Thinking of Spring

Hello all, and welcome to Words and Pictures.

You've arrived just in time for the April Artistic Outpost bloghop, so do hop around and see what my fabulous Design Team-mates have been up to with their Artistic Outpost stamps.  Here's the full itinerary...

Gerrie Johnnic, Lisa Somerville, 

Suzanne Czosek, Tracy Evans, 

Linda Coughlin, Alison Bomber,

Terry Horrall, Kate Yetter

And if you haven't yet heard the big AO news, do take a look here, or at the press release.

But before you go anywhere, here's my offering for you today.

It'll come as no surprise to the regulars that I've been in Springtime mode, and playing with the wonderful Birds of a Feather plate again.  As usual with these brilliant stamps, I've been mixing and matching, so there are guest appearances from a couple of other sets too!






I started with one of the PaperArtsy Heavy Grey Boards.  They're 2mm thick, with a lovely smooth white surface on one side, so great for layering and stamping onto.  I inked very gently with Bundled Sage, Iced Spruce and Peeled Paint.

Next, I did some stencilling with the same colours, layering the Tim Holtz Honeycomb and Dot Fade, and adding some browns into the mix too.










I stamped the beautiful robin pretty much centre stage.  It's either Coffee or Potting Soil - sorry, I've forgotten which!

And the nest seemed to look just right nestled at the foot of the board.  

The adorable birds on a wire are from the Bluebird set... 

... they're ready to take off from the top or the bottom of the piece!











And a couple of little birds are also perched part way up, surrounded by the leafy vines from the Hayride plate, which are stamped in my new Leaf Green Archival ink.













There's also some lovely Gothic book text, which is another stamp from Birds of a Feather.












The wooden banners I think came from Unity Stamps - they're deliciously chunky, about 5mm deep.  

I stamped the two phrases direct onto the wood (Spring is here from Birds of a Feather, Thinking of you from Bluebird).







Although the ink has run slightly along the grain of the wood, I rather like the softening effect.

A little touch of frayed twine on each of them, and we're pretty much done.







Thanks so much for stopping by, and do hop along to see what the rest of the team have been up to... there are many delights awaiting you!  If you get lost along the way, you can find all the details here at Artistic Outpost.

The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show off.  Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off - and they are nearly always doing it.
From The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
(She's writing about a British robin, of course!)

Plenty of my favourite things here... Artistic Outpost stamps, nature images - especially that vine stamp!, wood and twine, so I'd like to pop this into A Few of My Favourite Things over at the Inspiration Journal sponsored by the Inspiration Emporium.