Haaapy Monday! Can you believe it’s already the 22nd of May?? I had to do a double take when I looked at the calendar. (Although why it’s called a Calendar I don’t know. Surely it should be called a CalenDAY? It makes sense! Calenday. “Sweetheart . . . What date does it say on the calenday for a week on Monday?” See? Calenday. I think we should start a movement and all begin to call it a Calenday. That will get things put right!)
[thinks to self: perhaps I should write to Mr.Trump, and Mr.Putin, Prime Minister May, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, French President Francois Hollande ….. and of course I shall drop The Queen a note about this. I’m sure Her Majesty will agree that this is a grand idea!]
Aaaannnyhoo…. I made a card and I promised myself that I wouldn’t do a big long post and bore everyone to tears, so I’ll get on with showing you the card.
It was all made on a scored 6″x6″ white card.
Measured, cut and fixed in place the hessian you see in the photo (below), and while that was drying, I distressed some pale(ish) blue gingham paper, tearing it and rolling it in places, added some blue gingham ribbon and fixed the paper and ribbon two-some, in place, on top of the hessian.
Next came fussy cutting some honeycomb from a sheet of honeycomb printed paper then adhered it to the gingham paper. Time for a little decoupage: to make the dresser, where the chicken has laid her eggs, and one little chick has already hatched. 🙂
If you look really closely you just might be able to see that there’s a cobweb in the space where the drawer is missing, – to the right hand side, in the upper corner of the drawer space.I thought that was a nice touch considering who was making this. lol
Can’t see it? . . . here it is . . .
I added bits of straw in various places, and a tiny wooden rolling-pin – hanging on some cotton. The silver bumble bee you see hanging below the large red petal flower is also hanging on a thread, so giving the buzzy bumble a ‘flying’ movement.
The lovely, fluffy marmalade coloured feather was donated by one of our chickens: Miss Edna BIG BIRD, HUGE EGGS Chicken. She’s so accommodating. I ask for a feather and she does the ‘chicken wiggle’ and out pops something perfect. lol
The flower adornment was made using some pretty coloured stamens, some loofah strands, a tiny piece of muslin which I pulled some threads from to make it kind of ‘feathery’ around the edges, and that lovely ‘blousy’ flower from my stash.
Finally, it was time for some attention to the inside: using some distressed yellow gingham paper, cut to size, I made an insert which I then stamped and added a Country Chicken ticket in the lower right hand corner.
OH! And I added a bow made from the ribbon, to the front of the card!
And that, as they say, is all there was to it!
The papers and ribbons are all part of the DoCrafts ‘Home Sweet Home’ range. I bought them about a year ago and used some of them, but then Summer moved to Autumn and so I put them away reminding myself to get them out again this year. And … as strange as this might sound, I actually remembered!Ha! Miracles really do happen. 😀
Everything else came from my stash.
So, changing the subject …. I was thinking about Mondays, and I’ve worked out that Mondays were invented as a punishment for all the fun we have at the weekends! Seriously. It makes total sense when you think about it. We all do have more fun at the weekends, and we obviously needed something to kind of get us back into line – so Monday was invented. SOO…. Just get it over with and within 24 hours, it will be Tuesday, after that . . . it’s all heading towards Friday 😀 … can’t get better than that! So lets change things round a little. Smile today. Be happy. Be all twinkly eyed and joke around. Beat the system!
Oh … and just to get you started, here’s a Monday Special:
Q: What do you call a parade of rabbits hopping backwards? . . . A:a receding hare-line.
Have a great day out there. Be nice to yourself, and each other. And … remember to look both ways when you cross the road!
A few days ago I posted about a card I’d made (see photo below) and thought we could have a bit of fun with it by doing a ‘give away’ of that actual card. If anyone wanted to join in all they had to do was to comment with the word GIVEAWAY in their comment, and I’d include them as being one of the people who might like to be the owner of this card.
A couple of folks didn’t quite use the word (‘GIVEAWAY’) … but they said they wanted to be included, and since this is only a bit of fun and the first time I’ve ever done this, and added to that … it’s just a card and not a million pound lottery win, I thought I’d not be a stickler to the letter, so in all, we had 5 people say they wanted to be included.
soozyb (soozyb – I can’t add your name as a link as I can’t find a link to your blog. If you have one, could you post the address for it, and I’ll turn your name into a link so that visitors could come and check your own blog out and who knows … you might gain some more followers!)
And then … I went to the Random Number Generator website and asked it to pick me a number and this is the screen shot of the number it picked:
If you can’t read that number in the wee box over to the right there…. here’s a bigger screen print of just that box … only larger:
The result was… [drumroll] number 1… which means that the card goes to BCParkinson.
Congratulations BCP … I’m thrilled for you … and Edna Chicken sends her regards. (lol). I’ll contact you and let you know about sending me your snail mail address so that I can send this to you.
I’ve so enjoyed this bit of fun. Maybe we could do it again another time? What d’you think?
Thank you all for playing along. I love you to pieces for joining in the bit of fun.
I had a card making day …. and made a card with a sort of cottage, country feel to it. The card and papers used are all by Docrafts, who, by a remarkable coincidence, are based here in Dorset, where I live! (No I haven’t been and raided the warehouse in the dead of night …yet. But only because I think I’d need several helpers to bring home all the stash I’d want! lol)
The blue flower and green crochet doily (under the flower) are Prima and the feather … is from Edna.
