Flower Carnival page

This is the first layout I've produced with the photos I took when I visited my sister in February. I wanted to get something "blogged" to show her so I didn't extract the cut-out images as carefully as I should have and cheated by blurring the edges. So Steph (my expert digital scrapper blog-friend in California) please don't look at it too closely! But I still like the overall effect of the page.

The Flower Carnival was lovely but we wondered where on earth they were able to get all those thousands of flowers from in February! The idea is that the girls throw flowers to those watching and the tradition is to throw Mimosa - which was in flower everywhere. At the end of the parade they were also throwing flowers from the displays so some lucky people ended up with armfulls of beautiful exotic blooms - but were happy with our Mimosa and it looked lovely in my sister's mosaic vase at home. Here are two more photos of the beautiful floats in the parade. Unfortunately lots of my pictures had hands in them as there were excited children standing in front of us!

My Buns in the Oven

Or should that be Bun in the Ovens! Here's my version of Lauren Meader's excellent Timeless Template which you can find here. I made these for my sisters on Mothers Day - I always like to give them a little something as well as my Mum. However my buns were not so cute as Lauren's - I couldn't make myself use baby socks as she did as they could not be put to good use after the day. So I used one-size adult socks instead and of course they were rather too big for the ovens - and I had to give the odd white socks used for the cupcake cases separately. I must say the recipients were rather bemused until they 'got it'!
But they are cute and I shall be making an Easter version to hold mini-eggs for the children.

PS - a note to the lovely Steph who always leaves a sweet comment on my posts - but has so much stash she doesn't know what she's got!!!! Steph, I've got a little notebook which has all my stamps stamped in it and if I were to go on a spending spree I would take it with me to check I wasn't buying duplicates...... good idea?

A week for the garden

Last week the weather was spring-like - mild and sunny with blue skies every day. Just right for starting on the big post winter tidy-up in my Mum's large garden. I was rewarded by uncovering the hellebore from its covering of last year's dead plants and weeds. I just love this plant but the flowers hang their heads downwards - such a shame but nature must have her reasons!
But today its cold, windy and rainy - the plum tree blossom is already falling so it won't last long. Luckily a got this lovely image whilst the weather was kind. Probably won't get much tidying done this week!

French Heart

I've been making these little heart sachets as small gifts for more years than I care to remember. They are so quick and easy. I made this one for my sister from vintage tea towel fabric I bought on my recent visit to Nice in France and have filled it with dried lavender flowers from Provence (and toy stuffing). It is already filling the room with the scent - lovely! I read a handy hint somewhere about stuffing small items - use a pencil with a rubber on the end - and it really does make it much easier.

Mother's gift

I've decorated this photo holder from Paperchase for my Mum. I often print out digi photos for her of the grandchildren, etc and they usually end up all over the house and she can never find them again. I hope this will encourage her to store them in one place. The holder was very cheap and I think it would also make an ideal box for a set of hand made cards to be given as a gift.

I recently invested in a Coluzzle starter kit and circle and oval templates after seeing them used in a few craft tutorials on the web. I used the oval on my Mother's Day card - ovals are always hard to cut out neatly for me and this made it easy. I'm really pleased with my purchase.

A little pickup

I made this card for a relation who has been in hospital recently - hope he's soon on the mend. As many crafters have found, cards for men are not so easy but I was quite pleased with the way it turned out (except for the imperfect stamping of the name!). As you can see I used the Loads of Love set (another of my second hand stamp bargains from the USA) and my favourite scallop punches.

Home again and some French stamps

We had some shopping time in France and I found this foam stamp set (really a kit for children), but really liked the images. I don't usually like fairies and cute-type images but these seemed quite quirky to me. I've made this thank-you card for my sister as she says she never gets any nice post - only bills in her postbox! Not my usual style but of course I wanted to use the stamps. I've also used some acetate flower shapes I cut and embossed in my Cuttlebug after seeing the idea on the Cuttlebug Challenge blogspot here.

I've looked for the other stamping kits in the UK and there are a few places that sell them but not the sets I was interested in - I'll have to wait until my next visit to add to my French collection!