Not the best start to the week...

On Monday I discovered that the huge grant I spent all of January working on was not funded, which was really disappointing. Then I discovered that despite my postdoc getting some fantastic results it seems unlikely that the company who is currently funding her has the funds to keep funding her beyond September which was another blow. In the current climate it is really hard to get funding and it is just so disheartening to keep writing grants, which take a lot of time and effort, to get continual knock backs. Sadly it is part of academic life, and I will pick myself up again and keep trying, but I can't help wishing it was easier. To top it off I developed a stomach bug on Tuesday and spent yesterday and today feeling totally rough at home.

Today was very strange though as Alex was at nursery and this is the first time I have been at home with out him since he was born. The house felt very empty and quiet despite Tim being around. It did mean that I was able to catch up on some much needed sleep. Alex wasn't quite as good at nursery today..he was very tired as he has a nasty cough which is keeping him awake at night, as well as teething...so apparently he was happy when he was sat on someones knee or playing quietly by himself, but when everyone was around it was too much for him without the safety of a comfy knee!

Despite feeling pretty rotten, spending a lot of time in bed and feeling lethargic and 'do-less' over the past few days I have done a bit of crafting which has been nice. I must confess that some of the inchies were actually made at the weekend, I just didn't get round to posting them on here. I think it is fair to say that I have rediscovered my love of scrapbooking, although I have been too ill to make a layout these past few days. This scrapbook layout is based on another Pencil Lines sketch (# 92) and was made on Monday. It is titled 'First Mothers Day' although the word 'first' is hard to make out against the background. I wanted to make a fairly girly layout as I never really get the chance to do that. All the stickers and embellishments (except the hugs heart) were freebies with magazines. The cardstock is Bazzill basics and the patterned paper is K&Co. The journalling reads ' My first Mother's day with Alex was very special. He hand stamped me a card, we went out for Sunday lunch and had a nice stroll in the woods'.

In my great tidy-up and re-organisation I rediscovered my flowersoft so made these two ATCs using flowersoft. I am quite pleased with how they have turned out.

I have also been challenging myself with my inchies to try and be a bit more adventurous so these inchies are all not just using stickers. This first set was a copper background, with a patterned foreground, stamped with three different leaf shapes and then finished with a skeleton leaf. I am quite pleased with how these turned out.

The second set were rose velum onto textured cream card background, with ribbon, a pink rose bud and a subtle heart sticker.

This next lot used the caught in crystal technique for the background and then stamped butterfly images in black StazOn ink over the top.

These ones used embossing on red metal and then overlayed onto silver card...the photos don't really show them up clearly.

For the final set I adapted the butterfly template into a much smaller version that would fit on inchies and then made the butterflies by folding and tying with craft wire before mounting onto textured card.

Last, but not least, I have joined a Cute animals fat page swap on the CM&PC forum and so have to make 12 4x4inch pages. I have decided that these are all going to be more or less identicle in design (as shown above), but will have different pictures and captions on them. I was sent the pictures in an e-mail entitled 'We wuv Rabbits' and thought they were suitably cute for this swap.

I couldn't resist this picture for the back of the fatbook pages. Anyway, I am now off to bed so more soon,

Love,

Caro

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