Another sort of art - Flower Arranging

I spent a pleasant couple of hours this afternoon in a village hall flower arranging.
The theme this time was Christmas - and there were all different shapes and styles of arrangements being made.

We just had to do whatever we wanted - but had to bring a in picture or photo of the design we were going for.




The spikes of yellow flowers are Mahonia, and the foliage you can see is bay, rosemary, Australian bottle brush sprayed gold and some hypericum berries. You can click on any photo for a close up






Yellow cymbidium orchids and red spray carnations.
This will reside in my porch on the window ledge where it will keep nice and cool and will last right up to to and over the Christmas holidays.

You can also see conifer, variegated holly from my garden and fir cones sprayed gold.


Its a bit early for Christmas decorations for me - but this, I feel, is not a traditional arrangement.

When the flowers fade I can remove them and the ribbon, and by adding a few flowers, it will last through spring.



And the cost? Not as much as you may think.

Stem of Orchids £4.95
Spray carnations £2.50
Foliage from my garden and hedgerow

The ribbon I already had - so too the candle which is years old.

And the best bit is - I have enough of the above flowers to make either one more large arrangement like this - or two smaller ones for either side!

The porch smells amazing when you walk in there with all that foliage.

Something completely different!

This Thursdays Challenge is 'Playing with Paint'



This is something completely different for me! If you click the photo you can see the embossing texture.

Colour washed background paper.

Then I used my just arrived Tim Holtz masks - aren't they BIG! I don't do big - and when I saw them I thought - I won't be using them! But encouraged by my very talented friend Paula and being snowed in - I thought I would give them a go!

I placed a tiny part of the mask onto the paper and then applied more paints in different colours.



With a white pen and using the bandanna method, (it was my first attempt) I dotted around the masked areas. Then embossed the areas which were outside the mask.

It's given the book cover a lovely texture on the dark areas which emphasise the masked area.

I assembled the notebook with my BIA and added an acetate cover - to finish it off.

UK Stampers Challenge

The challenge on UK Stampers is to make a piece of art using an old stamp which you have not used before.



The photo stamp I used on this note book I made, was one I bought second hand on impulse.

I had to take the photo in artificial light unfortunately - which does not show it to its best advantage.

I stamped the vintage image with sepia archival ink, then embossed it - the spots you see are not spots on the image but where the light is catching the embossing.

I then 'inked' all over the cover, and embossed it with gold to give it a vintage 'leather' look about it - well that was the aim and added a gold strip of ribbon.

In 'real life' it looks so much better - clear embossed in the middle with a clear photo stamped image - and the textured gold page.

Blog Candy

Angel Drummer is celebrating her birthday with a blog cand giveaway! Happy birthday

Shades of the sea - 'Friend' tag.

I can't get a true to life picture of this, couldn't take it in daylight - so this is a scan.

I have shaded it from left to right with sea green, blue, then sea blue - then stamped it and added the wording.


The wording cut outs are not are showing up quite white - think its the scan light and flash light, in reality they are shaded with sea green and blue to match the tag.

Matchbox project - Blending Foam Storage Box

Remove all the matches from the boxes and store in a sealed tin for safety.
Glue your boxes together - Use any multiples you like. I decided on 16 boxes.


Cut a strip of paper to cover the top and sides and overlap at the bottom about 1/4 inch. I decided to decorate my strip but you can use pre-printed paper of course.
For a stack of boxes this size my strip was the length of an A4 sheet cut 2" wide - which made it easy! You need to cut a strip to go across the bottom too (on top of the overlap from the longer strip.)



Next I glued the strip and covered the box overlapping at the bottom, then glued a piece to cover the bottom


Once inked and stamped I decided it looked a bit pale - so added another layer of ink
and over stamped it.



And then one more! As I am a mucky worker and often have ink on my fingers I painted the top with Shellac to protect the surface.



Then all I have to do now is to ink the little drawers as I go - with a blending foam pad then pop them into the appropriate box.

The match boxes push out from either end with your finger or you can add a little brad.





On the reverse of each box I put the make and colour of the ink I have used on the pad.

BIA Note Book - Vintage Gold

I did another little notebook - today - again just experimenting and it fits the challenge on This Thursday which is Marvelous Mettalics.

I used a piece of scrap paper I had - which was pale blue to start with. Dabbed on a bit of colour here and there, then stamped it, and embossed in black the 'lady'.

Swished over some gold and then heated up the embossing again so that it came through the gold.

Stamped and embossed the patterns at the top, then with a complimentary chalk blue/green, I stamped and embossed a little trio of leave stamp which came with my prize Trees Stamps from Stamping up Stamps around the page to create a vintage look wall paper effect.

This positively shimmers in daylight sunshine.