Wild and windy weather

Having been nice or at least not wet for a while the weather turned overnight last night. It was quite a wild night with lots of wind and it was very grey and threatening to rain this morning. We dashed out for a quick walk before the weather broke catching only a few spots of rain. Yesterday was an organising day, shopping, cleaning, gardening and of course playing with Alex. I have finally managed to complete the weeding of the third bed in the garden. That leaves only the two biggest to tackle. One of those will be time consuming but shouldn't be too difficult as it has previously been dug over...the other will be a complete nightmare as there is so much building rubble in it that it is impossible to get a spade into the soil for the most part. I will leave that one until last and think hard about whether getting some professional help for it. The picture above is of the complete mess that the final bed is in...it even has blackberries in it!!

I have only had time for a little crafting over these two days, most of which has been purely experimental and has ended up in the bin! This ATC is one which was borderline heading for the bin, but Tim persuaded me that it wasn't that bad so I have kept it. I used gold leaf paint over some red textured mulberry paper and then stamped the woman from the PaperArtsy Petals 3 stamp onto it using black StazOn ink. I then mounted this onto a background which was butterscotch with hearts on it using the resist technique, and two red/gold hearts using embossing. The ATC was finished with red writing, and an Angel Kiss flower with gold.

This next ATC is on glossy paper brayered with Wildflower Adirondack ink, then the face part of the PaperArtsy stamp used with black StazOn ink over the blue part of the card and butterfly stamps used and embossed with red and pearly gold. Finally the card was edged with red ink, a blue flower brad and a butterfly gem.

This final ATC uses the Wildflower Adirondack ink again, but on matt card, then butterflys stamped onto this background and then the Paper Artsy Image overlayed on that with Ginger Adirondack ink. This was finished off with a butterfly stamp in dark red, the butterflies highlighted using glitter gel pens, the edge inked in red and a flower brad added.

I have received several ATCs in the post this week, but haven't had time to scan them in until now...these two were from Angie and are really lovely and different from anything I have received so far. The first is entitled 'Beauty is...' and the second 'embrace' has the child done in 3D by using sticky foam underneith the image.

These three ATCs are the ones I received for the Alphabet swap and they are all so different! My completed Alphabet is going to be so much fun with so many completely different styles. D is for Dinosaur is by Joshua Wade who is 5 and I love the fun Dionsaur stickers he has used. E is for Emerald is by Rhea Bellamy and I like the creative use of the gold outline stickers. F is for Frog is probably my favourite of these and is another Barbara Williams special. It probably doesn't show up on the scan, but the Frog is decoupaged over the background photo of a pond edge, and the 'F' and 'FROG' have sparkly finishing to them. I would love to know what she used to generate that effect.

I am off to a wedding tomorrow so will not be updating until Sunday at some point. In the meantime, have a great weekend everyone.

Love,

Caro

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