Seaside/Nautical Tags

I'm hosting the challenge over at Tag Tuesday for the next 2 weeks....and for my theme I have chosen Seaside or Nautical.
Living close to the sea all my life, I have many happy memories of my childhood and my own children's childhood spending such long lazy days at the beach....so this theme is close to my heart.

For this tag I coloured the background using ink dusters and distress inks in faded jeans and fossilised amber.
All the images were then stamped and then coloured using water colour pencils..this is such a lovely set of stamps that my friend had given me a while ago....

This is my skinny tag..it was cut from scrap water colour card that I had used inktense colour blocks on and swiped over with a wet brush...
I used Crafty Individual stamps for the script and beach huts and birds...I highlighted the huts with water colour pencils.
Betty Grable is a photo type stamp, that I stamped on to plain card, cut and then coloured and added to the tag...

I do hope you can find time and enter our challenge, you can find us here at
Tag Tuesday

Altered Peg....

It's time for this months challenge over at More Mixed Media....and for my design team project I altered a large peg.
The theme is always Anything Goes..with the option of using a colour chosen for that month...this month the colour is "Pastels"
I enjoy altering pegs, they are so useful in my craft room because I use them for note holders.

I sanded the peg, then brushed it off before staining the sides..then I added backing paper to the front and back and underneath the peg.

I stamped the image of the girls..coloured the image then added it to the tag.

To finish I added the ribbon and flower..I didn't get too fussy with embellishments as I wanted to keep the peg simple...

Do pop over and join in with our challenge this month....Lozzy, our "Boss Lady" has a prize for the winner..so well worth giving us a visit..hope to see you soon.

You can find us here at...More Mixed Media

Sunflowers

Good Morning..looks like rain..a welcome change from the intense heat we've been having..far too hot for me....
Many moons ago when my children were small, they used to plant sunflower seeds and see who's would grow the tallest...so when I saw Valarie's Flower theme for this fortnights Tag Challenge I remembered an old stamp I have and that reminded me of my childrens flower growing...
So here is the Tag I made...I love this stamp of the little girls sitting among the sunflowers...

I stamped on white card and then using water colour paints I coloured the image. The word stamp is from a different stamp...

I had to take the photo against a dark background, even though it was a bright day yesterday, the white tag against a white background looked grey.....
So if you love making Tags why not come along and join in with the challenge.
You can find it here at
Tag Tuesday

Too good to waste....

It's July already..where has the last few months gone..I don't know if it's because I am older that time is flying by. The weather is ridiculously hot at the moment, I am spending more time indoors with all the fans going, but the time at home has given me an excuse the sift through a lot of my craft stuff.
I was given some albums some years ago..I was loathe to throw them away, so I stripped them back to the original covers and decided to make a couple of small journals for my design team project at Rhedd's Creative Spirit.for their July challenge.

I decided to make 4 journals  from the 4 boards so I measured them so 2 would be slightly larger than the other. 

I took one of each size and rounded the corners and the other 2 I set aside to alter at a later date.
I gave them a good sanding with some fine sandpaper to remove any glue residue.
I then gave them 2 coats of gesso.

For both of the journals I added some texture through a stencil to the front cover and left it to dry overnight.

 I painted both sides of the front and back covers using green,blue and yellow acrylic paints..then highlighted some areas in gold gilding wax for the shell journal and then I used brown,black and orange for the steampunk style journal, highlighting areas with gunmetal gilding wax.

For this journal, I adhered some orange mesh, muslin and shells to the top cover and finished decorating it with some pearls from an old necklace that was given to me some years ago, well I was never going to wear it,lol.

The pages in the journal are from scraps from around my craft room..some pages have pockets etc..sorry I forgot to photograph the inside.

The Steampunky journal is a great size..more for a man I feel. I decorated the cover with cogs and chicken wire that are from Fernli Designs...after painting them I added rust effect to areas to age it some more.
Again, the pages are from scraps in my craft room..

The Seaside journal measures 14cms x 8cms

The Steampunky one measures 14cms x 6cms

The covers are really sturdy as the board is really thick.

If you have any old board books and you no longer need them, why not recycle them and come along to Rhedds and enter our challenge...

You can find our July Challenge here at 

Rhedd's Creative Spirit