Missing in Action - Again!!

My blog seems to have been sadly neglected of late but I have managed to take a look at most of the ones I follow although sadly not always had time to leave comments so apologies all round.  My time management skills seem to have deteriorated but hopefully I can soon get back into the swing although with the slightly warmer weather the garden is 'bursting out all over' and calling for attention so that is another thing to add into my busy schedule.  If anyone has any good suggestions for dealing with a large lawn which is looking more like a ploughed field covered in badger toilets I'd be grateful - a load of ready-mix concrete comes to mind!!  I'm sure mowing it must be classed as a health hazard.

This card was made as a commission for a man with an interest in woodwork and motorbikes - mention was also made that he used to milk cows but I was unable to include them as well.  I thought I had a woodgrain embossing folder but sadly not, so used another one which I thought looked vaguely like wood when used on Kraft card.  The motor bike stamp is one I've had for ages and came from a 'grab bag' of unmounted ones many years ago when wood-mounted stamps were the norm.  I used to cut my own wood blocks and mount them up would you believe.  The chap on the bike reminded me of the AA men who used to ride around with sidecars to come to the aid of stranded motorists - they wore peaked caps and would salute anyone with the AA badge on their vehicle (ought not to own up to remembering that - showing my age!!).  As the recipient of the card is 90 years old I felt he would be likely to remember them too.  The lady who asked for the card to be made was very pleased anyway.

Beading for a Change

I thought I'd share my latest bead weaving project with you today - a simple necklace using cube beads in two sizes.  I spent an enjoyable morning at a quilt exhibition with a friend and have come home with all sorts of ideas buzzing around in my head - particularly some of the machine embroidery projects made me realise this is a technique I've not done in ages which is a shame because I have plenty of exciting fabrics and threads to use up being the hoarder that I am LOL!!  We all say it I know but oh for more hours in the day.

Make My Monday challenge

The challenge this week on Make My Monday is to use the colours of blue and brown.  This wonderful bear character is Wellington from Docrafts and he is surrounded by blue flowers so just right.  The entire card was produced within their Digital Designer programme, partly because I felt like dabbling with the computer and partly (well mainly really) that my desk space has shrunk to almost nothing so no space for regular crafting.  This was a bit of displacement activity  to avoid the tidying but but I will get around to that tomorrow - just didn't feel in the mood today!!  There are some beautiful examples from the design team so follow the link to take a look.

Patchwork Cushion

Well it is a little milder this weekend but has been raining steadily ever since around 10am so not all good.  Today I'm sharing with you another of the samples I made for my recent stitchery demonstrations using various Clover templates.  I spent quite a while thinking of different of using the little puffy circles obtained by using the Suffolk Puff (also known as yo-yo) template and this cushion was just one of them - there are one or two other items not quite finished but I will get them done and share them another day.  This cusion was made from lots of odd scraps of fabric cut into squares and stitched together.  I then added a yo-yo to alternate squares with some miscellaneous buttons from my (large) mountain of odd buttons. I am trying really hard to use up oddments in all departments of my crafting but the mountains don't shrink by much!!  Enjoy the rest of your weekend and hopefully the weather is better for some of you than it is here.

Backgrounds

The challenge this week on Make My Monday is to make a background from scratch (no designer backing papers allowed) and there is a mid week motivation post with ideas and of course the usual lovely work from the design team.  My background was made on watercolour paper with distress stains, water and salt - once dry it has been overstamped.  The image is a Creative Expressions stamp designed by Sam Poole, coloured with matching Distress colours, cut out and popped onto a piece of embossed Core-d-nations card (sanded, inked and overstamped).  Apart from the little bee which is a Chocolate Baroque stamp all the other stamps used were from Creative Expressions by Same Poole.

April Quintiles

Well I must say that the theme for Chocolate Baroque Quintile swap this month really had me thinking - it was April Fool.  Of course I had to tie in the theme with stamps and/or products from CB so I ended up 'thinking outside the box' and went for Steampunk style.  To my mind there must have been people who thought that the early inventors of weird and wonderful flying machines were foolhardy to say the least.  The quotation is from Shakespeare and the images are of course Chocolate Baroque stamps.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what the other members of the group come up with for this month which has been a bit of a challenge!!

Blue Birds

A bit of hybrid crafting here with some of the elements being created using Docrafts Digital Designer programme.  The backing papers, ribbon and bow were printed as was the image - all arranged on the screen and then separated out for printing so that I could make up the card in the traditional way.  A Spellbinders shape was used along with a strip of embossed card as a border for the printed ribbon and bow. The sentiment was produced on the computer and punched out.  The actual image was a black and white one but I altered the colours within the software to tie in with the rest of the design.  Working out designs on the screen is a great way of being able to just print papers and other elements at just the right size, thus saving on ink and also not ending up with loads of scraps of printed papers - as you know I have a mountain of those already!!