What a great way to spend an afternoon

I haven't been able to go to my flower arranging afternoons once and month for ages, and ages, and ages, - but I did so yesterday.

I was only there an hour or so, but did manage to make a table top arrangement - the other ladies were making great big dangling arrangements suitable for displaying in church

This is how it looked when I brought it home but today the roses have opened out and you can hardly ee any foliage - and it looks just gorgeous.

I don't plan to miss any more of the flower arranging monthly get togethers if I can help it!

You just can't beat the smell of fresh foliage, and flowers to put a smile on your face

More texture pages

More experimental pages for my texture reference book.

It's just one of the forum projects going on at Cardmaking Paradise   see the link in the  post below.

 

I got my inspiration for this whilst looking out my garden studio window

on a dull wet grim sort of day.

 

 I cast my mind back to autumn last year with the bare vines of the ivy clinging to the birch trees

The leaves are starting to fall after the cold snap these past few nights, and I have mixed in some frosty wintery sparkle - and the wistful vintage girl printed on a perspex 'window' in the woods.

So somehow the challenge of using texture paste on a page - I seem to have turned into a Narnia type dream

And my 'texture paste' alas wasn't the posh art one - but a £! pot of unamed all purpose filler in a hardware shop!

The texture pages being created on the forum by members are so colourful and  beautiful - I just wish I didn't have a weird imagination and could just create the way they do - without it having to 'be' something pictorial.

Apparently it is all due to what sort of brain you have - honestly I was told that by a professional!

I happen to see things in pictures in my brain - tasks, problems, mathematical things - you name it I visualise it!  Tsk!

Textures House Book

Well I am still soldiering on with my house texture pages which we are showcasing on the Cardmaking Paradise Forum.

Here is another example for the 'Buttons, bits and bobs' textured house

I had to scan it as my batteries were flat in my camera - doh!  

The face was an image transfer onto mount board for the back of the frame.

The front I cut out a scalloped aperture, then covered the whole of the area with tile sealant - which was the only glue type 'stuff' I had to had that I could smooth on thickly to take the different depths and sizes of buttons and other 'junk' bits and pieces.

  I smothered them all with metal paint - just and old cheapo I have had years which is running out now - yikes.  When dry, I highlighted it with silver rub and buff, the mounted it on top of the image transfer which I had covered with a piece of 'overhead slide transparency cut to size.

It's stuck together with double sided sellotape

The cover page

 One of the metal pages

 More to come later

It looks so much better in real life!

I am just 'dipping my toe' back into crafting again, and joining in the monthly postcard swap on UK Stampers forum.  It really is great fun and just wonderful to get a postcard each month.

I have painted my images with water colours to hopefully give it a vintage feel.

Why not join us and make a post card - you'll soon get addicted

I don't 'do' ATCs

Well I do  now!

Sara of Cardmaking Paradise  was hosting an Internations ATC swap when  I logged on to the forum after bringing Mr Lottie back from hospital.    I was pretty tired (understatement) and had lots to 'worry' about - but I thought this was just the challenge I needed to distract me - and it did.

You can read all about it here  and see all the fabulous entrants.  There was a nice long lead in date so it gave me enough time to get my act together.

Yesterday our packages came back.  There was a tutorial on how to made a little book to put them all in.  I am useless at doing things like that - but it was so simple and the ATCs were so lovely that I got stuck in last night and made it!

 We had to make eight ATCs and I made an extra one for myself which I stuck on the front of holder

 

I was over the moon with the ones I received

From left to right the artists are

Heike, Maggie, Sara, Sue

Glennis, Annie, April and Lainey

Thank you everyone I am thrilled to bits.

It's a fantastic little ATC holder and I have room for 4 more ATC's !!

Not that I am hinting any CMP friends

Phew - I thought all was lost!!!

I haven't been able to get in to my blog since my last post - and I thought that I would never be able to do so again.

Every time I tried to log in it came up with Blogger Buzz and made me sign up with that - then that wouldn't let me in.

At last I have cracked it - and here I am again.

Well this is a bit askew isn't it - don't know how that's happened!

I had to scan this postcard and it's made it look rather harsh.  

To the naked eye it is much softer and chalkier looking and the dark link above her head in the background does not exist on the postcard - it's on my scanner and I can't get it off!

So here is my effort for this months' postcard swap on the UK Stampers Forum

we could choose any subject but couldn't use any words!

Up my allotment the blackberries are starting to ripen - so this is what inspired me to stamp and paint the Bramble Goddess - using the colours on the brambles

I'm back at last.......

Well it's good to be back - Mr Lottie had his open heart surgery earlier in the month and we are back home.  Doc says it will take about a year to return to full fitness - but hey, that's great - he's got a new lease of life.

I took a few hours off from 'nursing' duties to have a play - and it was great!   I moved a lot of my 'messy' crafting stuff back out into my garden studio (just lifting out drawers and swapping them with the empty ones out there)

On Cardmaking Paradise they are having a 'fun week' where you are set a task to create something.  The next few weeks are going to be pages for a textured book.  The first page was one using buttons - but at that stage I hadn't located or sorted mine out so I just made a texture page!

 I used one of my favourite stamps as inspiration - a mermaid which I stamped on a coaster first then glued it on to the house shape page.  I  broke up some large shells and used chunky bits across the sea bed - gluing htem on with bath sealent to raise them up to give a 3D texture to the underwater scene.

 Some fine dry twigs were painted in sea blues and green and tucked under the shells

I used plasterers 'tape' (which is rough open threaded string like stuff) for the hair, and other sea weed 'flotsom' - I pulled it to bits picking out individual threads and then painted them black for the hair and greens and blues for the sea weed etc - left them to dry - before gluing them on over and under shells, and other sea life

Why on earth I didn't think of using black sewing cotton I do not know - it would  have been much quicker!

I poured a clear selant over the top and left it to dry in the sun.

In 'real life' it really looks wet and as though she is under the sea. I quite like the shiny little painted fish swimming in and out of her hair!