Wigan, wrens & water

Thank you to Wendy and Martin from Card-Io, in Pemberton, Wigan for making yesterday's demonstration so enjoyable and for keeping me topped up with coffee and lunch. Hello to everyone that came along despite the glorious weather which, I'm sure, made gardens a very tempting alternative. It was lovely to see so many familiar faces - a special "hello" to Melanie and Joanne who I hadn't seen for ages...thank you so much for the homemade scones and soaps.
Aside from my Off the Wall stamps, I was demonstrating Dylusions ink sprays and I think I managed to avoid spritzing any of the ladies at the front of the crowd! Here are three of the tags I made on the day..... ......the Bubblegum Pink spray really gives a vibrant lift to the blues I used on the third tag. Of course, I would like the pink, purple and blue combination!
Wendy took this photo of me distressing the edges of some card after I showed the ladies how to create my snowy landscape with bleached out trees and snowmen. I know I've shown that one a thousand times but there are always requests to do it again! I didn't take a photo but if you look back through my old posts you'll find an example. By the way, please ignore the double chin...I'm putting it down to the way I was holding my head!
Everyone liked the way this background came out. This was created using Pure Sunshine and Postbox Red ink sprays over wet card. I used the Dylusions stencils to add more details - the letter jumble was sprayed with water before placing down, dabbing with the excess liquid with tissue and lifting away. The flower was made using Paul's technique and I added one of my Creative Thoughts stamped with Archival black ink. I thought I'd share this photo of my table near the end of the day...well, it wouldn't be me if it was neat and tidy would it? I always feel that I've had a good day if it's a tip as it means that everyone's been taking a close look at things...I'm not taking the blame for the mess! I'll be back at Card-Io later in the year, so that was the Wigan part of this blog post title.
Yesterday evening I heard some birds making a really angry commotion and spotted Tara wandering near some bushes beside the lane. She wasn't in hunting mode, just having a trot about, but, of course, the birds didn't know that. When I got nearer I could see that they were tiny and one flew down and perched on the fence right in front of me. Then I realised that they were wrens - so miniscule but making such a racket and bravely trying to make Tara go away. So, I can add wrens to my list of the birds around here.
I was also very pleased that I'd decided not to pull out one particular weed by the fence at the side of the house. I spotted these little chaps on it last night..... .....don't know if you can see them, but they are Cinnabar Moth caterpillars and they feed on Ragwort. The moths are lovely....very dark grey with pinky red markings - quite unmistakeable. There are a few clumps of Ragwort in the field and they are all home to lots of the little stripey caterpillars. Although they aren't a rare moth I think any sign of a moth or butterfly doing well is a good thing. I'll enjoy seeing how the caterpillars do - apparently the Ragwort makes them taste awful so the birds tend to leave them alone.
So, to the water in my title. This refers to this morning's trip to Church where the service was dedicated to the Christening of a little baby chap called Stanley. It was a lovely service and little Stanley didn't so much as make a sound when the Vicar poured the water over his head three times - over Stanley's head that is, not his own! It was all very uplifting with family friendly music and lots of laughter.
Water came in a different form near the end of the service though, as the small choir sang "Be Still my Soul" which I chose as one of the pieces of music at David's funeral. It was so different from the other music today that I almost wondered if I'd gone into my own little place for a few minutes. Although it made me cry it was lovely to hear that beautiful music in the peaceful setting of St Chads again.
Well, Tara is now giving me "feed me" looks and keeps trying to shred the carpet to get my attention, and no doubt Thomas won't be far behind, so I had better open the Felix sachets before the floor is threadbare.