossing as I didn't want the black to run ... added more white acrylic to the centre of the letters to make them shine ... doodled black lines around the letters and some dots.

Some close-ups

 of the embossing paste ... 

the luminous circle and black doodles ...