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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A new toy!

OK, so I normally talk about work and family first before moving onto all things crafting, but I had to share this straight away…Tim has given me a Crop-a-dile. It is bright pink and is very solid and chunky and works like a dream. It has a lovely smooth action both for cutting holes (it is supposed to be able to cut chipboard and tin etc, but I have only tried card so far) and for setting eyelets. I love it and am now looking for any excuse to use eyelets on projects at the moment.
Work has gone well so far this week and I have now submitted the two grants and the studentship that I have been working on for the past few weeks. I have also acted as a referee for a journal called ‘Expert Opinions on Drug Development’ and read through a review article that was submitted to them and given my comments on it. On the whole it was a good article, it just needed a bit more detail in places. It is very strange to be considered an ‘expert’ in anything, but good fun! The rest of today has been spent doing some admin and desk tidying ready for the next lot of work to come my way. In fact I have been so on top of things that I decided to leave work early yesterday and go for a gentle stroll through the woods with Tim and Alex…the autumn colours were wonderful and the weather was perfect, the only sadness was that I went straight from work and didn’t have my camera with me.
Alex has had a slight cough to go alongside his cold in these last few days, but to add to that he has worked out how to do a fake cough which is so cute and so funny. We have had some lovely times together this week playing different games to make him laugh. Bouncing up and down is still his favourite and this morning before work I held him in my arms and then jumped up and down with him which made him laugh out loud. Like me he suffers from huge bouts of hic-ups and today we both had very loud ones at the same time which completely cracked him up, making me laugh and hic-up even louder! This cute photo of him was taken just before I put him to bed tonight.
It is my Gran’s 83rd birthday next week and so I made her a card this week. She loves gardening and therefore I wanted to do a card with flowers on it. In the end I used the stipple brush background effect that Kay showed me on a textured white card background and then mounted a watercolour effect rose stamp onto a pink piece of card onto the background card. This pink card had eyelets (set using the Crop-a-dile) and ribbon on it and the whole thing was finished with a happy birthday stamp in the same colour ink. Tim’s birthday is also next week, the day before Gran’s, and one of his presents this year is a computer game called Crysis. Sadly the game isn’t out until after Tim’s birthday so I made him this surprise waterfall card as a taster of what is to come, a sort of IOU if you like, using screen shots of the game taken from the net. I haven’t tried to make a waterfall card yet and I was thrilled with how well this slightly different surprise version worked.
More soon,
Love,
Caro
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How many different things...

...can you do in one weekend? This weekend the answer is loads. Before Alex was born Tim used to do all the jobs around the house (washing, shopping, washing up and some general tidying), but now he has the full time job of looking after Alex so those things don't get done during the week meaning that we have to do them at the weekend. So we have done the weekly shop, cleaned, cooked, washed, washed up, fed Alex, changed him, bathed him, played with him, generally tidied up the house, collected the rest of the enormous playhouse (and when I say enormous I mean it...we couldn't fit it in the car, we had to attach it to the roof of the car to get it home), sorted out and put away Alex's 0-3 month clothes, organised his current clothes (3-6 months) and got out the next lot of clothes (6-9 months) ready for washing when he needs them and more! We have been given clothes enough to last him until he is 2 years old we think, although there may be a few items that we need to buy we haven't had to buy anything so far which has been fantastic. Long may it continue. Clothes can be expensive and we can't really afford new stuff for him (there doesn't seem any point anyway when he grows out of them so fast).

Alex surprised himself and us this weekend by 'crawling' backwards for the first time...OK it was more of a body shuffle, but it was still movement in one direction rather than spinning in a circle. This means that the stair gates may be needed sooner than originally thought. He has thoroughly entertained us this weekend with the different noises that he has been making the most amusing of which has been a breathy Darth Vader impression. His various toys continue to fascinate him especially the cube and anything noisey, although we tend not to give him the musical toys too often for our own sanity. I have had so much fun this weekend making the most of my time with him playing lots of little games and making him giggle. He is a very physical little boy and the more physical the game the more likely he is to laugh out loud.

On a different note I have finally finished Tim's birthday card. The 3D mandola looks really good since it is shimmery due to the mica pigment powders and it is finished with a green gem. It looks better in real life than it does in this picture, but I am quite pleased with the way the 'spring' card turned out. I have not tried one of these before and with the gold stickers on the base and some green stamping on the folds it seems to have come together well. The background was done using two different ink pads (yellow and green) and then a very stiff round ended paint brush (like a stippling brush) to create the stippled effect. I got the idea from some cards that Kay had made and I fell in love with that way of doing a background...it is really effective.

I also got together with Alex to make his card for Tim...I painted his hand green and let him slap the card with it...I have to say that he wasn't too impressed with that...he didn't really like the sensation of the paint on his hand or the hassle that cleaning him up afterwards entailed. On the other hand he got on much better with the pens than I expected and all the pen work is his own (with the obvious exception for which I guided his hand). For added interest I then added the gold peel offs of the computer (a kind gift from Frances Gale)...Tim's favourite hobby. I think that Tim will like this one.

I received two wonderful ATCs through the post yesterday and when I tell you how old the people are who made these you will see why I was so impressed. This first one, Shaker Vase, is lovely and was made by Kayleigh Wade, aged 7. The shaker is great and I love the edging on this ATC.

This second one was made by Kayleigh's sister, Michaela Wade, aged 8 and I love the attention to detail in the placement of little gems on the necklace as well as the way that she has coloured in the corner peel offs and then cut round them to shape the corners of the ATC. I think you will agree with me that these are two fantastic ATCs.

More soon,

Love,

Caro

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