A warm welcome to all my visitors,

Thank you for taking the time to come and look at my blog, I really do appreciate it. I would love you to leave me a comment, even if it’s just to say Hi. It means I can come visit you!

All my designs are original, so copyrighted to me. If I have been inspired by someone elses work, I have named them in the post, and where able, I have provided a link.

Please feel free to use my designs for inspiration, I just ask you to credit me, and provide a link back to my blog.

Thanks, Shaz XX

Wednesday 28 May 2014

WOYWW #260- the 5th Birthday edition

So, here it is, our Fifth anniversary! Happy WOYWW Birthday to everyone. No crafting on my desk, unless you count the boxful of stuff taken to the anniversary crop, glaring at me waiting to be put away. Having taken the easy option of moving the box to another desk(!), I can now show you the ATC's I received at the crop. Hop on over to The Stamping Ground, where Julia is waiting to welcome you (probably armed with cake,lol) to this weeks Birthday link-up.

What an amazingly talented bunch you all are- every one is a work of art. Its funny how many of us took the theme of 'friendship' for our ATC's too. I will draw your attention to the gorgeous grey and black ATC on the top left- made by our 'non papercrafter', LLJ! I think its stunning, Jan you are hiding your talents away! The purple and black Art ATC on the left wasn't from the crop, by the way, that came in the post from Sandra de, thanks Sandra. As for the crop, we all had a truly fabulous day, as I'm sure you will guess from all the pictures on the various blogs. So much fun catching up with old friends from last year, and meeting some new ones this year-Debbie,Chris, Lynda, Nicky,Christine, Cindy and all. LLJ did us the most amazing lunch, as always, Julia kept us supplied with tea and coffee, and laughs. Plates of cake came round so often, I think we all probably gained a couple of pounds! Kyla and me took over a corner of the tables, side by side, so we could get as messy as we wanted without giving the tidy crafters the heeby jeebies, lol. Photographic evidence to follow. Not only did I have a wonderful day at the crop, and a lovely weekend for Beloved Hubby and I staying with LLJ and her family, but on Friday, Visible Image stamps had run a Facebook Like, Comment,Share competition, for a couple of lucky people to get a set of their new Fantasy stamps. Done as a random draw, I was stunned when checking my Facebook page back at Jans, to discover I was one of the two lucky winners! What a weekend. Now, back to the photographic evidence I promised(threatened) you with:


You know its not going to look like this for long.......








 .................and it didn't.







WOYWWers everywhere you look.









Julia appears to be having words with Angus..............








...........and attempting to keep us all in order.











Jan, camera in hand..................



Mine and Kylas little corner...........
What you can't see is that we'd also taken over a table against the wall, and the corner of the stage, rofl!.....................










...................But you can from this angle.











Mary Anne and Di standing, Maggie, Lisa and Zoe, Debbie and Nicky ( I think) sitting down.















 Jan looks like she's dancing into the kitchen..........................












We have Lunch Lady Jan, now meet Tea Lady Julia, with Sam and Chris waiting for their brew.
















Dinner is served........................










.....and rapidly demolished by a bunch of ravenous crafters.

 I'm sure you will find a few photo heavy posts this week from all the croppers, so apologies if I've kept you far too long. Have a great week everyone xx.

Wednesday 21 May 2014

WOYWW #259

Good Wednesday, all. Almost there-1 week to our 5th Birthday. Wouldn't be the first time in my life I've been accused of acting like a five year old, lol. And now, three whole days to the Anniversary crop, yay! Looking forward to meeting people from last year, and some new faces.
 So, pic of the week: assorted stuff from the ATC frenzy of the weekend- actual finished ATC's out of shot. Have to admit to getting a little panicky last week- not even started, and not a clue what to do. I'd been waiting for inspiration to strike- more like it had gone on strike :). Then, a comment I spotted during the rounds last week (can't remember who's blog it was on,) from LLJ about dandelion clocks provided the much needed light bulb moment. Jan, you are a sanity saver! There was a lot of winging it involved, but I do a lot of winging it, so I'm well practised at that- but I had the basic idea to get started. Finished them Monday afternoon. Phew.
 I'll be taking them to the Crop, and anyone not going who would like to swap, e-mail me your addy and I'll put one in the post. There's an e-mail link in my left hand side bar.
 I will be bringing  my dies again, this year I will definitely remember the Nesties, lol, and I'll also bring my embossing folders so bring your cardstock/paper!  If anyone has seen me use any stamps they'd like to get images of, let me know and I'll bring them too. Here is an idea of the dies etc, from last years post.
 Not sure what I'm bringing to actually do- fortunately we've got a 4x4, rofl.
 By the way, Beloved Hubby is a bit of a Tech wiz, so anyone with laptop/pc problems, bring them along with you, he'll sort you out. Have a great day everyone, see you later.

