Faith, Hope & Crafts

 Hello Friends I hope you are all well and warm. It is soooo cold here in upstate NY. Cabin fever is setting in but it is just too cold to go out so I am trying to keep busy with my crafts. I love winter just not the frost bite temperatures of late. Anyway yesterday I decided to try my hand at painting. Yes free hand painting no stamps or tracing to give me the image. I sketched an outline of a thistle and went from there. It was a little scary but I went with it. I have not painted since high school so this is the first time I have painted anything from scratch. I wanted to paint a wee thistle. Since I am from Scotland it is the national flower after all. I also just love them as flowers/plants they are unique. I used my peerless watercolors I love these paints so much. I have a lot of work to do on my painting skills but I really like how it came out. Not bad for my first real painting in years right?  Once it was dry I printed some words from the song Caledonia. Then I

Hello Friends I have a lovely butterfly card for you today inspired by article of clothing. My husband bought me lovely butterfly jammies (pyjamas) for Christmas. I LOVE them so much. They are the kind that when you put them on they are just super comfy and you want to live in them ha! Anyway I loved the pattern on them too. A collaboration of different butterflies coloured in pink with a touch of grey. I thought this would make a great card. I got out some of my favourite Unity butterfly stamps to create a similar pattern.  I used my distress inks to paint the butterflies and background.  I really love the combination of the colours once it was dry I stamped the word butterflies all over it with silver ink. I backed it on to some glitter paper and then a grey card base. I added some glitter to each butterfly. Finally I printed out a sentiment that I love to add to my card. ~ Your time as a caterpillar has expired. Your wings are ready. ~  It is tim

Hello Friends I am back with another card!  This time I am using the colours from this month's Unity Be Inspired Challenge . I just love purple's and blue's they are my go to colours when I craft. You should come and play along it if you want to there is still a lot of time left to join it.  I got out a stamp set I have not used in a long time Insightful Meadows . I was going for a bokeh background on this card. I have never really tried it before so I was just kind of experimenting and it worked out great. I applied some watercolor paints to the stamp then stamped all over the page with 3 different colours. Then I sprayed water on the card and blotted it with some paper towel. I dried it with my heat gun and this is the result that was left behind. It kind of blurred itself in the process and that is exactly what I was going for.  I stamped the sentiment from the Trust Your Soul SMAK kit right over the top with Versafine ink. Finally I backed it on to some bla

Hello My Lovely Friends I hope you are all having a good week so far!!  I have been really busy over the last week so I have not had much time to craft. So today I made some time :) I am really meant to be cleaning my house but crafting comes first right ha! I am still on my watercolour roll. I love love using the Peerless Watercolors that I got for my birthday! Thanks to my hubby for the best present ever :)  This card I made today was a complete accident. Yes that is right an accident! Don't you love it when stuff like that happens? My original plan was to put glitter inside the heart and keep the outside clean. But I got some splashes outside the heart aghhh! So I just went with it and added some more to even it out! I dried it with my heat gun and I LOVED the way it came out. I used the outline distress heart and sentiment from the Unity  Trust Your Soul SMAK kit. I applied my paints right on to the stamp using two different colours. I went with a Valentine theme

Hello Friends I have been playing around with my new stamps this week.  I have made a lot of new things and this is one of them. You know how much I love making tags so I had to make one.  I am on a glitter role at the moment. So I made this tag with gold glitter and gold sequins. It is a bit over the top but I don't care I love it ha!! I used kraft card to just give it a twist and I think it works quite well. I love the gold ribbon that I picked up at Hobby Lobby in the sale gold glitter chevrons. The sentiment is from No Remedy For Love January 2015 sentiment kit. I heat embossed it with white embossing powder to make it pop :) Thanks so much for stopping by my blog! Have a great weekend :) Mandi xox Challenges   Friends with Flair

Hello Friends Have you ever seen a stamp that you just absolutely love?? Well I did with this one. The minute I set eyes on this winter girl with her mittens and hot drink I knew I had to have her. She comes as part of one of the kit of the month's at Unity. I am not a member but they usually have a one time purchase of the kit of the month's so I jumped on it. Well actually my husband did, he bought me this one for my birthday which was right before we left for Scotland. This kit is called Warmth of Winter  and is the 12/14 KOM. I finally got around to using her over the weekend. I had a million ideas for her when I ordered her but now I was stumped with what to do with her. I started off  just putting her down on paper. I heat embossed her with black embossing powder and painted her with my Peerless Watercolors. I absolutely love the way the colours of these paints all blend together. They are almost effortless for a novice like me :) I really want to take a paint c

Hello Friends I am back from Scotland and I have horrible jet lag! It's been 3 days and I just can't get back into this time zone yet. I had such a lovely time at home in Scotland with my family. The weather was pretty mild it rained mostly. When we landed back in NY I walked out of the airport and my lips froze it was that cold yikes!!! Today we have snow so I am home having a crafty day :)  I made this door hanger a few weeks ago for my friend Colin who is massage therapist and yoga teacher in Scotland. He just moved into a new place of work and needed a new door sign for his room.  He asked if I would make him one so of course I took on the challenge :) If you need a massage and are in the Glasgow area I highly recommend him. Here is his website Glasgow Yoga Massage if you are interested in checking him out. So on to my door hanger :) This was a plain wooden hanger that I painted then covered in card stock. I printed out the words and stamped the tree image using m

 Hello Friends I managed to get another tag made for the Craft Stamper Take It Make It Challenge . I love love love using white embossing powder to create projects. So I wanted to make another quick entry for this challenge. This time I went for a lovely butterfly and used my watercolours again on this one. This stamp is from the Trust Your Soul smak kit from Unity Stamp Company. I created the background on the tag with my paints, silver stars and glitter. While that was drying I heat embossed my butterfly in white, cut it out, painted it then glued it to my tag. I only glued the body of the butterfly so that I could pull out the wings creating a 3D butterfly. I love the colours on this one so much. This is the first time I have used this butterfly stamp and I love it. I just know it is going to be one of my favourite stamps. I hope you like my tag thanks so much for stopping by :) Mandi xox Challenges Simon Says Stamp Wed - Anything Goes Wow Embossing Powder Dec 2014

Hello Friends I wanted to make a project  for the Craft Stamper Take It Make It Challenge . This month the challenge is white stamping. If you know me and my blog this is one of my favourite techniques to work with white embossing powder. I also happened to pick up the February issue of the Craft Stamper yesterday so I wanted to use the free heart stamp that came with it.  I am still home in Scotland for the holiday's still so I don't have all of my craft supplies but I did bring a few supplies with me and I happened to have another heart stamp that I used to create the top and bottom border. I stamped my tag and embossed it with white embossing powder then I used my Peerless Watercolour paints to colour it. I really love the way they blend together. I went for a two tone look with the raspberry and plum colours.   The tag was so absorbed with water that the paper started to pill. I loved the way it left a snowy effect behind once I rubbed the dried in pills away. Don&#