Summer's weekend!

Well this weekend it has truly felt like summer!  The sun is shining, there is a light breeze, there are the sounds of children playing outside and the smell of fresh mown grass.  Yesterday Alex and I went for an adventurous drive over Strines Moore to the village of Bolsterstone where they were holding their annual Village Fayre.  It was great fun with lots of traditional stalls (white elephant, second hand toys, clothes, cakes, sweets, pick the right dandelion, rolling penny's. skittles etc) and fun games to be had.  Alex tried his hand at fishing for ducks, scoring a total of 5 in his net.

He also got to have a go on the little traction engine, the bouncy castle and the merrygoround. It was a perfect traditional Summer's fayre and a lovely afternoon out.

Today we went to the permanent paddling pools at Rivelin Valley where we spent a happy hour or so shooting each other with water pistols while splashing through the pools.

I can't believe it is already two weeks since the last Quirky Crafts challenge and this week it was my turn to set the challenge.  We have a great sponsor Stitchy Bear stamps so do pop over and join in.  The challenge is to NOT use any patterned papers, with the idea being that you make your own. You can use embossing, inks, stamps, paints or anything else you think of.  This was my first attempt at using colour wash inks and glimmer mist to create the background. I then added Lavinia stamps (stars, grass and dragon) stamped in black and then kept the digital stamp (from Stitchy Bear stamps) in black and white to add contrast. I am entering this into Stamp somethings 'digital' challenge.

I also made a bookmark using distress inks (antique linen, walnut stain and tea dye), using Crafty individuals and dark room door stamps and the quill and ink pot from Stitchy Bear stamps. This fits with the Simon says stamp and show 'a word' and CTT 'technology' challenges.

As it is the weekend it is time for another Less is More challenge. This time the challenge was shades of blue. My first thought was to use my Adirondack dye pads and brayer to make a brayered background and to put this inside my new embossing folder (a frame).  I used three shades of blue for the brayered background and then stamped the iris and butterfly on top. As a result of the butterfly I am also entering this into the Flutterby Wednesday challenge. 

Now, I wasn't too happy with the previous card so decided to have another go at the less is more challenge using the same frame, but this time using distress inks. I have two shades of blue distress inks and used those to ink the background. I then used inkadinkado flourish stamps round the edge, added the Kanban sentiment, stamped the blue butterflies and finally added the gems.  This card therefore also fits with crafty cardmakers spotlight challenge 'focus on the sentiment',  and Delicious Doodles 'flourishes and bling' challenges. 

Finally I made this scrapbook layout following this weeks Sketchy Thursday design. I took the righthand side of the double page layout, which also fits with the 'cut your embellishments from patterned paper' challenge from Scrap Fit. The scarves, hat, gloves and boots are cut from American Traditional Designs papers and the snowflakes from Sandylion papers. That is all from me for now after a wonderful weekend.  Have a great week everyone.
Love,
Caro
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