No Edna isn’t a new craft producer … at least, she’s not a big time producer of craft items… she’s one of our chickens.
Edna is a big old bird who lays mahoosive brown eggs of roughly 3″ tall – (too big to fit into egg boxes – even the egg boxes from supermarkets which claim the enclosed eggs are ‘extra large’). We only have two chickens now, Edna, and Dorothy, and it’s a case of from the sublime to the ridiculous!
While Edna is the big, noisy old bird whose a rich, warm rusty colour, Dorothy, on the other hand, is a quiet, delicate looking, little thing, whose feathers are paler, mottled, and fluffy, and she has feathered feet, so she looks like she’s wearing feathered slippers. She’s a beautiful colour, and her eggs are darling and so little too – anything from half an inch to roughly an inch tall – and they’re a pretty blue colour. They‘re very rich eggs, a little too rich for me. She follows dear Edna around as if Edna has her on a lead. She also copies Edna… When Edna does the BIG LOUD “QUAAawwww, qwaw, qwaw, ack, ack, ack.” letting the world know that she’s about to lay an egg the size of a planet, Dotty tries to copy her, but the noises she makes come out like a creaky little whisper: “paw wah wah waah“. You couldn’t get two more extreme birds. But they do seem to love each other. Bless them.
When Edna goes into the hen house to lay her egg in one of the nest boxes, Dorothy goes in with her and more often than not we can find them both snuggled together in a nest box, keeping each other company while Edna lays her egg. However … Mr. Cobs went looking for the two darlings a few days ago and found them in one nest box, but … Edna (big bird) was sat ON TOP of Dorothy! Dotty must have gone into that particular nest box first, and Edna either went in to keep her company, or … she wanted to lay at the same time, and instead of choosing the nest box right next to Dotty, she clambered in and sat on top of her! We were quite frankly suprised that Dotty wasn’t squished!
Edna, like all birds, loses feathers every now and again. When she goes through a moult, she looks like a Mrs. Shabby Chic Clucker, than like a World Champion Sized Eggs Layer! Any feathers she drops I squirrel away and use them when I know that something needs one of her feathery gifts. This card needed a gift from Edna. I did toy with putting one of her eggs on it but didn’t think the Post Office would approve of a scrambled egg letter ~ so you have the little spotted egg you see in the photo above. (no, it’s not a real egg). lol.
A teeny tiny metal spoon, so that you can eat your boiled egg with it.
The title of this post is ‘Just for You, … if you’d like it‘ and what I meant by that is that you could be the receiver of this card if you’d like to be.
I’ve never done a ‘give-away’ on my blog (I’ve never been sure anyone would want anything to be honest, – and I’m still not now) … but in the last few days I’ve seen a few blogs doing ‘give-aways’. Not of cards, but rather knitted things like mug sleeves or sewn items like a make up bag etc, but it made me wonder if bloggers who made cards ever did a give-away for a handmade card. I’d never seen any … and this led me to think that maybe it might be something fun and something to make someone smile so my mind was made up. I’d do a card ‘Give-Away!’
If you’re a follower of The Cobweborium Emporium blog, and would like to have your name ‘thrown into the hat’ and be in with a chance of receiving this card then please just leave a comment below with the word: GIVEAWAY – either at the start or the end of your comment.
To make sure that all is fair, I’ll get the Random Number Generator to choose the number, and I’ll also do a screen shot of the R.N.G and post it so that you can all see which number was generated.
If you’re the ‘winner’, then you have a choice. You can choose to have the card for yourself, in which case I’ll write the card to you, sign it and send it with love. Or… you can choose to receive the card un-written, so that you can write it and send it to someone else.
But … If you don’t want to enter but still want to leave a comment or have a ‘coffee chat’ , then please do. You really don’t have to get involved in a give-away. It’s just a bit of September fun. 🙂 Any comment which doesn’t have the word ‘GIVEAWAY’ at the beginning or end of a comment won’t be entered and you must be a follower of the blog here to enter.
This give-away is open to anyone who is a follower of The Cobweborium Emporium blog – no matter where you live.It’s not just for UK folks. I’ll close the ‘give-away’ entries on Wednesday 21st September 2016, at 6pm UK time. Only followers who have commented by that date and time, with the word ‘GIVEAWAY’ somewhere in their comment, will be included.
NB: Please DON’T put your real name or address in the comments box. I need to look after your privacy and security.
Well it’s Sunday and I’m not normally a poster on Sundays, so this is something which feels kind of odd to me. A nice odd though. It feels kind of warm and fuzzy. Friendly. Fabulous. Like I should be doing something normal, and instead I’ve been given time off to go and have a coffee with friends somewhere lovely.
Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee with me.I love seeing you here and love chatting with you in comments too. I’m so very blessed to know you all.
Bless me bloggers for I have sinned ... I didn’t show you the Christmas Cards I created and sent to my neighbours last Christmas. [hangs head in shame]. But I’m here and able to post them now. (Wouldn’t post them earlier in the year because it felt almost obscene to post about Christmas too soon.)
