Nice weather for once!

Yes, we have actually had sun today so I dragged the whole family out for a walk at Wyming Brook. This is a nature reserve only 5 minutes drive from us and is based around a stream and a gorge. One of the paths is suposedly pushchair friendly but after today we have to say that we disagree, the terraine was rather too rough and we had to carry the chair over some of the larger bumps in the path. It was lovely to get out into the woods though and enjoy the fresh air and some breeze. These photos are of the brook and Alex in his chair on the walk, and yes, he was actually awake this time, although the extremely bumpy path might have had something to do with that.

Those of you who know me well will know that I am not a gardener...in fact I haven't done any gardening apart from the occasional lawn mowing for nearly 2 years (for various reasons), and the weather recently has provided me with the perfect excuse to be indoors crafting instead. Well, I have decided that I really want to get the garden under control by the end of this summer so that Alex has somewhere to play next year when he is toddling about. This meant that today, while the weather was nice I went out and cleared the top patio of weeds.

I also had some time today to play with a new toy that Tim gave me, a set of Whispers brush pens and blenders for use with rubber stamps. Now, at the moment I don't have very many rubber stamps (although I have ordered some!) so my experiments today were with stamps that were freebies on the front of magazines. That said, I am quite pleased with the results and made this ATC to document my experiments. The butterflies were stamped first and then enhanced with the blender and then 'masked' with a repeat of the image stamped on scrappaper and stuck over the proper images with repositional glue. The flowers were then stamped over the top, the scrap masked image removed to reveal the final effect. I hope this all makes sense. I am quite pleased with the overall effect and am looking forward to some more intricate stamps to try it with.

Love,

Caro

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