Scrapbooking Kit swap

One of the many things I love about being involved in UK Scrappers is the opportunity to join in swaps of all kinds - various types of stash, made items such as bookmarks (see my post below), altered objects etc.

The current one I'm in, organised by my UKS teamie, Claire, is a scrapbooking kit swap - the idea being to send your swappee a co-ordinated kit including cardstock, patterned paper and various embellisments, enough to make several LOs. As we were all to send items from our excisting stash, this didn't cost us a penny, and just look at what a wonderful kit arrived for me this morning:






Thanks so much to the very generous Ann who sent it!



And this is what I sent to Claire:





She later posted a pic of a LO she had made with some of the stash I had sent her and it was really interesting and inspiring to see what someone else had done with "your" stash.
I think swaps are a brilliant idea - even if I don't always like everything I receive (although I did in this case), it is great to get some free and different items to experiment with and stimulate my creativity.

Easter Gardens

Happy Easter!
Well, the Easter Hare paid his regular visit here very early this morning and left a trail of chocolate eggs in the garden for the children to find. He also always leaves a treat and often a little something else in their Easter gardens - this year it was a little chocolate rabbit and a butterfly ( made by yours truly) -see close-up below.
These Easter gardens have been part of our traditions since the girls were young - originally the idea came from the Steiner kindergarten that L. went to and the girls used to make little caterpillars out of plasticene which would miraculously change into buttterflies overnight.
They no longer do this, but we still enjoy the ritual of visiting the garden centre in the run up to Easter and choosing some plants and cress seed to sow. We also use grass seed but never get round to doing the gardens early enough so that the grass has had time to germinate before Easter Day!


This one is E.'s.


And here are the butterflies I made:
I used a butterfly stamp with charcoal chalk ink on patterned paper and then attached it to a shadow-stamped image of the same butterfly.




Our good friends M. A. and O came over for lunch and we ended up playing charades - I. loved it and has been playing lots more rounds with me since our friends left.
A good day.

Lark Ascending

Yesterday late afternoon I had one of those magical experiences with nature that sometimes happen here.
It had been horrible weather all day, cold, windy and raining, and then towards 6pm it suddenly brightened up. We had been in the house all day so I rounded up R. and I. and we went out for a walk to the wood. As we headed home R. decided to take I. for a quick lemonade at the pub and I headed home across the fields alone.
One of the fields I walked past often has skylarks and as I approached I could hear their song. I stopped to listen and look up to see if I could see any when suddenly one took off from the ground right in front of me and hovered in the sky overhead singing loudly - it was a wonderful moment - so unexpected and with the sun out and the sky now bright blue after such a day.
As I walked back along the "Concrete Path" I saw that the wild primroses are out along the verges and I also spotted some tiny wild violets. It reminded me how much I love the changing seasons here...


On the crafting front, I managed this month for the first time to do all the weekly challenges on UK Scrappers and the monthly House Challenge too.
Here is my week 5 challenge LO, which I'm really quite pleased with as it is the second set of photos I attempted to use for this challenge and after a strugle with the sketch provided I like how this has turned out.

Quick Easter Cards

A quick post to show these quick Easter cards I made for my mum, brother and family and sister and family - the bunny image is clip-art, coloured with my lovely Promarkers and the patterned paper is all magazine freebies. So, very cheap as well!

Cutting back

Now that Spring has at last arrived I am trying to get all the cutting back and tidying up done in the garden that we usually start about a month ago but weren't able to with all the snow and then rain. I'm really racing against Nature's clock here, as traditional wisdom says all pruning and cutting back should be done by the end of March, which is on Wednesday! I've done the fruit trees, the Cornus, some roses and other shrubs and made a start on the Siberian Irises, but there is still a lot to do. Looks like good weather for it today, so after lunch I will be out there again with my trusty gloves, shears and secuteurs...

Promarker Love

After reading a thread about these artists marker pens over on UK Scrappers, I just had to get myself some and try them out. Yes, they are expensive, £1.50 - £1.99 each (though I got a good deal on a set and free postage at Angelcrafts), but the quality is wonderful, the colours beautifully vibrant and there is a huge range of colours available. I can see they are very addictive!
Anyway, when they arrived, I spent an enjoyable couple of evenings doing colouring in - I made a couple of Easter cards and then these bookmarks for a swap in my team on UK Scrappers:

Front:




Back:




I don't actually have many outline stamps which are good for colouring, so I have been using clipart images - I read on someone's blog that you can change images to black and white and use them like digital stamps. I have found that not all images work when you make them b+w (well not on my computer anyway), but lots do. Apart from the lampshade, which is a stamp, all the other images on the bookmarks are from clipart. I'm really pleased with how these turned out - and they were such fun to do as well!

Also, please check out my very cute Promarker storage tin in the top photo. Again I "borrowed" someone else's idea - on a thread about storage of the pens, someone had said they used a lunch tin from Paperchase. Well, I just happened to find myself in Paperchase on Tuesday and treated my new Promarkers to this lovely tin!

Papercrafting

Whew! It feels a little strange to be back blogging after such a long break. I'm not sure quite why I stopped at Christmas time - we were away at New Year and then life seemed to be extra busy after that. My knitting projects have also been sadly neglected although I did use my sewing machine intensively for a while to make DD2 two flapper girl dresses for a production of Bugsy Malone she was in at school

I have been back making things this month and last, though - cards and scrapbook layouts!

I have got back into scrapbooking recentlyalmost to the point of obsession. I 've made 7 LOs in the last 3 weeks and have also made quite a few cards. (I've also spent lots of money on scrapbooking stash, but sshh - don't tell anyone!

Here are a few of the LOs I've made recently:


My DD2:






This is about our silver wedding anniversary:





Another nostalgic one about me and DH:






My three:





And this one I just finished this morning, for the monthly challenge over on Sarah's Cards blog:
(the challenge was to use old stash)