Mothers' Day Mindscape!

Here's a picture of the card I made for my mum:The bird comes from the Inkadinkado Mindscapes set - released just this year - which when you look at them closely are actually made up of other images (butterflies in this case): It took me a while to realise this, being a bit slow on the uptake!!! I wondered why they'd called it mindscapes!
The background is stamped with Elusive Images Autumn Hedgerow and Nature Table stamps - I love building up backgrounds this way.
The background paper is a new one from Artylicious, which should be coming out soon. The colours were just perfect for this card!

Cheers!

Helen

Carnival

This is a canvas that I made for the Elusive Images stand at the NEC trade show:It uses the new Carnivale, Celebrate and Mardi Gras themeplates and K & Co. Classic Boxed papers:The wire round the outside is a coat hanger bent into shape and attached with wire staples. I went to my local hardware shop Bunces for those. They're great in there - I go and say what I want to do and they tell me what I need!

Cheers!

Helen

More felting

Talking about felting, here are two very simple cards I made using a felted accessory as the centrepiece:
In each case I've added some extra texture to the heart/flower by felting in some coordinating wool. I also stitched onto the heart with gold thread - was going to do the same with the flower but ran out of thread! The scrapbook papers come from the K & Co Classic Boxed set.
Helen

Happy Birthday Mil!

I have to say 'Happy Birthday' to my sister-in-law today - it's a big one!
I made her a card using the Elusive Images Paris stamps which are fantastic: :
The Notre Dame image is edged with one of the Prima Build-A-Frame sets and the whole card is bordered with a stamp from the Prima Paris set. I've stamped on Crafty Individuals Spring papers and the deep red/pink paper is from Cosmo Cricket Fleuriste.

I also made her a small felted wallhanging: The stamps are from Elusive Images - the owl (one of my favourite owl stamps) and the larger leaves - and the smaller leaves and flowers are from the Prima text Build-A-Swirl set.
I got my felting supplies from the Altered Element, a wonderful mixed media shop! If you haven't tried dry(or needle) felting you should, as it's so easy and produces great results. Lynne's got all sorts of interesting stuff in her shop!
I met up with my brother and SIL yesterday and my brother was making her cake having had detailed orders of what sort of cake she wanted (I seem to remember banoffee sauce came into it!) - I hope it's turned out well!
Anyway, enjoy!

Helen

Trade show tales

Well, I'm back from the Trade show at the NEC where I was helping on the Elusive Images stand. The team are fantastic to work with and always make me feel very welcome, so thankyou Glenda, Adrian, Lynn, Judith, Emma, Carrie and Annette! We were nicknamed the GLOGGS - you'll have to work out what it stands for as in all the excitement, I've forgotten! I know we had a good laugh about it.
I got to help Glenda teach her 3 workshops on the Saturday which was great fun.I've never really done much workshop teaching so it was great for me to see an expert at work. Glenda assures me I'd do okay if I was let loose on an unsuspecting public! I met loads of new people, some of whose business names I recognised and also people I'd met from last year. Hi everyone!
Meanwhile the others put up the stand which looked fantastic with all the artwork and new products. After that, it was a case of meet and greet and get to talk about all my favourite products for three days! I'd nearly lost my voice by the end of it.
Can you believe it, I didn't take a single photo - too busy telling other people they couldn't take photos!! I won't tell you who I said that to (in the nicest possible way, of course) but let's just say they were a very well known person in the industry and Glenda had to step in quickly! I did think they looked rather familiar!! Me and my big feet! What with that and the trials and tribulations of the zapper, I'm surprised they put up with me! If you want to see some photos of the stand, the artwork and the GLOGGS, go on over to Glenda's blog and have a look.

Cheers!

Helen

Flowers galore!

Here are two cards using the flowers from the Elusive Images Butterfly Collage plates.
The first card uses Artylicious papers to make the flower and the background is made using Glimmer Mists and stamped with the Corner Flourish:
In the centre of the flower I've just blobbed some clear glue and then piled on beads:
This next card uses the K&Co Classic Boxed Papers to make up the background and the flower. I've stamped the edge of one of the collage stamps to get the diamond pattern:The flower centre uses an old button with some wired beads:
Don't forget to watch the show tomorrow!

Helen

Butterfly Collage

Glenda's new show on Create and Craft is on Tuesday 10th Feb. at 1pm. This show launches the Butterfly Collage stamp sheets. You can get a sneak peek of the stamps from the card below:
They're wonderful stamps to use. I've combined them here with some Artylicious papers and then I've used Derwent Inktense pencils to colour in the main image. I can see why they're called 'inktense'! The colours are really rich. When I'd finished edging the card with the pencils, I decided the background was too white, so I just wet my finger and rubbed it over the colours to spread them around a bit:
If you go on over to the Elusive Images blog over the weekend, there's going to be some blog candy!

Enjoy!

Helen