A card for Aunt Beulah . . .

I heard that another of the cards I’d made for a blogging friend who lives in the USA arrived on time for Christmas and so I can now share the card with you.

I know that to some of you, you might think that I’ve made the same card that I sent to someone else, (Rabbit, at The Rabbit Patch),  but I haven’t.  (see below) 

I made a card for Rabbit at The Rabbit Patch – which had a similar look about it – but it was different, and the insides were completely different from each other too.  This was the card I made for Rabbit – which I shared with you a few weeks ago:

… this (above) was the card I made for Rabbit – at The Rabbit Patch – but it’s completely different from the card for Aunt Beulah.  The flowers, the pearls, the leaves, the backgrounds – everything is different.  Even the hanging hearts are different.  😀

But this (below) is the card I made for Aunt Beulah . . .

All the cards I made for blogging friends were made using things which had something from my home about them.  On this, Aunt Beulah’s card, – the little Pine Cones – came from my garden, where the four 100 foot tall pine trees in my garden had dropped their cones.  (I reckon those trees are in a competition with each other to see which one of them can trip me up and leave me flat out on the decking!  tsk tsk).  Of course – I had the professional help of my assistant,  Little Cobs,  in the collecting of the pine cones, and he was paid his pocket-money for helping.  (He’s going to end up with more money in his money-box than I’ve got, at this rate!)

The background, wooden planks ‘look’ paper …. well now that’s actually cut from a spare roll of wallpaper.  I have this wallpaper on the wall behind my big wooden bed in the bedroom.  I kept around half a roll of the wallpaper  *just in case of some accident or other* – and I wanted to ensure that I sent a little bit of ‘me’ in the card,  so I cut a square of the paper to make the card look like it was a timber wall.  It’s great paper, as it has a texture of old wood.  Very soft and gentle, but it does have that look about it.  (I have no other wallpaper in my home – just that on the one wall.  I saw it and fell in love, so ordered it there and then!).

The hearts were all handmade by me out of very light weight clay, and coloured up using Buff-it,  which is made by Pinflair. (Highly recommend this product – I would use it on every card if I could – I love it soooo much!)

The string of red pearls are pearls that I used to use on one of my own Christmas Trees, but every time someone walked too close to the tree, those pearls would jump off the branches in an attempt to make an escape bid for the floor … so I said ‘no more’ and decided that I wouldn’t use them again.  I didn’t know what I was going to do with them, but I took them to my craft room and squirreled them away in there, knowing that at some point, I would use them.  And … I did.  For the first time – I cut a length off the long string and decorated the card for Aunt Beulah with them.  I antiqued them up a little using some silver wax – which I simply rubbed on with my finger, to give the pearls a shimmer.

The flowers, red and white berries and the dried corn …. etc,  all came from my stash of flowers, and I touched them with a little ‘snow’ and dusted them with ice crystals to make them twinkle.

Finally … I stamped the sentiment onto a length of card which I manipulated so that it bent and ‘travelled’ over the page in a pretty way,  – popped it into a memo pick and fixed it to the card.

And that’s all there was to it!

I was SO relieved to hear that the card had made its way to Aunt Beulah, and that she liked it.  If you would like to find out why I love this fabulous lady so much, please just click on her name and her blog will open up in a new window for you.

Aunt Beulah ~ thank you for the wonderful reads that I find on your blog.  Thank you for the thoughts, the smiles, the joy and sometimes even the tears.  Thank you for being the person you are, for the person you are is totally incredible.  Sending you much love for the New Year, and wishing for you – contentment.  May a blanket of contentment come to rest upon your home and wrap itself around your heart and life. ~ love ~ Cobs. xxx

Thank you too, reader, for being who you are.  I thank you for coming and spending time here with me on this blog and hopefully enjoying the read too.

Happy Tuesday.  May your day be bright and may the sun shine enough to melt any snow that’s hanging around, and melt the ice on your car windows.  May you find something to smile about, and may love wrap itself around your heart and keep you warm inside.  Even if it’s only the love I send you here….  because love is love is love.  It’s all good!

Take care out there …  much love and plenty of squidges ~

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Victorian Christmas ~ a handmade card.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’d been making some cards which were being sent to the USA, and I was a bit worried that none of them would get there before Christmas.  Well … I had an email a couple of days ago telling me that the one card had arrived at its destination!  So I’m thrilled to pieces to finally be able to share one of them.

This particular card was made especially for Beverly of More Ink Please.  Beverly is a fellow crafter.  She makes the most incredible cards – some of them are amazingly intricate and so, so pretty.  She is also a very talented hand-made book maker.  But … she has but one fault.  She never finds time to blog about them!  She will chat with me about some things that she’s making, but even though I push her to take a photo and pop it onto her blog …. she’s a proper rascal and never does!  tsk tsk.

I decided back at the beginning of November what sort of card I wanted to make for Beverly.  I wanted to make a card with a very Victorian feel, with lots of layers.

The Poinsettia flowers are all handmade and although I cut the centre (black) stamens from cardstock, I gave the flowers their yellow centres by adding some tiny glass beads.

