Hello
Welcome to my Sunday post for That’s Crafty, at least, a sneaky peek at my post. To view the complete project then please visit HERE.
Have a lovely Sunday, enjoying the last day of August.
Wishes
Lynne

Welcome To Wonderland ….. A Giveaway – Now Closed

Hello Everyone
As recently promised, it is time for a Giveaway.
It is no secret that I have loved Oxford Impressions stamps from the very early days of my stamping life and over those past few years, I have grown to love this company more and more and in my view, Oxford Impressions have the best collection of Alice In Wonderland stamp sets.
One winner will become the owner of this Oxford Impressions’ Classic Alice stamp set.  This set is approximately A4 in size and as you can see, it is bursting with stamps.

If you would like the chance of winning this stamp set then please leave a comment before the closing date of Friday 12th September.  If any of you would like to share on your Blog’s sidebar or at Facebook then please tell me so that I can add your name a second/third time into the hat.

In advance, many thanks to any of you who join in with my Giveaway.
Wishes
Lynne

Dreamy Days At Wildflower Cottage

Hello Everyone
I could not believe it, when I looked through draft posts, I came across this particular one where I had written that this was one of Crafty Individuals new releases…. except they have since released a whole new crop of stamps, tell me, where do the weeks go that this is no longer one of the new stamps!!
This stamp,  CI-411 brought to mind country cottage gardens,aiming for a shabby feel with a mix of natural textural elements.
It was by pure chance I happened upon the stamping surface I used as it wasn’t what I initially hand in mind. This was a panel of found paper which I had prepared for another project (but never actually used).  I liked the effect of the brush strokes, giving a distressed appearance to the stamped image. On receiving the new stamps CI-410 jumped out at me especially for the lovely sentiments so I had to use one immediately which I stamped onto a wood panel I roughly painted. Some of the natural elements:- jute, burlap, balsa and driftwoodI dipped into the same stamp which the sentiment came from to stamp the lovely butterfly, I know, I should have stamped a dragonfly to match the sentiment. Thank You for your visit to my Blog today.
There is still time to enter the Crafty Individuals Autumn Fashion challenge.  Visit Jean’s Crafty Individuals Blog for details.
Wishes
Lynne

Listen To Your Inner Voice

Hello Everyone
Welcome to my Sunday sneaky peek at my project for That’s Crafty this week.The project can be viewed in full HERE.
Have a lovely day.
Wishes
Lynne

A Man’s World @ That’s Crafty Challenge

Hello Everyone
A few words to tell you that over at the That’s Crafty Challenge Blog the theme is This Is A Man’s World.
As always, there is a £20 gift voucher to spend at That’s Crafty for the winner, a fabulous prize.
To read the rules for entering please visit the challenge blog, link at top of post.
Wishes
Lynne

May Dreams Come True

Hello Everyone
Welcome to this post which sees me sharing a sample for Darkroom Door, using the new Criss Cross Texture Stamp.
This sample was made along the same lines as a sample I shared recently HERE , where I laid down texture and paint before stamping one of the Texture Stamps to form a random pattern for a background. Alongside the Criss Cross Texture Stamp I also dipped into stamps from the following sets
Wildflowers Vol 1
Art de Fleur Vol 2
As with the sample shown HERE, I once again stamped the wildflower stamp with paint instead of ink.
I wasn’t entirely happy with the stamped impression and laid it aside to place in the rubbish bin but for some reason, it caught my eye. Picking it up again I decided to go with it because the nature of the wildflower stamp almost lends itself to a slightly shabby/grungy appearance.  Now that I have the photograph in front of me I should have listened to my first instinct of wanting to bin it because maybe it isn’t so much shabby/grungy but truth be told, a messy result.A sentiment is all I used to finish this card.So no, story, no wonderful characters, only stamps, paint and some textures to form a card.
There are now several Texture Stamps available and all can be found at the Darkroom Door on-line store, link at top of post.
Many thanks for taking the time in visiting this post, it is always appreciated.
Wishes
Lynne