Made with a little help from a kit bought for me as a gift, from: Folk It, which contained all the colours of paints which I needed, (and I only already owned the one colour (white)), so I was happy to have the kit just to get everything there in one place. If you haven’t painted before, or even if you have and need a little encouragement for whatever reason, I would thoroughly recommend their kits to you. They don’t just come with the paints and a couple of brushes, (and a dotting tool), but they come with everything you need to make at least one project, or in the case of the cards – you would normally get around 4 or 5 really good quality cards & envelopes, a little booklet which helps you, plus it comes with a CD Rom that you simply put into your computer (in that little draw which you use to hold your coffee cup – just joking. I don’t do that. At least .. not for a few months now. lol), and you watch as the delightful lady on-screen as she not only tells you what to do, but demonstrates IN REAL TIME as she teaches you – so you can watch, pause, paint, and then move on (but I’d recommend watching the CD Rom all the way through first … don’t run before you can walk, eh?)
Aw anyway .. you want to look at the piccies… so without further ado ….
Angels, stars and snowflakes. With the addition of an ‘angel feather’
All of the cards you see here, have that central panel with the painting on it – which is a piece of mount board, already cut to size for you. But, you only get a certain amount in the kits which will help you to make the projects in the kit itself, however, you can purchase more of these cut to size mount boards from them directly (pack of 25 for £5.00). I recommend their ready cut mount boards because I know how difficult mount board can be to cut. (oh boy do I know!). So if you can buy it ready cut then it removes the struggle.
Another Angel card, this time with an embossed background.
Mistletoe … PUCKER UP PETALand brace yourself, I’m coming for a smacker! … Good grief!! Cor … you can run faster than I thought you could just by looking at you!
Ok … you might have got away that time … but . . here I come again …. [flicks the light switch and everything goes black] .. you’re not getting away that quick this time kiddo!
A snowflake … on a chalky blue background. The painted snowflake was sprinkled with very fine glitter before the paint dried, so that snowflake twinkles merrily when the light catches it.
Another snowflake … only slightly different from the last. I think I must have had a glass of wine too many when I took this photograph because it’s drunk and leaning! LOL
Now I did a snowflake on black... but I should have taken more care as I slightly wandered off the straight and narrow, but I kept it anyway and was so glad that I did because at the last moment I realised I’d forgotten a card for the Postman! So I quickly mounted the black backed snowflake onto a card and ran it past Mr. Cobs who said … “It’s fine! Stop worrying!” … so I tucked an ‘internationtionally accepted gift card‘ (i.e. [in this case] money) into the card and sealed it just in time before the postman arrived…..
Can you see where I wandered off the path of good and true?Look down in the bottom left corner as you’re looking at the card right now. It doesn’t end in the corner. [sigh] … But, in crafting, just as in life … It’s the mistakes we make which teach us the things we need to learn. … Because this was for the Postman, I stamped a postal franking image on the envelope. lol.
To mix it up a bit, I turned the mount boards so that I was painting on the diamond rather than the square and this time it was a wreath. Once the painting was dry I added a little satin bow in a deep vintage colour red. (The berries are paint … not stickles).
And we end where we began … on a wreath, this time a thicker, fuller wreath, mounted on a square of mirror card in deep blue, which I punch around the edges of with a little hand punch.
Better late than never … those were the Christmas cards I posted to my neighbours last Christmas. What am I going to make for them this Christmas? Well, right now I haven’t got the foggiest notion, but as soon as I’ve decide and have made some, I’ll share them with you!.
Happy Monday all. The start of an all new, shiny, fresh out of the box, week. Enjoy it. Make a memory happen today. One that your mind reminds you to remember. Remember *that* moment. A moment in time is just a moment in time … unless you remember it. And then, it becomes a very special moment. A magical moment. A memory.
So … when you go to bed at the end of today ... just as you lay down to go to sleep … inside your head, remember something which happened during the day which either made you smile, laugh, or even something which was just an enjoyable moment in time. A few seconds even. Then remember what it was that made that moment a memory for you. What special thing was it? Fix that memory to the wall of your brain. Put it up there on a memory post it note and pin it there with a pin, to make sure that it doesn’t fall down. Now look around at all the other post it notes inside your head. All your memories or moments. Coooo … there are a lot. Have a look at them as you drift off into sleep.
Sending big squidges from my corner to yours where you’re sitting right now.
Have you heard of Free Art Friday? If the answer is ‘no’, then I hope to help you discover what this wonderful bit of generosity, love, fun and Random Act of Kindness(‘s) is about. Stick with me .. you might just want to get involved in this.
I hadn’t heard of this myself until a few years ago when I saw a really fabulous artist interviewed on TV (here in the UK) about it.
It all began over ten years ago with a British Artist who goes by the name of My Dog Sighs (who was the chap being interviewed). The moment the interview finished I knew I wanted to join in with this bit of ‘lovely’ in a world which seems to be increasingly unlovely. But one thing has stopped me. I don’t ‘do’ Facebook or Twitter, and in order to get the word out about your own particular piece of ‘Free Art’, you need to be able to give people clues about where your piece(s) of free art can be found so that they can go on a type of Treasure Hunt to find it.
Facebook scares the heck out of me. People seem to get verbally bullied beyond belief on these social networking sites, and I’m just not the sort of person to get involved with allowing that sort of conduct. But … I want to get involved in this Free Art Movement! Catch 22 situation.
So .. I’ve begun my adventure and joined Facebook – but I haven’t figured it all out yet. I’m still trying to work out how to use the darn site. Boy, is it confusing! I will also look into joining Twitter and see if I can find a group in the area around where I live.
