Cute!

 

Here is a card I made recently for a friend of mine. This is 'Milton with a daisy' (Wild Rose Designs), and although he is a bit too cute for my liking I know my friend will love him.  I have watercoloured him with my aqua markers. Although I love my promarkers, I am getting more and more into watercolouring. The papers were some that I bought from funky fairies when the they were closing down. I do love these two colours together! The lace was a donation from my lovely friend Lynne - Thank you! I thought it matched perfectly.

A few hours in the garden

 

I just wanted to share a few pictures of the garden that I took today between little showers. It was so lovely to be out there with all the scents and colours.

 

The insects were very busy and I was pleased with the wide variety of bees and hoverflies that I saw.

The veg plot is a little overgrown, but the beans and peas are full of flower and we have a good harvest of turnips. The rhubarb always gives us a good crop, and the apple tree is laden this year. Lets just hope the Bramleys don't go through the roof of the greenhouse!

I have recently registered our Garden on the 'Big Wildlife Garden' website. Our vegetable production has been a bit hit and miss over the past few summers, and we were getting a bit depressed with it, but by registering our garden and looking at what we are doing for wildlife has made us look at it all from a different perspective. Insect life and bird life in our garden is thriving, and I am sure some of this is down to the herbs and native plants we have. All I'd like now is a resident hedgehog!

Less is More - circles

Well, I'm almost as late as I was last week with my less is more entry! This week the LIMettes need to come up with something with circles on it. Here is mine

I went for a selection of Waltzing Mouse stamps and citrus colours of memento ink (Cantaloupe, pear tart and tangelo). Reminds me of sliced limes, lemons and oranges!

Thanks for looking. Hopefully I will manage to visit you and comment before the weekend x

A Wedding and an Anniversary

I've been busy making a whole host of cards for colleagues at work. A couple of birthdays, three people who are leaving and a wedding that will be happening over the summer. Here is the wedding card. I used Bearly Mine designs vintage lace papers, A Waltzing Mouse frame stamp, some punches (Woodware and Martha Stewart) and dies(Marianne Designs), some pearlescent beige brilliance ink (Embossed with clear embossing powder) and some Tea Dye distress ink.

The subtle colours on the papers don't show up on the photo, but they are beautiful! I'm entering this card into these challenges:
Allsorts - Free and easy July
Moving along with the Times - My favourite things (Roses, Tea Dye distress ink and anything with a vintage feel!)
Simon says Stamp and Show - Embossing

My second card is one I was asked to make for a couple celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. My friend had seen a card I had made with the lovely 'Jack and Ginger' image by Mo Manning and asked if I could use that. This is what I came up with.

 

I coloured it with promarkers and added a panel of pearlised card that I dry embossed in a diamond pattern and added gems. Not sure if I have gone a bit overboard with the bling, but 60 years is some going these days! Well, I'd better go. Thanks for looking!

Better late than never!

Here is my rather late entry for this week's less is more where the theme is 'legs' and 'one layer'. I used post its to mask off an area of card and then used my ink dusters and distress inks to create a landscape. I stamped it with the tree (Making tracks, inc.) and the stag (Stampscapes). The trees needed a bit of water brushed over them to give them more definition. The sentiment is from Personal Impressions. This one is for my Brother-in-law, whose birthday is at the end of the month.
Only a week left at school now, and I can't tell you how much I am ready for a holiday, but I wish I could hang on to the wonderful class I've had. This year has flown by far too quickly!

Some surprises in my garden...

When I got home tonight I sat by the patio doors looking out at the bird feeders. I sat with my camera next to me as we had some lovely visitors to our bird feeding station yesterday. I wasn't disappointed.First came the sparrows...

 

Then the goldfinches arrived. There are at least five that I could see today, and some young ones too. These two are adults (not the best photo I'm afraid)...

Then three young long tailed tits arrived! Two flew back to the trees very quickly, but this little fella hung around for ages!

I'm no expert, and these aren't the best photos, particularly being taken through glass in the rain, but I'm so happy we are getting some different birds and so close to the house too. All I need to do now is find a way of deterring the neighbourhood cats - any suggestions?

Less is More - shades of blue

 Here is my card for this week's less is more challenge where the theme is shades of blue - right up my street! I used my ink dusters and a set of stamps from Inkylicious called Flight of dreams. I used big and juicy waterfall  for the 'dusting' and majestic blue versafine for the stamping. I love the effect with the ink dusters, and I will be practising more with them as soon as I get a bit more time.I'm also entering this into the Allsorts challenge this week where the theme is 'Free and easy'.
We had a beautiful day for our school summer fair yesterday, but when I got home I was shattered! I spent Friday evening baking cupcakes (forty five in 3 different flavours) and Saturday morning decorating them before selling them and lots of others on Saturday afternoon. It was a huge success and we raised lots of money for school. here is a photo after we'd sold a few.