Pearl Dances Amongst The Waves

Hello Everyone
Redlead Paperworks are known for their stamps and stencils but they also have a stunning collection of collage sheets whether for Halloween, Christmas, Nature or why not have a look at their Ancestor collage sheets.
When I laid eyes on Redlead Paperworks’ Ancestor Collage Sheet No. 8 I so wanted to work with one image in particular, a girl who I came to call Pearl.
If you are interested in the Redlead products used on this canvas then I will give you a link for the stamp used.  The sentiment I used comes from a stamp which has two other sentiments on it, great value and can be found HERE.
To see Pearl dance amongst the waves, it has been said there are those who whisper that she is a Mermaid Child and if you were to find yourself swimming alongside Pearl then she surely would turn her green eyes upon you and swear upon the sea that she is a Mermaid but if you were to take a moment to look a little deeper into her eyes, is that not a mischievous glint.
It is true that Pearl wishes with all her heart that she were a child of the sea because it is where she finds joy. Running down to the ocean she whiles away the summer days bobbing atop the waves, where the seaweed entangles itself amongst the tendrils of her hair so that you do not know where her hair ends and the sea begins.
Her happiness most certainly floated, like the waves of the ocean. 
The end result is not what I had in my mind as I planned on working with colour. Let me show you a photograph of the initial texture I created and also the paints I laid down onto the deep edged canvas, colours which were eventually made to be more muted in tone. I also changed the orientation of the canvas.
A froth of gauze to mimic the froth atop the ocean’s waves and a flutter of mica flakes, the sunlight glinting on the waterand a scattering of pearls.This sentiment was so perfect for this image of PearlI will leave Pearl to catch the final waves of the Summer.Many Thanks for visiting my first post of this brand new week.
Maybe you are savouring the final days of Summer or maybe you have already waved goodbye to Summer, which appears to be the case in my little corner of the world.
Wishes
Lynne

Make Your Mark

Hello Everyone
Welcome to my Sunday post where I share a sneaky peek at my DT project over at That’s Crafty where I  continue to play around with colour
If you would like to see the project please visit HERE.
Have a lovely day.
Lynne

Embrace The Everday In Life

Hello Everyone
When Darkroom Door released their latest  batch of stamps which included the new Line Art range, there were also some additions to the Texture Stamp range. One of the Texture Stamps I received was  Texture Stamp, Damask.
I had already inked up Splatters and Flourish to create accents for my Line Art samples, but I hadn’t inked up the Damask stamp. I was keen to emphasise the texture element of this range, that it isn’t necessary to create a full background, you can ink up the stamp in a random fashion to create texture on backgrounds.
Previously when I spent time making cards, for me, the pleasure wasn’t purely in the stamping but also in the gathering of little pieces of this ‘n’ that whether fabric/lace fragments, scraps of textural paper, buttons, seam binding, anything that caught my eye and a tag usually formed part of the card, all resulting in cards which tended to be dimensional. So, keeping with this time where I am trying to not always go with my formulated way of creating,  I am laying down the texture first and telling myself to step away from the little fragments which would normally adorn projects.
I wanted a boldness to the flower (Darkroom Door Friendship Flowers) which I could have stamped with black ink but to keep with the textural, slightly mixed media feel to the card, I opted to stamp with  paint. Full details will appear at the Darkroom Door Blog which is constantly being up-dated with DT samples from all the team.
This is a 6″x4″ cardbase but the actual substrate I worked on was HP watercolour paper 300 gsm.
The Damask  pattern is quite subtle in areas, I liked the variation on the background, maybe you can see the texture in the background. A simple sentiment was added to remind us all to embrace lifeI hope this day is an opportunity for you to embrace life
Wishes
Lynne

