Out Of The Blue all day workshop with Visible Image & Pauline Butcher.

Welcome back, thanks for dropping by & joining me.

It's been a busy old time for us at

 Out Of The Blue.

In the last 2 weeks we've held 2 of our own evening workshops & also hosted an all day workshop with Visible Image & Pauline Butcher at the Compass Inn.

It's the first time we've hosted a workshop for the whole day & I'm pleased to report that it was a great success.

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the day which was packed with lots of crafty tips & techniques from Pauline, a roast dinner!, & lots of products to buy including Visible Image stamps brought along by Helen & Mark.

I was able to join in too which was lovely & here's what we made

We also had time at the end of the day to play around with some Brusho paints & tags that Pauline had brought along.

Everyone loved getting their hands on these & were amazed at the results. I'm pleased to say we now stock Brushos in the shop & they are already proving to be very popular.

Here's the tag I made

& here are some that some of the other ladies made

Here's some pictures from throughout the day

We are now planning another all day workshop for later on this year so watch this space or email me for details if you are interested in attending amyj.rus@gmail.com

See tou again soon

Amy x 

Classic Car

I've just got home from our Out Of The Blue workshop.

Even though its been a long day I still need to sit down & unwind before I head off to bed.

So, I thought I'd write this post & share with you the projects we made this evening.

With Father's Day coming up in June we thought we'd have a Father's Day/male card theme.

We used Visible Image stamps to create our cards.
Classic sports car was the main feature with Tyre marks, Grunge Check background & Metal plate forming the background.
Our group had the choice of which sentiment to use, Live the life you've imagined, No matter your age you'll always be a classic & & Father's Day Stamp set.

Everyone enjoyed making the cards & we actually finished ahead of time!, we quite often overrun past our 2 hour workshop time so this meant we were able to sit & enjoy our tea & cake & have a bit of a crafty chat.
We had 4 new crafter's joining our group so it was a good opportunity to get to know them too.

This month we celebrate 3 years of holding our card making workshops.
It's great to still be introducing new crafter's to our group & sharing all of our crafty little ideas with each other.

Thanks for visiting my blog & leaving me your comments which are very much appreciated.

Amy x 

Visible Image Butterfly Wreath

A late post this evening as I have been busy preparing packs & equipment for this weeks Out Of The Blue workshop on Thursday.

We are going to be using stamps from Visible Image for a Father's Day/ masculine card.
In fact, we'll be using Visible Image stamps for our June festival workshop as well as hosting a full day of card making this Sunday at the Compass Inn at Tormarton with Helen & Mark from Visible Image. Pauline Butcher from their design team will be teaching the workshop for us.
I'm really looking forward to it & the Sunday roast we'll all be enjoying as part of the day too!.

I've been using Visible Image stamps myself recently for some projects I've had in mind for a while.
One of which is my project today, a Spring Wreath using the small & large Butterfly stamps, particular favourites of mine.

The base for the wreath is a polystyrene ring I bought a few years ago that's been in my stash waiting for the right project to be used.

I stamped goodness knows how many small & large butterflies!, painted them with Cosmic Shimmer Water colour paints, cut them out, shaped them & glued them to the ring with a glue gun.

The ring had been painted first with turquoise paint in case gaps showed through the butterflies. 

To the large butterflies I added wire, curled antennae & the bodies of all the butterflies had drops of cosmic shimmer pearl PVA from the Phil Martin range.

To hang the wreath I added ribbon, a bow & another butterfly to decorate.

The overall effect of all the butterflies clustered together is very pretty & I am pleased with how this project turned out.
Although very easy to do it was quite time consuming & I was seeing butterflies in my sleep by the end!.

Thanks for stopping by, if you fancy coming along to our Visible Image workshop day this Sunday we still have a couple of spaces left. Please see the details below & get in touch.

Amy x 

Singing Star

Welcome back blog friends.

Its mid way through the week & I for one am looking forward to the bank holiday weekend ahead.

Not much planned at the moment other than working Saturday & then relaxing with the family Sunday & Monday.

Maybe I'll be able to fit in a bit of craft time somewhere too!.

Today I am sharing a card I made using Visible Image stamps Sing, Galaxy & Soul Music

This card is currently sat on the shelf in my shop right next to the stamps themselves. I'm sure it won't be long before we need to reorder as these are lovely stamps to work with & Helen & Mark's range of designs is great.

The singer was stamped onto white card in black ink & heat embossed. I used black soot distress ink to blend around her & the galaxy stars are stamped in black & heat embossed in silver.

I stamped the singer again & filled in the lines on her dress with a sakura pen & then cut her dress out, shaped it & stuck it into place on top of the original dress to add dimension.

I stamped & embossed the black background card with the music from the Soul Music set in silver embossing & added a touch of treasured silver gilding wax around the edges.