Wednesday 14 May 2014

Chocolate Baroque Guest DT Post

A few weeks ago I was offered the opportunity of doing a Guest DT post for the Chocolate Baroque DT blog, which blew me away. Also made me panic somewhat I must admit. What to do? So many talented crafters  on their site quite makes you feel the pressure,lol.
This was my project, I decided to stick with what you know, a card, but I did add extra pressure on myself with colouring the image. All my regular visitors know how I feel about my colouring, but even I was quite pleased with the finished result.

This was actually the second image I coloured, as I tried first stamping onto a piece of mountboard, as I had an idea to add some magnetic photo paper to the back to turn it into a removable fridge magnet, but the Promarkers tended to bleed badly on the mountboard, so I reverted to normal card for the image.
One of the wonderful things about Glenda's stamps is how beautifully they mix and match, you are never limited to working just with the stamps in a particular set. For this project, I’ve used stamps from four different Chocolate Baroque sets: Serenity, Gothic Fragments, Floral Edges and Words of Wisdom. 

I began by taking a piece of white card roughly 6” x 6”.  I sprayed it with a mix of blue and purple; I mixed Distress Re-inkers (Salty Ocean and Seedless Preserves) with water in mini misters, but any spray inks will do the job. After spraying, I blotted the paper with kitchen towel, which left a lovely muted background.

Now I overstamped this piece with a couple of stamps from the Gothic Fragments, one of the Floral Edges and the Wisteria branch from Serenity. So the overstamping stayed soft to match the background, they were all stamped in Salty Ocean, and each time I stamped the image onto scrap before stamping on my background, giving me a paler second generation image.  I sprayed a second piece, roughly 3” x 6”, in the same way, then overstamped with another of the Gothic Fragments, finally inking up the Old English Prayer from the Words of Wisdom set in Versafine Majestic Blue and stamping that over the top.



Next I took another piece of white card, and stamped the Buddha image from Serenity in Memento Tuxedo Black, as I was going to colour it with Promarkers.  Using the ink left on the stamp, I also stamped a post-it note mask for the image. I trimmed the mask on the lines, so I would not get a ‘halo’ effect around my image. The post it mask was placed over the top, so that I could add colour to the ‘sky’ around the image, using Adirondack inks in Aqua, Stonewashed, Sailboat Blue, and just a touch of Denim at the edges, with a Colorbox Stylus tool. You can do this with sponges, an ink applicator or brushes, whatever your preferred method is. The sky took up roughly 2/3 of the image, so the bottom third was coloured for grass, again with Adirondacks in Willow, Citrus and a little Lettuce. Any of these inks can be swapped for whatever dye based inkpads you may have.

After this was totally dry, I added colour to the image using markers. The final touch was to add gilding flakes to the shrine the Buddha is sitting inside, and to the adornment on the Buddha's head. This I did by using a Versamark pen, Judikins Sticky Stuff embossing powder and gilding flakes.The background sheet, Buddha and the Prayer were each matted onto dark blue card.
For my base card, I cut two sheets of dark Grey Metallic card to 9”x 7 1/2”. Measuring in 1 1/2” from one short edge on each sheet, I scored a line down the card. At this point I also cut two sheets of white copy paper to make an insert for the greeting later, always wise when using a dark card base. Sandwiching the two white sheets between the two pieces of card, I punched two holes in the narrow section that had been scored. Now I threaded fibres through these holes, and tied together.  You could use twine/ribbon/string,  whatever you like. My ‘fibres’ are actually ‘eyelash wool’. I added a pale purple and pale blue brad top and bottom of the spine to secure it firmly.
Now the background sheet was stuck to the card front using double sided tape, and the Buddha image mounted on top of that, again with tape.  I added little foam pads to the back of the Prayer, to give a little dimension, and mounted it at an angle partly over the Buddha image.The final little embellishment I spotted lying on my desk- a little punched dragonfly. I had some scraps from a project a few weeks ago, using gilding flakes on black card, and had punched a few dragonflies and butterflies from the last bits. I added him with a little blob of
silicone glue.