Here’s how Free Art Friday works:
Create a piece of art
Write on an attached tag “Free Art, to take home and enjoy” ~ adding the artist’s name, email or web address is optional.
Place your piece of artwork somewhere in public, indoors or out.
Some people make a game out of it and leave clues on Twitter.
It’s NOT an exclusive group or movement. ANYBODY can join in.
There are now Artists across the worldmaking their own art and leaving it outside, somewhere noticeable but slightly hidden, for others to discover, and take, free of any charges or from any costs to themselves.
There are no real rules as such – which is a joy. The only ‘rules’ are: that the art has to be exclusively free art and you need to make sure that the work is easily removable from where you’ve left it, and does little or no damage to its environment. Oh … and it doesn’t actually HAVE to be a Friday either.(It just started as this, and it’s kind of grown into an any day free art)
Some artists will put out a painted canvas or mixed art canvas, others use materials found on the street, – such as cardboard, bits of wood, or a tin can – which is popular, but your only limit is your imagination. Many free art Friday participants’ work is fun and good-natured, which cheers up the folk seeing it (maybe on their way to work in the morning) and also, obviously, bringing a smile to the face of the person who claims the Free Art for themselves.
Artists have been leaving their art for others for many years, but My Dog Sighs can be credited with galvanizing the Free Art Movement when he coined the phrase “Free Art Friday“. After several years he started his Flickr Group (in 2006), and you can find the My Dog Sighs website HERE. (it will open in a new page).
This is a typical ‘notice’ which can accompany a piece of free art. There is a ‘global’ Art Abandonment page of Facebook, where artists all over the globe post photographs of the art they’ve abandoned, and where people who have found a free piece of art can say on Facebook that they’ve found something & post a photo of the item, or they can email (see the email addy at the bottom of the hand out above).
If you’d like to view the Art Abandonment Facebook page,CLICK HERE.
Below is an article from a newspaper I found on-line which talk about F.A.F in Gloucester (in the UK): (if you right-click on the photo and choose ‘View Image’ it will open up into a bigger picture for you)
So … now you know a little bit about Free Art Friday … does it make you want to take part? Does it bring a feeling of joy knowing that you could do something lovely to make someone else smile? And… they won’t have to pay a penny for the wonderful gift from the heart which you made. Would it make you smile to find your own piece of Free Art?
a blow up of the hand painted feather on the can art, ‘The Message’
The photograph above is a painting on an empty, washed and cleaned out, tin can, which would normally have gone into my re-cycling bin. However, I took a hammer to it (outside on a rock) and flattened it, and made sure that there were no sharp corners. I then primed it and painted the background, then painted a white feather on it. A feather from an Angel, perhaps? I’ve called it ‘The Message’, and only the person who takes the art will know what the message that feather brings for them. I framed the can in a box frame. It’s destined to be my first Free Art Friday piece of art … once I’ve figured out how to navigate Facebook and Twitter. {Cobwebs sighs}
But … Free Art Friday art doesn’t have to be a painting. Artwork could be something knitted, crocheted, painted, printed, stamped, sewn, drawn or any of hundreds of different artistic things. It could be a scrapbook made from loo roll tubes, a card, a Tag, a painting on canvas/cardboard/bit of MDF/Wood/etc, or maybe a key ring you’ve made, a bookmark, a stone you found in the garden and painted with patterns etc. An ATC or ACEO. Anything … anything you can make, is your own artwork.
Artwork placed on the street for a member of the public to take home and enjoy. Go on, make someone’s day!
I wanted to make a special card for someone who is such a really lovely person, but I wanted to make it in a way that perhaps she hadn’t seen from me before so I sat and I puzzled over it until my brain got sore and then …. I spotted a box on a shelf in my craft room and DING! A big exclamation mark appeared over my head!
I’ve had some Anna Griffin die cuts in a box for quite some time, and, well, you know how it is, you make something, and then another thing, then another, and then you decide that you want a change so you pop things back on the shelf and, over time, they kind of get forgotten. Well that’s what happened with the Anna Griffin die-cuts.
I sat in my craft room chair and opened the box (feeling a little like Pandora), and it was right at that moment a light inside my brain shone like a Christmas Angel. “Ohhh dearest die cuts, how could I have forgotten about you, my darlings? You are perfection” I said lovingly to the die cuts – like some weirdo.
So … I made a card with them! Other than this (wordy) introduction, there’s not much to say about this card because it kind of tells its own story as you look at the photos, so without further ado … may I present … Flowers for my Friend …. [round of applause can be heard as the curtain goes up … stops halfway, . . . a whirring, grinding noise can be heard, but then . . . with a bit of fiddling, up it finally rises] . .
I had to hold the card in one of those big peg things, that’s what you can just see at the bottom there. It’s not my fingers, ’cause those are fatter than that peg. {snigger}
The outside of the card is a pretty cardbut it’s also pretty ‘normal’. However … it’s the inside where the action is, for this card is meant to be displayed open.
When you open the card there’s a lot more going on than you might think from the outside. {kind of like my good self … only in my case there’s a lot less going on than you hope for}As you move the card around you get to see different things which you might not have noticed before .Ta daaaah! Like magic! You can now see how the individual layers of how the card works.Looking from the other sideSlightly blurry in places. The camera has a self focusing thing and wanted to focus on those pansies. In the end I gave up fighting with it and let it do whatever it darn well liked, because it wasn’t going to let me win.
