Dinosaurs for Miss Three

Hi and welcome, I've been busy re designing my crafting area with the help of my very clever hubby who has been building new cabinets and shelving to store my enormous collection of stamps and tools from over twenty years. Before and after photos will come soon.
 Due to this process of completely clearing out my studio and adjoining room I haven't been able to do any actual crafting but I did make a few cards before the whole process began. One of which was for my gorgeous little Granddaughter who lives in Melbourne with her mummy and daddy, she turned three on Monday and is an absolute joy in our lives, she loves dinosaurs and is very good at naming them, the family came over to Western Australia to visit us for an early Christmas in Nov and every time we went out for a drive we would hear a little voice from the back seat say "dinosaurs" when we approached a certain rd, none of us could see what she could see and we turned to her to ask where she could see dinosaurs, so without delay she answered "Pterodactyls" Well you could imagine how impressed Gigi (me) and Granddad were that she even knew how to say Pterodactyls, let alone know what one looked like at the ripe old age of two, but then she proceeded to point up to the electricity lines which had spacers on them which really looked like pterodactyls.
 A few days later we all went  to visit  Aqwa which is a beautiful sea aquarium filled with all the sea creatures from around our shores, there was a really lovely gift shop at the finish of the tour so we all popped in for a little look around, Granddad found some plush toys and among them were some different dinosaurs so he thought he'd ask miss T what they were, he showed her the first one which she looked at and counted the horns before shouting Triceratops, we and all the other customers were very shocked, then he pulled out a pterodactyl and of course she impressed everyone again. So I thought it only appropriate that I try and make her a Dinosaur card with the afore mentioned creatures adorning it. I made sure there were three of her favourite dinos to count flying in and on her card.  I made the card using some of our current DSP (designer paper) and stamped the 'Look who's turning' sentiment from a retired set called 'Number of years' I heat embossed it with Pool Party embossing powder. The dinos were all fussy cut and I enjoyed every minute of creating this card for our special little granddaughter. I even managed to find a dinosaur that the googly eyes fitted on.
 I hope you like it as much as she did...

Thanks for stopping by, inky hugs from ...

A flower by any other name...

 Hello my dear craft loving friends,
Firstly I'd like to thank all those who took the time to visit my page on the blog hop last Sunday, it was lovely to be invited to join and I really enjoyed reading all your lovely and encouraging comments, I really loved visiting all the other very talented demonstrators blogs and seeing all those incredible projects. There' certainly some amazing talent out there.
 I thought I would keep the ball rolling so to speak and show you another card I have made using the products from our new mini for 2020, this one is using mostly the DSP which coordinates with the Best Dressed Suite on pages 54-56, I just gave myself a challenge to NOT use more than one stamp for this card and instead try to use the beautiful DSP (designer series paper) to make the card shine.
 I don't mind a bit of fussy cutting and actually find it quite therapeutic "I know you think I'm a bit weird now".
 So after fussy cutting the flowers from one sheet of the paper which is 6''x 6'', I used a pearlised doily and coloured the edges with a Stampin' blend marker I cut into one side to allow me to ruffle the edges and the adhere the finished doily to the underside of the circle which was cut using the Stitched shapes dies, I stamped the Happy Mother's day sentiment from the Dressed to Impress stamp set in a coordinating colour of Old Olive, the flowers and leaves were all fussy cut and some of them were sitting on a cushy bed of dimensionals to give the card height and texture. I added a few Old Olive rhinestones for a little bling and some wink of stella over the centers of the flowers.
 The inside just had a few more little blossoms to carry the theme through. I hope you like it and I hope my mother in law likes it when it comes to mother's day too.
 Thank you so much for stopping by and I do love to see your comments.

Take care, inky hugs from .....

