Birthday Thanks and a Lovely Surprise

Just so you know, this post is very picture heavy, very!! Firstly I had help unwrapping my presents and opening my cards this morning.

And then he really got stuck in!!

First batch of cards from my lovely friends Hazel, Lesley, Lin, Hazel H and Emma.

And the next batch are from some more lovely friends, Helen, Chrissie, Burn, Debs, Chris and Lin.

And the next fabulous batch are from my lovely friends, Kirsten, Alison, Chris and Linda.

And finally this lovely lot arrived today, Neet sent me the green Stampotique card, and Jo the one underneath with the LP image and the lovely Julie Ann made me a gorgeous charm gift and look at the tissue she wrapped it in (right) and the fabulous envie.

And this is a gorgeous hanging from Linda which she gave to me on Sunday at the Donny show, it's fabulous, front and back.

This is a close up of the fabulous charm from Julie Ann, look at those shrink plastic pieces, gorgeous.

And on Sunday at the show, the lovely Lin and Chris presented me with this fab envie top right and inside was this PA voucher, they asked me to spend it at the show, so I got the set of EV stamps left, thank you so much for this lovely present.

I also treated myself to this set of stamps by Ryn Designs with some birthday money.

And then these two plates were from my fabulous mate, Emma. They are a Choc Baroque steampunk set which I had my eyes on at Port Sunny.

And the lovely Lin and Helen also sent me email vouchers which arrived in my in-box this morning, but I've not had time to look for anything today as I had another fabulous surprise.

Emma came over to see me, so I grabbed a quickie pickie once Fraz had calmed down after saying his hellos, and she was finally able to sit and have a drink.

But my intention for today was just to craft and nothing else, primarily playing with the brushos. Emma was up for this as well and here are a couple of things she made. The red reminded us of poppies.

And we did quite well for not making too much mess, well to start with anyway!!!

Then Emma moved on to play with lots of other things, Pan Pastels, Silks, Primary Elements whilst I managed to throw the contents of a box all over the place!!!

This is brushos on a small canvas using a pipette and the TH distress marker spritzer. I dried each colour before adding the next.

And then after cutting out all the 3 plates of stamps above and Emma stamping each one to make sure I'd cut enough rubber off, I added a couple of images to the canvas.

Then I tried a stencil technique that I saw Tracey from Oyster stamps demo at the show on Sunday.

This is the stencil which Emma brought with her, but left at my house!!  It's another Ryn one.

I just loved how this one came out, it's just one colour of blue brusho and then spritzed.

And a tag with a pipette and the TH spritzer tool to blow it around. Then stamped a couple of the Choc Baroque steampunk images and coloured them in with brushos and a water brush.

This is another technique observed on Sunday by Tracey. You may recognise the background image as one of the EV stamps, yes I used brushos to stamp with, then stamped the LP image in black and bleached it out to remove all the colour from it. You wouldn't believe what a difference the bleach made!!

And for my last tag I simply stamped one of the Ryn sets of raindrops, very effective indeed.

This is Emmas bleached out brusho one using one of the new Choc B steampunk set.

And brushos using the TH spritzer tool to get some air to move the brusho about with Lavinia stamps.

And she was testing out more of the Choc B Steampunk images.

The red poppies again.

This tag background was done with silks and primary elements. Looks really good IRL.

And the brushos through the stencil.

I have no idea why, but it won't let me turn this and show it the right way up!!!

Again I have no idea why it's turned around, but nothing I can do. This is Emmas pan pastel make.

And if you've managed to stay with me this long, thank you and well done and a huge thank you to all who have sent birthday wishes via Twitter, FaceBook, by email and by post. I've had a truly lovely day made special by all of you.

***Edited***

This is what I bought with my vouchers from Lin and Helen and a bit of birthday money.