Town and country

On Friday night and early Saturday morning I made a few cards for birthdays and thank yous. Playing around with different combinations of distress inks, doing some spraying with the magic Crafty Notions stuff, and stamping. Here are some of them:

I love these stamps, and the sight of the verges of our lanes filled with the fresh green stalks and foliage and the delicate sparkling white of the flowers of the cow parsley made me want to use them.

Saturday afternoon saw me heading off to London. The view of the Houses of Parliament from the train made me smile as the main headline in the news on Friday night and Saturday morning was about yet another MP the Telegraph had identified as having claimed huge expenses in dubious circumstances. This particular view made me think "Behind bars where they belong!"

Walking along Drury Lane I was taken by butterflies made out of feathers in a shop called Happie.

And this little box filled with everything in miniature.

I was in London to see a performance of Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment" at the Royal Opera House. This was preceded by an excellent meal at Carluccio's. I saw a performance of this production in January 2007, and it was totally brilliant. It was brought back with the same principals, Juan Diego Florez hitting his nine high Cs with ease, and the inimitable Natalie Dessay with her astonishing comic acting skills and accomplished singing; and once again conductor, orchestra, chorus, soloists, director and all others who worked on the production performed at the top of their game. Dawn French again entertained in her speaking role. It was an evening of sparkling comedy where at certain moments the principals also sang with real pathos. Unfortunately, regretfully, no stage door photos as I had to dash for the train.

Back at home on Sunday after a satisfying late Sunday lunch of roast lamb and spuds and veggies, we took a stroll, and marvelled at the wealth of flowers in the hedgerows.

Note to self: come back and check out these wild strawberries !

And yippeee ..... tomorrow, Monday is a Bank Holiday. Enjoy this nice long weekend !

Wednesday

Another Wednesday and it’s time to join Julia’s What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday.

The table is exceedingly messy as over the past couple of days I’ve been tinkering with various items there. Experiments with the B-Line bird’s nest stamp, and with the walnut ink, and a box of ATC books waiting for me to pop an ATC in each.

And a peek behind closed doors into my cupboard.

Am posting very early on Wednesday as I need to be up at 6.30 and off.

Happy Bank Holiday weekend to all. Let’s hope for a bit of sunshine.

Two Weeks Ago

Two weeks have passed since my weekend at Lin and Leandra's Artsy Craftsy weekend, and now that the second of the two weekends has taken place, I can post the fruits of my efforts.

First of all a view of the table where I did the biggest of the three projects in my chosen colour scheme called Blue Lagoon. This project was a sampler with nine squares: three covered with sticky-back canvas; three covered with metal; and three with Terra. All mounted on a canvas we painted and embellished to either contrast with or complement the colour of the squares.

We stamped on all three surfaces, and used the embossing folders in the Big Shot on the canvas and metal. We used metalworking tools and masks, and we used metal and acetate to make embellishments.

The project that started off the weekend was a big tag on board, approx 11" x 8." The colour scheme I chose here was called Cream of the Crop. The tree is made of heavy card covered with Ferro, and we did lots of die-cutting and embellishing of metal. I particularly enjoyed making the tissue paper flower attached to the top of the tag.

The third project was a smaller piece of work. Using the Mediterranean Mix colour scheme, I painted the wooden frame, and used the Big Shot to emboss metal for the roof, and for the front of the piece.

It was such a treat to get away from everyday life and a real luxury to spend a whole weekend messing about with paints, inks, card and metal, and colours and textures. Roll on the next Artsy Craftsy Weekend, and thanks again to Lin, Leandra, Karen, Lynne and Jo.

Templates and the Salt Technique

There's no connection between Templates and the Salt Technique in the title of this post.

Templates refers to the subject of our Stamping Club evening on Thursday. Clare who organises it brought along her supply of templates and had invited us to do the same, so we could all share and play nicely. I only have two templates: a K card and a four panel screen, and the latter went down a storm inspiring quite a few people to make some gorgeous oriental cards.

I made a complete hash of my triptych. I will blame the card as it was too flimsy and it cracked when folded. There is plenty of good card ready cut for cardmaking, but I can't seem to find any good sheets of plain white A4. Having blamed the card, I will say that it is quite usual for me to make a complete pig's ear of something the first time I try it. Anyway, I had fun messing about with the inks, sprays and stamps, and I will have a go at this again to do a proper one. Same goes for the kimono which gave me the opportunity to try out the Barn Door DI and my newly acquired Ranger gold embossing powder with which I am very impressed.

And now for the Salt Technique. Sue asked about this in her WOYWW post comment. Well, it's dead simple. You need to apply a watery wash of ink or paint to a piece of card. I used distress re-inker mixed with water. Then you place the card in a shallow plastic box and sprinkle rock salt over; and put it aside (in my case out of reach of the cat) and leave it to try naturally. I usually leave it for a day. Then you scrape the salt off. Sometimes it leaves a bit of a shiny residue.

Here, as they say, are some I prepared earlier, all ready to be stamped upon (not with my feet).

And speaking of the cat, here she is, the crafty little lass, looking for my box with the card and the rock salt, so she can send it flying. Butter wouldn't melt, eh?

And so he doesn't feel left out, Charlie Poppins (who can be trusted not to send the box flying) striding purposefully out for a snooze in the sun on top of the chicken shed roof.

Wednesday

Morning all. It's the day when Julia over at Stamping Ground calls upon us to reveal all about our work desks with her What's on your Workdesk Wednesday, and we all get the chance to have a good old snoop.

Well, mine has evidence of bits and pieces of crafting, but not much in the way of finished articles. I did some embossing on metal, grunged it up a bit and put filler on the back, but I haven't decided what to do with it yet. Then there are the card backgrounds using distress re-inkers and the salt technique, and the assorted grungepaper die cuts, and a couple of cards.

The cards started out as rather bright pink shiny card but I covered them with Versamagic. The swirly one is finished but the Stampington one needs a bit more work.

I've got my crafting bags out ready to pack for our club evening tomorrow. We all go laden with supplies, but there are always mutterings round the table about what we've forgotten to bring or should have brought.

And lastly a shufti at another area of the shelves.

Have a happy Wednesday !

Blossom Time

I've got four apple trees in the garden - three eaters and a wonderful Bramley which provides the ingredient for delicious pies, crumbles and wines. They're all laden with blossom this year. I love the veins that pattern the petals.

And in contrast, a couple of Stampotique girls with distress inks, Perfect Pearls and embossing on a tag.

What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday

Time for another post to take part in Julia's WOYWW at her Stamping Ground blog.

This week I haven't got round to wiping up the paint I was using to colour an embellishment, nor to putting away all of my weekend purchases. Plenty of naked wood and board to keep me busy.

I did actually get a bit more stuff which I have secreted in various nooks and crannies. Some new colours of acrylic paint, a couple of DI re-inkers and Tim's birdcage die.

The next photo is a bit more of the bookcase area. The little wooden case contains my acrylic paints, and I aim to decorate the case at some point.

Enjoy the nose around, and have a happy week.