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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Gardening and clothes!

An odd combination I know, but this is what I have been doing over the past two days. Yesterday saw me out in the garden again, still digging out the weeds of the same flowerbed (3/4 of the way through now). Alex sat in his ring and gurgled away to himself while I did it and kept me highly entertained. I really can't wait to get the garden properly sorted so that I can see what shrubs and plants we have and can decide what to get. Having taken advice from my Mother, what I need to do is dig out all the weeds, and then 'double dig' and weedkill the beds to treat them ready for introducing shrubs next year. I don't know if I have the energy to do that in all the beds, but I will do my best. There are a few flowers out in the garden as shown in these photos and the fact that Alex enjoyes being out in the fresh air makes it all worth while.

Today Tim took me clothes shopping...the aim was to look for an outfit for the wedding we are going to on Saturday. My preferred wedding outfit is a lovely pink flowery dress, but I can't wear that while breast feeding so we were on the hunt for a skirt and top combination. We went only to one shop and came out with 5 skirts, 2 trousers, 4 shirts and 1 cardigan! This did include a lovely outfit for the wedding. My excuse is that it is a discount store, half of it used up my left over Birthday and Christmas money from last year and that Tim insisted on me getting the rest! It is great to be back down to my pre-pregnancy size again. All this, however, meant that I had to sort out my wardrobe so I had space to fit them all in, which took up most of the rest of the day. I have three bin bags full ready for our local charity shop.

I also managed to make two wedding cards ready for the wedding on Saturday, one is for us to give the bride and groom, and the other is for my brother to give them. Both cards have a similar colour scheme and used the same sticker pack. This first one used Basic Grey backing paper, congratulations printed onto paper of a similar tone, copper coloured card with little stars on it, red ribbon, red and yellow patterned Basic Grey paper and the central panel made by colouring gloss card with Adirondack butterscotch ink before attaching the sticker.

The second card is much simpler, using three stickers to make the central panel, layered onto some gloss card coloured with Adirondack butterscotch ink and edged in red ink, then layered onto some more Basic Grey paper. The card was finished off by edging with deep red ink and adding two further stickers. I hope they like them.

More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Green, brown, blue and white.

Don't worry this isn't the theme of a card or an ATC swap. The green is for the trees, grass and weeds, the brown is for the soil and muddy stream & pond water, blue is for the sky and white is for the fluffy clouds in the sky. It has been a lovely couple of days. The weather has been dry and sunny, with intermittant clouds keeping it cool enough to be comfortable and we have made the most of it by going for walks in the Porter Valley. Yesterday we went through the Whiteley Woods along side the stream, and today we went through Endcliffe Park to the cafe where we got a delicious Bradwells double scoop ice-cream. Yummy! We are so blessed to live in a city where such lovely, easy walks are available to us. They are perfect for the pushchair as they are tarmaced, and although they are in the middle of a city, you can barely hear traffic. The sounds of the stream, birds and other children playing are predominant. Best of all they are nice and flat so not too tiring for Tim with his M.E.

The path through Whiteley Woods, Porter Valley

The path through Endcliffe Park, Porter Valley.

The duck pond, Endcliffe Park.

A mini waterfall in Endcliffe Park

I have also made the most of this nice weather by spending time in the garden with Alex, and yes, I have actually been gardening (my Mother didn't believe me when I told her!). My back is finally a bit better, enabling me to tackle the weeds. The hardest part is the fact that the flower bed I am currently digging out has quite a lot of rocks in it...I even bent the fork today. I can only do a bit at a time, because my back gets tired, and because Alex needs entertaining (great excuse this!). It is great fun having him sat in the rubber ring, in the shade of the tree. He chatters and grunts away to himself, while kicking and wriggling which is fun to watch.

Tim decided to try Alex with his first little bit of chocolate icing today...needless to say he liked it, but it was very messy, hence this photo!

Crafting has taken a bit of a back seat to being outdoors in this weather, but I have managed to play a bit with my new kit. This ATC is entitled 'Butterfly lady' and was made by brayering the background with Butterscotch Adirondack ink, then stamping the PaperArtsy Petals plate 3 over the top using Ginger Adirondack ink. The strip of red and yellow patterned card was then added on the left hand edge and the small Hero Arts dragonfly stamped on it in Ginger. A Stamps Away butterfly was then stamped using dark red pretty colour ink, which was also used around the edge. The word butterfly was stamped using black stazon ink and then areas of the images highlighted using glitter gel pens. Finally the embellishments were added. I would love to know what you think.

