I've had a busy week with customers wanting special cards this week so instead of working on new stuff I've been doing variations on a theme. I took the basic idea from the card we did with Phil Martin but altered the size to be more useable and coloured with the new colour cloud inks instead of gilding wax. The results are shown below

This proved a popular design as I have sold 4 out o 5 already!

The card below was made at a workshop by Sharon and show yet another flower used in the design.

Peter Rabbit and friends

I was asked to do a Peter Rabbit card this week so I got out my print outs from the Peter Rabbit CD from crafters companion and set to to see how many variations I could do with these. (Also thinking I still have one of these for sale in the shop so perhaps samples would tempt someone into buying it..) I do get carried away with this sort of thing and keep trying various combinations until I realise I have spent days on this topic and really do need to get on with something else.
Here are some of my samples - sorry the picture seems a little dark at the back.

creative stamping - A tropical summer

This week I am going to show you some variations of my creative stamping cards which were done at the full day workshop this week. Since they showed me cards individually you are in for a treat - that of seeing cards in more detail than I usually show from my workshop boards. I hope you like them. If you are local and wish to try again the workshop is to be repeated soon - see my workshop list at www.llindas.co.uk

Since returning from my holiday in Pembrokeshire I have had very little time for crafting being very busy coordinating our village summer fayre which is tomorrow. Hopefully all will be back to normal next week and I'll have more to share with you.
Lorraine and I did go to a retailers workshop at creative expressions and so I have those cards to show you. We had the morning with John Lockwood and the decoupage papers, then the afternoon with Phil Martin and the coordinating cosmic shimmer products. We thought some colours were better than others for matching well in the various products Lorraine's Jade being better than my lilac. Anyway below are examples of what we did.

My holiday was good although the weather was not as good as that at home but what was nice was sharing the first weekend with my son his wife and our grandson who we don't see much of.

For those of you who are interested this is a picture of him then.

Just before I went on holiday I had been working with the Stampendous Pop Up die system thinking this would make another workshop to do over summer.

The pop up system is one die then you have die and stamp sets that can be used with the system. I opted for the dogs duo since you rarely see good dogs. Initially I just adapted the ideas which come with the packaging - I will try other ideas now I am back.

 I also tried using dies I already had for the flowers (although there is a stamp and die bouquet set, and a cat set and a nature set...) and again for the tree scene. The initial results are shown below.

I've not done anything this week since I've been on my holidays but I thought I'd show you some of the extra things I have done over the last few weeks. I showed you a couple of pieces of wall art 2 weeks ago and this is another - inspired by my playing with the distress inks.

We also had some transfer sheets in from Debbie Moore vintage chic collection. I tried these on the top so that items of clothing can be customized (problem was you could only use fabric with a low cotton content so that ruled out T shirts). I found by doing light transfers you could get many uses out of each transfer as I showed on the equipment roll and the bag. The pink I haven't made into anything yet but wanted to try them out on coloured fabric - although they also transferred well onto my turquoise ironing board cover!!

I have been working on the cards for the Creative Stamping workshop from the latest edition - Here comes summer.
I looked at doing different techniques 2 ways for a  lot of the cards and used distress inks & alcohol inks with the odd bit of mica thrown in. Hence there are far too many cards for the workshop but I got carried away!

Whilst not so busy I have been doing more cards with the new flower dies - some you will have seen before but some on the board are new.

Then I decided do do some wall art pictures

sorry about the refection here! - this was inspired by the work done by John Glossop - our creative expressions rep. although his have a lot more to them than mine.

Then when I visited an art gallery I saw a mixed media picture which I loved and came back and tried to replicate the feel of the picture on these cards. Next week I want to try a larger version as another piece of wall art. The card with 2 butterflies was using the new creative stamping stamps - which is why I was trying them stamped in 2 ways

Having started doing cards for the shop from earlier designs I decided to look back and see how popular shop cards have changed over the years. The designs are ones that have been used for birthdays, weddings and anniversaries
I started with hand embossed frames and a bunch of flowers, then move to simple cuttlebug embossed designs and now through the simple nesting dies to the more complicated ones and flower dies rather than punches.

ok so this is upside down buut you get the idea

Sorry nothing last week. I was busy sorting out rather than making cards, then I worked with the vintage chic transfer sheets on material. I will show you those projects when completed. Delays as have to do in house where sewing machine is rather than in the shop.
This week I have been building up supplies of cards for the shop and trying different colour combinations with card, papers and dies mainly from creative expressions. You may have seen the original designs on an earlier posting.