💛 In the Spotlight with Gill Newton ...

  Happpppy Sunday friends, continuing on with the ⭐ Spotlights for all the beautiful souls that applied for the design team 💖 Today it`s the beautiful soul that is Gill Newton 😍 showcasing the lovely Lallianna 🐭 Twinkle Toes on not one but two cards.

💗 Please take a moment to find how Gill got into crafting 💛 going right right back to her childhood with her Grandma and Grandad ... please show her some love and send her some hugs... she took a nasty bump to the head yesterday.

My name is Gill. I have been married to my lovely hubby for over 26 years. He supports me crafting as it allows him to have some "me" time for himself. I have two wonderful boys, the eldest moved out this year, which left me a little sad ... until a crafty friend pointed out that I could have his old bedroom as my craft room instead of the small box room.😊 

I am a born and bred Manchester girl.

I have been crafting in one form or another since I was little. Starting from collecting fir cones with my Grandma and Grandad, then spraying them with gold or silver paint to hang on the Christmas tree. I also remember cutting old egg cartons up, so the "egg" holder was hanging down. Colouring them and then putting a pipe cleaner through the top to make it look like a {very dodgy} Christmas bell!

I started cross stitching when I was pregnant with my eldest, from there I did small cross stitch kits and started making cards with them. From there I started cardmaking, saw a small craft shop on the way to work one day, and have not looked back! I still shop at that small independent shop even now { 15 years later }, and still get welcomed with open arms. 

It was here that I first learned about stamping with cards.

I came across Tracy`s stamps almost two years ago, when I went on a class with another crafty friend. I love colouring as it is so theraputic, during lock down last year, I would often be found in the garden with a stack of stamped images, and my alcohol pens. It always amazes me how the same stamp can look so very different if you colour in different colour ways.

For my first card I stamped Lallianna in Memento ink. I then used my alchol markers to colour her in. Because I dropped my ink pad on the coloured image, I couldn`t cut her out square, so I turned my die a little and then die cut the image. The silver Mirri card border is the "waste" from cutting a different die out, but I think it is just so pretty. I then used one of the accent stamps in 2 shades of green distress inks.

I used 1st and 2nd generation stamping to give a feeling of depth in the images.

 The background is a sheet of plain paper that I coloured using my gel plate and some ink shimmer sprays.

  I have tried to show the shimmer on the photos but it is much more shimmery in real life.

  I wanted to keep this one quite simple, so I just used 5 gems in each corner.

For my second card, Lallianna was stamped with a black Archival ink. I decided I would use my colouring pencils. I then blended the image with some Sansador and a paper stump. I stamped the " sending you Love" in brown Distress ink, cutting them out then inking the edges with the same ink.

 I then die cut her with an oval die, then a sightly bigger oval from silver Mirri card. 

The background again was created with my Gel plate with pink, red and purple spray inks. 

The flowers were made with a stamp and matching die along with a few die cut leaves to pop behind the flowers.

A matching ribbon and bow, a few gems in the centre of the flowers and in the corners to finish off.

I love Tracy`s stamps they can be used in so many different ways. I now have ideas running through my head, but unfortunately, not enough hours in the day to do the crafting I would like.

Huge thanks to you all for reading and getting this far.

Gill xxx

You can find me on Facebook HERE

Blogland HERE