Gelli prints on cards - #2

I managed to make another couple of cards from my gelli print session that I mentioned in my last post. I even used up some NBUS!

One of my favourite stamp sets of all time is the Simon Says Stamp One with Nature set and I finally bought the dies in a recent spend there. The main printing was done with the leaves stencil I also bought from SSS. This is such a lovely stencil. In the green card, you can just see the hint of it on the die cuts. I used two shades of green on this print - a sort of tone on tone gelli print.

My second card uses a print I made from all the leftover bits of paint on the gelli plate. I basically gave the plate a light coating of one colour and it lifted all the layers underneath that hadn't picked up in previous prints. Don't you think it really looks like bark? I absolutely love it!

I die cut the pieces then had trouble working out where to put them on the card, so I hit upon the idea, which I am sure I've seen somewhere else, of random stamping and then covering up some of the stamped images with the die cuts. I popped them up on foam tape then cut the pieces that were hanging off the edge of the card.

I hadn't left a lot of space for a sentiment, but the inking was a light grey, and as the sentiment is meant to be a bit wobbly, I thought it would look nice just stamped on top.

Almost a one layer card!! 

Hope you're all enjoying life and keeping on crafting as much as you can :) Happy Crafting Everyone!

Gelli Prints on Cards #1

Hi Everyone! The weather has been glorious, but I'm a bit glad of the rain today as the garden was starting to get a little sad and wilted, despite my efforts at watering. Let's hope it clears soon for the Bank Holiday weekend!

I've been watching Kim Dellow and Teresa Morgan's gelli print videos lately and decided I wanted to get my plate and paints out again and have another play. There is nothing like playing to get you used to the medium. It helps you work out what works and what doesn't and you usually end up with something you can use for cards at the end. You can watch my first attempt at using the plate in My First Gelli Prints Video.

I decided to try some stencils with my gelli plate. One I bought and one that I made from a die. I've had this Spellbinders die since I first started crafting 3 years ago, using it on this card back at the very beginning of my blog. I hadn't used it in a while and considered selling, but there's something about it that made me keep it. I'm glad I did because it works really nicely on the gelli plate. I just die cut it out onto a couple of sheets of plain printer paper.

I printed this at the end of my session, and honestly I cannot quite remember how I did this! This is why it's important to film gelli plate sessions, if only so I can remember. I think the blue was already on the plate, I added yellow on top and then the red on top of the negative portion of the die.

However I did it, I LOVED the results. It reminded me of  hieroglyphs on an ancient Egyptian tomb - my eldest is currently obsessed with Egyptians!

Hope this inspires you to try out your gelli plate again - some of you have told me they have them or even made them. They can be a lot of fun! 

This has been sent off to the lovely Michelle over at The Card Grotto, who is a constant inspiration and an absolutely lovely friend. Wishing you a fabulous birthday!!

Happy Crafting Everyone!

Craft Haul - April, May 2018 - VIDEO

Hello! Here I am sharing my crafty hauls from April and May. I combined them as I knew I was going to Happy Stampers in Port Sunlight in May.

I'm over on my You Tube channel where you can watch it, or you can watch below. Details of where I bought the items are in the description on my YouTube video.

Thank you so much for all your kind comments on my GDPR posts of the past couple of days and I'm glad some of you have found them useful. We shall see what happens on 25th May!

I'll be back with some crafty posts soon - I have a lot of NBUS to use up!! Happy Crafting Everyone :)

Further Musings on GDPR....

****Please, please remember I am not a lawyer! None of this is to give advice on the legalities of GDPR or how you should comply. It is my personal blog, and I have done my own research into how I think it relates to me. You will need to do the same!****

So, having caused a bit of a stir with my post from last night and waking up to various questions about it, I'm popping a link in here to a blog post that the lovely Michelle sent me to assuage my fears. It does help to make a lot more sense of it.

The Blogger's Guide to GDPR from PipDig

Please don't just copy and paste what my Privacy Policy says. It relates to my blog and the things I have on it. Of course you can read what I have written, and see if you have similar things you need to mention, and you can then write your own. It has to relate to your blog remember! I have read the privacy policies of crafty friends - it is always useful to see what others have written as they can prompt you to see what you need -  but written mine to relate to me.