Whilst I'm showing you some photos from yesterday I thought I would share with you a photo of our greenhouse on the school field.

It is made from pop bottles and bamboo canes with a wooden frame. you can find instruction of how to make one here. We have six tomato plants in there and they are doing very well! To the right you can see our raised beds - one per class. We should have a good crop of potatoes very soon, our herbs are looking  great and next year we should have some rhubarb too!
Thanks for looking!

July Challenge at Sir Stampalot

Good morning and welcome to this months challenge at Sir Stampalot.This month we decided to ley you have a bit of a free for all so the Challenge is Anything Goes.

I used one of the new Molly Blooms stamps (Flake-tastic Molly) and one of the older ones (Dandelion clock flower) to make the frame, with Distress inks in Victorian Velvet and Wild Honey. The background scene was stamped with the Hobby Art Scene-it clear set called Harbour. All stamping was done with versafine black apart from the frame and all colour was added with distress inks, either sponged or watercoloured and aqua markers. I cut the frame with a Go create die called Large Frames Frilly #5.

As you will see from the super inspiration on the challenge blog, we are all using Molly Blooms stamps showing you just how versatile the new Molly Blooms Summer 2011 collection is, just right for all those Summer creations. You can find all the stamps used in this card at Sir Stampalot waiting to make their way to your craft desk.

And as you might expect, this months fabulous prize has several of the new Molly Blooms stamps along with lots of other summery crafty goodies to keep the lucky winner occupied for days.

 Even if you are not into cute there are lots of great stamps to create scenes with, like the tree-house, daisies and beach-huts.
I do hope you can join in with us this month. Just remember  - only combine your creation with 5 other challenges - that's six in all. Thanks for looking and I will look forward to visiting you!

Less is more Sketch

Here is my card for this week's less is More. I masked off a section of the base card and stamped and sponged using waltzing mouse large doily stamps and a variety of ink. I then stamped one of the same stamps three times and cut out with a nestie before positioning on the base card with 3d glue. The sentiment is also waltzing mouse.
Thanks for looking I will try and visit you in return x

By popular demand - Lime and coconut muffins

 

 Thanks for your lovely comments on my last post.Thought I'd better share the recipe for Lime and coconut muffins, as I'd tempted your taste buds!

Ingredients:

10 oz/ 300g Self raising Flour

1 tsp baking powder

5 oz/ 150g caster sugar

1 3/4 oz/50g dessicated coconut

1 beaten egg

7 fl. oz/200 mls coconut milk

3 1/2 fl.oz/100 mls sunflower or corn oil

Grated zest of 2 limes

1 tablespoon lime juice

topping:

3 oz cream cheese

2 oz butter

2 oz icing sugar

 lime juice to taste (2-3 teaspoons)

sprinkle with shredded coconut and a  strand or two of lime zest (or a small blob of lime marmalade!)

It is very easy! Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C/ Gas mark 6. Put 12 muffin cases in a muffin pan. Combine the wet ingredients in one bowl and the dry ones in another. Carefully add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold until just combined. Add to cases and cook for 20 minutes or until golden.
They are yummy straight from the oven, but if you can wait till they cool down try the topping with a sprinkling of coconut and zest shavings/ or a blob of lime marmalade swirled on.

Topping. beat the icing sugar into the butter. Beat in the cream cheese (I use philadelphia) and then add the lime juice and beat again.

 Hope you enjoy them!

Weekly Blogging

Well, there was I thinking things would slow down once I'd done my reports, but I was mistaken. I don't know why it always takes me by surprise, but I can see I might only manage weekly blogging for a couple of weeks as there is so much going on. It isn't like I haven't done any crafting, but getting to post it here is a bit hit and miss. Anyway, here are a few things I've been up to. First is an 8x8 card I made for a friend who's dad turns seventy next week.

 He likes music, travelling, reading, walking and red wine, so I used an Inkylicious music background stamp, lots of hobby Art stamps, The luggage label is a clear choice stamp and the boots are from an aspects of design sheet from the Stampman. I watercoloured the lot with distress inks.
My next card is for our assistant site manager who has been doing lots of gardening with the children. This stamp (Personal Impressions) is one I haven't used for a while. The little images around the border are all various See -Dee's collections.

Finally I decided to try a new recipe today - Lime and coconut muffins topped with cream cheese frosting - very tasty, particularly whilst sat in the garden!

We have had a very productive day today with hedge-cutting, baking, marking, and card making too!

Father's Day

Happy Father's day to all you Dads out there. This is the card I made for my Dad. I thought it was particularly suitable as last time we went out for a walk with him we saw 4 buzzards! The stamps on the main picture are Hobby Art, watercoloured with my aqua markers and distress inks. The Fern (Rubber Stampede) on the base card was stamped in Kaleidacolor Autumn leaves.