 
 Supplies:
 Chocolate Baroque stamps:Serenity, Gothic Fragments, Words of Wisdom and Floral Edges.
 DI ink refills Seedless Preserves and Salty Ocean
DI Inkpads Salty Ocean and Seedless Preserves
Adirondacks Aqua, Stonewashed, Sailboat Blue and Denim, Willow, Citrus and Lettuce.
Memento Tuxedo Black 
Versafine Majestic Blue 
 Sticky Stuff embossing powder
 Versamark or embosssing pen
Gilding Flakes
 Markers of choice.

WOYWW #258

Hi folks- I'm back! Missed a few weeks, on holiday last week, and a lot of hassle waiting for a bed to be delivered the week before! Trying to make a courier company understand that we need a proper delivery day & time, as working nights mean we need to sleep during the day was like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling.  Ordered it two weeks before we were due to go away, as it was Next Day Delivery. It actually arrived 10 minutes before we left for the airport. Anyhow, not a thing on my desk, as we only arrived back in the UK at 2.30am on Monday morning, a couple of mugs of decaff with proper milk later I felt fairly human.  Off to bed then and when we got up we had a flatpacked bed to assemble. Not to mention unpacking and washing.Why is it you can pack in an hour, but it takes at least four to unpack and put everything away? So where did we go? Lanzarote, which was lovely. Temperatures on average 27/29 C. Quite windy, due to the Trade Winds, but that made it pleasant to walk around in.I've put some pics at the end of this post, which you can look at or skip- it takes an age to get around all the desks I know. Speaking of desks, Head Desker Julia over at The Stamping Ground is waiting patiently for your link, as always.
The only other interesting(maybe) thing I've done lately is change my hair colour:

 This is my hair before:


  This is half way through:


 By the way, the enormous white thing in the picture is the Memory Foam mattress, ready for the new bed, which DID arrive the next day!










And the end result?

My original red, into purple, then into blue. Needs more purple next time, I think.

Edited Update!
 This just ceased to be the most exciting thing I've done! Just checked my e-mails, and today I have a Guest Design Team project being showcased on the Chocolate Baroque DT Blog! I did the project a few weeks ago, but couldn't show it yet, so in the next day or two, I will do a post with it.

So thats what passes rather loosely for my WOYWW post this week, I promise to do better for next week,lol. I shall also be laughably attempting to link in when I come out of work using my new smartphone, instead of waiting till I get home. Don't make the mistake of holding your breath on this one, in this case the technology is way smarter than the user. First day while putting all my numbers in, I randomly called four people. So we shall see how this pans out.
 By the way, going back to holidays, and flights. Does anyone suffer from ear pain when landing? Or know anyone who does? If so, Hubby found a brilliant cure after a bit of Internet research. I've suffered every time we fly, the pain being so bad I'm almost crying with it.  Apparently, its due to having very narrow tubes in the ear, and I've tried all the regular 'cures'-Flight ear plugs/chewing gum (which I loathe)/boiled sweets- nothing works. But Sudafed Nasal spray does! A blast when I got on the plane, one about half way through the flight (I was being ultra cautious), and one half an hour before landing. Result- pain free landing for the first time ever.So it definitely works.  Have a great Wednesday everyone, I will leave you with a few holiday snaps.

                                                                                                  Its amazing how big the cactus grow.

                                  


I has a cocktail, lol. and a ride on a camel.








Food being cooked using Geo-Thermal energy for the restaurant on the Volcano.









Amazing alien landscape of lava flows........






................. and 300+ volcanoes.












An End of an era

An end of an era

I write this with a broken heart, that only time can heal My beautiful, wonderful wifelet Shaz (Silverwolf) passed away peacefully in the ea...