New Toys!

First, I should apologise to so many of you out there. I stopped checking blogs during the summer, and when I went back in, there were thousands of entries backlogged. It scared me so much, I haven't opened Google Reader since! I'm hoping to get back into that, and to reading your blogs some time very soon. Our eldest has moved to Swindon for his new job and should be moving into a flat next weekend. Our younger son is back at university, and, while the house seems very quiet, that's how it'll be until December. So, between university visits for our youngest, things should have reverted to what passes for normal around here for a while at least.

Yesterday, I paid my first visit to the BSSBS at Alexandra Palace. I have to say, I was very impressed with the venue. While the actual hall was fairly utilitarian, the other areas are gorgeous, and the view is amazing. And there were lots of stamping goodies on show, so what could be better?

I've never had much luck with brayers. I think that's partly because my Woodware brayer keeps losing the roller. Anything but the lightest pressure on the handle causes the whole thing to flex and the roller goes off to do its own thing. So, seeing as most folk were using Speedball brayers for their demos, I decided to splash out.

Now, I did try to mask areas and come up with a landscape, but I wasn't impressed with the result, so I resorted to my Kaleidacolor inkpads, and in this case, the Bouquet one, and I added some stamped images, and I came up with this.

The central images are from Lavinia Stamps and they're stamped in Momento ink. The tree and grass detail are stamped in Distress Ink in Pine Needles, and the stamps are from Clarity and Lavinia Stamps respectively.

Over the last few years, I've built up quite a good collection of papers, but since I normally make 150mm square cards, that's the size I tend to buy. That's of limited use when I want to make a 5 by 7 card. So I dug out my Coredinations card - which was also 150 mm square, but by some careful trimming, I made it work! I embossed with a Papermania folder in my Wizard, and sanded the raised areas in the two larger pieces. (The smaller piece is embossed the other way around and 'upside down' compared to the rest.)

I added a little extra colour to the image (around the gate) with Promarkers, and a touch of 'magic' with Glamour Dust.

I definitely need to work on my brayering. One of these days, I may even come up with a landscape I'm happy with. Or I might even be tempted to have a go at Promarkering a landscape. Hm. Too many ideas and not enough time.

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
Paper Sundaes where anything goes,
The Squirrel and the Fox where anything goes,
Stamp, Scrap and Doodle where they want your favourite colours. (I've used my favourite rainbow stamp pad - I love that combination!)
The Paper Shelter where anything goes,
Little Red Wagon where they want repeated images (branch and grass stamps are all repeated.)
Anything Goes where anything goes,
Try it on Tuesday where the theme is 'Wonderful World',