I stamped the Sing sentiment, mat & layered it & stuck it into place in the top right corner of the card.

We are really excited to be hosting a special day of crafting with Visible Image on 17th May at a local hotel & restaurant.

Its going to be a fab day with a Sunday roast included too, yum!.

The very talented Pauline Butcher will be teaching the workshops on the day & Helen & Mark will be coming along bringing lots of their lovely stamps to sell.

Here are all the details, if you fancy joining us please get in touch on the number below.

Thanks for stopping by

See you soon

Amy x 

Pop up card workshops April 2015

Hello blog friends!.

 Well, its been a busy time since my last post.

Lots of new goodies have been arriving in the shop & we've been busy with our monthly workshops.

We've also been organising a special crafting event coming up in May when Visible Image will be joining us with Pauline Butcher for a whole day of crafting.

More info on that in a future post.

Today, I'm sharing the pop up cards we made at our workshops the last two weeks.

We used the pop up die & stamp set to match by Stampendous from WoodWare.

First up is the card I made as a sample followed by my group's creations with their own choice of colours.

So, here are my half of our group's creations, all coloured using distress inks as watercolour paints.

The die cuts all the pop out elements to add your stamped images to. It also has edge cutters & the oval & label style dies to use for the sentiments. 

So, a very handy die set & it proved to be very popular at our workshops this month with me having to reorder die & stamp sets in time to sell for the following weeks class.

The stamp set contains 2 vase stamps, a rose cluster, a daisy stamp, leaf stamp, butterfly & hydrangea cluster.

My group used the rose & daisy stamps, Carole's half of our group used the hydrangea. 

Here's the sample card I made using the hydrangea.

If you hop over to Carole's blog here you will see the cards her half of our craft group made using the hydrangea stamp from this set.

There are also now a few more stamp sets available to go with this die set. I like the look of the Woodland/forest animal set & we hope to have it in stock in the shop very soon.

Some of you already follow Carole's blog so you will know that its nearly 3 years since mum & I asked Carole if she would like to join us to help teach our workshops to help promote our shop Out Of The Blue & the products we sell.

I'm pleased to say our workshops continue to be very popular & many firm friendships have been formed along the way.

We also have new crafters joining us for nearly every workshop & its great when our members come into the shop following a class to let us know how much they have enjoyed creating our projects.

So, enjoy the rest of your weekend, thanks for stopping by & I'll be back soon with more info about our special Visible Image workshop day.

Amy x 

CAS Floral Birthday

Hi everyone, hope you've all had a good weekend.

Did you manage to fit in any time for crafting?.

I've been playing around with some projects ready for our

 'Out Of The Blue' workshop this Thursday which I will be sharing with you soon.

But, for today I'm sharing this CAS card I made recently.

It's sometimes a bit of a struggle for me to not be tempted to add more inks, layers, textures & more embellishments!. 

But these Woodware stamps from the Flower Head Collection just didn't need any more than the beautiful bright colours I stamped them with.

The inks I used were Clearsnap Colorbox Pigment Ink Cats Eye Queue, Sweet Sixteen set, now in stock in our shop.

I stamped a flower in the bottom right corner, masked it & then stamped over it with the next flower & so on until I reached the top.

I then cut around the outer edges of the flowers, stamped the sentiment & added some lemon yellow pearl gems to the flower middles.

To finish I added a piece of contrasting coloured card inside.

Simple!.

I'd like to enter this card in the following challenges, if you click on the links you can join in too!.


Fantasy Stampers challenge #34 Clean and Simple (CAS)

&

Addicted To Stamps Challenge # 139 CAS

See you soon!

Amy x 

Gone fishing

Happy Friday! 

Hope you all have a fun & crafty weekend lined up?.

I'm working tomorrow & then on Sunday I'll be busy getting things prepared for our workshop on Thursday.

 This evening I'm sharing a card I made as a special commission.

My Dad is a keen fisherman & since retiring in the last couple of years he has spent a lot of time in our local fishing tackle supplies shop (just opposite our own shop) picking up tips & getting to know the owner Chris.

So, when Dad found out it was Chris's birthday last week he asked me to make a fishing themed birthday card for him to give him.

I had just the stamps for the job!.

I used Woodware's 'Gone Fishing' background stamp & 'Casting the bait' stamp.

Plus Creative Expressions 'Tree Bark' A6 stamp by Sam Poole.

The whole card was made using navy, white & black card, black archival ink & faded jeans distress ink, pale blue embossing powder & some screw head metal brads.

I enjoyed making this card as I don't often make men's cards.

Apparently, it was well received & I'm already planning a Father's Day card with a fishing theme to make for my Dad in June.

Thanks for stopping by & leaving me your comments which are always much appreciated, I'll be back again soon.

Amy x