Enjoy The Ride!

According to today's weather forecast it's been the hottest day of the year so far and they reckon it's going to get even hotter by the end of the week - great timing for the start of the school holidays!  Our son is just finishing off some last minute College coursework and that will be him off on holiday as well. 


I cannot believe the amount of bird food I am going through at the moment, in the last 24 hours one feeder has been fully loaded three times and the seed feeder filled twice.  I swear as I walk back into the house you can hear the volume of tweets increase as they tell their pals that the wifey at No 3 has just put more food out!

I have some more cards to make for my friend's collection, it's her brother's birthday soon so I thought I would use this weeks Freshly Made Sketches Challenge as inspiration.

I chose the motorcycle as her brother was a keen motorcyclist. 

The stamps I used were "free" with a magazine (several complaints in to the Advertising Standards Authority about the way the publishers describe these promo items, especially when they change the price from Issue to Issue).

Cog Wheels

Hard to believe that we are already half way through June already and in a couple of days it will be the Summer Solstice!

Lots of frantic activity in the garden with birds queuing up to get to the feeder, so much so that in between the squabbles, fisty-cuffs kept breaking out.  It got so bad I went out and bought a second feeder to try and keep the peace!  I honestly don't know how they can get off the ground at the rate they are going through suet balls, meal worms and seed mixes!

I was struggling a bit trying to work out what to make for this week's Freshly Made Sketches Challenge.  There were a few false starts as nothing seemed to work the way I wanted it to.

Over the weekend I was working on some new boxes for my son's supply of cards.  He had handed me one of the originals I'd made for him which was looking the worse for wear and asked me if I could make him another.  I ended up repairing that one, which was a favourite of his, and a couple of others.  While I had embossed some of the cardstock for the boxes with a effect cog wheel embossing folder and had cut out some cogs for decoration from the Tim Holtz set I had.  It was when I saw the cut out corner pieces that I realised I might have what I needed for this week's sketch.

Hello Summer!

Yesterday was the first day of the Meterological summer, the sun was shining and so to celebrate I took Suzi (my car) out with the roof down and all the windows open so she could pretend to be a cabriolet.  In reality I just headed out to go for some free range eggs from a local farm - the roof and windows were soon closed to try and tame the rather pungent farm odours.  

I was listening to the radio on the way back home and the news reader was telling everyone how we've just had the sunniest and warmest May since records began.  The words were hardly out of his mouth when the heavens opened, I had no jacket with me and from the short distance from car to house I was soaked!

It's been warm and sunny today but while I was taking photos of this week's cards I could hear rumbles of thunder in the background but the rain has stayed away (for now).

When I first looked at this week's Freshly Made Sketches Challenge it made me think of an opened envelope so I began to have a look at what I had that would work.  Originally I was going to have the background as text like a letter but when I couldn't find anything I liked to use to make it decided rather than an envelope I would make a pocket with a decorated tag to put into it.

While having a clear out I found the head of large artificial thistle and it reminded me that I had a couple of stamp sets that I could use in a card to put it to good use in some photos.

The tag was made using the Woodware "Thistle" and Crafty Impressions "Bonny Scotland" set.  I used a section of white ribbon which I partially unravelled to make the fringed pull coloured with the same markers as the image to give the appearance of a thistle.  Another piece of ribbon was unravelled to make a fringed bow.

It was only after I posted my entry into this week's challenge and was looking over what I'd written the following day that I realised what a numpty I had been - I hadn't coloured the thistle properly, too much purple!  This is what happens when you do things when you really ought to be in bed asleep!

This is what it should look like

and not this

I also managed to lose the large thistle head I'd found so had to dig out the Eryngium & Rose posy for the photos instead.

While the sun was shining and because it was the first day of summer I decided to colour the Woodware "Wiggly Stems" set in bright summery colours. Tonic Studios ""Hello from "Folk Heart" Layering Die Set. The background paper came from a magazine "free gift".