And a final look at the front again, just incase you’ve forgotten what it looked like …
See … told you it wasn’t my fingers holding the card! {pulls out tongue and waggles it}
And that’s all there is to it!
Ok … let’s get down and dirty now …
The HEAT. The TEMPERATURE HERE IS ALL WRONG. IT’S TOO, TOOOOOOOO HOT!! I feel dirty all the time and I don’t like dirty. Mr. Cobs thinks I’ve developed one of those OCD things … I keep washing my hands, and arms, right up to the elbows, because it’s such horrid, sticky weather.
Now don’t get me wrong… I’m not complaining about the Summer, nor the fabulous Sunshine. But surely there is no need to roast a Cobweb in this unseemly fashion?
I’m sat here with the ceiling fan on at full throttle. I have a large desk top fan on the coffee table, doing its gentle wave, back and forth, like the Queen waving from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.And … I have a large air coolant machine, (which is darned noisy but worth the noise) in the hallway, facing into the living room, so that all my fur pals can keep cool.
Our living room, and leading halfway into the hallway, looks like the aftermath of a murder scene right now. Four bodies are waiting for forensic Science to come and put white tape around them, take swabs, and hairs and … whatever else they do in those white J-Cloth suits which they wear.
Three Cats and one rather rotund Dog, who has a big, chubby pink belly which I like to blow raspberries on because it makes her wriggle and snuff,(but enough of my peccadilloes), are all looking, for all intents and purposes, like dead things. I’d love to take a photo, but the minute I turn the darn thing on these four all know that little noise which the camera makes and they all sit up to see what the divil I’m up to now. So I won’t photograph them, I’ll leave them to rest, because they need it. If I’m too hot and I only have three items of clothing on, then these wonderful creatures are way hotter because they’re all wearing fur coats!
Oh look at me rambling on. It’s the heat. It’s addled that one last remaining brain cell. I shall shut up – except to say … Have a wonderful Wednesday. Do something nice for someone else today. Give them one of your smiles. Tell someone you’ve never met before, that they look pretty/handsome/striking/attractive .. anything nice. Lovely. Anything to bring them joy. By doing so, I promise you’ll get far more joy in return. Go on. Do something nice for someone else today. I dares ya!
Have a blessed day my friends. Thank you for coming to share a coffee with me round the kitchen table. Heaps of love to you and yours ~
In the cottage where Mr. Cobs and I used to live we had a HUGEmongous back garden. A tiny postage stamp sized front garden, but the back garden was fabulous.
We lived in that cottage for around 30 years, and I always said that I’d never leave it. However, what’s that saying about the best laid ‘schemes of mice and men’often going awry? My plan for never leaving the cottage totally changed when our youngest daughter got married and moved to the end of the planet. (Well no, not quite, it was only to the end of the country – but it felt like another planet altogether). She missed us, and the dogs, and the cats …. and … oh, everything! This missing us was making her dreadfully miserable, even though we travelled to see her and she to see us. Eventually we made the big decision that we’d sell up and move to live near her and our new son-in-law.
We’d said many, many years ago (when we were young and full of pie in the sky ideas) that maybe, possibly, perhaps, one day we might like to live by the sea, but we’d long forgotten that, and besides which, we’d grown older and less inclined to ‘up-sticks’. But anyway, … our cottage was sold, and we bought a new place near our daughter and son-in-law and moved lock, stock and … all our animals.
The long distance move was quite an ‘experience’ – but I’ll save that amusing, hair-raising tale for another day.
We’ve made friends with our new neighbours – all of them are just the most lovely folks, and we’re really settling in here in our new home and it’s feeling more like ‘us’.
I happened to admire some bluebells in one of my neighbours gardens, telling her how I missed the bluebells in my old garden. So she did no more than … gave me some of hers! I was beside myself with thanks to her. Mr. Cobs planted them in the rear garden and … the dog thought they were a new place to pee and killed the darn things.
My neighbour gave us some more some weeks ago. This time we planted bundles of them in the garden to the front of our new cottage, and just a few in the rear garden (and are keeping a close eye on the dog!).
The bluebells looked a little limp and very sad. All the leaves were just lying around on the ground like wilted things and I honestly thought we were going to lose them all. But suddenly … a spike appeared. Then another. And another and …. they looked like they were going to flower! AND … joy of joys … … THEY DID! They all began to flower.
I decided that I’d make a ‘Thank You’ card for my neighbour, and would take some photographs of the little bluebells for her, to include in the card.
So this, dear reader, is the story of how this card came to be, and how I went about making it.
Hand painted by Cobs.
I wanted the card to be very personal. Something where the ‘elements’ were a little more personal so that my neighbour would see that this really was a thank you from my heart. I began by painting a little bundle of bluebells – in a very light-hearted, kind of country style / folksy art way. (Country / folk art style painting is so much more friendly and less ‘formal’, don’t you think?).
Then I tried something I’ve never done before …. making felt flowers.
I made some bluebells from felt, wire and florist tape, then set this on one side for later.
I’d chosen to make a 6″x6″ white card as a base, and mat and layer onto the front of the card with something fresh and pretty as a background.
