Lovely Saturday

Hello all, I've just downed tools (pencil, pen and paper) for the day so I thought I'd do a post before I get dinner ready. A stir fry with noodles tonight and some of the veg that is ready to be picked from my plants. Friday night was my first home grown meal (well...almost all of it anyway!)....

...onions and cherry tomatoes from the grocer! The courgettes, sugar snap peas and chard were mine though! Just popped onto a tin plate and drizzled with olive oil, sprinkle of salt and pepper and roasted in the oven for about twenty minutes - they were yummy! The tin plate needed a good scrub though after the spitting oil!

Saturday morning saw me setting off to Burnley for my visit to The Craft Range for their craft demonstration event.It turned out to be something of an "old school reunion" (well, workshop reunion!) as there were so many familiar faces there. So, a big hello to Gez, Kath and Elaine, Jacqui and Christine, Brenda, Mary and Chris...and apologies if I missed you off the list! Chris, Jacqui and Christine...

 ....I was kept well supplied with hot drinks! As I was in the corner, I had to crawl under the table every time I wanted to come out from behind...good thing I'm not very tall!

It was such a busy day that I had no chance to see what everyone else was up to let alone take any photos. Mark Gould and Andy Skinner were in a separate room so not much chance for a catch up there! John Glossop was adjacent to me with some great altered art pieces. There were also demos from Clare representing Indigo Blu and also Wow powders and Crafter's Companion. So, a full house really!

As well as featuring stamps I was making lots of backgrounds using Distress inks, Dylusions ink sprays, stencils and Viva Decor Inca Gold. This was a simple scrunched black card tinted with Dylusions (using the opaque white spray makes the colours visible on dark card) which I then rubbed the Inca Gold over. Simple but effective!

I've become a bit obsessed with backgrounds like this one at the moment.....

....Dylusions sprayed onto my craft sheet and picked up onto white card with a little water spritzed over the surface. I then sprayed the white ink through a Tim Holtz stencil and then flipped the stencil over to use the ink that was on the surface. That way you get the positive and the negative images.

I've really gone mad with colour lately! I don't think you could get much more colourful than this really....

 ....subtle it's not! The die cut flowers were scrunched, wet and then spritzed with inks. Once dried I added touches of Inca Gold and some MME brads.
The day went by in a flash and I was soon on the train back home. I walked back through the park and saw something teeeeny dash across the grass to the right of me and then disappear behind a tree. Thankfully my camera was close to hand so I crept up slowly and found this little sweetie....

 ....altogether now.....aaaahhhhhh! (That's aaaaaahhhhh NOT aaarrrggghhhh! by the way!) It was a cute little woodmouse and he was as bold as could be. Of course, being me, I had to scrabble in my bag and break off a bit of samosa that I had just bought! I threw him a crumb and he sat there having a good feast whilst I took more photos.....

....oh yes, you can tell I'd had a good day of demonstrating just looking at the colour of my fingers! I was really thrilled with this little wildlife encounter. After he'd had a few more morsels he sped off back into the bushes with a twinkle in those big beady eyes!

It's all out there - you just have to keep your eyes open!
Right, time to get into the kitchen now and then a quiet evening (avoiding the dreaded World Cup!) before another day of drawing tomorrow.

Sewing AND ironing!

Crikey, I think I should lie down in a darkened room having done both sewing and ironing this week! Having said that, neither were related to the dreaded housework, so not quite as bad. I've never been a fan of sewing though and neither has my sister...mainly due to the fact that our mum used to be a fantastic seamstress who had the ability to turn a length of fabric into a beautifully made garment without the need of a pattern. She would take a few measurements, make some marks with tailor's chalk and then the scissors would flash and, in no time, she'd be fitting the fabric pieces together in situ on whoever she was making the garment for - pins held between her lips as she went! Heather and I just never felt we could come up to her standard I'm afraid.

Anyway, on Saturday I'll be at Studio Craftique in Hessle, near Beverley where I'll be demonstrating DecoArt So Soft and Ink Effects fabric paints as well as Fabrico pens, Sizzix dies, stencils and stamps. The Ink Effects are really great to work with if you're a little nervous of painting directly onto material as they are painted onto paper before being ironed onto the fabric - foolproof! (Hence the ironing!). Below is an example of the Ink Effects on a simple white T shirt....don't ask me why I took the photo at the rather drunken angle!

I inked up the quote stamp with a black Fabrico pen and also used it to add the outlines around the figure and the musical notes. The paints are fully washable.

The So Soft paints give a more vibrant finish and are painted directly onto fabric. No heat setting required and the painted items are machine washable after 48 hours...brilliant! I used the same Dylusions character (Ruby Rainbow) stamped onto plain white fabric and then painted with the So Soft, including the new glitter colours. Once dried, I turned it into a small cushion.

The borders, bird and railings are all from Dylusions stamp sets. I like the fact that you can see the text detail on the wings beneath the glitter paint.

