Shoe inchy.

It's been a fairly exhausting week made worse by some very heavy and humid weather. I love the hot summer sun but I hate it when it's humid. It just make you feel lethargic and generally yuck!!

The weekend was the big Luxembourgish music festival which is either absolutely roasting hot or extreemly wet (in true festival style) and this year was hot, humid and threatened thunderstorms which thankfully didn't happen! A great day was had by my two eldest daughters and by clicking on the link you'll see a photo of one of my daughters singing her heart out to one of the headline bands. http://kultur.rtl.lu/kulturpur/fotoen/2726/photo/2/?back=

If I didn't get time to do anything else I can always find a few minutes to put together an inchy. The one above is my entry to http://inchybyinch.blogspot.com/ whose theme this week is "Shoes".

There are some great sales around at the moment and some wonderful bargains to be had especially on shoes. I'd love to own a pair like the one on my inchy but alas, it's been a loooong time since I wore heels!! These days it's comfy crocs, trainers or flatty sandals! The girlies however, are building up their collection so they now have a pair for every item of clothing they own and with their sizes being the same now, they swap all the time!

Anyway, whatever your style I hope you like my shoe inchy.

Rock and Roll card.

I made this card for the Wednesday Stampers challenge entitled "Rock and Roll".

Most of the card is quite blingy and shiny but sadly it's difficult to capture this in a photo. I tried outside in the sun and inside on my craft table but unfortunately neither were great!

I distressed the edges again (my favourite thing now!) to add to the over-all Rock-Chick grungy look.

http://wednesdaystamper.wordpress.com/

Celtic inchy

Today is Luxembourgs National Day and last night we were watching the fireworks until midnight with our good friends Lena and Peter. Earlier on in the day, they'd got me out on an 8km run which I was really happy to have achieved but my legs are feeling it. Today I'm more than a little tired!! So it's good that today is a lazy day with nothing to do but sit in the sun and craft!

The Inchy by Inch challenge this week is Celtic Symbols. I was already familiar with Celtic knots but it wasn't until I researched the subject that I discovered that some Celtic Symbols were less complicated and quite straight forward.

You can see some more examples here http://inchybyinch.blogspot.com/

For my inchy I'd actually tried to draw freehand the symbol onto the background, then trace around it with a Versamark pen to emboss it, but somehow it just didn't work so small and left me with a bit of a messy end result. I decided to cut out the image I'd been using to trace and placed it on a circular background to hide the mess of the embossing! The result isn't too bad and to finish it off I used a brad in the centre.

Postcard/postal arch

Gothic Arches have chosen "postcards" as their theme for this week although by the time I'd finished with my piece it had turned into the theme "postal"!!

I started by distressing my background to within an inch of its life with Ranger distress inks and stamping a few postal stamps all over. The other collage images are either found or stamped onto paper and the penny black stamp was downloaded by my husband who didn't want to miss out on the fun. (He doesn't admit it but I think he was a stamp collector in his youth - he knew the exact stamp and date it was issued, I couldn't fail but be impressed!).

http://gothicarches.ning.com/

Owls and houses.

Last week I had a chance to play with an idea I've been harbouring for some time, which was to make a birdhouse using a template I'd downloaded from http://nicholeheady.typepad.com/capture_the_moment/2009/05/introducing-bird-watching-additions.html It's the cutest design I've ever seen in a birdhouse and there is also a wealth of other templates for you to use for all sorts of things which will keep you busy for ages.

I had the owl stamps from Hero Arts to put on the front then found the theme for this weeks challenge on http://inchybyinch.blogspot.com/ was Owls. It was easy then the create inchies using the same background technique and stamps. I used a Japanese newspaper as my background just for fun but I hope I don't offend anyone who reads Japapanese by using a bad joke or something (I think it was either the financial pages or the tv pages!)

A black and yellow retro arch.

Today is actually Mothers day in Luxembourg - hoooray for me!! Daughter number one was exempt of course seeing as she'd already mistakenly celebrated it a few weeks back, just as well as she flew to Egypt for a weeks holiday this morning! Daughter number three had made me a beautiful mosaic mirror frame at school and daughter number two generally made me feel loved and wanted with her presence all day!

Mothers day generally means a day let off chores and a jolly good excuse to do nothing except play really. So this afternoon I did just that, spending a few hours in the craft room with my youngest crafting.

Gothic Arches are back after a two week absence and the new theme is yellow and black. Tricky one, but for some reason it made me think "retro". I fumbled around in my stash for an appropriate backing paper and made it look even more retro by adding the yellow thread and found a retro looking cat on my computer. The font is 'font diner' which along with the little crown on the cats head, just finished things off nicely!

http://gothicarches.ning.com/

Inchie swap thanks

Oh my goodness, today I'm feeling soooo tired after a huge storm woke us ALL up last night!! We ended up with daughter number three AND the cat in bed with us - not alot of sleep was had and here I am two cups of coffee later trying to pull myself together for the rest of the day!

Still, to cheer me up I'm posting the picture of the inchies I received yesterday from Fiona at the Inchy by Inch site. Aren't they just the prettiest set of houses you've ever seen? I'm so happy to have been part of this swap and want to say a huge thank you to all the house crafters.

I'm off now to have another coffee and put my head in a bucket of water!!

A fashionable card

This card must have two of the smallest stamps in my collection. I created it in response to this weeks Wednesday Stamper challenge to create a piece of art on the theme of "fashion".

The dress is a sizzix die cut which is just yummy and I stamped over it with a very small flower stamp in a soft rose colour so the effect is very subtle. As the theme is fashion, I added some stitching around the edge of the paper and some faux stitching detail on the dress.

http://wednesdaystamper.wordpress.com/

Postage inchy.

Following a weekend where I rather ambitiously invited friends over for a bbq even though the forecast was for rain (even the chap in the supermarket asked if we had a garden tent as he loaded the meat into the trolly), it was good to spend some time in the craft room and not worry about what's going on outside!

It's a shame that after such a warm and sunny May, that June should kick in cold and wet! C'est la vie I suppose!

Anyway, I spent a few minutes putting together an inchy for the Inchy by Inch site who's theme this week is "Postage".

The background stamp is a Hero Arts stamp which I've had for years and used alot. The little stamps are from a sheet of Tim Holtz distressables.

http://inchybyinch.blogspot.com/