I stitched around the card I’d chosen for matting and layering on the card stock, in zig zag stitching.
Fashionistas always say you shouldn’t mix spots and stripes. I say … ‘do whatever feels good’. So I matched spotty card with gingham! (see above photo – the gingham is down in the left corner).
I stitched around the watercolour card in straight stitch, on the sewing machine.
I cut a slightly larger than the card size piece of green Organza ….
Green Organza, into which I hand sewed a running stitch and then pulled on the ends of he thread to gather the Organza up a little to make it look a bit scrunched and folded, behind the card.Showing you the white base card, with the gingham mounted on top.
Before I layered the spotty card onto the gingham, I distressed the edges and then using a duster brush, to give the card a more vintage feel, using some warm brown ink from a StazOn ink pad.
See the ‘gathered’/folded organza? I added a rough cut piece of muslin behind the painted bluebells, and added some deep blue paper ribbon, which I wrapped around the watercolour card twice and added the bow. I then added some cotton lace to the bottom of the card.
Then it was time for me to build the idea I’d had when I first thought of making this very special thank you card.
I knew I wanted it to have a vintage feel, to almost feel like it came from the 40’s or 50’s. I chose all my flowers, and knew that I had some wooden plant markers in my craft room somewhere … finding them was going to be the tricky part. Would you believe it! I found them in the very first place I looked! (That NEVER happens normally!)
My very most favourite part of card making … adding the ‘decorations’.
I added the little nest with the three bird eggs, by using my hot glue gun. It’s a very light weight decoration, so doesn’t make the card heavy. The flowers are all from my stash and bought from various places.
The little dragonfly is a metal, Tibetan Silver embellishment. The white fuzzy ‘flowers’ you see are a type of Gypsophila, which I’ve only recently discvered and absolutely love them. They make things so pretty, and give so much more depth to a floral ‘arrangement’ on a card.
The wooden plant sticks are blank – but you can change that really simply by either writing on them yourself (if you have a steady hand) or … choose a font on your computer, print the word(s) out that you wish to have on your plant stick and simply glue the word onto it!
Close up of the tiny boots.
The two Wellington boots are metal, Tibetan Silver, and actually do stand up all by themselves! I hung them on some silver chain – leftover from my days of jewellery making, and added the Rayon Seam Binding bow, in a deep blue colour.
I’d made the card so that it was a pocket card(with an easel stand to the back so that it stood up all by itself), and made two tags for inside the pocket. One was to be a bookmark, and the other was for photographs and the dedication (the ‘to’, ‘from’ etc).
Showing one side of the Tags
You can click on any/all of these photographs and they’ll open up to a much bigger photo which you can see a little more easily if you wish.
One side of the bookmark
The bookmark is double-sided. On this side (shown above) I’ve used two stamps from the ‘Floral Sentiments’ Vintage Collection which I stamped in black, and also another stamp called ‘Parchment Script’ made by Image Tree, which I embossed using Gold embossing powder. I also stamped two tiny butterflies from a collection by Cavallini, which I embossed using Copper Kettle embossing powder.
The other side of the tags
On the reverse side of the larger tag I stamp some card with a Postcard stamp (by Urban), which is where I wrote the ‘to ….. from ….’ – and on the reverse side of the bookmark; I computer made the little picture of the bunch of bluebells teamed with part of a poem written by Anne Bronte′.
If you click on this photograph it will open up into a much bigger view, and you’ll be able to read the poem.
Click on the photo ↑ to make it bigger – but don’t forget to click ‘back’ to come back again!
The photographs mounted onto the larger tag
I took a handful of photographs of the bluebells blooming in my garden, chose the best three, then resized them on my computer to make them smaller, and kind of cuter, and added them to the one side of the larger tag. Oh … I forgot to say . . . I stamped that word ‘Photographs’ – using a Tim Holtz stamp.
Close up of the photographs. click on the photo to make it bigger – but remember to click ‘back’ to continue reading
Obviously, a card with a bird’s nest on the front isn’t going to fit into an envelope! I had to make a deep box …..
I didn’t want to make the box in the same colours, but I did want the box and card to ‘speak’ to each other and have things in common . . . so I used dotty card – only this time in deep purple, and stamped all around the outside of the box with bird themed stamps. Bird Nests. Bird Houses, Dove Cotes. Birds on nests in branches …. etc. And just for a bit of fun, I added the little resin birds nest to the lid of the box. I added the little topper of a Garden Shed and made the bunting from scraps of different colours of dotty card, hand stamped with the letters from the alphabet to spell out ‘THANK YOU’.
Do you remember those felt bluebells I made, right at the start? Well … there they are. On that box lid.
A close up of the felt bluebells.
The colours of the bluebells aren’t actually quite as shocking as in the photographs of them. The flash obviously surprised them and make them a little more flamboyant than they really are. lol.
When I took the card over to my neighbour, she was absolutely thrilled with it, but as surprised as surprised could be that I’d made the card myself. She exclaimed …. “You made this??” … then a few moments later … “And you actually made this??” …. then …. “I can’t believe you made this. It’s wonderful!” … … which I didn’t take offence at, I just giggled my head off. (Although I do wonder what I look like I make in my craft room People probably think I make a mess more than I make anything else! LOL … Hmm, actually, looking at my craft room – they’d be right! eek!)