More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Snip Snip!

I have finally had my hair cut after 8 months! The situation was getting desperate...it was all falling out following Alex's birth, looking really thin and straggly and the split ends had to be seen to be believed. 6 inches shorter and it is a new me. I can't decide whether I have gone a little too short as it now has a series of waves that it never had before, but it will grow eventually and in the meantime is looking much thicker and better. We had a busy day yesterday...Alex is booked in for nursery and our deposit is paid which means that the place is held open for him whenever we want it, the house is tidier, my hair is shorter, the washing was done, I took Alex for a short walk in the sun and made a card.

A very sleepy and grubby Alex...carrot all over his clothes!

Today we went out for a family pub lunch to The Sportsman, which is 5 minutes drive from our house. It is a real old fashioned, traditional English pub serving non complicated pub food. Tim had fish and chips with the biggest cod you have ever seen, and I had lasagne, salad and chips. For desert we shared a rubbarb pie and custard. Yummy! Alex was awake the whole time and was a complete star, playing with his Octopus and gently chatting away. Tim has always been hesitant of taking Alex out for lunch, although I have done this many times, so I think it surprised him how good Alex was and how easy it really is. Hopefully this means that I will be able to persuade him to do it again soon!

The other treat for today was a parcel of crafty goodies that arrived for me: 4 Adirondack ink pads, a paperartsy stamp, a pack of wedding stickers, and a rubber brayer. Time for me to play I think!!

I have recently discovered, thanks to other peoples blogs, the joys of challenge sites. The only one I have previously used has been Pencil Lines for scrapbooking sketches, however, I decided to look at some of the cardmaking ones. This card is based on sketch number 23 on the Sketch This Cards site, and is for a friend who's baby girl is due next week. Funnily enough this card also meets the challenge for Wednesday Stamper, although it doesn't use a single stamp, as this weeks challenge was to use stitching on a card (real, drawn or stamped) and two of the papers I used have stitches on them. Isn't it great when you can do a 2-in-1!! I am really pleased with this card and hope that Zoe will like it.

I also had a bit of a play today with my new stash! I used the resist technique with stamps from the Stamps Away range and Adirondack butterscotch ink pad to generate the background for the main panel of this card. I then stamped some hearts in gold (versamark), then stamped two more hearts in red (pretty colour) and embossed over the red in pearl gold (the red shows through), and added a little of the red to the card by dry brushing and lightly sprinkled some pearly gold embossing powder and heat set this before adding the wedding stickers. Finally I edged this with red ink. This whole central panel was then matted onto red patterned card, before adding to the white card and inking the edge in red. This is a new set of collage techniques for me and I am thrilled with how it turned out. I would love to know what you think.

Love,

Caro

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The sun is out!

Whoopee! The sun was shining all day today and I made the most of it. Unfortunately since putting my back out on Monday gardening was out of the question, but Alex and I spent some time in the garden and we went out for a lovely family walk to Forge Dam. There is a playground and a duckpond there so we took some bread to feed the ducks. Alex wasn't very impressed with the ducks and spent more time watching the people around the pond rather than the ducks. We also decided to try him in a swing for the first time. He is really too little for it, but we were very careful and he really enjoyed it...big beaming smiles! I also decided that I would like to take him down the slide which was great (unfortunately the sun meant that you can't really see either of us in the picture. It was such a relief to get out into the fresh air and sun today.

Alex is coming on really well with eating solids...opening his mouth for the next spoonful and really swallowing it all down at a rate of knots. He ate a whole mashed up banana for lunch today and I made some carrott puree for tomorrow. He is also getting on a lot better with the training cup than he ever did with a normal bottle and today went for 6 hours without breast feeding. It is good to know that he and Tim will manage when I am at work.

I spent the little crafting time I had today playing around with the resist technique and have decided that it is very cool! I need some more inks though. Todays trials used the two oriental stamps that I have and two of the colours from the kaleidacolour rainbow dye inkpad. The first card has the fan stamped in gold and then subtly coloured with glitter gel pens.