Butterfly Mornings When Secrets Are Shared

Hello Everyone
In this post I would like to share a Crafty Individuals team sample where I have used one of their new stamp releases
CI-419 Lovely Day designed by Gio and dipped into an Elements set from the previous release of stamps, CI-410.
I set about working on this sample immediately after this journal page HERE.
For this journal page two words were in my thoughts, dreamy and texture with the sentiment, butterfly mornings (from CI-410), creating a springboard of an idea in my head
 as though the girl has woken in the early hours of the morning, taking a stroll through a nearby glade where the morning mist swirls around her as butterflies alight in her hair and whisper their secrets to her
Although this page was most definitely random, I did take the time to plan where the stamped elements would be, purely for the reason that I wanted to ensure those areas where relatively free of texture.  Beyond that initial planning it was all about laying down texture and various paints. This was fun because I looked around at the paints I have and dipped into this and that whether they were chalk or satin paints, whether they were caran d’ache or Gelatos (black) and also Twinkling H20s.So let me share with you details of the page.
That piece of embossed floral is a fragment of wallpaper sent from Darlene.  I only use a smidgen of it as it is amongst my treasured stash.  When paint is added to it the flowers are beautifully enhanced.This is another piece.  Initially both were painted to blend with the background until I decided to apply a beautiful Caran d’ache NeoColor II crayon, Phthalocyanine Green before adding highlights from a black Gelato.
This page really did transform as I worked on it.  Initially the colours were quite bold, now remember that my use of the words “quite bold” regarding colour isn’t necessarily the same as your interpretation, remember I come from a world of timeworn pink, sepia, cream and winter white!  Patches of yellow and lilac are some of the colours which remained peeking through the layers, they were actually amongst the colours first laid down, that was until I continued building up layers of paint, Gesso and allowing the paints to blend together, running down the page.
Lace, muslin and gauze were some of the other textures applied to the page.Let’s now shift the focus onto the stamped elements, with Gio’s woman taking centre stage.
It was a great leap recently when I did just that for the Darkroom Door Line Art stamps but for me, although it is something I greatly admire when I view artwork by others, I prefer to not to.  It would have been tempting to paint the butterflies in her hair and the butterflies around her but I liked the effect of seeing the background colours shine through.  After stamping I applied a wash of Gesso, to enhance the dreamy effect.The sentiment above is also from Gio’s set.  In the past I tended to simply stamp a sentiment as it came but at the moment I am trying to not always go with my norm,  so I arranged it differently and with a Stabilo pencil I quickly drew a box around each word.Thank You so much for your visit to this scheduled post and many, many thanks for not only your visits and comments for previous posts but also the encouragement I am taking from your comments regarding my use of colour.  For me, dipping my big toe into colour is rather alien but I wanted this to be a year where I would dabble a bit more, working in an art journal, using colour, etc.  In part it was sparked by DT stamps.  Being part of Crafty Individuals team is a dream and I class myself as so lucky but in all honesty and I am sure it doesn’t come as a surprise to learn that I was struggling with the Alice Palace designs.  I would see other stampers create (such as Coco) and they made it look so effortless to ink up the designs but for me, no matter how I tried, they were not fitting into my shabby chic/vintage style.  Since shifting my attitude towards those stamps I realise that all I needed to do was sit back and have FUN and that it is okay to dabble outwith the shabby/vintage style.  I was setting too many constraints upon myself.  There is no doubt my heart will always be a shabby one but I feel as though I missed out on inking up other stamps just because they did not fit into that particular box.
This all might be short-lived, who knows but your feedback, whether positive or negative, does help me because there are many samples at the moment which I look at and I don’t see anything of me in it, that is a little bit disconcerting.  As I said to the lovely Renee, I need to stop over-thinking! LOL. As much as stamping is a passion for me and I know you all relate to those words, I do wonder if I lost the fun of it along the way.  I do have a fun project which I will be sharing very soon, not for Crafty Individuals but for Redlead.
A short word before I leave to remind you that the Crafty Individuals Autumn Fashion challenge is underway.  All details can be found HERE.
Wishes
Lynne
P.S. I will soon be sharing a Giveaway soon.  It would be lovely if you wanted to be part of it.