Finished it ....

PHOTO HEAVY!!

.... Morning! It's been quite a while since I posted anything remotely creative! Well this morning, I'm sharing pictures of my completed black Dyalog insert book. I started working on this book when I came back to the UK last summer. I spent many happy evenings in different hotels doodling backgrounds, adding images and words to my pages. I shared some of those pages on the Facebook Dyalog & Creative Dyary group last year. I spent some time this past weekend in my craft room finishing off the last few papes - and it's all done now.

I'm going to enter the current Love to Craft Challenge - LTCCB#35 where it's Anything Goes. Here's one of the spreads I worked on:

Inks: Dylusions Spray Inks - Postbox Red, Polished Jade; Posca - White Paint Pen 0.7mm bullet nib
Accessories: Dyalog Black Insert Book #1; Image from Dylusions Colouring Sheets #1; Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Glitter Gloss

I started on the right-hand page by drawing the boxes by hand - hence the wobbly lines! I added lots of different doodle designs using a white Posca pen. I picked one of my favourite images from the colouring sheets book, cut it out and adhered it to the page. I doodled the border, added a touch of colour using my paint pens (Tim Holtz water brushes filled with Dylusions spray inks), and finshed off by adding the quote. Sadly, you can't see the sparkle on the little labels on her coat from the shimmer pen - it's so pretty!!

Here are the rest of the images from the completed book - I had such fun working on this and can't wait to work on more.

Apart from one "oops" I used only Polished Jade and Postbox Red inks as the spot colours, on the "oops" page I used Cut Grass and London Blue. Most of the stencils are also from Dylusions. I do hope you've enjoyed looking at my black Dyalog.

We are fully settled back into our house in Wales - so nice to be home, but I do missed Scrappy Chic and Stampeddlar - my local craft stores in Michigan. I am fortunate to have Dyan's shop - Art from the Heart, here in the UK, but it is a three hour drive from where I live. I will be visiting later this year - more of that later.

Life here is very busy. I'm almost recovered from the surgery I had on my ankle - cast off and now having physio and learning to walk with my new fixed ankle. We've done renovations on our two main bathrooms, and will be started work on converting a couple of rooms on the ground floor and the double garage into a suite for my mum. She can't wait to move into her new place. After that we'll be renovating the kitchen - but more of that much later.

That's all for now - thanks so much for sticking with me. I hope to get back into a more regular pattern of posts again soon. See you!

It's done!!

... Well, hello all! It's been quite a while since I added anything to my blog. This is a long post, but keep going to the end - there's something special!!

As you may know from previous posts, we moved back to Wales in October last year after very nearly 7 years in Northville, Michigan. It's wonderful to be here, but I do miss my stateside friends. And I really, really miss my local US craft shops - I was very lucky to have two wonderful shops within easy reach of our home in Northville - Scrappy Chic, Livonia and Stampeddlar, Northville. If you're in Michigan, both are worth a visit.

Now that I'm back home, I'm finding that my local shops are probably going to be online shops - Seven Hills Crafts, Art from the Heart (yes, I do know there is a real shop and I'll get there soon), Bumbleberry Crafts, and I'm sure I'll find lots more soon.

We've been extremely busy since getting home - lots of renovation work being done on our bathrooms - will share photos once the work is completed. And I've been busy sorting out my craftroom. I'm very lucky to have an enormous room with great light. Here are some photos of my new space:

The tall cabinet is Storeage4crafts. It holds 54 Really Useful A4 4L boxes, and it's not far off full - mostly with stamps that I purchased while in the States. The tall tower unit is home to most of my Stampin' Up! and Uniko sets. On the far wall, you can see where I keep all my Dyan, Dina and Tim stamps, along with my embossing folders and various punches too.

My desk fits nicely in the corner with a daylight lamp on the desk to provide extra light at night. On my desk, I have several storage units holding Gina K and Memento ink pads. On the small unit - you can see my Distress and Distress Oxide storage units.

This shows yet more storage - various items, ribbons, paints, cutting/embossing station, Stampin' Up! inkpads, etc etc.

The Ikea Kallax units, also came back from the States, are for storing various journals, papers, inks, photos, etc - all work in progress. On top of the units are perspex contains where I store dies - MFT, Concord & 9th, Waltzingmouse Stamps, Altenew, CAS-ual Friday, and lots of free ones too.

The last photo shows two Raskog carts (both came back from Michigan). They are full of paints, sprays, inks, glitter paste, watercolor pads, and all manner of coloring paraphernalia.

I am really happy how my room has come together.  and I can't wait to ink up some stamps!! I think I'm going to join in a couple of challenges in the next week or two. I'll have to get a move on, as my ankle surgery is now likely to be the end of this month and I won't be able to get upstairs to use this fab place for a couple of weeks!!!

One of the best results of the move home is that I've been able to go through my stash. I've catalogued new items, remove old stash, and discovered that in my haste to get some new stash before leaving Michigan, I did end up with some duplicates!! Hey ho!

That's all for now, hopefully my next post will be for a challenge! Thanks for stopping by.

.... I know that my blog has been very quiet for the past few months, but I think packing up our house in Michigan and moving back to our home in Wales is a reasonable excuse. However, I'm mostly unpacked now. I still have quite a lot to do to get my craft room into order, but I do think that I'm going to be able to craft in the new year!!! Yea.

