A VERY LOVELY LANDSCAPE AND NEWS FROM COCO'S CREATIVE CLASSES AND MORE...

I have a few things to share with you tonight.  Firstly I was delighted to discover this very lovely landscape indeed at 'Sandma's Handmade Cards' using our new 'Village Inn and Church' stamp.  This is the stamp CI-474..

..and this is the lovely make..

..so clever and creative, don't you think?!

This one is by Coco and is another interpretation using the same stamp - great stuff!..

 

The 5 new stamps were just released last week, and are still on their very special intro offers, which you will find HERE.  Only a few days left on the offers though now, so best be quick!

My next lot of news is from Coco's recent crafty classes in France.  Her ladies decorated canvasses with a landscape theme, and here they are with their makes, plus a close up of a few of the canvasses..

Coco also sent me a link to the blog of one of these ladies - Impression Scrap by Lys, and Lys had a couple of close ups of her gorgeous canvas on there..

... very nice!

Here are a few of Coco's makes with another one of our new stamps - the 'Pretty Flamingos'..

 

A journal page..

.. and a canvas..

In the bottom left of both the journal page and the canvas Coco has stamped our lovely little new 'Make a Wish' child, and here we have the stamp followed by a card, again by Coco, featuring a very colourful 'wishing' child..

We had more beautiful makes sent over by the teamies, including this fabby card, by lovely Joanna..

I can also share one of Joanna's sweet daughter's makes with the flamingos - lovely Lucy - who also took the photograph, thanks for sharing Lucy! A new stamper in the making here..

That's all for now folks, and thanks for your comments, always a pleasure to read.

Back soon,

Jean x

WELL THAT WAS FUN .......

We had a great time with the Hochanda folk in Peterborough.  Everyone there is really nice and supportive, and I managed to get through the two shows somehow!  Hope you managed to see some of it?!  I'm hoping to be back there probably in July with some more demos.  I am going to share a couple of the makes with you here tonight.  Hope you likey?!

The beach babe is from CI-278, along with the beach huts.

The next image is the gift bag, also featured in the afternoon show...

The main image here is the little boy from CI-459.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your comments always.

Back soon,

Jean x

SO VERY SHABBY CHIC!

I am just loving these very shabby chic and delicious makes by Flo.....

Beautifully distressed and layered using our swirly frames and images from Life's Journey 2 as well as elements from a few stamps including CI-294. The luscious texture was created using paste and a couple of Dinky Stencils. All very nice indeed!

I also have some very nice tags to show you, firstly lots of tags, inspired by Flo (last blog post), and made carefully by Coco with CI-466 and CI-468...

Then a couple of tags by lovely Sylvie....

....again using CI-466, and also CI-469 and more.  Loving the rusty elements too on the second tag. Thanks for sharing ladies (links to their blogs on the right hand side).

Back again soon folks,

Jean x

p.s. Forgot to mention that we will be on our usual stand at Port Sunlight next Saturday.  Have you got your ticket? We look forward to seeing you there! x

p.p.s. We will be releasing new stamps at the show as well, and will have some very nice special offers to share!!!

BRIGHT, COLOURFUL AND VERY CHEERFUL....

Hello Lovelies, and thanks for checking in with us today.  I have some very bright and cheerful makes to show you below, so even if the sun isn't shining with you at the moment, here we have a lovely burst of colour and sunshine to brighten even the dullest of days!

Firstly I have a big thanks to send to Christine of Craftyfield, for so kindly sharing her scene with us recently (you may have seen it on Facebook?!).  This is exactly the sort of scene I was thinking of when we designed the 'Build a Landscape' series of stamps (new additions coming soon).

Christine used several CI stamps to create the above including CI-460 and CI-449.

The next make is truly bright and delightfully colourful and is by Sylvie, one of our lovely teamies..

Sylvie has used CI-372 by Alice Palace in the above card.

My next card is by Helen, who is a serious lover of colour, and she made this card with one of our more recently released stamps CI-466 featuring a spray of flowers..

Loving her background with Brushos and CI-468 and more.

