Weird day!

Today has been a very odd day. I went to work this morning knowing that our car was going to be collected for repair and that a hire car was going to be dropped off. This had all been arranged for 10am this morning so that Tim would be able to collect me at lunchtime in the hire car so that I could come home and feed Alex. While at work the power kept going off and my laptop can only survive for 45 minutes without power so this started to cause some problems, and then the hire car didn't turn up in the morning, so we decided that I would work at home this afternoon. This meant that when Tim came to collect me at lunchtime (in our car) he was in a really really bad mood. The hire car finally turned up at 2pm and then our car was collected at 4pm. I did actually manage to do some work this afternoon, despite Alex not being his usual happy self and in fact I sent Tim and Alex to bed for an hour while I worked in the study.

Alex has had a fairly grumpy and unhappy day today...he has been off his food, and thrown up quite a lot and generally not been his usual happy self. The mood swings have been amazing, happy giggling and laughing one minute, growling but content the next and then screaming abdabs the next. However, I did have some nice quality time with him this evening after I finished my work and we played in his gym, he did some 'drawing' with me and we had a lot of fun bouncing.

I received several ATCs today which was lovely. The Christmas swap ones arrived from Germany and I received the Christmas pudding from Joshua Wade (aged 6), the Patchwork star from Luc William Brunton (aged 11, I think) and Snowflakes from Janet Matthews. I love all of these. The teabag folding for the central snowflake is great and I must have another go at this technique at some point. So many techniques and not enough time!

These very cute dalmations are decoupaged and are from a new member of the CM&PC forum, Emma Ryder. This is hopefully the first of many swaps that I will do with her.

Last, but not least I received this very cute New Years Cherub from Joanne Browne, I love the additional effect of the folded flower in the corner.

I now have an hour to myself in which I hope to get on with some of my Christmas cards...will let you all know how I get on. More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Success!

It has been a very successful few days.. We have spent the time turning our house back into a home, putting away things that have accumulated all over the place, vacuuming from top to bottom, playing with Alex, eating yummy food, going for walks and I have made loads of ATCs. Alex’s cold is finally improving…it hasn’t gone yet, but he has been much more his normal happy self which is wonderful. He still hasn’t learnt to sit up by himself as he thinks that toppling over or throwing himself backwards to be caught by me is the greatest game ever! I introduced him to bubbles yesterday and he thought they were great, if a little puzzling because they kept bursting!
Crafting has been really successful as I have managed to catch up on all my ATCs that I owed people, clearing the decks ready for making Christmas cards. These three have snowmen stamped using the free stamp that came with Papercraft Inspirations, embossed in black on white card and then coloured in using the mica powders to give a nice shimmery effect. The snowmen were mounted on some blue and silver caught in crystal background acetate and then layered onto different backgrounds. I think that although they are similar there are enough differences to make them interesting.

Kerry Knowles, who I have swapped a lot of ATCs with, very sweetly decided to make one using my crafting business card and so as an exchange for that I have made her one out of the thank you card she sent me. I just love this stamp from Simple Expressions flora 5 and think it works really well over the top of the rose. I hope she likes this one.

Angela Clerehugh, who has been organising the alphabet swap asked me if I would do another letter K for someone who has joined in late, so I made this K is for Kangaroo using a photograph of a Kangaroo in mid jump taken from the net. I printed it out with a black background, mounted it on gold textured card, and decoupaged the image of the Kangaroo, before adding the letter K and the word written in gold. A fairly simple but effective ATC.

I wanted to make an extra ATC as a thank you to Lottie Middleton who is organising the bookmark swap and so knowing that she likes Oriental things I made this Oriental butterfly using a similar base to before and an image of a butterfly and a text plaque from a decoupage sheet that I had on computer. I hope she likes it.

Finally I have completed the next three letters (M,N&O) for the Alphabet swap. I was dithering about what to do for M, but in the end had to go for Mickey Mouse as he is a firm favourite of mine. The image was taken from the net, but the background was drawn by me using Whisper marker pens. I like the way this one has turned out.

N is for Nappies was really Tim's idea as I couldn't think of anything and he made the suggestion. I made the background in photoshop using two photographs of branded disposable nappies and layering them over each other. I chose pale blue for the large letter as it went with the picture of the terry nappy that was decoupaged on top.

O is for Owl was the final choice, although it was a close run thing with O is for Octopus. I just love Winnie the Pooh and so decided that Owl had to be the way to go. I wanted to find a good picture of Owls house for the background but failed after spending ages trawling the net so I used the picture of a party inside Owls house instead. I hope whoever gets these cards enjoys them.

I have had a lovely week off work, spending time with Alex and getting things in the house sortedand back to normal, and I have to say that I don't really want to go back to work, but these things happen. Hope all is well with you all. More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Bookmarks!

