Busy Buzzing Bees - A class with JOFY

On 26th May my plans changed unexpectedly and so I was able to attend a class at the Craft Barn by Jo Firth-Young, (JOFY) designer for PaperArtsy.

The class was to make this fun box canvas with two of Jo's stamps sets.

We were given a small box canvas which we painted with our choice of colours from the Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic paint range. Then we stamped the message and some honeycomb patterns directly onto the canvas, some of the patterns overlap the deep sides of the canvas. We painted in the hollow outlines for two of the words with white paint.

A printed page from an old book was supplied and this we painted with a wash of white paint, stamped the hive, then pained in shadows. This was cut out and stuck into position on the canvas.

The flowers were stamped onto tissue paper and painted, then cut out! Quite tricky cutting out these as they were on very narrow branches! It went very quiet while we all concentrated hard at this point.

We stamped large and small bees onto card and painted in the details, before cutting them out. We cut the wings off the large Bees! - but added new ones made by stamping on acetate. 

Bees and flowers were added to the canvas, again they were wrapped around the sides.

The wings of the tiny bees were folded up so they appear to be in flight.

A tiny hole was drilled in the top of the canvas so one large bee could be added by means of a coil of fine wire - from where he could hover over the canvas. The hole was tidied up with a tiny button.

And one lovely bee buzzing around on a wire from the top.

I finished off with a marker to go over any of the stamped lines which had acquired a little paint, and the gems were added to the flowers.

This was a great class and I thank Jo for teaching it and sharing lots of hints and tips along the way. 

It was also lovely to meet Dame Judi Dench in the Farm shop next door during our lunch break. 

I will certainly use this technique again and I have now acquired some of Jo's stamps to play with at home. 

Thanks for looking

Lynn x

Happy Mother's Day

Happy mother's day to all you Mums.

I saw this Mouse House Designs stamp (We're "Mint Tea" Be Together) ages ago and knew I had to buy it to make a card for my lovely Mum (known to many of you as Mrs Potts).

The stamp is from The Craft Barn and was coloured with Promarkers.

The papers are Basic Grey's Kioshi.

The Card is from Craftwork Cards.

Detail of the sugar cubes sparkled up with stickles.

Happy Mother's Day Mum xXxXx

We had a lovely Day, my brother and Elaine brought Mum and Dad over for lunch. Catherine was home for the weekend and was here with her boyfriend. Emily arrived home for the Easter break yesterday. We missed Andrew who has another two weeks at Uni before he can come home for a break.

We were still celebrating ACE's 19th birthday as well as Mother's Day.

Cup cakes

Cath and Emily with cake.

Mum and Dad

I was spoilt with lots of gifts. Thank you all very much x

(My lilies are still closed, so I will post a photo when they bloom.)

Summer by the Sea

I am away on holiday in Suffolk and thought I would take some card making bits along with me, including some stamps I have been meaning to try out. Linda and I also swapped some of our stamps, we thought we could give each other some inspiration with our existing stamps if we tried out a few belonging to one another - that's our theory! So today I have been playing with these delightful Stampin' Up stamps.

The first two were made with Stampin' Up stamps from Linda's collection, I have stamped lots of images and coloured them with water colours, I have only made two of these into cards so far, but will add the others later when complete.

I also used scraps from the August Scrapholix kit both the Bazzill card stock and the Daisy Bucket papers. The blossoms are from a delightful little organza bag full of mixed blossoms given to me by Jilly Beans two years ago and still going strong (thanks Jill). The greeting stamp is an old, well used favourite from The Craft Barn, made by Fun Stamps.

For the next two I used a fish stamp (sorry I can't remember who made this one, please comment if you know). I used a Craftwork Cards frame and some garden twine for the first one. I also used lots of chalk ink. I coloured the fish with Letraset Promarkers. More left overs from the Daisy Bucket papers and Bazzill card stock were used here too. Some self adhesive metallic dots from Paperchase, and plenty of Liquid Pearls to add the finishing touches. The greeting is also from Stampin' Up.

Next I used an old stamp of beach huts, one of my favourite things, influenced by a trip to Felixstowe sea front today! The first uses water colours and some 'Phresh and Phunky' papers by Basic Grey. The second is a blast of colour using more Promarkers and Basic Grey's 'Colour Me Silly' range of papers.