I've had the time of my life - without the dancing!

Phew what a great time I have had - spreading my birthday out for as long as I can!
Monday we went to my oldest son - and was surprised with the most fantastic meal - he is a great cook - and it was great to all be together to celebrate.  Sadly my younger sons girlfriend was too ill to come - she has been struck with swine flu.  Get better soon 'M'.

I have more lovely pressies, and Haruko made me a gorgeous rich chocolate cake - with candles - and 60 on it too.  And they sang 'Happy Birthday' and I got to blow out the candles.  This is the first time in my entire life that I have had a birthday cake, and now I know how good it feels - brilliant!   (A bir ironic as I used to make cakes for everyone - birthdays, weddings, etc you name it I made one!)

Yesterday I went to Olney to LB Crafts for a workshop - Mixed Media Jewellery inspired by Tim Holtz

We made three pendants.

This is the reverse of the first one.  Inside is a square of card, coloured and stamped and sprayed with copper shimmer.

This is the front using the same method, but it's hard to see the shimmer spray.  It started off as a little silver frame, (which I coloured with alcohol inks,)  into which we sandwiched a piece of card (which we stamped and inked) with two pieces of glass.  Then finished it off with the clock parts, and the metal 'roof'. 

Now that I have mine home, I think I will replace the stamped image with something different - its nice to experiment.  All the pieces turned out differently on the course - and it was lovely to see the different colours and interpretations.

For this next pendant we all had a copper 1 inch frame.  A piece of copper, a mould, and a piece of copper wire.  The finished pendant was achieved by moulding the piece of copper, cutting it out, staining it if you wanted too - which I did, and I gave it a spritz of gold glimmer spray - all these glitzy things are hard to photograph sadly.  I am going to finish this off by sealing it with Diamond Glaze and perhaps adding a little jewel.

I am really rather proud of this last piece.

I decided to totally go 'wild' and change the colouring of it.   I used rust, copper, blue, and a few other colours to make it something that will go with any outfit - and it looked great with what I was wearing on the day.  Rich and wintery and warm.

I am 'hungry' to make more of these with different photos or images, and colours.  I am going to use alcohol inks to colour the little gold adornments I made either side - to tone in with the over all 'rustic' and old look, and the green beads I will alter with alcohol inks too to make them look a amethyst colour perhaps with some copper.

This looks so much better in natural light and in one's hand and it really catches the light with the alcohol inks.

It is finished off with disc and key. 

I have bought some more frames, essential bits to construct more of these, but the discs, and keys, and the 'clock works' all come in separate packs containing far more that I need and cost a fortune, so I will have to improvise somehow - which adds to the fun.

We arrived home last night - tired but happy - and thank you to all those on the course with me, I had such a wonderful time.

Stamp Man Christmas Giveaway

The Stamp Man is having a great Christmas giveaway - click here to join in

Birthday cards and pressies from internet friends

Here are some quick photos of the gorgeous cards and presents I received yesterday.   I wanted to scan them in individually, but its manic here, so I just can't fit the time in.

I took these last night so they are not as bright as they are in daylight.

Aren't they fabulous - I am still on a 'high'

These are a bit better to see

 I just find it amazing that all these people spent so much time making these just for me - and I haven't even met most of them - I am truly humbled - but with a huge grin on my face.  I am taking them all with me when I visit my sons on Monday - I know they will be amazed!

Ok I know that the one in the middle is a Christmas card and the one on the end is a Thankyou card, but they all came on my birthday (or maybe before because Patrick was hording them) and they have all be made just for me.   The one of the left is a photograph (by a famous artist where my friend lives) mounted inside the card.  I first met her on a 'chicken' forum and we have been friends ever since and we meet up when they visit Norfolk.  I would love to meet up with all my other internet friends all living in far flung places.

The 60 card is from the owner of the Time For Crafting Forum which I am a proud member of, and I just had to include the picture that Luke sent me - he is 4 on 23rd December and getting very good at drawing.  Haruko wanted him to use other colours but he was most insistent that he wanted these - red and green - very Christmassey I thought.

With all this inspiration, I will have absolutely no excuse now to avoid making cards.  And I now have a great reason - lots of like minded friends to send them too.   Next week I am going to make time to make myself a birthday book - and I want lots of names and dates to put in it.  I shall put lots of pages in it too - ever the optimist - with the intention that my internet list of friends will grow and grow.

Must dash - so much to cram into the next five days!

Old Age Pensioner - It is official

Sorry that I have not been doing the rounds of all your blogs today - I have been a bit pre-occupied with my 60th birthday today.

I am having the best birthday of my entire life.  I have had 10 cards from internet friends!