Front of the bookmarks
Back of the bookmarks

I have had a wonderful day today, apart from shopping and cooking a lovely roast chicken dinner with Birthday cake served with Haagan Das ice-cream as desert, I have spent the day playing with Alex and with crafty things! Todays crafting session has been to make two bookmarks for the swap that Lottie Middleton is organising on the CM&PC forum. The Oriental bookmark had two different shades of purple and pink put on the background in random pattern and then the Oriental writing stamped on in pale purple. This was done on both sides of the bookmark, and then around the edges gold mica powder was painted on, and the Chines coin image stamped in copper at top and bottom. On the front of the bookmark the Geisha image was embossed in black and then coloured in using mica powders, and on the back a Chinese dragon image was stamped in deep purple. The nature bookmark was completed as described yesterday. Both bookmarks will be laminated (assuming I can locate our machine which is curently missing in action and then an eyelet added at the centre of the top and ribbons attached. I am quite pleased with how well these have worked. More soon,

Love

Caro

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ATC thanks

I have received so many wonderful ATCs over the past few days that I thought I would put up a separate thank you thread. The first three are the next letters from the Alphabet swap that we are doing on the CM&PC forum. I just love the way there are so many different styles in this swap. J is for Jug is a cross stitch panel done by Angela Clerehugh, the organiser of the swap, and I admire the time and patience she has put into doing this...I have done very little cross stitch myself...I get in a muddle with threads! K is for Kites is by Ann (sorry, I don't know the surname) and I love the fun feel to this ATC, especially the choice of shimmery greens and silvers. L is for Lemur is by Michaela Wade (aged 8) and is great fun, with the lemur print being on fabric and well decorate and mounted with gold corners.

This next ATC is a luxuriant feeling Kimono from Angela Clerehugh and I love the true Oriental feel to this ATC and the silver, black and blue theme works really well to tie everything together.

These next two are both from Sharon Snowdon. The first one is black Oriental style stamping onto caught in crystal background with pink and blue as the colours and holographic glitter and finished off with a Chinese coin. This is simply beautiful and I wish that my Caught in crystal work turned out as well as this! The second is a complete contrast and is of a Wild flower stamp mounted over tissue paper stamped with yellow flowers and glitter, layered over the top of white card stamped with black post marks. This again is lovely and has given me some ideas for my own work.

You can probably spot a theme coming through with these two from Gail Seamark, as they are both Oriental with a Japanese temple and a Kimono both made from peel offs, layered over oriental backing paper. The Kimono has been coloured in with what I think is twinkling H2Os. These are both simple and very effective.

Last but not least is this Oriental Lady by Kerry Knowles, a gold peel off over black shiny and subtly patterned card, cut out and decoupaged on top of an Oriental background paper, with gold edging. Wonderful.

As you can imagine I am thrilled with all these ATCs and want to say a huge thank you to everyone. More soon

Love,

Caro

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Birthday preparations and the day itself

It is Tim's birthday today so the past couple of days have been spent preparing for the day. I have the week off work so as well as baking, wrapping presents, playing with Alex, decorating the sitting room etc we have done a bit towards our great house organisation. We have cleared more of the garage and one end of the garage is now arranged so that the enormous roof-rack box can be stored in the garage and not the entryway which is wonderful. We can now actually get the pushchair into the house which makes going for walks much easier. We have also taken loads of things to Oxfam including a box which was packed up over two years ago!! I am feeling a lot happier about how things are looking downstairs.

Sadly Alex still isn't very well, his voice is incredibly croaky and his sleeping is eratic and he is constantly tired. This means that he has been a little more clingy than usual in patches. However, today he has been wonderful, tolerating being left to play on his own a lot more and has been eating better. His favourite things to do at the moment are to blow sloppy wet raspberries and crawl around on his tummy, mostly backwards. It is amazing the distance he can travel by rolling and 'swimming'. The nice thing is that he looks so pleased with himself when he does it. Alex has had fun crafting over the past few days. I can give him a felt pen and he will spend ages happily hitting the desk with it and dragging it over the paper. It is slightly hit and miss as to whether he draws on the paper, the desk, himself or me, but we have fun. This is one of his master pieces!

Despite Alex not being well I did manage to make and decorate a birthday cake for Tim. It was requested that I make a chocolate orange cake, which I have never made before so to the traditional cake mixture I added chocolate orange drinking powder and two Terrys chocolate orange bars (chopped up small). For the icing I melted Terrys chocolate orange, butter and added some more hot chocolate orange powder and milk before mixing in the icing sugar. The result was extremely yummy but very rich...you can't have very much of it in one go. Tim was very happy with it which was the main thing. I had fun decorating it with writing icing, hundreds and thousands, chocolate drops and chocolate buttons as the photo shows.