This second ATC has the fan image stamped in black then stamped again in gold - I am not sure how well the scan captures this effect. I then added further embellishments of a hand drawn ying/yang symbol and gold brads and inked around the edge.

Continuing the oriental theme I received this lovely ATC today from Doreen Collins (Momiji) which I love. The metal embellishment and the colour scheme work really well. Thank you for such a lovely ATC to add to my collection. More tomorrow.

Love,

Caro

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A great day - lunching and crafting!

Today was a good day. Although the day started cold and grey, by the time I got back from my lunch out the sun was shining...always a mood brightener! Alex and I went and had lunch with my boss, Nicky, and another work friend, Zoe, who is currently on maternity leave with her baby due a week today. Zoe's daughter Imogen (aged 2) kept us all highly amused throughout the meal, while Alex slept peacefully for about 40 minutes. When Alex woke up he charmed the two elderly ladies at the next table by grinning at them and gurgling away. It was lovely to have a good girlie lunch and to catch up with my friends. Alex has also discovered the 'horsey' game whereby he is jogged on my knee at different speeds (walk, trot, canter and gallop) and then 'falls off'. He thought this was wonderful and laughed loads whenever he got to gallop and the falling off. He has such an infectious laugh.

Todays crafting experiment was an ATC using the 'resist' technique of stamping. Others have explained this better elsewhere but briefly, you stamp your image onto gloss paper using Versamark, dry the image thoroughly then sponge over the card using waterbased dye inks (in this case Kaleidacolor) - your stamped images should show through, stamp with colours and you are finished. I decided to try and represent Autumn (one of my favourite seasons) by doing a leaf stamp. I am quite pleased with this, my first attempt, but I think that it needs a bit of practice to improve.

I also had time to make 'I is for ice-cream' for the Alphabet swap. I am quite pleased with the way the glitter glue works as the strawberry sauce on the Cornetto and the original 50s style poster in the background. Makes me want an ice-cream! More tomorrow.

Love,

Caro

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Feeding success

Today for the first time, Alex managed to go nearly 6 hours without needing to be breast fed! This was a major breakthrough as he wont take milk from a bottle, however, he did take milk from a training cup and what with a better mouth-to-spoon reaction leading to him eating 'solids' such as baby rice at an amazing rate, it seems that he and Tim will be able to cope OK while I am at work which is a huge relief. Alex loves playing on his playmat/baby gym but does get fed up after a while and likes to sit up so this picture is of him sitting on the floor propped up by cushions. He is actually looking at Tim who was playing with him at the time.

One way or another I didn't manage to get much time to do crafting today, although I did order some goodies on-line and start to think about what I want for my birthday! The one ATC I did manage to make was 'H is for Hat'. The background paper used an image I found on the net and duplicated and the letter H has a clipart image of a hat repeated on it.

I had a lovely treat today in the form of a beautiful ATC entitled 'Wings' from Barbara Williams. This is stunning and has a lovely glittery effect on parts of the stamp. More tomorrow,

Love,

Caro

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Ouch!

This is a short post today as when I bent down this morning to pick Alex up I put my back out. Consequently I am in a fair bit of pain and have found it difficult to do things today. We did however go and look at our first nursery...we are thinking of putting Alex into nursery one day a week to give Tim a break. We quite liked the look of this one...it is within walking distance of work and only 10 minutes from home by car. We will be looking at others before making a decision though. Apart from that we did a family shop and spent the day at home. Alex was very funny as he has discovered that if he kicks on the floor he makes a lot of noise and he has now started doing this a lot and giving huge grins at the same time. It makes the most amazing racket when you are on the floor underneith and gave me quite a shock the first time! I managed to do a little crafting today and made 'G is for Giraffe' for the CM&PC forum ATC Alphabet swap. The Giraffe is a Stamps Away stamp and was stamped onto card, coloured, cut out and then mounted onto the background using 3D foam stamps. More tomorrow I hope
Love,
Caro
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On the move!

