A very frosty morning!

It's been a while since I posted, but I've been really busy and experienced considerable disruption thanks to the weather. Stupidly, though I think I was getting a little complacent, forgetting how cold it has been getting, because, guess what - I woke up today to ice on the inside of the bedroom window again and the water frozen again!!! There is an amazing frost here this morning - everything is sugar coated like this!

One of the reason's I have been neglecting this blog a little, is that I am excited to say I am part of a new craft blog venture with my distant crafting pals Jo, Judith and Lesley. We don't see each other very often as we live quite a long way apart. In fact Lesley and I have never met in person - only virtually!! We wanted to find a way to craft together across the miles and so we set ourselves the challenge of choosing one project a month from Craft Stamper magazine that we would use to inspire a project we would all complete in the following month. I was lucky enough to choose the first project which was Jean Hardy's Enveloped Elegance from page 34 of the February issue. As I have said before I am a big fan of Jean's work and I know I have set a hard challenge for some of the other girls. This is all about us going outside our comfort zone and trying new things and I know we are all going to interprete this project in very different ways. Having chosen the project, I think I am going to be the last one to complete my project though! You can see our new blog here. The others are streaking ahead and there are various posts so far of the materials we have all chosen and sneeky peeks of work in progress.

I put together a kit of materials for my niece's birthday today - Happy Birthday Hannah - to get her started on book making and art journalling. She loves her present and as she is doing a graphics course I know she will get stuck in and make great progress.

Here is the card I made for her. She loves black and white photography and dictionary definitions, so I chose a design I hoped she would like. The photo isn't great as I had to take the picture in artificial light, and the flash kept bouncing off the glossy paper.

I used one of the new Crafty Individuals stamps of tree silhouettes. I stamped these in black archival ink onto glossy paper. I am not keen on glossy paper even though it is great for really sharp images, but for a photograph-like project it was just right (apart from being impossible to take a flash photo of). I cut the panels of the stamp up into individual images and mounted them on black card I had punched with a film edge punch and matted the whole thing onto silver satin card. I used a dictionary birthday definition stamp I got from the bargain bin at a show and finished off with leaves punched from a printed page with a Woodware punch and edged with Weathered Wood Distress ink and silver maple leaf brads. 

Keep warm everyone! 

Lovely snow!!

We may be snowed in at the moment, but the upside is that we have the most beautiful views around our garden and into the surrounding countryside. I just had to share some of the photos.

This was what greeted me when I pulled the bedroom curtains this morning - ice on the inside of the window. This was after I thought to myself that it hadn't felt so cold getting out of bed after all!!

The pattern reminded me of the Elusive Images Ornate Leaf stamp that Helen Chilton used to stamp on glass in the latest issue of Craft Stamper!!

This is the sun rising over our veg garden.

The view across the countryside from our front gate.

The views from my shed today.

Other bits of the garden.

This is one of our wild visitors looking for food. We really love rabbits and we have made sure the birds and animals have been well fed over the last few days.

Keep warm and safe everyone and above all, try and take time to enjoy the beauty of this unusual weather.

Happy New Year and more Patchwork Butterflies

Happy New Year everyone!

I am now back to work after a nice long Christmas and New Year break at home. We have generally escaped the bad weather down here, although it is now snowing as I type and we have a completely frozen water supply! 

I have enjoyed some really good play time over the holiday. This is one card I made using the fantastic Elusive Images Patchwork Butterfly plate again - I am in love with this set of stamps. This time I used one of the smaller butterfly stamps.

This was another hard card to get a good picture of. I stamped the butterfly 4 times on green parchment in black Perfect Medium and then heat embossed in Moonglow Angel Wings Gold embossing powder. I absolutely love the Moonglow powders and treated myself to a whole new set of colours over the Christmas break. I then mounted the butterflies onto a sheet of butterfly paper sent to me as part of my Graphicus Guild membership. The whole thing is matted on a couple of layers of green Remake card and finished off with green dew drops and a nestie cut sentiment.

I'll post a couple more of my projects over the next few days.