Laura Rumble - Crafter

 Happy Tuesday!  It's time for a new colour swatch at CC&S ... It's a beautiful colour palette and one I tend to be drawn to often as a lover of all things green and being partial to a bit of peach, specifically Nectar from C9.   I've added a touch of stencilling in the background and layered up three butterflies on top.  A simple stamped sentiment (W Plus 9) underneath finishes it off nicely. You know I love a chance to play with my extensive thread collection and it's not a surprise that I had a perfect match to my inks.  The thread is simply wrapped around the middle of the butterfly with the loose ends acting as antennas. I hope you'll join us at CAS Colours and Sketches for this beautiful colour combo!

 Lots of chickens!  What could be better?! These are from a set by Time For Tea Designs called Ewe are Moovelous.  I'm yet to use the sheep or the cow but I just adore the chicken.  (And the chick, and the little daisy!) I cut the chicken shape out of a panel of teal card in as even a grid as I could manage.  I then used that as a template to stamp the chickens on to a white panel.  When the teal panel is popped up over the white panel it gives a really fun sunken chicken look. I reversed this on a second card for popped up chickens.  This time I stamped the chickens in different shades of blue, aqua and green ink. The background is a heart die cut layered (Time For Tea Designs) on a stitched panel (Heffy Doodle) and the greeting is a die cut birthday (Create A Smile) and stamped happy. Which do you prefer - Sunken Chicken or Popped Chicken?!

Every once in a while a stamp set comes along that just steals your heart.  For me, Pretty Pink Posh's Dinosaur Friends and Dinosaur Additions have done just that. They are sets I have used for design team work for My Perfect Stamp over and over again.  I have the matching dies too which has opened up the possibility of even more ways to use them. I have heat embossed... made cards... Stamped and coloured with copic markers... scrapped... and even made a wreath which has proudly hung on my door for months now... And the thing that gets me is every time I pull it out I am flooded with ideas - still now, months after its release and at least 15+ projects in  

  A trio of 'congratulations on passing your driving test' cards.  Why a trio?  Hmm, I do only need one but I figure if I'm playing with this many stamps I may as well stamp multiples!   I would not want to do this type of project without a MISTI.  Mind you, I don't really enjoy any form of stamping without a MISTI these days.  It's such a good tool and a must have in my craft room. I started off going through my stamp sets and pulling out anything positive and congratulatory.  I also threw in a Vrooom! and a Beep! for good measure! I arranged them in my MISTI, snuggling them together in a pleasing way with as few gaps as possible.  Gaps don't matter all that much as it's easy to go back and fill the in with a second phase of stamping. I picked my inks based on this week's Colour Throwdown challenge.  To mix things up I did one background with ombre stamping. I pulled out a few dies from my stash... I wanted to pop up a section or panel of ...

 Hello!  Here's my take on December's Stick It Down sketch...     I'm a fan of this sketch (if I can say that about my own sketch?!) as it is so versatile.   I have switched the circles out for tags.  I reckon the design will work for the majority of shapes - I quite fancy having a go with stars.  The challenge would be finding a photo that would crop well.   I have been enjoying my advent calendar this month.  I've got a couple of mini blending brushes which I was keen to try out.  I pulled out a Skull and Cross Buns stencil and a few Pinkfresh inks and had some pastel fun for the background.  Wanting to carry on play with the blending brushes I coloured up a few white tags too.  My attempts at ombre blending were iffy but I'm pleased with them nonetheless. I added detailing to the tags and background using a couple of Jen Schow stamp sets and a grey ink.  I thought black ink would be too harsh with the pastel colour pale...

Blogging some photos of last years Christmas cards made with Skull And Cross Buns clear stamps... These first two cards use the Scandi Christmas set. I love this messy heat embossing with 'spilled powder' and 'confetti stamping' peeking out from behind the main feature. These foxes can be found here .

 I'm quite excited about this layout... I have used StickerKitten's Space stamps and Wow! Embossing powder to create a space scene.  I've then painted over it with bright colours and seriously questioned my sanity.  But this is one of those 'trust the process' techniques.  When the brightly coloured sky is dry you go over with a couple of layers of black watercolour.  When you add splatters on top of that it comes to life as a starry galaxy.   I went a little further and added some glow in the dark star sequins.  It is SO COOL!!  When I turn my light off at night I see the layout glowing.  I will say it wasn't the easiest thing to photograph but I shut myself in the wardrobe to capture this photo... I think this is my favourite layout so far this year. Here's the process video: