Hello there. I know I’ve been absent for a little while. I lost my dad towards the end of August, and I have also had a week away on holiday in Turkey. I managed to schedule my Design team posts, but very little else.

I’m also what they call flexibly retired – which means I am only working two days a week now…….hopefully more time for crafting – as well as other things.

I have a Copic colouring class this coming Saturday with Faye-Wynn Jones – soooo looking forward to that. I have the three day Craftaganza in November with Crafters Companion, and a three day weekend with ‘the girls‘ in a holiday park in November too.

The builders have finished the bathroom, the decorator has finished the painting and decorating……….it has been full-on, I’ll tell you…..

This morning I created a card for the current challenge at Color Throwdown:

This is a fairly new stamp company based in the UK, Picture This – Creative Endeavours – and I have several set of their stamps, but haven’t found time to play with them until today, I thought I should, especially as I bought more when I went to the crafting Live show in Coventry last Sunday – courtesy of Thirsty Brush and Co and winning a couple of tickets on Instagram – bought more goodies……I am sure you will see them – gradually!

I saw the colours for this challenge, and thought of this set of houses…..

I stamped the image first, then again alongside – can you see where I did that? I don’t think I did too badly! The outlines are heat embossed in black, then I took the three other colours from the challenge and played with water-colouring the houses with my Zigs. The aqua is actually the Catherine Pooler ‘Aquatini‘, but the grey and cobalt blue are Zigs.

I did quite a rough water-colour technique, as I didn’t want the houses too perfect, or too neat and tidy, as I feel the stamp is quite sketchy. A little bit of a deeper colour to some areas, but generally played around.

The sentiment is from Concord and 9th ‘City Scapes‘ – the ‘welcome‘ die cut three times and layered, and the rest stamped onto the card itself.

Challengesd I shall be entering:

Color Throwdown – cobalt blue, aqua, grey, black