Fresh Air, Donations and Babies

Wow there is lots to put in this blog today. I will start with my card, as the challenges are nearly closing! A colleague at work is expecting, and we think it might be twins :). So I was asked to make a baby card for her to present before she goes on maternity leave. I decided I wanted a owl themed card - but it didn't take me long to realise I did not have any owl designs, so I had to trawl the internet for owl clipart (I did look for digi stamps but couldn't find any suitable ones). Eventually, this is the card I came up with:

Based on this sketch from Sweet Sketch Wednesday 2


I took an orange card blank and folded it in half to make the base card. I printed the two owl clip art designs and then added the baby owl with dummy to the owls on the tree branch using spray adhesive. I mounted this onto spotty blue paper and then onto the bottom of the card blank. I took a pink spotty paper and layered the blue spotty paper on top,and then added an orange papermania ribbon. This was adhered above the image. Down the right side I attached a fluffy variegated orange to pink twine and the same twine with glitter fleck through it, adhering the ends inside the card. I added an orange button to the side of the ribbon panel and to the side of the image panel I stamped 'New Baby' using orange ink.

I am entering this for the following challenges:
O is for Orange - abc challenge
Celebration - Creative moments #46
Anything Goes - audsentiments #110 - crafting by designs - catch the bug
Kids - 2cuteink #110
Use a greeting - ink on my fingers
Chart (image; sentiment; solid colour paper; button; ribbon) - avenue613
Pretty Papers - Cute Card Thursday
Fussy and Fancy - Love to create #123

The next item on the crafting agenda is the update on my fish cross stitch - now at 57 hours.

We got a bumper crop of fruit from the allotment a couple of days ago and I decided to make a flan with them (all red berries), with creme fraiche. There were tayberries, raspberries, strawberries and red gooseberries and it was absolutely lovely. The mice really quite liked the creme fraiche also (although I was trying to encourage them to eat the fruit! Anyway, as I was letting the girls have their bit I had allowed Tawny (my little blind guy) to run around on the floor. I turned around once the girls had finished to see this:

Cheeky little man decided that he could get away with eating directly from my plate. He did get away with it too as he is just so damned cute!

We also managed to get a nice crop from the Autumn planted onions, which was a nice surprise after the wash-out winter that we had! And I got half a carrier bag of Broad Beans from another allotmenteer, which will be very much appreciated, especially by OH.

AUDIO BOOK - 'My Sister's Keeper' by Jodi Picoult.
I do really enjoy listening to the audio books by Jodi, and especially like the fact that different reader's read each persons perspective. The main plot of this story is that Sara and Brian (the parents) produce a child to be a perfect doner for their older daughter who has APL, an acute and rare form of Leukaemia. At age 13 the child takes her parents to court to sue for the right to decide what happens to her own body, or medical emancipation. Through the story we meet the oldest sibling, a son called Jesse who feels so unable to do anything that he turns to arson, both parents (the father is a firefighter/paramedic, and the mother an ex-lawyer), the sister with APL - Kate, Anna who is the doner child who is taking her parents to court, the lawyer Campbell Alexander who has a quirky character and a service dog and the guardian ad litem Julie. Through the book you get a history of the girls medical escapades, extracts of when Kate has had normal experiences that her mother never expected to see her have, Jesse's problems and also background into Julie and Campbell, which is a minor story in itself. I really enjoyed the moral and ethical issues this story brought up, and the way Jodi looks at how an illness affects a whole family. The ending to the story is a dramatic twist and was not what I was expecting, but it does work really well. If you have seen the film then be warned that the ending in the book is very different and there is a lot more in the book than can be portrayed in the film. I haven't seen the film, but having just read up about it it appears that the film detracts from the poignancy of some of the issues by making other  items more dramatic - like including a sex-scene where there could never have been one due to the treatment that Kate was undergoing.

If you enjoy reading about difficult situations in a fictional sense, but with a good grounding or moral and ethical background then I would definitely recommend this book!

Thank you for looking,
Hugz Tinz

Shrinkles Robin with Mail

Hi guys,

Today after work I went ot the shooting range with the OH and had a play with his gun. I think he was quite impressed by how well I actually did - even when the scope was out slightly  :D

Anyway, upon arriving home I decided to have a go with my new shrink plastic, which I have wanted to play with for ages!!! So I made this Christmas card:

Firstly the base was covered with Poinsettia vellum from the papermania range, and a turquoise spotty backing paper which I got from my mum. Down the centre I added a black stripy ribbon, which I last used for making a 2013 calender for my mum!!! I stamped the robin with mail from the Honey and Hugs Festive Frolics collection onto the shrink plastic with Staz-on black ink. I then coloured it in with promarkers, which does not give a fantastic finish so next time I think I will try glass paints instead. I followed the instructions and within two inutes of being in the oven my little embellishment was ready - if rather smaller than it started out. The sentiment I added was from a goody-bag I purchased last Christmas and then only used one sentiment, due to having already made most of my cards (this is typical for me - they are much cheaper this way lol).