ESAD 2020 Mini Catalogue and Sale-A-Bration blog hop

Welcome, you may of arrived here from the talented Jenny Bowman's blog, what beautiful projects she creates.
I'm sure you are so full of inspiration and can't wait to get your inky digits on some of these amazing new products. This new "Hand made for you" mini catalogue and Sale-A-Bration catalogue is so beautiful and I found it difficult to choose which sets I was going to ink up for this project. I hope you enjoy looking at these cards and clutch bag ensemble which were super fun and easy to make using the new Peaceful Poppies suite.
 This first card was made using the Painted Poppies stamp set, I stamped the poppies with Momento Black ink and coloured them in using my aqua brush and Poppy Parade ink pad, by squeezing the closed ink pad which makes a little ink puddle for you to pick up the ink from with your aqua brush.
 I used some thick Whisper White card stock for my base card and Basic Black card for the diagonal strip on which the white strip with my images were matted on. I coloured a few extra poppies, fussy cut them and then adhered them to the card with dimensionals. The matching envelope has one of the poppies stuck on the front too.

The inside was just stamped with some texture stamps from this set and I also added the sentiment from the coordinating set called Peaceful memories.
 The next card in this ensemble is made with the gorgeous new 3D embossing folder called Parisian Flourish, it can be found with the Parisian blossoms suite on page 15 of the new mini. I embossed the Poppy parade card stock and then gently sponged over the card with Momento black ink, followed by some swipes of Versa mark ink and then I tipped some gold embossing powder over the the card before using my heat tool to finish it off. I stamped another of the pretty poppy images several times over the white cardstock, I masked some of them to build up the illusion of a field of poppies with all their seeds flying in the breeze. The thank you sentiment on the front was from the Peaceful moments set and I heat embossed this onto black cardstock with white embossing powder.
 The matching envelope was stamped with the same set and coloured using an aqua brush and ink pads.

Both of these cards and envelopes slip inside little plastic pouches in side a faux clutch bag, I made this bag using Basic black cardstock for the base and then embossed the Poppy parade cardstock with the Parisian flourish folder, using the same technique as the card above.
 After adhering these pieces together  I added the strap made from Basic black, Poppy parade and Gold foil card, I used a gold metallic brad to give the illusion of a rivet.
 This makes a nice gift for someone who loves to send cards and you could always send new cards for them to replace the used ones with.

this is what it looks like inside, along with its matching pen. I rolled coordinating DSP arround the inside of the barrel so it looks just right in the center of this cute clutch.

I do hope you have enjoyed your blog hop so far and thank you so much for stopping by to see my projects.
 Please hop on over to see Sharon Dalton's beautiful projects.

Blog participant List:

1. Nicole Wilson

2. Shannon Kissane

3. Rochelle Laird-Smith

4. Denise Buetler

5. Rachael Lewsley

6. Bronwyn Eastley

7. Lou Kitzelman

8. Libby Dyson

9. Sue Vine

10. Peta Stephen

11. Monique Fielder

12. Narelle Fasulo

13.  Cathy Pinchbeck

14. Jenny Hayward

15. Mae Collins

16. Cheryl Algie

17. Richelle Fletcher

18. Kathryn Ruddick

19. Kayla McCreadie

20. Jenny Bowman

21. Charmaine Black

22. Sharon Dalton

Hello and Welcome....