Alex that is and not us! We put him onto his playmat on the floor and then a while later we discovered that he was no longer on the mat but partway across the floor. He doesn't do it very fast and it is by wriggling and not rolling, but it is so funny to watch as he looks so pleased with himself. We had him in fits of giggles on and off all day today which was just as well because he has been stuck inside yet again today as the weather was soo miserable. I want some sun! Today saw us catching up on some essential jobs including cutting Tim's hair (a number one all over) which looks soo much better. We have started weaning Alex and today he demolished half a jar of ready made baby food at one sitting. This is a huge relief as he wont take milk from a bottle so needs to be able to eat something when I go back to work. I now have a recipe book to make our own purees etc for him which we will be trying over the coming weeks. He is developing and growing so fast at the moment and loves trying to stand while we hold him so we have been putting him in the door bouncer a bit more, which he enjoys.

I got time to make another couple of ATCs today using the same techniques as two of yesterdays, just with different stamps. This first one was stamped using pretty colour inks and made to look like a water colour by running a blender pen over the stamped image. The image was then layered onto card and embellished with ribbon and a 'jewel' flower.

This second ATC used Whisper pens to colour in white card, then images were clear embossed on top and black pen was run over the top of that. The card was layered onto a yellow background and some stickers/peel offs added. These are available for swaps should anyone want them.

Love,

Caro

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Windy, wet and miserable

The weather that is, not Alex! He has been on great form keeping us all entertained. The past few days have been so wet that the house yet again looks like a Chinese laundry with washing on every available surface. As Alex has now grown out of much of the 0-3 month sized clothes I spent yesterday going through the bags of clothes that we have been given from kind people sorting out the 3-6 month sized clothes and washing them. This and general organising of the house has occupied much of my time over the past two days, although I have to say that Alex proves to be the best excuse for getting distracted from chores. He is so much fun at the moment, I had him in fits of giggles this morning and it is just lovely to play with him generating loads of smiles. Bath times continue to be the greatest of fun with him now splashing a lot and grinning from ear to ear for much of it. I love this picture of him looking like a little pixie!

I have managed to do a bit of crafting over the past few days as well. I am still experimenting with stamping and all these projects use the Stamps Away range of stamps from http://www.clevercuts.co.uk/. This first card was made with stamping the butterfly image onto a scrap piece of paper then sticking it to an ATC with the image already stamped on it using repositionable glue. Over the top of this Whispers brush pens were used to colour the 'rainbow' effect over the top. The scrap paper was then removed leaving the white strip behind and finally the butterfly was coloured in and the butterfly gems added.

This dragonfly card used exactly the same technique, but just used the pastel Whispers brushes and a blue ink pad for the stamped image.

This card followed some advice from people on the CM&PC forum and the stamp was inked using pretty colour ink pads (from Lakeland) and then the image coloured over with the Whispers blender pen. This was then mounted onto an ATC and embellished.

This final ATC was coloured over in stripes of Whispers brush pens, then stamped with a fern image using Versamark watercolour pad and embossed with clear embossing powder. Finally the entire card was coloured over with black ink and the leaves exposed by wiping gently with a cloth. I look forward to peoples comments on these cards. If anyone is interested in any of these ATCs, do get in touch.

Love,

Caro

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A mixed day

Now that both Tim and myself are feeling a little more human (still not 100% but definitely improved) we set out to do something about the state of our house. However, partway through the hoovering we discovered that the drive belt in our new hoover has broken rendering it pretty useless, giving us the perfect excuse to give up on that. Moreover, when I went to put the washing on this morning I discovered the machine was half full of grimy, greasy washing up water so I had to do an 'empty' wash to wash the machine itself...very frustrating. However, the rest of the day was better...having been fed up with being cooped up inside due to the rain and illness over the past few days we decided to make a break for it and went for a lovely walk in between the showers. We are so fortunate that there are loads of really nice walks only 5 minutes from us despite living only 10 minutes from the centre of Sheffield, and today we did a short circular walk through the woods by a stream. About half way round we discovered this monument to one of Sheffields 'Ancestors of Steel'. Alex wasn't particularly impressed although he did seem to enjoy the walk itself, cooing and gurgling away and watching the sunlight in the trees.

I have really got into the oriental theme recently for ATCs so today I used the fan stamp to generate another Oriental ATC. This time I stamped onto pale gold pearly card using StazOn ink and then coloured the stamp using glitter gel pens. This was layered onto a background generated from some images I found on the web with the outside of the fan on foam to make the fan stick up at an angle. I am not entirely satisfied with this ATC....I think that the little image in the bottom righthand corner isn't quite strong enough, but other than that it seems to work quite well. It is available for swapping if anyone wants to.

Love,

Caro

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