I Spy With My Little Eye #3

Hi everyone, I'm back after a couple of non-crafty weeks due to being away in Derbyshire for 10 days over the Coronation period (which also included my birthday), followed by a week of trying to catch up with myself whilst partaking in Eurovision fever which was sweeping Liverpool where I live last week … but more of that later! So grab a cup of tea - it's going to be a long post!!

Today is the 3rd Wednesday of the month already. so it's time once more for a new I Spy With My Little Eye... challenge over at Ellibelle's Corner.  This month's theme was chosen by me, and it is...

I Spy With My Little Eye ... Something With Wings

There are lots of options that you could choose, so we hope you will be able to join us. We also have two brilliant guest designers joining us this month - Gundi from Papierelle and Katrina from ScrappyHorses, so please do visit the challenge post and get some more inspiration.

I made a conscious decision  with this card to use an older stamp for a change, and I remembered I had this lovely Woodware vintage style butterfly.  Having decided on that I also felt motivated to use a number of snippets so that I could complete my homework for the Snippets Playground, including a small one of white stamping card, a large 6" x 6" snippet which I had previously used to create a faux woodgrain background, and a couple of larger snippets of coloured cardstock for matting. I even found a small snippet of lace to use on the front ... do I get extra brownie points for that??

Here's the result.

I previously made my background on a 6" square piece of card by dragging Distress Oxide inks over it to form a "faux woodgrain" effect, then softly stencilling with more DOX through my Lavinia "Divine" stencil (it's actually so soft that you can hardly see it on the finished card!!). For this card I added some 2nd generation sepia background stamping of a woven burlap pattern, then stamped my "vintage" wording also in sepia ink. I die cut a deckled rectangle shape from my white card snippet, and stamped the butterfly in sepia and heat embossed. I then created a smooshed background with Antique Linen and Old Paper DOX, and blended Vintage Photo DOX round the edges, before colouring the butterfly with Stormy Sky DOX. 

I matted the image onto my background panel, then added lace and twine before matting onto three layers of card stock which all had their edges distressed with my distressing tool. I stamped the birthday sentiment (which I masked off to spread over 2 lines) with Pinecone Versafine Clair and coloured the letters with Vintage Photo DOX, and added a couple of pieces of washi tape. Finally I added a die cut flower to the right of the main image, and matted the finished piece onto a 7" square card blank.

Stamps: Woodware Butterfly, Made For You (birthday sentiment); Indigo Blu Sarah's Choice (background stamping);

Media: Tim Holtz Distress Oxide inks (Antique Linen, Old Paper, Stormy Sky, Frayed Burlap, Vintage Photo); Versafine (Vintage Sepia); Versafine Clair (Pinecone);

Tools: Lavinia stencil - Divine; Spellbinders Nestabilities - Deckle Rectangle die; unbranded flower die (Amazon); Tim Holtz distressing tool;

Other: Washi tape - Craft Sensations at The Range; lace and twine from my stash.

Challenges I would like to enter:

Allsorts #728 - Anything Goes with option Embellish It

C.R.A.F.T. #677 - Birthday

Crafty Catz #637 - Anything Goes with option Add Ribbon, Lace or Twine

Creative Crafting Uncles #41 - Butterflies - TOP 3

Let's Craft and Create #195 - Anything Goes with option Use Ribbon, Lace and/or Twine

Snippets Playground #454 - Use Snippets

Sparkles Forum #164 - Things With Wings

Stamping Sensations (May) - Anything Stamped with option Add a Stencil

Use your Stuff #484 - Use a Technique 

(faux woodgrain inking)

Word Art Wednesday #595/596 - Anything Goes

The I Spy challenge starts on the 3rd Wednesday of each month, and will end on the Sunday before the next challenge starts at 23;39 US Central Time - so that's Sunday June 18th.

Please do pop over to Ellie's blog to see the fab creations of her and our guest designers, and link up your winged creations here.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, I've had a busy couple of weeks with holidays and Eurovision fever. Here are a few pics of the adorable animals we encountered at Yorkshire Wildlife Park while we were in Derbyshire, the and last but not least .... Liverpool does Eurovision!! I went with my husband into the city centre twice - one evening to see an English National Opera performance of Eurovision hits in the Eurovision "fan village" in front of the historic Liver Building on Liverpool waterfront, and the second time we just wandered around the city on the afternoon of the Eurovision final. It was absolutely teeming with people, the busiest I've ever seen it.! The general consensus in the media seems to be that Liverpool hosted a fantastic two week music festival, and it is projected to boost the Merseyside economy by £250 million over the next 2 years!!

Yorkshire Wildlife Park

Eurovision comes to Liverpool

Phew! I think that's enough for today ... I'm getting back into the swing with crafting now so hope to  be back soon with more makes.

Take care, and thanks for visiting.

Hugs,