Here is another make from Helen, with another one of the newer stamps CI-467, used to form lots of colourful rows of cottages - just gorgeous!!

.. And my final burst of colour today is from Flo, and again features the floral spray above, but this time split across two corners of her very pretty tag..

.. CI-468 again appears in the background.  Which reminds me that I have just received a fabulous box full of handmade delights from Flo.  More about that later!

Thanks everyone, and hope you all have a very lovely weekend out there, and lots of thanks too for your very sweet and kind comments always.

Back soon,

Jean x

FLO AND MASKING, AND OTHER BITS AND PIECES....

If you are on the CI mailing list for newsletters you will have recently received a step by step by Flo on masking techniques.  Hopefully you enjoyed it and found it useful.  We also put the relevant stamps on special offer for a week.  Here is the card Flo made and wrote steps about:

I love the 'Alice' theme here, and this is an earlier card Flo made with a similar theme and a few different stamps as well:

The stamps appearing above are on offer within the pages of the Sale section Here, and will be removed from this section at the end of this week.  If you don't receive our newsletters already, you can sign up to get them on our Homepage (towards the bottom of the page).  You will then get to know all about the offers and new stamps and stuff by email on a regular basis, so do join in the fun.

On a different note we will be back on Hochanda early next month - yay (more info to follow)!  Lesley made a rather lovely card on our last Hochanda show, and I had a play with the same technique myself.  It involved kraft card and a white paint background, simple but very effective.  I decorated a nice cheap sketchbook from Hobbycraft and created a couple of cards:

Stamps used in the above include CI-460, CI-209, CI-468,  CI-391, and CI-440.

My final makes this evening are another book cover design by Flo, and a card by Willy, both featuring stamps from our most recent issue, CI-466 and CI-467:

Love both of these makes!!

Thanks for viewing, and leaving comments, and I will be back soon,

Jean x

COCO'S CREATIVE CANVASSES.....

Corinne has been very creative recently and has designed these two terrific canvasses, which I thought were certainly worthy of their own blog post tonight.  She has used many CI stamps on them, and I will link to some of them after I show you the photos she has taken of her canvasses.  Firstly a photo of the two canvasses together.....

..... followed by individuals and close ups....

Some of the stamps you can see here are CI-416 'Feathered Friends', a new stamp CI-467 'Build a Landscape', CI-453 'Tree Trio' and an older stamp CI-202 'Hare Amongst the Trees'.

Some stamps used in the other canvas are CI-209 'Winter Trees' and CI-287 'Birds on a Wire', along with one of our very useful stencils 'Birds in Flight'.

If you decided to create a similar canvas of your own it is often less daunting to divide the canvas up as Coco has done and create smaller scenes within, and using similar colours and themes in each 'scene' and repeating some of the stamps will help bring it all together.  Stamping onto white tissue paper, fussy cutting and then gluing the tissue to the canvas overcomes the problem of stamping directly onto the stretched canvas.  When varnished the tissue itself can become almost invisible.  Also consider taking your images around the edges of your canvas too to complete the picture.

Check out more of Coco's lovely work on her blog.

Bye for now,
Back soon,

Jean x

HOCHANDA MAKES .......

I thought that tonight I would show you a few of the makes that we took with us to Hochanda a few weeks ago.  Some of the ones made by the team and a couple that Lesley made whilst on the show.  We will be back on Hochanda in the not too distant future we believe (more to come on that), and we are so looking forward to it again!!

By the team....

 - Lovely Lynne's work with the trees from CI-209 - so shabby chic!..

Makes by Daniele -pages from a gorgeous book of the garden (sporting lots of CI stamps), and a mini Tando printer tray, in all its colourful glory (and bedecked in CI Springtime papers and images)...

A couple of simple cards from me (CI images, stamps, papers from our Travels in Italy book, and mini frames)...

...plus the Tando mini long printer tray, decorated with papers, and that pretty little cottage from CI-460..

A beauty of a card by Flo, and yet so simple....

And finally two of the on screen makes by Lesley Wharton (my particular favourites)...

(CI-460 appearing again on these).

Wowser!!

Bye for now, back soon,

Jean xx