I'd like to wish all my friends and family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy & Healthy New Year.

I hope everyone has a super holiday. I'll be back crafting and posting soon. Take care.

Uniko - Sneak Peeks ....

…. Hello! I am so pleased to be posting today. I'm here with sneak peeks from Uniko's new release - we have lots in store for you. So, here goes.

This first peek might be familiar to some of you. We are bring back a couple of sets that had been retired. This one will be so useful for the coming Holiday season:

Next up is another of the previously retired sets and features my favourite Santa image - he's so cute:

Next is a new addition to the Background Builders series - it's really clean, simple and so very useful:

I think you'll like the next set - it features a bold word with lots of additional sentiments, again perfect for the Holiday season:

Next is a seasonal addition to the very popular Simply Said Block series - can't wait to play with them:

The last of our new stamp sets is an addition to the Botanical series, and it layers too!

As well as the stamp sets being released, we have a few new stencils too.  They are all super and I'm sure you'll all enjoy playing with them.

Bev and the rest of the Design Team will be starting introduction posts from tomorrow, and Release date is Tuesday 30th October. While I have my stamps and stencils, I won't be able to join in the fun as all the rest of my crafting goodies are on a sea container somewhere in the Atlantic!! However, I do hope that you'll pop along and check out all the inspiration projects from the rest of the team.

That's all for now - hope to be back to crafting soon!!!

Back Home ...

… I've finally managed to get my hands on Jonathan's laptop and thought it was time for a quick update.

Jonathan and I came home on 1st October  and it's so nice to be here. We are all now living in our lovely (but cozy) flat in Chester. Our goods will be leaving the States this week and should arrive in Liverpool at the beginning of November. Once our tenants have moved out of our house in Wales, we'll be able to get everything delivered. Then the unpacking starts!!!

Kat is really enjoying her new school and is very happy with the A-level courses she picked.  Of course she really misses her friends from Northville, but social media is the perfect way for her to stay in touch.

That's all for now. I hope to start blogging properly again before Christmas and be back on my design teams at The Male Room and Uniko - so miss getting inky!!

See you soon.

Moving house ....

... Hi all! It's been a while since I've been on my blog, but I've got a good excuse. We're in the middle of moving back to the United Kingdom. Jonathan's company decided they wanted him back and it's been all go since the middle of August.

Kat and I came back at the beginning of the month to get Kat enrolled in 6th form. She was really upset at first, but now that she's picked her school and A-level courses, she's settling in.

Since being back at home, I've found a cute flat to rent in Chester, bought a new car and am now looking at moving our household goods back here.

So, as you can tell I have very little time for crafting - but I did bring my Dylusions dyalogs home and do spend some time doodling. I will share some photos soon.

That's all for now.

Uniko - Framed Florals and Big & Bold Hello ....

.... Good morning! I'm here today with the last of the Uniko introduction posts. Today the Bev and the design team are introducing Framed Florals and BIG & BOLD Hello, the latest addition to the Big and Bold series. Both sets are just fabulous. I'm going to start with my card showcasing Framed Florals:

Stamps: Uniko - Framed Florals, Beautiful, Originally Organic Additions
Inks: Versamark; Gina K - Black Onyx; Stampin' Up! - Pool Party
Accessories: White Lustre Card; SU Card - Grapefruit Grove, Silver Embossing Powder, Copics; Nuvo - Clear Shimmer Brush

I used my MISTI to stamp the image on white card, coloured it with Copic markers, repositioned it in the MISTI and stamped the image again with Versamark and heat embossed with silver powder. I cut the panel to leave a small white frame and then layered the whole image on dark peach card. I attached the panel towards the top left of the card and then stamped the sentiment. On the inside, I cut a mat layer of peach card and added a greeting to the white panel, along with a few little flowers. I'm submitting this card to Colour Throwdown - CTD#506 as I used their colours for the card.

My next card is much brighter and much bolder and features the large hello stamp:

Stamps: Uniko - Big & Bold Hello
Inks: Ranger - Alcohol-Lift Ink; Ranger Alcohol Inks - Crimson, Sunshine Yellow, Limeade, Flamingo; Gina K - Black Onyx; SU - Grapefruit Grove
Dies: Lil Inkers - Dual Dotted Rectangles #4
Accessories: White Lustre Card; Concord & 9th - Summer Glitter Paper Green; SU Card - Grapefruit Grove; Yupo Paper

At the end of July, I created a number alcohol inked yupo pages. I decided to use one of this card and make use of the new Alcohol-Lift ink pad. I simply die cut a panel from the yupo sheet (you need to run this through the machine several times to make sure you get a good cut). I put the panel into the MISTI, inked up the large hello stamp with the lift ink and stamped. I removed the alcohol inked panel, put in some white card and stamped off the lifted image - check back tomorrow to see cards with the image. I repeated the process to make sure the alcohol ink was sufficiently removed to reveal the word. I layered the panel on some green glitter paper and adhered it to the front of the card. On the inside, I cut a mat layer of peach card and on the white panel added a message and little flower. I'm submitting this card to Time Out Challenge - TOC#116 and to Happy Little Stampers Anything Goes with Dies - HLSAGD#08.

That's the end of our introduction posts. Tomorrow is release day and we'll be showcasing all the new stamp sets. You will also be able to purchase the stamps from Bev's shop. That's all for now. See you again soon.