Live Every Moment

Hi everyone, just a quick card from me today to “keep my hand in” as I’ve not been crafting ‘cos I haven’t been too well all week. I started on Monday with a terrible sore throat, sniffles and soon developed a hacking cough … I suspected it might be the dreaded lurgy, but I took a test which said no. I never left the house until yesterday afternoon, and then only for a quick stroll to the Post Office.  Feeling a bit better now though I'm still hacking and my sneezes are on the Richter Scale!!

In the meantime I’ve been rearranging my craft space, aka the dining room. I had supplies in a dining cupboard and a craft tote in the corner, but always had to run up and down stairs to bring down other frequently used items that resided in the study, plus there was a lot of unpacking/repacking of the densely packed cupboard and tote … I was really frustrated by it! My husband recently offered to give over his CD drawer unit for me to keep some stamps in while he relocated his CD collection to the study, and when I tried it out it worked really well, so I decided to get a proper grip of my stash. This week I have had two storage towers delivered which sit neatly in the corner of the dining room where the tote used to be, and have enabled me to bring nearly all my stash together arranged in a much tidier and more accessible way! I’m still getting used to it but I’m hoping it will be much easier from now on to get crafting if I just have a spare hour or so…. plus I’ve rediscovered some stash I had forgotten I had!! Best of all I was able to clear away after my latest crafting session in 5 minutes flat .. yippee!!

Here’s a quick card inspired by a Jo Rice tutorial.

I was quite fascinated by Jo’s technique of creating a smoosh panel on a masked piece of card using Zig watercolour brush pens scribbled onto acetate then spritzed. I don’t have any Zig pens (yet?) though I do have some cheap watercolour brush pens from The Works, so I thought I’d give it a go with those. I masked, scribbled and spritzed to create my watercolour panel in pink, orange and purple, then stamped Aurora as she seemed the most suitable fairy in my stash for this layout. I coloured her wings and the flowers using Sakura Stardust pens then overlaid that with Spectrum Noir clear sparkle pen, and highlighted her with white gel pen. I also coloured over the body of Aurora with my clear sparkle pen as Jo did in her video, though I have to admit I wasn’t too keen on the result. Jo uses Wink of Stella which I don’t have … I don’t know if the Spectrum Noir sparkle pen is the same but I felt the sparkle looked a bit too thick. 

Anyhoo I ploughed  on regardless. I stamped a sentiment from the fab new Pink Frog set I purchased while ordering some Pink Frog stamping card (as recommended by Tracy Evans), which I was able to collect in person last week as I discovered the warehouse of this family business is in my home town of Chesterfield 😀. I also stamped a birdie and dragonfly to fill a bit of space, added a bit of black fineliner doodling round my sentiment, and followed Jo’s technique of adding some trails of dots around my fairy, though I made mine sparkle! I finished by edging the piece with black marker and matting onto purple card stock and a 6” square card blank.

I wasn’t too displeased with how the water colouring turned out though I’m sure it would be much better with some decent pens! 

Stamps: Lavinia Aurora, Fairy Bugs, Bird Collection; Pink Frog Typewriter Sentiments;

Media: Watercolour brush pens from The Works; Versafine Clair (Nocturne); Sakura Stardust pens (pink, orange, purple); Spectrum Noir sparkle pen (clear); Posca sparkle pen (violet); gel pen (white).

Challenges I would like to enter:

Colour My Heart #564 - Use at least 3 Colours

(Raspberry grape, nectarine)

Creative Inspirations (August) - Fairies

Double Trouble #146 - SomeThing, AnyThing, EveryThing

Happy Little Stampers: Watercolour (September) - Anything Goes with Watercolour

Krafty Chicks #679 - Anything Goes

Paper Dragonfly #21 - Anything Goes with option Include a Dragonfly

Sheepski #78 - Make It Feminine

Simon Says (Monday) - Sparkle and Shine

Simon Says (Wednesday) - Anything Goes

Simply Create Too #194 - Use Stamps

Sweet Stampin' - Doodling - TOP 3

Word Art Wednesday #611/612 - Anything Goes

Hope everyone is having a great weekend … last one before the kids go back to school and autumn draws on!! Take care and thanks for visiting.

Hugs,