Normally I'd have had to resort to hand stitching around the cushion but Heather brought round her little sewing machine for me to use. Quite funny really as she hasn't used it herself yet - told you we both have a "thing" about sewing! However, once I got started I was well away and, before long, I was zig zagging around Sizzix birds appliqued over hessian......

....and sewing fabric panels onto cards ready for painting on Saturday.....

 ....the machine helped as it's small, lightweight and easy to use. I was even able to use it on the floor, pressing the peddle with my hand and, thank goodness, even at top speed it was easy to control!

Hope to see some of you there on Saturday as it will be lots of fun.

Meanwhile, here are a few more pictures of things I've been creating with my new stamps. Another tag made using my "Frayed Around the Edges" Doo Lally Pip character, this time using the new Tim Holtz spritzer and Distress Markers through Tim's new Doily stencil....

....the spritzer really does give a great effect though very detailed stencils. I've been asked if using the spritzer will use up the ink in the pens more quickly so I asked Tim and he assures me that it won't - all good!

There is one of my new quote stamps on this next, over the top, piece! 

I was showcasing Tim's Rosette strip die and his burlap panels- don't think I could have fitted any more on there really!

And a couple more tags to share....

....Dylusions ink sprays on the left tag and I used Tim's stripes stencil on the right tag which made me think of a woodland so was perfect to add my new owls to.

Well, it's 6.30pm and dark outside after a beautifully sunny day. The days are certainly getting longer and it really does feel as if Spring is getting close enough to touch. Can't wait to have a few free days to get the garden tidied and some seeds sown. But for now it's time to draw the curtains and get my dinner ready  - a simple concoction tonight of a crunchy Caesar salad with some crispy bacon and cherry tomatoes.

I'll be off on my travels tomorrow and Thomas is already sulking! He's back to full health again now and no limping at all...though I'm sure he's going to use that raised paw when he wants to tug at my heartstrings! 

Have a great weekend everyone.

Oh, before I go, here's a saucy photo to share with you that I've borrowed from a good friend's Facebook page....

 ....any ideas? It's Dame Edna and a rather large eared, moustachioed character who, as you can see from the stance is very tall. But yes, under the disguises it's me and my pal Andy Skinner! And no, to answer a query when Andy posted this on his Facebook page, you don't need to be buying wedding hats!

Thank you

Hello folks and thank you for all the good wishes sent to Thomas yesterday! I'm pleased to report that he's feeling much better today. He is hardly limping at all now although he is still lifting his paw up when he's sat down....I think he's got used to all the sympathy!

This was him looking all contented this morning....

 .....but this afternoon....well.....I am keeping my eye on these two.....

......talk about looking for trouble! By the way, I can report that Thomas weighed in at 7.4 kg  yesterday (wow!) but the vet said that he's not fat, he's just a "big boy" and he "carries it well"! Now Tara....well....that could be a different matter!

I've not photographed the rest of the samples I made for Stitches yet, but will do so very shortly. I took delivery of a truly enormous box today which contained my cards, tags and canvasses etc as well as all sorts of new products for me to add to my warehouse...er...spare room!

Today I've been working on samples for my fabric painting demonstration at Studio Craftique in Hessle a week tomorrow. Here's a sneaky peek at something I'm part way through.....

.....Dylusions fans may recognise the images!

I'm signing off now so I can watch "An Island Parish" which always cheers me up!

Off on my travels again

I'm all packed for my trip to Yorkshire tomorrow. I'm not setting off too early but it's nice to have all the gear organised and ready to go. I'm travelling to Hessle, which is about ten miles from Beverley, for the demonstration at Studio Craftique on Saturday. I've just taken delivery of some Dylusions stamp sets and will be using these, as well as some of my Off the Wall designs, all brought together with ink sprays and other Ranger goodies. It was touch and go, as the bad weather held up the parcel so I was very relieved when the postie walked up the path!

Here are a couple of "journal pages" that I made with a selection of the Dylusions images (they are loose pages so that I can leave them at the store after my demo). I really love the birds...especially once I'd put their hats on....

......please excuse the vile backdrop! I was rushing to take pictures at the last minute before packing them away and I just grabbed the nearest thing...a manky old cushion from my workroom...yeck! Anyway, I used Dylusions ink sprays directly onto the card, lightly spritzed with water and dried with kitchen towel. I spritzed water onto the surface of the template (CW Mini Gears), pressing onto the surface, lifting and drying to give a negative "bleached" pattern.

The leaves and the coloured fronds are from the Doodle Parts stamp set. I stamped some birds in black directly onto the surface and others onto white card that I sprayed with more inks. I stamped, coloured and cut out the hats and stuck these onto the birds - don't they look jolly! The birds and hats are from the Birds on a Wire set. The phrase is from a Dylusions set called The Right Words.

The next page features stamps from the DooLally Doris set, also from the Dylusions range.