When my son phoned and I told him how many cards I have received (an all time record for me) even he said "Wow mum - cool"


We spent the day in Norwich city, and had lunch in the Assembly Rooms - a most gorgeous historical house http://www.assemblyhousenorwich.co.uk/

I had a five course sumptuous Christmas meal (won't dare weigh myself tomorrow) finishing with Baileys coffee and real homemade melt in the mouth mince pie. I had to pinch myself that today is really real.

Dearest Pat presented me with a bottle of Chanel perfume (which will last all year) and Father Christmas and the Birthday pixie are apparently going to buy me a lap top!  I am not sure if Father Christmas will find a bargain by the time he comes down our chimney - but if not then in the New Year apparently.

I am on such a high - you'd have to see it to believe it - not like me at all!

I am treasuring every single moment of today - and am so happy to be 60 its the best time of my life!

Once again - huge thanks for the cards and presents - I am so chuffed - I almost feel like I am part of a big family - you have all contributed to make my day so very special and one which I shall never forget.

God bless you

Have a lovely weekend - and now I really must  go to bed

I hope you are sitting down because...............

I was inspired by Inky Fingers to have a go at this.

I have made a Christmas card - sort of.

The stamp isn't a Christmas stamp, but I loved it as soon as I saw it.  As usual the photo is rubbish, so that you can not see that I have rubbed glittery stickles over it, which really transform it.

I have painted it around the butterfly wings, and brushed it on the bare branches and I think that it looks like frost in the first light of the morning.  I actually am happy with this card except for one little thing which you might spot or might not!

The Keeper stamp plate.

I was really inspired by this months' Craft Stamper magazine - lots of lovely projects in there - brilliant.

I actually have one of the stamps that was used in there too - which is a first! 

I bought it from Happy Daze  and two of their design team members are featured in the magazine this month.  Sadly I can't put any scanned photos on here as the magazine is not in the shops until 4th December (mine came early as I subscribe to it), but you can see some of the examples if you click the Happy Daze link above. 

One of those featured in the magazine is Paula a friend of mine - and I was inspired to have a go.

I decided to make myself an address book as ours is so old and is falling apart.

The trouble is people keep moving, and in the years I have had it some have moved 5 times - it is a real mess.

This book is really really thick and I used the largest size O wires to make it.  Lots and lots and lots of pages, and made this way so that I can just tear out any that get changed.   The covers are made out of mount board which I painted, inked then stamped, with images from the set of The Keeper stamps.  I was dreaming of a really hot steamy summers evening, with a few wispy white clouds just appearing over the horizon, and the sun. 

I have given it a couple of coats of varnish to keep it clean, so looks nice and shiny.

Sections of the inside pages are divided with tags, onto which I will put the letters of the alphabet for that section, once have all been entered. We have lots of surnames beginning with the same letter, and some letters of the alphabet haven't a single address, so this way I can divide it to suit our needs - which is not taken into account when you buy an address book - well it can't be can it!

At the back of the inside cover I have made a pocket which will hold 'business cards' which will be handy, and at the moment I am not sure whether to buy a journal stamp for the pages, or to just write them up by hand on the plain paper (Patrick has volunteered for that job!) 

I have a busy few days coming up, so probably won't be able to do any crafting until the weekend - but I hope to have time to visit your blogs to see what you are up too late in the evenings.

Have you see these before?

Firstly thanks for all the emails - I am feeling much better now thanks.  I slapped on the sunblock and went for an hours walk around the village. Bright sunshine, yet very very cold, but it was a real tonic to be out in the fresh air and getting some exercise.

Now swiftly changing the subject...................

Have you seen these before?

The window cleaner can this week and asked Patrick if I wanted some feathers for my arty crafty work.

I think he said that they were 'Hedgecock'  feathers - but as I rely on lipreading it is probably a totally different bird as I have never heard of a 'Hedgecock'.

Edited to day  -  thank you, thank you, thank you - for telling me its a Woodcock.  And thank you Paula for the Google link.  Now all I have to do is to work out how to paint with them!

What a beautiful little bird - I do so hope that it wasn't shot - but sadly I suspect that it might have been.  It's surely too tiny to eat.  

 I expected feathers akin to pheasant or partridge (as it is the shooting season around here with guns going off most days in the fields around).  Anyhow, I was greatly surprised when he opened his wallet (I know - and you're right - in these here parts it's rare you see a local open their wallet - and never to take anything out of it!) In fact this was a first for me!  He went on to say that artists use them for painting with.  They push them in a ???????? and then paint with the feather!

I think that they must be rather rare and he probably came across it on one of his shoots, but I would love to know more about it and the painting side of it.   They are so tiny as you can see by the small matchstick I photographed them against.  He definitely said 'paint' with them as opposed to using them as a quill in ink.