January Journal Page

The  cold New Year in the UK has made quite an impression on me already! I am a sunny kind of person (my children think I photosynthesise in sunlight!) so the cold gloomy days are not my favourite! In honour of this cold start to the year I made a journal page. I intend to make a page a month so this is January’s! Let’s see if I stick to that “resolution”!!!

I started by brayering blue paint onto the page. Don’t worry about making this look perfect – the imperfections are what make the page work! Use as many blues as you like – it all adds to the depth of colour! Then I added white paint over the top. I didn’t clean my brayer as I don’t mind a bit of overlapping paint!

Then, using a snowflake stencil, I sprayed blue ink onto the page. I didn’t tape the stencils down as I like the ‘danger’ of seeing if the ink bleeds underneath! On this occasion it didn’t really but often it does and, for me, that all adds to the organic make up of the page!

Then I stamped the balloon man onto the page and again onto card. I also stamped the label onto card. The balloon and the man were painted with watered down paint and then cut out. The fussy bits (like the balloon’s strings) were already on the page so I just added the cut out pieces to the page. I wanted the swirl on the balloon to stand out even more so I re-stamped that on card, cut it out and adhered it to the balloon. The label was cut out and inked with Brown Distress Ink. When it was all in place I added the year and the month.

Hope that the cold January isn't affecting you too much! Thank you for popping by! 

Gabrielle x

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Love Those Scraps!

Hello everyone! Jennie here again and today I am sharing a set of cards made from scraps.

I expect like me you have an ever increasing scraps box which sits under the desk and I always have good intentions of using all these little pieces of much loved papers. I am not one for making new year's resolutions but I thought I would try and dive into this box every now again this year. And this is my first foray!

I pulled together papers which I thought would work together, although I had no idea how I was going to use them.

 These are all papers from different sets - you can see how I don't like to throw anything away.

Apologies for the blue haze on the photographs - we have had some very dark days and these were the best I could get.

Browns and neutrals are always easier to put together.

As my scraps were small I decided to go for 4 x 4 cards and designed a background using layering stencil, distress inks and a gorgeous stamp from the Classics #13 set. 

I am really loving these three punches from the Tim Holtz collection. My flowers were made by punching two of the Tattered Florals and one of the Spiky Floral. These were then spritzed with water and scrunched up.

When dry I pulled them out a little with a bone folder and layered them on top of each other.

And so here are my five cards with just a few little strips of my scraps and some co-ordinating flowers. I even found some butterflies in the box too!

Thank you for joining me today and my apologies for the poor quality of the photographs. They didn't look too bad in the camera, but have not transferred well! 

Hopefully better weather is on its way soon!

Jennie x

Live The Dream

Tim Holtz Layering stencil - Harlequin	Tim Holtz Layering Stencil - Schoolhouse	Tim Holtz Stamper Anonymous - Classics #13 stamp set	Tim Holtz Distress Ink - Faded Jeans
Tim Holtz Distress ink - Iced spruce	Distress ink pad - Frayed burlap	Sizzix Punch Tim Holtz Large Laurel	Sissix Paper Punch by Tim Holtz - Tattered Flower Large
Sissix Punch Tim Holtz Spiky Floral Medium	Tim Holtz stamps - Simple sayings

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Take the Rough with the Smooth

Welcome to a new week, it's Brenda here to show you some of the outcomes from our Country View Workshop last week.

I designed and created nine new textures using the fabulous DecoArt fluid acrylics and mediums adding in some embossing powders as well and everyone made the most of the day finding out not only how to create these themselves but learning how the products can work with each other to create different effects. There are more close-up photos on my blog Bumblebees and Butterflies.

Here are some photos of the workshop participants and some of their finished mini boards - we ran out of time to mount them onto the larger boards so they can hang them in their craft rooms but they enjoyed the fun of creating and learning new the new techniques. Thank you to the wonderful Di at Tando Creative for making up the kits specially for us, they worked a treat.

Take a seat and maybe a cuppa and join in the fun and atmosphere of the day.

Isn't it incredible how different they look?

My thanks to Sue, Margaret, Jackie, Lyn, Carol, Sheila, Di, Linda, Hazel. Jane, Heather and Vonny for a day filled with fun and laughter and moments of complete quietness and concentration. Your finished boards were amazing and showed the individuality and creativity of you all.

If you are interested in joining us for one of these creative days the dates for the year are published on the CVC Project blog and all the details and booking will be on the shop web site generally about 6 weeks before the workshop date. We hope you will join us sometime and thank you to all those who already do.

Enjoy the week and stay warm if you are in the UK as we have hit a cold snap at the moment.

hugs Brenda xxx