 Done in a similar way to the birds page, but no stencilling this time. Instead, I stamped the leaves with black Archival ink and then bleached them with water before adding a light green to colour them. I took a small strip of stiff card and concertina folded it before using it behind the head to give a wobbly effect!

Finally, I just have another tag to show you, featuring my Hopeful Harriet stamp set along with wings from my Steamed Up set. I used TH tissue wrap around the tag before spritzing with inks...the surface isn't very absorbent so I dab the inks with tissue and layer them for a subtly effect. 

 I've given Harriet the top hat from the same stamp set and the words are from my I Can Fly set. I was really happy with the way the colours came together on this tag...nice when you're pleased with something you've made isn't it?!

Well, that's all the pictures for tonight and I will report back after the weekend. Oh yes, I forgot to say how the British Gas visit went. The two guys came, drilled holes in the walls and pumped the insulation in....all of which made one heck of a noise for over an hour and meant that every door in the house was open to accomodate all the leads and pipes. As it was snowing pretty heavily at the time it was somewhat chilly! Poor Tara and Thomas were beside themselves - Tara buried herself in her bolt hole of the airing cupboard and Thomas, after hiding under a chair for five minutes decided he was better off out of it and scooted out of the house. He was obviously keep an eye on matters though, as he came back about two minutes after they'd left! Tara soon came round as well, but they got some extra treats last night to make up for their traumatic day!

So, I can report that my room thermometers are showing higher temperatures since yesterday...I think it's still as cold outside so I'm hoping that the insulation is already helping to keep the house a little toastier. Here's hoping anyway!

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.

A different sort of day

Thank you to everyone who sent me emails, texts, cards and comments for my birthday today. It was a day of mixed emotions as this was my first one not spent with David since I was just eighteen years old. We always used to play Mario Lanza's music on our birthday mornings and David would serenade me whilst giving me a big hug...he had a really wonderful tenor voice.
Of course, I had to play Mario Lanza this morning which brought back so many memories and I did shed some tears. However, Heather arrived soon after, so I "pulled myself together" and we set out to have a good day.
After visiting our mum, we went on to Freeport which is an outlet centre where we did the round of all the shops and had a fish n chips lunch. We'd thought of going to the zoo but the weather's been so unpredictable that we decided to go shopping instead! We'll save the zoo for another day.
So, it turned out to be a fun day thanks to my lovely sister.
I've spent the evening trying to catch up with everyone by phone or email and am gradually getting there - if I still haven't got back to anyone, please be sure I haven't forgotten you!
Here's a piccie of some of the cards I was sent including one from Gez that made me smile...if you open the picture in a new window, you'll see Gez's card featuring a cycling frog! Brilliant! On Tuesday, Joanne and her lovely husband "T" came to visit and brought me these lovely home grown flowers.... .....a beautifully coloured card, bookmark (which I just happened to be wanting!) and this great birdtable - wow! It's going to look brilliant in the garden and I'm going to put it where I'll be able to watch the birds from the conservatory. No excuses now - I'll have to get that weeding finished!
Heather gave me some lovely gifts including two charms for my bracelet which I tried to photograph but didn't manage - one is a silver owl and the other is a most beautiful Murano glass bead in aqua tones with delicate white flowers beneath the surface.
So, I had a rollercoaster of a day really.
I did promise to share some photos of a few things I've made this week for my day at Card-Io on Saturday. I have just a couple to share for now starting with this little collection.... .....the card features my "Inertia Starter" robot stamp set. I used stencils from Crafters Workshop and Dylusions to create the backgrounds on the robot panel and base card. The tags are made using stamps from my Off the Wall collection. I've used Dylusions ink sprays to colour the ribbons.
Below are a couple of tags, the one on the left features "Emily" who I stamped, coloured and coated with Glue n Seal (gloss version) before spritzing the tag with Dylusions ink sprays. I spritzed water through a stencil to give the bleached out dots effect and the edging is another stencil with Chipped Sapphire Distress ink blended over and then highlighted with a white pen. I wrote the words using black and white pens.
The right hand tag was made using some of the card that I prepped a few days ago and the rosette style flower is made from the paper towel that I used to roll across the wet inked surface. The bird images are from my "Arabella" stamp set and the quote from my "Creative Thoughts" set. I really like the bright shades of the Dylusions inks and found them very uplifting. Talking of bright colours, one shop we called into today was the Pavers outlet and Heather talked me into getting these lovely shoes..... ....not that I took much convincing, and the clincher was when I turned them over and we saw the soles, complete with steampunk detailing! Heather suggested that I ink them up and literally "stamp" onto card with them!
Well, it's a bit of a mish mashed, mixed up sort of post tonight, but it's getting late and it's been a long day. Thank you again for the thoughtfulness that's been shown to me and I hope to see some of you on Saturday. I'll post more pictures after the weekend and let you know how things go in Wigan.
I know it's only Thursday, but have a great weekend everyone.