Tim has enjoyed his birthday and the run up to it, which we spent doing lots of present giving and receiving (I gave him some new computer games and a posh gaming keyboard, which he has spent ages playing with and configuring), eating nice food (smoked salmon, strawberries and cream, birthday cake, and a greek style buffet - one of Tim's favourites, take away curry), playing with Alex, watching superhero movies (Fantastic 4 and Spiderman3), going for a walk, and generally having nice chats. Sadly there is no picture of the birthday boy as he doesn't want me to put one on the web so here is one of Alex again!

I have done just a little crafting today, as the previous days were spent wrapping presents and cooking for Tim's birthday. These are two book marks I have started for Lotties swap on the CM&PC forum. These are just a trial run and I think the final version will have one of these designs on the front and the other on the back as they go quite well together. The background is made by stippling two inks onto the card (yellow and green) and then using a mixture of stamps from Crafty Individuals, Simple Expressions flora 5, Hero Arts and Wooden Stampers to layer up the images. The result is an autumnal feeling book mark which I am quite pleased with.

Tim has decided that instead of going out for the day tomorrow he wants to spend the day playing at home with his new presents, so I should be able to do some more crafting then. More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Bonfire and stair gate!

Our house is on three stories and the lower ground floor is utter chaos. It only consists of the hallway (entrance) and garage but you have never seen such a mess. It is impossible to get the pushchair into the house anymore so we decided that enough was enough and it was time to have a major sort out. Now in order to clear the entryway it was necessary to tidy the garage so we decided to have a bonfire of all the burnable rubbish. This was a great success and we cleared about 20% of the garage with burning and a further 5% with things for the bin. Tim was as happy as a sand boy out in the garden. It is the first ever bonfire we have had since getting married and the first one Tim has ever done without the supervision of his Dad. Because of all the smoke going every which way we kept Alex inside in his chair looking out of the patio doors so he could see what was going on.

Unfortunately Tim hurt his shoulder so we didn't do anymore to the great clear up today, instead we put up a stair gate at the top of our stairs. Alex is definitely mobile now, albeit backwards, and can move several feet in less than a minute so we definitely need the gate now for safety. Alex hated the drilling and the hoovering up afterwards so I took him out for a walk while Tim finished the job. The walk was lovely as Alex was happy and chattery and the weather was so lovely. Alex still isn't very well so he was much more in need of cuddles and I have spent any crafting time in the past few days with him sat on my lap as this photo shows. It is a bit tricky to actually do very much in the way of my own crafting but he had great fun with pens and paper hitting the desk, and drawing (probably more by accident than design).

These 4 ATCs were part of my crafting success in the past couple of days. The central panel is of the same caught in crystal technique and then stamped with black StazOn. The stamps were free from Papercraft Inspirations. These are mounted onto ribbon (free with Quick cards made easy) and then finished with gold peel offs and red sequins. They have worked out better than I thought and I am pleased with the overall effect.

This ATC I made today and was the same caught in crystal stamped with one of the flower stamps from Simple Expressions flora 5, mounted on green card and then butterfly stickers added on top. I have this week off work to do the great house sort out and to celebrate Tim's birthday so more from me again soon.

Love,

Caro

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Not very well

Well we have a poorly boy. Alex has the cold that is going round at the moment and is beginning to lose his voice. He has a very croaky voice which squeaks from time to time...it is rather cute really and at least it doesn't seem to be stressing him. Fortunately he isn't off his food and although he is slightly more subdued than normal he is still laughing and giggling, bouncing and generally enjoying life. He has started to crawl backwards which pleases him immensely. The look of pride on his face when he has moved several feet is so funny to see. He gives such a cheeky grin as if to say, look what I just did Mummy. We are going to put the stair gate up this week to avoid any accidents.

Work has been a bit more gentle the last couple of days, I have edited an article for a journal and written two abstracts for presenting some work on breast cancer at a meeting in London in May. Apart from that I have been spending time with my students making sure that they are getting on OK. One student has to have written up his thesis by 1st December so much of my time from now is going to be taken up with editing this and advising him.

On the crafting front I have finally started making my Christmas cards. I have made 4 so far, the only trouble is that there are so many exciting projects that I have in mind that I keep getting side tracked into trying something else instead of getting on with them. The latest experiment has been witha 'caught in crystal' type technique where acetate is covered with a layer of diamond glaze into which ink is brushed then glitter sprinkled on. Over the top of this glue layer a piece of tissue paper is scrumpled up and then straightened out and then placed over the top of the glue layer. The whole thing is then left to dry before being cut up to use by stamping the image of your choice in StazOn (or similar ink). The card above had the Chinese dragon stamped in black StazOn onto some acetate with yellow and red ink and red glitter on it, then the eyelet set in the corner using my new crop-a-dile and then mounted on gold card. I am quite pleased with the way this has come out and as I made quite a lot of the caught in crystal background there will be more over the next few days!

More soon,

Love,

Caro

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