Chatsworth at Christmas

No card today but I thought you would enjoy seeing some photos of a recent visit to Chatsworth - especially those of you who live overseas and like to see how the aristocracy live.....shades of Downton Abbey!

Each year the house (the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire) is decorated for Christmas, with dozens of Christmas trees, heaven knows how long it takes, it is a labour of love for me to get the baubles for one tree out of the loft....

This next room was decorated to celebrate the Nutcracker ballet, the dancer you see was inside a box that opened like a music box, with music from the ballet playing......

Imagine sweeping down those stairs in your Christmas party outfit.....

My friend Heather and I had to make do with puffa jackets instead of silk and velvet.....

The library was fascinating, it was a theme of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' and all the glass fronted bookcases had paper cut outs of the images from the song, here are twelve ladies dancing....

 

and Lords a leaping - I love the way they are all different poses and sizes

There were other signs of a handmade Christmas as well, these paper angels were used to tie back drapes

Imagine sitting here for Christmas lunch!

I hope you enjoyed your visit to one of England's most beautiful stately homes

Stockings for Daring Cardmakers

This week on Daring Cardmakers, they are saying 'show us your stockings!'

Here's mine, stocking from good old Christmas Cheer in Cricut design space, filled with some random greenery and some leaves I left white. That Merry Christmas paper that I used for the stocking has been hanging around for at least ten years!

Today is this little poppets fifth birthday. Happy birthday Molly xxx

Here she is on her first day at school in September

and eating some giant fire pit toasted marshmallows........ 
 

 

Silver, Aqua and a Dash......

This week on Daring Cardmakers, Kathy challenged us to use Aqua, Silver and a dash of one other colour.

I came up with this.........

 The silvery snowflake background paper is from the Arctic Winter paper pad from Craft Label (isn't it gorgeous?). Snowflakes and NOEL word are dies by Spellbinders, and the silver circle is a MFT die

Pop over to Daring Cardmakers to see the inspiration over there, and we would love you to join in if you are getting into your Christmas cardmaking mode....

Twelve Days of Christmas Card

Craft Label have a Christmas pad called the Twelve Days of Christmas, I got the 8 x 8 size, there are three pages of these tiles - enough to make eight of these box cards, I love the way they turned out

 I followed a very good tutorial on this particular fold by Paul  Ford  on YouTube. Here is the link  He is well worth following if you like unusual folds for cards, or make mini albums. I love the way he is so organised, there is no faffing around on his videos

In my design team parcel from Craft Label was this little Santa stamp, a last minute addition, and an absolute bargain at only £1. I knew at once what I wanted to do with him, quick stamping, even quicker colouring, and the image cut out beautifully with my Scan n Cut machine. Then it was Ho Ho Ho all the way..............perfect quick card for small excited people!

 

Jolly Holly

The challenge over at Daring Cardmakers this week is Jolly Holly Days, pop over there to see the fantastic creations from the design team, and we would love you to join in

I made mine with a variety of die cut leaves on a twig wreath background. I cut them all in white and inked them. Holly and bow dies are by Spellbinders. I spattered a bit of white acrylic paint on the navy background. Sentiment stamp by Tim Holtz, embossed in white WOW embossing powder

I went to a lecture yesterday on Moorish architecture in Spain - it was focused mainly on Andalucia, especially the gorgeous city of Cordoba, and it took me right back to a week Mike and I spent there some years ago. That area of Spain is the home of flamenco, there was a local festival of some type going on, which meant all the women were dressed in gorgeous flamenco dresses and mantilla's, even the young girls, who were perched on the back of their boyfriends scooters in full flamboyant dresses. One night we went back to the hotel, it was quite late, but there were crowds of excited people gathered outside....big crowds. They were clearly waiting for someone, we thought it would be a pop star we had never heard of, but the noise and cheers were overwhelming when a car drew up and out stepped a Matador, fresh from the bullring, still wearing his bejewelled suit of lights

Isn't it lovely when something triggers memories of days and events you have forgotten? Yesterday in that lecture, I could almost feel the warmth of the sun and smell the delicious aromas wafting out of the tapas bars

It's been a while..........

I have so neglected my blog lately......down to a variety of reasons,  I had a period of being unwell, had all sorts of unpleasant tests, luckily all is well and I am fine again now. Somehow I haven't got back into the swing of things since lockdown, it's strange really, during those difficult times, friends were saying 'well at least you have your crafts to keep you occupied', but I hardly made anything, with everything going on in the world, it all seemed a bit pointless to play with paper! But here we are...triple jabbed and crafting again 

Trimcraft sent me a box full of their delightful Christmas goodies, I particularly liked the Winter Wonderland pack and made these box cards. The santa sleigh is a die cut, the little trees were cut with my Cricut. They turned out just as I hoped 

and a couple of regular cards made with elements from the matching decoupage stack. Branch from Winter Woodland in Cricut design space
 

These photos are pretty bad, I took them at night, but wanted to give you an idea of the pads. They are available from Craft Label

Don't we live in a divided world these days? There seems to be no grey areas, just angry people who wear masks, and angry people mad at those who do. Angry people who believe in the vaccine programme, and angry people who don't. Angry people who believe so strongly about climate change they superglue themselves to roads, and angry motorists who believe they are nuts. It's quite difficult to tread the middle ground I find - but humour helps. It quite made my day when I saw someone wearing an Extinction Rebellion T shirt tucking into a plastic wrapped sandwich with coffee in a unrecyclable cup. Or see someone faithfully,  wearing a mask as a sort of chin strap with nose and mouth uncovered. It was funny as things started to get back to some sort of normality how, when you bump into friends unexpectedly, there was a sort of hesitation...oops, no, can't hug you and those elbow bumps are ridiculous, let's just stand awkwardly a good distance away from each other and hope that's allowed 

So here I am again, still pondering about the realities of life, and with a very messy craftroom once more. I promise to be back very soon (is it too late to make a new year resolution? No, it's only November.......)