When the cat's away.....

Mice will play.... well that should be when Hubby's away, I'll play!!!!!!

Hubby was up early this morning and headed off to help his friend with some renovations and other stuff... and as he had done most of the housework yesterday, I didn't have much to do this morning.... so once the bathroom was done, washing done and on the airer upstairs and the dusting in our room done, I headed into my craft room and PLAYED!  Well I did some Design work... now up to date - 3 blog posts scheduled and then had some fun with my Altenew goodies.

Last week I bought issue 174 of Simply Cards and Papercraft which had some layered Altenew rose dies - but have been too full of the cold to feel like playing till today.  The magazine also has some downloads of coloured squares to make choosing the colours for the roses super easy. 

I printed the paper and die cut three roses and lots of leaves...  My background is a lovely grey card called Wrought Iron.  I used one of the beautiful Altenew cover die backgrounds that my lovely friend Betty sent me.  Love the black and grey stripes behind the pinks of the roses.   Finished with  a white embossed sentiment from Fresh Freesia stamp set.

Then I watched a couple of the class videos for Altenew Academy's Background Magic.  This class is being taught by Laurel Beard.   It is mainly about Background stamps - of which I don't have any of the Altenew ones.  So some improvisation had to be done so I could try out some of the class techniques with Altenew products.   Laurel used a striped stamp and some masking in Day 4 - so I took one of the cover die backgrounds Betty sent me and made it into a stencil - and did some masking and stamping and voila....This idea came to me as part of my AECP - from the Easy Die Cutting class.  Day 2 was about using die cuts as stencils.  Totally inspired me for doing my homework for the latest class!  So many awesome ideas for using dies in many ways. 

Totally rapt with the result.  It looks very similar to Laurel's stamped background.   I don't have any Altenew silhouette stamps so just did a couple of layers of one of the stamps in Golden Garden.  Add the sentiment from Sincere Greetings.   My splatters were a bit wishy washy so added a few Enamel Accents as well.

So I've been in the craft room for over 6 hours... Hubby came home and then went out again to watch the local rugby team play... He'll be home soon.  Time to take a break... turn on the heater and think about a nibble before we head out to a "not quite 60" birthday party.  Our neighbour is 59 this year as are several of his friends and they are having a combined party at a local hall.  As I still coughing and spluttering, I'll wrap up nice and warm to go out.

Thanks for stopping by.