I was originally going to make the little robin into a fridge magnet, but then found out that my magnetic tape actually only sticks back to itself! Goes to show you should read the instructions when you buy something - and then try it once you have it, as this is another thing in my stash that I bought last year (or rather had bought for me) and then have not used!

I am entering this card for the following challenges:
Sketchy colours - White, Turquoise, Grey and Yellow
Craft your Passion - Use ribbon; Divas by Design ribbons and flowers (poinsettias on vellum)
Passion for Promarkers 254 Things with Wings (Robin)
Deep Ocean - 81 Add a sentiment
Papertake Weekly Challenge; ilovepromarkers; craftyribbons; catchthebug; Completely Christmas; Crafting by designs - Anything Goes
Winter Wonderland - spots and stripes
Crafty Hazelnut - Make your mark (robin)
ABC Christmas M is for Mail
JingleBelles Rock - Shopping Our Stash (ribbon, stamp, vellum and oven?) lol - SOS bonus
Simply create too #65 Christmas in July

AudioBook - Angel of Death by P.C. Doherty
This book is set in King Edward I's reign. Although the story-line is quite interesting (a priest whose family is known to be disliked by the king is murdered and the kings clerk has to find out who did it to relieve suspicion from the king himself) I found the story was quite slow. It did not keep you wanting to rush through the CD's to find out what happens next like some of the other books. However, the plot is good and works well and the clerk has an intriguing way of ferreting out clues. It is difficult to try and guess who the culprit is and you think along with the answers as they appear. Personally this is not a book that I would have chosen, but I am not sure if it is the writing style, the setting or the pace of the story that prevented me from properly enjoying the story.

Thank you
Tinz

Second glance for a Slider

Hello everybody,

What a lovely day it has been today. Trying to make up for the weekend, but why does it wait until we are at work - and then you can guarantee there will be a road accident and by the time you get home it is too late for enjoying the sunshine!! Grrrrr. I have however ordered my animals food now, so they will be very happy when it arrives as they are currently eating the same thing everyday (they are fussy and like to have a range to choose from lol). Here is a little piccy of my fluffy little girl - Stamper.

Crafts:
Now onto my crafting post - I decided to have a go at a slider card yesterday. As I do not have any funky label dies I used scalloped circles for the main part of the card. I cut two from plain cardstock and one from red mirror card, and then a smaller from white cardstock. The small white circle was mounted on the red one, with the other two being used for the slider mechanism and card back. Double sided patterned paper in blue was used for the slider panels, and attached to the slider mechanism before the scalloped circles were mounted together. To attach the circles I used blue square brads on either side of the slider, and then two glitter brads on the top of the circles. Originally I was also going to add two to the bottom to make the circles symmetrical but this tightened the circles over the slider mechanism and made it hard to slide the tabs, so I just left it with the top two brads instead.
I used some poinsettia brittania dies and a supermarket carrier back to make the flower for the front of the slider, by layering two different sizes of poinsettia petals. I then attached a white pearl to the centre of the recycled carrier bag flower (For the Recycled Item - Simply less is moore and Crafty Calender - Petals and Pearls challenges).
Onto a small die-cut scalloped circle I hand-drew and coloured a 'Sailors Swallow Tattoo', which was then stuck onto the top slider (For the Craft-room - Hand-drawn Tattoo challenge), and a ribbon added to allow the slider to be pulled. Onto the bottom slider 'Good Luck' was stamped.

I am also entering this card into the two red, white, blue colour challenges (I am british so same colours :) ): artistic inspirations and SOS.



Audio Book Review
I have just finished listening to 'Second Glance' by Jodi Picoult. In usual Jodi Picoult style this book was very in-depth and reviewed various controversial discussions and a rare disorder. Unusually the rare disorder is not the main component of the book and the main character has a very unrealistic ability to not die. This book is based around a man who, after losing the love of his life and finding himself unable to follow her however hard he tries, starts investigating the paranormal. He finds the ghost he is looking for and gets a lot more than he expected. The story goes into the background of the ghost to explain hat happened and why things happened and how it affects the current population of the small town. There are a lot of tangents to the book and some of them take a while to understand, while some could have been left out without affecting the story too much (but they do add a bit of drama being in there). It takes a while to explain how Meredith and her daughter fit into the story, and the boy with XP (allergy to the sun) is not really an integral part of the plot, althugh he does allow certain points to be put across in a way that may be understood by many. The ending is slightly unexpected and unusual, but it does fit in with the flow of the book. All-in-all I found this a captivating book to listen to - as I find Jodies books usually are.

Thank you for looking,

Tina

You BUG me :)

I needed another ATC to send off this weekend. I usually make them in collections of three as you may have noticed in my previous posts, however I was a little stuck for time. I wanted to make one that had a play on words, but was themed along the lines of June Bugs.

