Elemental Inspiration for DCM

I seem to have been targeted by hackers who have put NO WAR banners in the Ukrainian colours on here. I have no idea how to get rid of this - working on it. Going Buggy is not, and never will be a place to advertise politically, however just their cause is.  

Another Friday, another challenge....... I found this one hard! The inspiration collage is above, and below is what I came up with. A very loose interpretation this time. The background stamp, sponged with distress inks is called French Script - that takes care of Paris then! I found a circle and some greenery there as well.......it turned into a clean and simple card that I am a bit obsessed with at the moment. The heart stems and that stitched circle are by Memory Box

The light was fading fast on a miserably grey day by the time it was ready to photograph, so this was the best I could do before I popped it in an envelope to fly down to Surrey for daughter in law Lidia's birthday

 Not much in the way of cheerful news this week, like the rest of the world I am fixated with watching in horror the news channels. I did meet up with two friends for lunch yesterday, we went to a Carvery (which is a bit of a depressing experience these days as the whole place on weekday lunchtimes is crammed with some very ancient looking pensioners.......until the realisation dawns that actually you are in the company of your peer group). From every group of tables, snatches of conversations drifted over....over and over again the words Ukraine, Russia and Putin drifted around the room. The world is weeping

Compton Verney

I recently visited Compton Verney in the Worcestershire countryside with some friends to see a Needlecraft fair....the house was derelict until a wealthy patron of the arts rescued it and turned it into a venue for all kinds of art displays/concerts etc. The house is now managed by a charitable trust. The building itself is pretty unremarkable, (apart from a glorious Art Deco chapel), but the grounds were landscaped by Capability Brown (a great English landscape gardener), and are just delightful. No formal flower beds, just great sweeping vistas of lawns, leading down to a river bordered with bullrushes, and home to families of ducks

Look at this first photo - did you think it was pen and ink drawings onto fabric? So did I, until you got up close and realised that all those buildings have been faithfully recreated with the finest black embroidery threads......
 

Look at this - it looks like a painting, but every detail, water, grass, sky, has been embroidered onto linen

I liked the fact that there were exhibits from young people as well, all these samplers were made by youngsters, some as young as twelve! 

The last two to catch my eye are these fabulous felted scenes, they were for sale, but were way above my budget!

I am a real grasshopper type of crafter, if something grips and inspires me, I rush ahead like a bull in a china shop thinking "I could do that!"...........the reality is, of course that I can't. I was tempted to rush out and invest in embroidery threads, but common sense kicked in, even I, despite my misplaced enthusiasm, know with certainty that there is NO way I would have the patience to produce anything worth looking at. So maybe I will save some pennies so that the next felted cow that steals my heart can come home with me 

Elemental Inspiration for Daring Cardmakers

It's my turn to set the challenge on DCM this week, as always, the first challenge of each month is a mood board for inspiration, here is what I chose - mainly because I love the teal and pink colours! The idea is that you choose three elements from the board for your project, go ahead...join in....have fun with us! To see the design team cards, go HERE

Here is mine - I chose the teal and pink of course, some tiny hearts (the girl in the photo is holding hearts), and I used a MFT die which is part of a set which makes a plaid, to mimic the door panels behind the girl. The stamp is by Clearly Besotted

What three elements would you have chosen?

Looking in my photos file, I totally forgot to post photos of a visit made to Compton Verney to visit a needlework fair, I will dig them out over the weekend....I hope whatever you are doing, you have a great weekend 

 

In the Frame

Over at Daring Cardmakers this week, Nat set the challenge of 'In the Frame'

I used the Memory Box Sea frame for mine. Background done with distress inks, and lots of little fishes.....

 Do pop over to see what the design team came up with, and join in if you can

I wonder what life is like for all of you in your countries now? Here, most of the restrictions have been lifted from today. I honestly wonder if things will ever get back to normal. Hopefully soon, it will all seem like a bad dream for all of us. In the meantime, I have a streaming cold, so it's time to dust off the lateral flow tests again.....

Edited to say it was negative 😊

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you had a good Christmas, ours was interrupted again by Covid - our eldest son and his family were due to spend it with us, but our grandson Monty tested positive, so that plan flew out the window. But all our family managed to visit at some stage over the past two weeks, so it has been fun, and now the tree and decorations are down, the house is quiet again and I can potter about in my craft room to my hearts content.....

It's my turn to set the challenge over on Daring Cardmakers this week, I chose a theme of 'Up UP and Away' which is to use balloons on your creations. After I set the challenge I wondered what had possessed me, as I couldn't find a single balloon stamp or die , but after much rummaging around, found this hot air balloon die from Spellbinders, and made this card which has three opening flaps on the front..

It makes a cheerful card for a child I think........

Baubles for Daring Cardmakers

This week on Daring Cardmakers, the challenge is Baubles, Boxes and Bows - I went down the bauble route with this trio of baubles made with Spellbinders dies. The background is a Christmas word background, embossed in silver (it shows up a lot more in real life....)

Do pop over there to see what the team have all come up with this week, I always love the fact that everyone has such a different take on the same subject

 

Trim the Tree for Daring Cardmakers

This week on Daring Cardmakers, the challenge is 'Trim the Tree'. I decided to go for a winter landscape using a very old favourite, the Lovely as a Tree stamp set by Stampin Up

I stamped it onto a white panel twice, I worked out the center on the second panel and inked that piece with Stormy Sky and Milled Lavender distress inks (I didn't bother to mask it, just made sure I didn't ink the snowy ground). I added some white falling snow - my go to white pen is by Signo. I added glitter to the snow....

The two panels were edged narrowly with silver, then the coloured panel was popped on with foam pads

 

Elemental Inspiration for Daring Cardmakers

There is a great winter mood board over at Daring Cardmakers this week, pop over to see how it inspired the Design team. Here is mine......

My Christmas cards are done, now for the bit I hate - writing and addressing them. Every year I feel as though just signing them simply isn’t enough when sending to a cousin or friend that I haven’t seen for years, so I sit there chewing the end of my pen desperately thinking of something relevant/witty/interesting to say, and let’s face it, the past few months have not been a barrel of laughs for any of us. There is not much you can say about the joys of masks/social distancing/isolation......maybe this year I really will just sign our names with a flourish and be done.....at least they will know we are still around 😁

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.......)