Autumn approaches

Thanks to everyone who came along to my demonstration at Crafty Corner in South Shields yesterday. It was great to meet you all and I hope that you will all be getting nice and inky with the ink sprays and spritzers! As promised, here are just a few of the cards from yesterday to remind you of what I was doing.

The snowman from my "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" set,stamped coloured and cut out and I used Stickles Icicles over his ruffles and pom pom buttons. The background is the Crafters Workshop Aspen Trees stencil that I used Distress inks through, adding less pressure as I moved down the card. The words are from my Inspirational Christmas Quotes set. Super simple!

This card is one of those that came from creating something else! I was inking a Sweet Dixie die cut dove with Versamagic and I decided to make use of the negative. I placed the dove onto a piece of card that I'd already decorated with Goosebumps spray and Distress inks and then stroked the ink over the image...thereby coating the die cut and creating the negative at the same time. I embossed the dove with both gold and silver powders and the card below with just gold.

I was showing how brilliantly Dylusions ink sprays work to create backgrounds on white card but here I used them on some manilla coloured card. By adding the opaque White Linen spray to the other, transparent, colours,it completely changed the look and toned them down. I used images from my Moon Gazer stamp set and a white gel pen to add highlights.

 Of course, as I hadn't been to Crafty Corner before, it was only right to do one of my faux bleached snowman scenes! This time, to ring the changes, I decided to work directly onto 300 gsm card that I had cut using the Sweet Dixie Holly and Star die. Those of you who have seen me demonstrating this technique before will know how simple it really is....just Distress inks blended over the card and then the snowy foreground, trees and snowman created just with brush and water...with a few details added to the snowman of course.

Of course, the cards I make on demo days do tend to be rather "unfinished" looking...often without greetings or those little extra dimensional extras - it's all about the techniques on the day!

I'd gone up to Newcastle on Friday (quite a trek) and stayed in a hotel right next to the rail station. A beautiful interior greeted me as I entered, including two magnificent chandeliers....

....they were e-nor-mous! I wouldn't fancy the job of cleaning them and they did give me a smile remembering the famous Del Boy chandelier moment!

Today has been a bit of a rest day as I was really shattered after all the travelling and getting home late. Church this morning followed by coffee with friends and then home to enjoy some sunshine in the garden.I'm making the most of the warmth as there are definite signs of the waning season...coming home last night it was already dark by 7.30pm (groan) and this morning I had to squeejee the condensation from my  windows - how depressing! To crown it, when I set off for Church, there were skeins of geese flying overhead, honking away....there we have it...autumn is on the way!

Still, the darker evenings do tend to herald good telly programmes! Downton was a real treat tonight...no spoilers though in case you haven't watched it yet! Good start to the new series though.

Well, I'm away to my bed now.My sister, Heather, is coming round tomorrow and we're going to be spending some time together in my Doo Lally work room....I guess that means we probably won't get much done if past experience is anything to go by! (Yack, yack, yack.....!).

Don't forget to leave a comment below the Blog Candy post (a few posts back) if you haven't already done so. It finishes on the last day of September. Night all.