Well that’s it. That’s the story of this card, and how it came to be. OH! I nearly forgot to tell you … my neighbour said: “You couldn’t have brought this on a better day… it’s my Birthday tomorrow!”. Awww, I was filled with fun bubbles when she said this. She would have an extra card on the shelf!
Thank you SO much for coming to visit. I love seeing and chatting with you all via comments. It makes blog land such a wonderful place to be in. I’ve made some really fabulous friends and blogging buddies, and I never guessed that I would when I first began this blog, just over a year ago. So thank you for making this dotty old card makers days even more brilliant!
Sending love, and wishing you all …. a truly blessed rest of your day!
In my last post I said how difficult I found making ‘Sympathy’ cards, I think because it’s so difficult to accurately gauge the deep, all-encompassing pain which descends upon someone when they suffer the loss of a loved one. So it came as quite a surprise to find myself making yet another ‘sympathy’ card, – this one very much different from the last one.
I had my Ranger Melting Pot (aka The Cauldron) out the other day and made a few things, putting most of them on one side for projects at some other point. One of the things I made was the Angel Wings you see on the card above. I got the little box out where I’d stored them along with the other items I’d made and the moment I picked up the Angel Wings and held them in my hand … I knew I should make another sympathy card, this time using them as the feature embellishment on the front.
I laid the wings onto my desk and looked at them for a minute or so. They were lovely – but there was something missing. Took me a moment to figure it out. Wax. They needed high-lighting in pearl wax so that the individual feathers came to life and caught the light. It took just a minute to do – but they looked so lovely once I’d polished them to a shine. (Nicer than in the photographs – but sadly I’m not a great photographer so please make allowances for me being rubbish with a camera!)
I went through my stamps to find the right one which would be suitable to use – and although I stamped out several of them (wasting card like it was going out of fashion) – none of them were right. They were either the wrong sentiment, or they were the wrong type face for the words. In the end I decided that I’d print my own words, using my computer and my printer. That’s when the ‘fun’ began.
It took me a very hotone and a half frustrating [insert appropriate swear word] hours just to get that sentiment from the computer to my card! I had to work out where I needed to place the typed words on a word type document that I was looking at on the ‘puter screen – which would mean it would be in the right place when I put my card through the printer.
(Again – this resulted in more card being put into the ‘trim off the rubbish bits and put the rest into the ‘scraps’ draw’ pile. Grrrr!)
Seriously – it was frustrating to the point that my sensible mind telling me to: “just give up woman, you’re not going to get this right!” – the problem was → – I was determined that it wasn’t going to beat me.
Then suddenly all the planets aligned. There was a Star to the East. My Lottery Numbers came up and …. well no, actually that didn’t happen . . . but it certainly felt like it did when the printer delivered the perfectly placed sentiment, with the right font, right place and right colour. TaDAHHHH!(Was that a choir of Angels I heard singing? At this point I really wouldn’t have been surprised.)
I attached the wings to the card using a mix of two glues – one an ‘instant’ fix – which was the hot glue gun. The other one a glue which needs time to dry, but dries clear and holds well. Then it was time to deal with the inside.
I didn’t feel it needed me to add words to the inside of the card, but instead leave it blank inside so that the sender could write a short, or long note of condolence depending upon how they themselves felt.
Instead I decided upon a single creamy white Angels feather, tied with a bow of satin ribbon, attached to the inside of the card.
And that was it.
It’s quite a simple card (or would have been, was I not so technically challenged!) and once I’d got the positioning right of the sentiment, it was easy to pull it all together. However – I think it’s perfect in its unfussy, simplicity. It conveys the right feeling, in the right way, but it doesn’t go over-board. I think I got the balance just right on this one and I love the finished card.
I think I got the balance just right on this one. I really love the finished card and hope you like it too.
Have a happy Sunday. I hope the weather is kind to you and that peace rests in your heart and soul today, where ever you are.
If love is blind … then why is lingerie so popular?
I had so much fun making this card. It’s a large 8″x8″ card, made on white cardstock. The pink, rose and printed papers (at the two corners) are all papers which came free with magazines a while back; and the gold mirror board and flat gold card (die cut into a rectangle doily) were from my scraps drawer!
I’m very much a thrifty crafter and won’t waste great papers if I can save them – so where I knew I wanted to curl back I simply used a large triangle of paper to cover the corners of the base white card. ↑
The sentiment was stamped onto gold card and embossed in black.I felt that it needed more importance, so choose to use one of a selection of light-weight wooden frames – this one is warmer to look at than the photo shows.
I stamped out the basque ↑ onto the same colour of pink paper as the backing paper, embossed it and then attached it to a little hand-made, wire coat hanger. I punched a hole in the rectangular doily and ‘hung’ the basque from it.
If you look closely at the basque in the photo above ↑ you might be able to see that I used a white pen in places. This was to place ‘light’ in the places that natural light would have fallen on parts of the basque in real life. The ribbons, the seams, bits of the lace, etc etc.
I stamped peacock feathers ↑ over the paler of the pink backing pages, and embossed them with a pale pink, twinkly embossing powder. In the photo above you can see the embossed feathers. (I was checking the page for placement of the basque on the doily to make sure that it would look right.) ↑
Added roses in three shades, and some sprigs of a lilac type flower in white and pink. ↑
Close up photographs ↑ of the corners ↑ which were curled back so that you can see the patterned paper underneath and the two different colours of pink papers.
