A Day Well Spent

I've just got back from a lovely day out attending a Stampin' Up Extravaganza day with the lovely Jenny Moors (Stamping Moments) where we made a good selection of Christmas items in attractive shades of blue and silver.  We made three different sized gift boxes, the largest with an accompanying gift pocket card, a medium sized one with an acetate sleeve - probably about the size to hold a box of after dinner mints, and the small square one contained the three little cards.  As always this was a really enjoyable day and I even managed to actually complete all the projects and of course met up with like-minded friends - I'd say a good day was had by all.

Spooky

Being October the theme this month for the Chocolate Baroque Quintile swap is SPOOKY.  I'm a bit short on Hallowween stamps etc but I did have this one from them.  It was stamped onto heavy watercolour paper and a mask cut for the moon before colouring the background with Distress ink, some of which was lifted off with splashes of water.  Using a reverse mask I then brushed some colour over the moon.  I've tried all along to make two different tiles for this challenge but I'm afraid this time around the two are very similar with just the water splashes being in different positions!

More Jewellery

Last week when visiting a local gallery to see a quilting exhibition I was tempted into their craft section and just had to treat myself to a silver scarf 'ring' with a gorgeous dangly owl on it.  This of course got me thinking that I could make some of these if I could obtain the basic finding (scarf bail) easily.  I discovered they aren't quite as easy to source, particularly in this country as far as I can tell, which in turn made me think that I could maybe design a beaded scarf bail  and this is the result of my first experiment using Delica beads.  The dangly part is an adaptation of a design seen in the latest issue of the Beadworkers' Guild Journal which I spotted after I'd started making the bail part using an idea from a book on Geometric beading.  I picked up a couple of light scarves in the local charity shop and that's it - my first beaded scarf ornament.  With all this beading I've not produced any cards recently so it is back into the craft room to dig out my stash and play with inks because I have a couple of Halloween quintiles to make.