Sunny Afternoon

Hello again! It's nice to be back blogging after a few days away. The children are now back at school and we are left with some lovely memories of a great Easter holidays: plenty of sunshine;

having family and close friends to visit and stay; a trip to London and meeting up with my mum; E. starring in our village pantomime.

On Saturday we went with my sister and her two children to a beautiful, tranquil garden on the edge of the Norfolk Broads - Fairhaven Water Gardens which has wonderful spring flowers and it's own private Broad ( lake) which we had a boat trip on. The cousins thought it was a magical place - "like something out of a fairytale"- and it certainly seemed so that afternoon as we walked along paths speckled with sunlight and leaf-shadows and looked out over the shimmering water.

Of course, for I. the most magical thing was the presence of my sister's Border Terrier, Findlay...

Beautiful bookmarks and a family visit.

These are the lovely bookmarks that I received back today in the bookmark swap with my team mates on UK Scrappers. Now I will never have to hunt round for a scrap of paper to hold my place in a book again!

We are having family arriving to stay this evening until Sunday - my sister, her husband and the two cousins - I. is eagerly awaiting the arrival of 13yr old T. - his favourite cousin, When the boys get together they never stop talking for about 3 days! I don't think I'll be able to post on here while they are staying, so I look forward to returning here in a few days.

Sending out today...and an award!

Went to the Post Office this morning and got these sent on their way.
First the card for my niece who will become a teenager tomorrow, made using the lovely dress-form stamp from The Girls' Paperie and resist stamping technique:



Next is the decorated box of stash for Amanda in the Community Chest stash swap which is part of the run-up to the Cyber Crop on UKS. I cheated a bit here as the box, which had contained some toiletries from Boots was already decorated on the sides, so I just used patterned paper on the front and back and attached some ribbon and a flower. Inside is a collection of small items from my stash such as buttons, brads, chipboard shapes, journalling spots, gems, pins, charms. I really hope she likes it:



And last, but by no means least, I have received my first blog award - from the talented Winnie - thankyou!

I understand that I now need to list 7 crafty things about myself and then pass on the award.

So here are 7 crafty things I do/have done:

1) I make all my own cards for birthdays and other occasions, including all my Christmas cards for the past two years.

2) I knit, having learned to do so as a child, but have only recently mastered the art of circular needles.

3) Since taking up scrapbooking in Feb 2008, I have made more than 100 scrapbook layouts, of which 8 have been published in magazines.

4) When I was a teenager I made lots of my own clothes and got a sewing-machine for my 18th birthday. ( more than 30 years ago!)

5) I recently got a new sewing machine and have enjoyed getting back into sewing.

6) When my children were young I made and decorated all their birthday cakes ( does this count as crafty?)

7) In the past I have also done lots of drawing, painting, cross-stitch and even pottery.

I'm passing this award on to 3 other creative bloggers : Nicky C, Sandie and Claire.

Through my Kitchen Window

We don't have a dishwasher - our previous one "died" just before we moved here 6 years ago and we've not yet replaced it. So I spend a lot of time standing at the sink looking out of this window while I do the washing-up. One of the first things we did in the garden was to make a flowerbed outside the window so I would have something interesting to look at, and I really appreciate it every day. So far this year I've enjoyed hazel catkins, witch-hazel, cornus, snowdrops, daphne flowers and now hellebores and aubretia.

And I get to spot quite a few animals and birds while I wash up - pheasants, partridges, moorhens, blackbirds, robins, dunnocks, great tits and blue-tits, various finches and once a woodpecker. I watch rabbits and hares - once a young hare even took up residence in the flowerbed for a while, and occasionally Mr ( or is it Mrs?) Fox - a magnificent creature, but not a welcome sight when you're a henkeeper...

This morning it was a tortoiseshell butterfly and some fat bumblebees working over the Aubretia flowers.

Maybe one day we'll get a dishwasher: but if we do I think I will miss my washing-up sessions too much...

Resist Stamping revisited

Hmmm - I re-read the resist stamping tutorial and found that Christi had sprayed the colourwash onto her cloth - if I'd read it properly the first time it could have prevented my pink fingers!

I treated myself to this lovely stamp set today from The Girls Paperie:

- I'm going to have a go at using the dressform stamp for my niece's card, but I'm sure I will also get great use out of the other stamps.

Getting Inky

It being the school Easter holidays, not much crafting is getting done at Hands and Heart, but I did steal a few minutes this afternoon and had fun getting messy. More messy than I intended as I accidentally stained my hands shocking pink (Adirondack Cranberry colourwash) when I tipped out rather more than I meant to...

I have wanted to have a go at resist stamping since I read a great tutorial about it by Christi Snow in issue 12 of Creative Cardmaking. Her technique is to stamp the image with Versamark, emboss in white and then apply the ink/colourwash over the image with a cloth for a vibrant effect.

Through my experimentation I found that using plain smooth cardstock and gently rubbing over the colour gave the best effect. I want to make a birthday card for my about-to-be-a-teenager niece so I'm going to continue playing with this technique with other stamps.

Cherry Blossom Morning

A good side -effect of keeping hens is that I need to go outside first thing each morning to let them out of their house and feed them. This is a great way to get myself fully awake each morning and connect with what the weather is doing and the beauty ( or otherwise!) of the morning.

Today is definitely a day for beauty - the sky here is a deep clear blue and the sun has a real warmth to it. As I went about my tasks with the hens there was birdsong, bees and butterflies. But best of all was that the flowering cherry trees in the hen pen, whose fat pink buds I've been eyeing up for the past week, have burst into blossom.
We planted these trees two years ago to help prettify this rather ugly area with the compost bins and the oil-tank - you can see these in the picture below, disguised a bit by the blossom, along with our two hens - Edwina and Beryl.

I need to make my morning coffeee now and sit out on the deck to soak up some more of the lovely morning. I hope your morning is as promising as mine.