Although I’d curled and glued corners I wasn’t entirely convinced that the glue would hold, so I chose a large, warm pink brad for each corner to pin the paper in place.
I attached the rectangle doily, which I’d die cut on my Ebosser,to a piece of gold mirror board, then cut around the doily so that the mirror board fitted the doily exactly. Everything was then fixed in place, andvoila! One more card added to the pile for charity.
I had lots of fun making this card and loved the way it’s turned out. Hope you like it too.
Have a truly lovely Sunday all!
Sending love out into the ethernet – so grab some as it flies by!
A handmade card, but with a story behind the making of it.
Last weekend I had my cauldron Ranger Melt Pot out with the idea of making ‘something’ (I knew not what at that moment in time). I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I wanted to play with my Melt Pot. Everything was on my desk, ready and waiting for me to conjure up something which I could make in my Ranger Melt Pot category here on my blog. But what? WHAT?
I sat back in my chair and had absolutely no ideas. My mojo had gone out for drinks and not invited me.
Ah well, I said to myself, you’ve got the thing out now, so just mess around, and who knows, something might come from playing and making a mess. I stamped out an image of some Angel Wings, embossed and then distressed them using denim ink and lavender ink. Cut them out and then shaped them to given them some depth and ‘apparent’ movement. I printed out some words onto some lightweight card – thinking that I’d put the wings in the Melt Pot and mount them onto the card. But .. I decided that I’d do it the other way round. So I cut out the words into a big ’round’ – using my EK circle cutter, – and then distressed around the edges of that circle with the same inks I’d used on the wings.
Turned on the melt pot and once my crystals had melted I began to move the large circle around in the molten liquid. I advise CAUTION when using a melt pot – keep tools in each hand so that you’re not tempted to touch anything. I use a pair of long-handled craft tweezers in one hand and a bamboo skewer in the other. It doesn’t stop the urge to touch – but it makes you touch in a safe way, with the tools rather than your fingers.
Once I’d coated the front of the circle,I removed it from the liquid and just let it drip for a moment, then laid it flat to let it ‘set’ and go cold. Unfortunately – the lightweight card was too lightweight and it curled all around the edges and curved in places. It wasn’t what I wanted. I cleaned up and left the coated surface on one side.
Then a couple of days ago I looked at it again and told myself to try using it and see what I’d come up with. So here’s what I did:
Originally I chose a white 6×6″ card but changed my mind and used a 6×6 craft card instead; and some white feathers. I placed the wings on the circle where I felt they looked best, but the circle still seemed like it was missing something. So I chose a tiny glass bottle with a cork stopper, and put the tiniest of white feathers inside it, along with a teeny pinch of iridescent glitter, just to draw the eye to the feather, as I knew it would stick to the feather and the inside of the glass jar. It looked really lovely – so I glued the jar to the disc, and fixed the wings in place.
I felt that the wings looked a little flat, so I used some Anita’s Gloss and carefully coated the wings then put everything to one side while I worked on the card.
Using brown and a shimmering gold (not mirror) card, I cut out circles so that I could mat and layer the wings/words/glass jar onto them.
I chose some blue ribbon in a shade which echoed the blues of the distressing around the edges of the wings and the disc, and using some permanent tape, I fixed the ribbon running it over the back and front of the card, exactly at the ‘half way’ mark.
I fixed the first layer of the cards onto the front of the card.
… then matted and layered the other discs in place, sometimes tucking a white Angel Feather into the layers. Once the wings were dry and the glued bottle was fixed in place, I fixed some feathers onto the top layer then applied the disc topper which I’d made on top, adding just one smaller feather tucked under the outter edge of the wings.
Three close-ups of the teeny tiny white Angel Feather in the bottle. It was really hard to capture the feather – so I chose the best three photos of a large bunch of rubbish ones that I took.
Of course – there HAD to be a surprise inside the card … (you knew that, didn’t you! lol)
On the front page of the insert is a psalm from the bible, which speaks of Angels: I stamped it onto some white paper, and distressed it a little, then fixed it to the craft paper insert
In case you can’t read it, it says: He Shall Give His Angels Charge Over Thee, To Keep Thee In All Thy Ways. (Psalm 91:11).
Then on the inside, middle of the insert . . . .
. . . a pair of white feathered Angel Wings, and a stamped image of a feather, drifting freely.
Once finished, I really like this lovely card – which began with a disenchantment with the way the topper turned out, but I’m really glad that I made it into a card. It looks a little flat in the photo’s, but to the naked eye it has a depth and a wonderful warmth and gentleness about it. And to be quite honest – if someone sent me this card I’d be chuffed to bits. Seriously chuffed to bits!
I hope you like the card too.
So anyway … enough of me and my crafting. What have you been making or doing? Leave me a message with a link to your blog and I’ll come and take a look and leave you a message too.
You can leave messages on any post or article on my blog by . . .
scrolling up to the title of that article which you want to comment on and …
looking for the little grey speech bubble to the right of the title. (Hover your cursor over the title of a post then move it to the right and the speech bubble will turn from pale grey to a deep red colour.
Click on that speech bubble and the comments for that article or post will open up for you to read (if there are any) and, if you’d like to, make a comment.
Wishing you a totally fabulous weekend. May your Angels surround you and protect you from any harm.
The Art of Cobwebs 