So I started with a white card blank. I took a piece of green paper, patterned with silver glitter swirls and cut a strip and a square from it. The strip was added to the bottom of the blank and a length of red-based stripy ribbon attached over the top. I took my ladybird 'Urban Stamps' cling stamp and stamped the image onto red cardstock, sprinkling pink glitter over the stamped image. This gives a subtle sheen without obscuring the ladybird image. This was attached over the ribbon strip. Above the image the square of paper and a square of dotty washi tape were stuck with 'Me' and 'You' written respectively on them in black flexmarker. Between these 'Bug' was written in glue and pink glitter sprinkled over. Swirls were added around this using black flexmarker.

This card followed the following sketch from Sketch and Stash (rotated 90 degrees):

And is also being entered into these challenges:
#219 Craft Your Passion - Bold (colours) and Beautiful (bug); Simon says Monday - I ought to use this more (stamp and glitter); Simon Says Wednesday - Anything Goes; Crafting by designs - here comes summer; scrapbook stamp society - Anything Goes with Swirls (patterned paper and round BUG); Fussy and Fancy - things with wings; Crafty Little Fairies - June - Spots and Stripes; One Crazy Stamper - Glitter and a Ribbon.

Thank you for looking.
Tinz

Best Wishes - at the Opera

CRAFTS

I have used an All Dressed Up image to create my card today. It took a while to get the image to print how I wanted it to, but I eventually got there. I used a butterfly image and added two borders, the first in red and the second in yellow. I printed this onto a Papermania patterned paper and then stamped 'Best Wishes' sentiment to the bottom of the card. I coloured the image using the promarker sets - Hues (5 pack), Pastels (5 pack), and the limited edition Summer and Autumn.

Summer - V's sweet ideas #24; Artistic inspiratons #96
Outdoors - Addicted to stamps #84
Rainbow - polkadoodles (colours)
Frames - OLS #6
Pretty Paper - pinkleart
Subway art - 613 avenue create #76

Two-word sentiment - aud sentiments #109
Something with wings - open minded crafting #12
Anything Goes - crafting by designs; All dressed up; Simon Says Monday; love to create #120

GROWING VEG

I got my first mini vase of cut flowers from the allotment today and they smell lovely. My gooseberries are also almost ready to be picked - and so far the net has kept the birds away!

AUDIO BOOK REVIEW

I have just finished Death at the Opera by Gladys Mitchell (ISIS). This is a Mrs. Bradley mystery book where a death occurs of a teacher during an opera performance and although the verdict comes back as suicide nobody believes this. Psychoanalyst Bradley is called in to look into the situation and discovers that not only has she been murdered but there are other murders also. This is very similar to an Agatha Christie book, with a more eccentric main character and provides many alibis and contradictions to keep you guessing. I did guess who the main killer was before it was revealed (but not the information for one of the other murders), but it does require thinking outside the box slightly. Altogether a good book to listen to on long journeys!

Fishes and Birdies

Well it has been a gorgeous day today and I have had the day off work. We went out to Tropical Birdland as we have not visited for a while.  Unfortunately the main character has had to be locked away due to misbehaviour!!!

We had a fantastic day out though and taking the bag of walnut halves was certainly worth the money as the birds were much more interactive in their aviaries!!

Here is the update on my fish - now at 56 hours.


I have also finished listening to a Nicholas Sparks audio book - 'The Lucky One'. This is about a Marine who finds a photograph which 'brings him luck' whilst out in Iraq. Once finished in the Marines he is encouraged to find the lady in the photo. The story actually starts towards the end of the journey to find the lady in the photograph, with no explanation. The explanations come through memories and as he talks to others throughout the story. It tells of his meeting with the lady and those around her and how they influence each others lives. The ending was a little unexpected although it would have been strange had it not ended the way it did, but it also showed that people can have many different faces. I really enjoyed this book, especially as it went through the different people so you knew how they were feeling and what they were planning.

Father's Day

Hi all,

Finally got my Tomatillos and first lot of tomatoes out on the allotment today - after a busy weekend visiting OH's parents. I am now utterly knackered and wish I had tomorrow off work lol.
I managed to get a picture of my fuzzy little mousey today when I was cleaning him out also - here he is!

For my crafting challenge this week I made a Father's Day card - with the main idea being to enter in into the Ribbon Weaving technique at FB Crafting techniques.

I weaved a black polka dot ribbon and a silver ribbon together to create a background strip and mounted this onto silver mirri card, mounted onto black patterned paper. I then added a yellow motorbike topper, a winners cup and a #1 Dad speech bubble to finish the card off. I wanted the ribbon weaving to be the focalpoint of the card.

This is being entered into the following challenges:
Male themed cards - artistic inspirations #95; craft your passion #217; ooh la la #158; papertake weekly challenge; cute card thursday; glitternsparkle; aud sentiments #108; country view

Anything Goes - (with ribbon) Crafty Ribbons
Celebrate (Number 1 Dad) - Suzybee

Also here is an update on the fish tank, which is now over 55 hours.