Please also remember I have a Blogger blog which is different to how Wordpress works. If you have a business and sales site, this is also different. The link above relates to Blogging. 

It's taken me a lot of conversations with friends, a lot of reading and a lot of thinking about my blog and what it has on it, what it links to and what I decided I don't want on there, such as adverts. In short, it has been a GOOD THING to do. It does no harm to tell your readers what personal information they are leaving on your blog, and telling them what you will do or not do with it, what you link to, what information you sign up to for mailing lists, etc. In fact if anything, it's polite and we all like politeness, don't we?

DO NOT PANIC! YOU CAN DO IT! 

I shall be having a well deserved gin tonight and possibly a cookie. Like a biscuit cookie. Not a computer one.

GDPR - General Data Protection Regulations - Please read!

*** A HUGE shout out to my crafty friends who have helped me to get my head around all of this. You know who you are and I appreciate it so much!!!***

A little run down on how I've changed my blog to conform with the new EU/EEA General Data Protection Regulations.

I've added a Privacy page to my blog which I would appreciate you reading as it also tells you what I do with the information you send me as part of my bag and destash sales.

I've decided to remove adverts from my blog for the time being as they require cookies for personalisation. I barely make anything from them anyway.

I embed my YouTube videos into my blog posts when I have a video and so, I have, with loads of help from my bloggy friends, changed these so that no cookies will be set on my blog from YouTube. The easiest way not to miss my videos, is to subscribe direct through YouTube.

Any comments you leave on my blog will give me access to certain information such as your user name and email address and if you leave a comment, you consent to me having that information and your name/username being displayed on my blog.


I have a small group of people signed up to my email list with Google Feedburner. By signing up to this, you consent to them and me having access to your email address and user name/name. You can unsubscribe at any time, although I hope you won't! 

I know this has been worrying quite a few people, including one crafty friend who shut her blog down because she was so concerned about it. 

Please do not panic about it, it is simply me telling you that if you engage with this blog in any way, you leave some data about yourself. I have complied as best I can with the new regulations and all I want is for you to carry on enjoying my blog posts and letting me tell you about my crafty adventures and my crafty hauls :)

I do hope you will still engage with my posts and YT videos, and leave comments and likes. It keeps me going and I really enjoy the interaction. I've made some lovely friends since I started blogging, and I'd hate it all to stop!
  
I will be back soon with more crafty fun posts, so do not worry, we will get through this together!

New Destash Page

A quick post to let you all know I've created a Destash page on my blog with details of items I'm selling. Most are half price of the original and are in good condition. Any yellowing and staining of stamps won't affect their use.

Do let me know if you are interested by email - ruthich1976@gmail.com

Happy Crafting!

5 Colour Challenge - Copic UK Facebook Group - VIDEO

Hi Everyone, I'm back to share a couple of cards I made to start off the May challenge over on the Copic UK Facebook Group. This month it is using only 5 colours. Now those of you who use Copics or any other marker, knows that can be a challenge, especially if, like me, you enjoy colouring people and critters that can often take up around 20 colours an image. So I used a technique I learnt on my Copic 4 class called colour washing.

My apologies that my photographs don't really capture the colours terribly well. They are muted, which is what the technique gives, but not that muted!

I found a couple of images of these Jane's Doodles cacti that I stamped out ages ago to take with me when I travel and hadn't got round to colouring them yet.

The video below explains much better how this technique works, but basically you lay down your shading in grey and then wash another colour on top. In this case I did remember the colours I used thanks to the video! I used my Toner greys in 1, 3 and 5 and a YG63 and an E23.

It is a really quick and simple way to get a muted effect for your colouring and for colouring in small images.

I then fussy cut the cacti and popped them up onto foam tape on top of a piece of patterned paper from my recent Stampin' Up stash haul. A white card blank and a simple sentiment in the bottom corner kept it very simple.

I hope you'll join in the challenge this month - there are Copic Ciaos to be won! - and try something different too. Happy Crafting!!