 I'm super happy to finally get back on my blog after a very long break, I've still been posting my creations on my Facebook business page which I have found to be a much simpler process for this old chook, but with a good nudge from a fellow demonstrator (Thanks Nicole)to join a blog hop tomorrow I was persuaded to get that old grey matter moving and jump aboard the fast train into 2020.
 I thought I'd start with a little peak at the new Stampin'Up!® mini catalogue 'Handmade for you' which is just gorgeous and jam packed with soooo many beautiful new products, it was released yesterday the 3rd of January along with this year's Sale-A-Bration catalogue which is also full of must have FREE (with qualifying order) crafting tools and stamp sets. (You can see both of these catalogues in my side bar on the right) But if you would like a hard copy and don't already have a Demonstrator, I'd be happy to send you one.
  I have had fun playing with a few of the new sets and thought I show you my first one made with the set called 'Under my umbrella' which can be found on page 42 of the Hand made for you mini, the set comprises of 15 photopolymer stamps with gorgeous sentiments in pretty fonts, along with super cute umbrellas which can be cut out using the fun coordinating umbrella builder punch.
 I just punched out some umbrellas with  water colour paper and then just washed over them with my aqua brush using the following fresh colours: Granny apple green, Mango melody and Melon mambo, giving them an ombre look by letting the colour lighten up at the bottom of each brolly.
 I used thick whisper white as my base card which I masked off with post-it notes before sponging with Coastal cabana, Bermuda bay and Granny apple green. Once this has dried I dripped some water from my finger tips over the inked area and blotted with paper towels to remove some colour, leaving the illusion of rain drops, to add to this effect I also used some Shimmery crystal effects which has to my great delight been carried over from our Holiday mini.

Thank you so much for stopping by, I hope you were inspired to get inky, please feel free to ask any questions or just say hi.
 Inky hugs from Charmaine

It's been a while..

I'm not really sure if this is going to work but if it does I just might resurrect this blog!

A little baseball...

 Hello fellow stamp addicts, I hope this finds you all having an inky week! I unfortunately have had quite a few unfortunate weeks of mishaps and accidents ;-( but I'm hoping things can only get better ;-) So I thought I'd share last weekend's inky session that I enjoyed with some very special friends who always cheer me up and lets face it, how could you frown when colouring in this cute little Lala land baseball Luka. I paired him up with lots of Stampin'Up! goodies to complete this card
including designer paper for the paper piecing technique used for his uniform, which is a fun way of colouring in your images.
 I rarely colour in boy images so this was quite a struggle for me to be honest, I guess it's because I only had girls and wasn't really in the habit of making many cards for boys. I hope you like him and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me, don't forget I love to get some blog lovin' too so please leave a comment to let me know you've stopped by for a visit.
                                            The finished card...

                                        A closer look at Luka.....

                                            The inside view....

                                           A different hat...

you can click on the image for a closer look if you wish, thanks for stopping by, lots of inky hugs from .....

a little water colour wonder...

 Hi there craft lovers, I've had a very special weekend of birthday love, my eldest daughter flew over from Melbourne and was able to join our family for a birthday dinner at our favourite restaurant, the only one missing was daughter number two as she is currently living back in the UK ;-(.
 Anyhooo! this post is about the wonderful medium of water colour, I love dabbling in a bit of water colour technique and this was no exception.
 Whilst attending this year's Stampin'Up! south pacific convention on the
Gold Coast, I was privileged to watch a lovely young lady called Petra Tailor do a really lovely technique in one of the booths. this first card is my interpretation of her technique, using a few different colours but I love this technique and will definitely be using it again. Can you spot the beautiful new set called  'You've got this' I'm totally in love with this set, the sentiments alone are good reason to have this set in your stash. check it out on page 113 of the new catalogue, if you don't have one you can either browse it on line on my website found to the right after the 2nd of June, or you can contact me for your very own hard copy.

the colours aren't that great in this photo but I'll do my best to get another one done soon to show you, I've used the new colours Delightful Dijon, Mint Macaron and the returning colour Night of navy. The ribbon is Wisteria wonder seam binding and the card is matted onto silver foil, onto brushed silver then onto Whisper white.
 The second card is a new technique I've developed using an aqua brush to do the thumping technique instead of the usual marker pen way. I have used the new colours that were mentioned above as well as Old Olive and Rich Razzelberry. Just click on pictures for better view of colours.

The stamped image of the tree is from another of my go-to sets called Sheltering tree. I hope this post adds a little serenity to your week, if you would like to learn these and other techniques please contact me for details on my classes or check out my list of up coming classes on my web site : http://charmainesinkyhugs.stampinup.net/  lots of inky hugs from ........