In The Garden.....

Hi, I hope you're enjoying your weekend.  Did anyone go to Aintree Racecourse Craft Fair?  I did, I had a lovely day and picked up some nice crafty bits to play with.  To be honest, with a lot of people trying out PanPastels and Memory Box dies, I was starting to feel a bit left out, so I felt I had to add to my stash :-)  I got six of the PP pale tints to start with, because I love pastel colours, and they are soooo beautiful - I'm now addicted and want more, and have used them on this jumbo altered coaster which cost me all of 5p in a charity shop (and started it's altered journey very differently last week, lol).

I also met Marie from Bailey Rosy (former Dolly Daydreams) at Aintree - what a lovely person!  As she is also from Liverpool, it was a foregone conclusion that she'd have a great sense of humour, but what I didn't know was that she's from about 2 miles away from me (at the most), and we went to the same high school, would you believe!!!  It was like meeting a long-lost friend from school!

The theme for The Stampsmith Challenge this month is The Colours of Spring - this is one of my favourite stamp ranges as their images are beautiful.  I wanted to try and do something a little different so I've used an image from the Pin Ups sheet, and turned her into "Betty, the gardener":

Using Kraft cardstock attached to the coaster, and a mask (A Touch of Mica), I've used the pale yellow PanPastel to create the brick wall.  I've then used a Memory Box die to create the bottom border coloured with green PP, then coloured the flower heads with the yellow and pink.

The sentiments were also coloured with the green, and the CI flourish was stamped with a pale pink acrylic paint dabber.  All the ribbons are from MME and the little watering can is from Mei Flower.  Betty herself (she's not really called Betty!) was stamped in Coffee Archival Ink - my other half, Dave, bought me the Pin Ups plate at Xmas but I've had a bit of trouble stamping the images from this particular one - I've stamped this image onto Clarity Stamps' silk, matt-coated cardstock this time and it's turned out better, so maybe it was my cardstock.

I usually take my blog photos on my mobile as it has a great camera on it, but it's in for repair at the moment (overuse of the USB port, lol) so I've had to use my old camera which hasn't picked up the colours quite as well as I'd like - it's  much more colourful in real life.  If it's back over the next couple of days, I'll update the photos.

I would also like to enter this into the following challenges:-

Moving Along With The Times - Garden or Flowers
Shelley's Images Blog - Pastels, Kraft & Flowers
Southern Girls Challenge - Get Your Girly On
Stampavie and More - Spring
Flourishes/Timeless Tuesday - Bingo (I've used the middle line across)

I hope you like it.

Maria x