Mousey Sketch 3

I've gone with Lisa this week and chosen to decorate a notebook for my entry to the third Waltzing Mouse Sketch Challenge. I've a few reliable cake and biscuit recipes that I use over and over but they are all in different cook books and I can never remember which one. So I thought I would start a project and collect them in this little notebook. I'm going to decorate the pages with stamps and hand write the recipes - I could even print out photos of my efforts to illustrate the recipes - that's the theory anyway. I've used my Pic-nic Patterns and Afternoon Tea stamp sets. The notebook was already covered in lovely green handmade paper and took the Distress Ink I used easily.

I've had a bit of a trauma the past couple of days - my external hard drive has failed and I've lost two years worth of photos, digital scrapping files, videos, scrapbook pages, etc - I've been told nothing is recoverable! And yesterday my Google account was hacked and temporarily disabled - I found out late last night that some horrible people had tried to send pornography to all my contacts! I think Google had intercepted and deleted the link straight away but if anyone did find something horrible in their inbox I am mortified and do apologise! I don't think anything did get through however and it was a bit of a fiddle getting my email and blog back, but all seems back to normal now thank goodness!

Gardeners World Live at the NEC

My sister and I had a good day out on Wednesday when we visited the Gardeners' World Live exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham - especially as the ticket also included entry to the Good Food Show with all its free sampling! This was my favourite garden - the Girl Guides Centenary garden called "Stick in Time". A gorgeous planting of red field poppies, yellow corn marigolds and blue cornflowers designed by a Ranger Unit leader from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Carol Adams. The girls had written their thoughts about being Brownies and Guides on sticks which were placed in the beds of wild flowers they had grown from seed. It was a shame that we were not allowed to walk through the garden to read what was written on the sticks. How I'd love to have my wild patch looking as glorious as this!


Here's a few more things I liked: this clematis grown in a large container - great idea; Dibleys Nurseries' stand - our local nursery famous for winning 21 gold medals at Chelsea with their Streptocarpus plants; watching a snippet of Gardeners World being filmed - these little dolls were supposed to be the presenters I think; traditional skeps being made on the Honey Bees stand; and this lovely display with its Peony Black poppies - I love poppies and bought a packet of seeds so you may even see them here in a few weeks if I'm successful with my sowing.

I could add many more photos but I think this is enough before you start getting bored. I would have created a scrapbook page but my hard drive has crashed so I can't get at my scrapping files. Its in the freezer at the moment..... don't know if that will work but I can't think of anything else to do at the moment - I'll be weeping if I've lost all my photos!

Waltzing Mouse Hop Sketching!

Today's the day of the Waltzing Mouse blog hop - but also the closing day of the second Waltzing Mouse sketch challenge - what on earth are they trying to do to us! So much pressure!! I know I don't NEED to participate but I did want to keep up with my two favourite challenge blogs. It can't be too difficult to make two cards a week you may say, but I've always been a person who will ALWAYS put off till tomorrow what I COULD do today! And I did...... and I've just finished my card..... and its almost dark....... so I had to photograph it in artificial light :o( However, I have made it fit both the challenge (a masculine card) and the sketch.

I started off with an idea I liked, however when I'd made up all the different elements of the card I hated it. But now its all put together I've ended up rather liking it again. I know the colours are weird but I think they give the whole rather a Japanese feel. I'm afraid I had to add the little fish with a non-WMS stamp to make it suitable for my recipient - I hope this doesn't disqualify me! I made it for a certain great-nephew of mine to give to his Dad, who has recently started taking him fishing.

Please accept my apologies for the absolutely atrocious photograph!

Last minute challenge

Just a quick post to add my card to the A Passion for Papertrey challenge, which ends in about 25 minutes!! I'm very last minute as I've found this theme really difficult - use chipboard in a project. I don't have any chipboard in my stash as I've never been keen on it and don't really know what to do with it. However I wondered whether I could die cut a piece of chipboard recycled from some packaging. My Cuttlebug just about managed it, though the pieces needed tidying up with scissors, and then my card idea was born. In fact this is a very up-cycled project as all the cardstock here has been saved from the packaging of various purchases. The only stamp used - apart from the sentiment - is my beloved Background Basics Text Style.

I took my photos outside the back door as the light is best there in the early part of the day. My card is posed on top of the coal shed where I feed my birds in a big terracotta flowerpot and I noticed the pair of jackdaws that visit have brought someone new with them today - he must be one of their chicks as he hasn't learned to be frightened of the back door opening yet! I feel some stalking with my camera is warranted - watch this space....

Edit: here's the baby jackdaw - not a good photo yet as I took it through the window - and I forgot to move the washing line! This lovely Woodpigeon decided to pose too so I snapped him up. Isn't he handsome!

Splash

Well the weekend is here but its certainly not "Flaming June". We had a mini heatwave in May though and I just had to get to the coast again. Llandudno is a great shopping centre (there's an excellent craft store and lots of charity shops) and there's the added appeal of the beautiful unspoiled Victorian promenade and beach. What more could you want - shopping and beach combing in one afternoon. And we had a yummy afternoon tea at M&S - just look at these cute gingerbread men that came with our tea. I couldn't resist snapping them before they were scoffed. They just reminded me of my Oven Fresh Gingerbread Joy stamp set (from Waltzing Mouse Stamps) used to decorate this little box made up from the Rubber Band Box template. I made it for a challenge but didn't get round to entering it. Its just the right size for giving a few of those little ginger- bread men. Cute!

Butterfly Mouse Sketch Challenge

Anyone who reads my blog will know I have rather an obsession with the butterflies in my garden. I spend huge amounts of time stalking them with my camera. So I thought I would have a butterfly theme for the very first Waltzing Mouse sketch challenge - a brand new challenge blog you will find here. My butterflies have been created from vellum, Earthangel's wings and the butterfly body stamp Claire very cleverly included with this set.

I don't think I'm very good with sketches! I don't do them very often and find it quite hard to follow one - it has taken me three days to be happy with this card and its passed through quite a few versions in that time!

I created this butterfly digital scrapbook page some time ago when I was feeling really guilty one day about the time I had wasted chasing butterflies when I should have been weeding!

Mum's Birthday

Its Mum's 86th birthday today, though we actually celebrated yesterday so that we could all go out for lunch together. Any such family occasion is an opportunity to reminisce and of course we did. For a long time I tried to get Mum to write down her memories and even bought her one or two of those books meant for recording life stories and memories for the future - but she never filled them in and so I took to keeping a notebook in my bag and writing things down whenever Mum (or any one of us) remembered something that it would be sad to forget for ever. I did this page from one such memory. During WW2 Mum and her parents lived in Warrington and her Dad worked in the American base Burtonwood. Like many other girls she started courting a GI and they became engaged but in the end Mum just couldn't leave her parents (she was an only child) to live in the US and so they decided to part. She - and I - often wonder what happened to Jim Campbell. We do know he married and was living on Staten Island after the war. Its funny to think that as a war bride by now she would have been living in the US for 65 years! What a difficult decision she had to make all those years ago.

Anyway, Mum really liked the little shawl I knitted for her birthday gift - so that was a success. I packaged it rolled up inside this tube - can you guess what it is! I've been wanting to up-cycle a Pringles tube for ages and was pleased that the shawl fitted perfectly inside. The heart label is from the Waltzing Mouse 'Seasons of Love' stamp set which co-ordinates with Spellbinders Heart and Scallop Heart die sets.

NB: If you read the memory on my digi- page and wonder about "Hiya Red" - Mum was a beautiful redhead!