The tiny pine cones you see on the card (covered in [fake] snow) are actually from my garden.   I put Little Cobs to work during the summer, and asked him to collect me some fallen pine cones, but, I told him,  “I want the teeny, weeny, baby ones, because Grammy wants to craft with them and put them on cards”,  and, Bless his little heart, he took his bucket and went around my garden, picking up pine cones and either putting them in his bucket or, after doing a spot check, declaring them  “Too Big!” and discarding them.

He then helped me to put all the baby Pine Cones inside a plastic bag, and zipped it up for me, so that I could force out any insects and part company with them.

I’ve put him on the payroll, and he now gets paid weekly, in cash.

Well look ….  a week before Christmas and I’m only just posting a Christmas Card. Sorry about that  … making them all is taking time and by the time I’ve finished making one, I’m onto the next ‘making’ and … well, time just runs away from me.  It’s that things fault.  Time.  It’s times fault.   Awww, let’s not get into Time and it’s horrors. grrrr.

Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee with me while I chatted away.  I love seeing you.  Especially on a Monday morning before Christmas.  😀

Have a blessed rest of your day my fabulous friend  ~ 

 

InkTober 3rd 2017

InkTober caused me a moment today.  I began with an idea in mind and started to draw it ….  kind of liked it … but not enough.  So I scrapped it and decided on something different instead. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Its like knitting … and getting eight rows in then realising that you made a mistake on row 2 so having to pull it all back and re-knit. grrrr!

So anyhoo ...  this is what I ended up painting….

#InkTober2017

 

… but .. that’s not everything …

The photo above was taken with the desk lamp as lighting, but the next photo is taken with the flash on the camera …  and it shows you what the photo above can’t….   that I broke open the Kuretake, Gansai Tambi Starry paints (watercolours) – for just the one colour – White Gold, – so that I could use a teeny tiny bit around the edges of the moon, and onto the clouds.  And this next photo, taken with the flash, shows you the difference that this one colour can make …

#InkTober2017

 

It just gives the moon and clouds a more magical feeling.  Slightly more depth.  And … well, I just had-ta!  lol.

The apparent ‘bend’ on the left hand side of the painting, isn’t a wonky bit of water-colour paper, it’s actually how the paper dried.  I’ll bury it between the pages of a book, weighted down by a couple of book, and it will then magically become flat again.

The pens used to create this bit of Inktober Art are by Kuretake, apart from one Sakura Gelly Roll Ink Pen, in white, which I used to add some ‘moon shine’ hi-lights to the trees and parts of the landscape.Pen

So far I’m quite enjoying InkTober  . . .  it’s a bit like doodling, only trying a bit harder.  But I can see me getting tired of black a bit quickly.  But that might just be me wishing to break out and crack open the bottles of blue and brown ink which sit on the side of my desk.  I wonder if that would be against the rules.  I mean to say … it’s still ink, isn’t it?  I could rather go for a nice inky denim blue drawing.  Or a fabulous vintage looking brown bit of fun!

Ahhh .. I’ll be good as long as I can .. then I’ll break the rules and be naughty.  lol.

Thank you for coming for a visit and sharing your coffee moment with me.  I just LOVE seeing you here.  Blog land has turned out to be one of the nicest places on the web.  I’m not sure what I expected when I began The Cobweborium Emporium – certainly not being part of such a great community of bloggers who are truly amazing, and so very talented!  Cooks, Knitters, Writers, Bakers, Farmers, Artists in a variety of forms, and .. well just genuinely nice people.  I’m SO glad that I began this blog, for without it I wouldn’t ever have even known that you existed.  And that thought alone is SO painful to my heart, because I love knowing you.  Truly.

Thank you for being exactly who you are.  For who you are is  . . . perfect.  I tried you on and you fit perfectly, and I love you for it.

Have a truly great day out there!  Sending squidges ~ as always …

 

 

Just Watching the Water! ~ an ATC/ACEO – painted for World Watercolour Month

One of my most favourite pastimes is to drive to a particular car park in Dorset, where I can park right by the edge of the sea.  It’s just behind a low wall.  If I get out of my car and walk a few feet to the wall then it’s down a few steps and I’m on the beach.  When the tide comes in it comes right up to the wall.  Only ever coming over the top of the wall when there is a particularly bad storm.

I don’t care what the weather is … it can be full sunshine or persisting down with rain …  I’m happy to sit with the window down a little so that I can hear and smell the sea, and just listen.  I don’t need to talk and I don’t need a radio to entertain me.  The most noise I need is the sea, doing what the sea does naturally.  I love to watch the water.  To be at peace and at one with that magnificent force of nature that the sea is.

SOooo many brain cobwebs can be blown away by a visit to the sea.  I can sit there for quite some time before I eventually say goodbye to it and start my car up to drive home.  But …  as I leave I have always found that I have this sense of inner peace and the knowledge that whatever happens, everything is alright with my world.

I visited the sea yesterday . . .  

I’d been grocery shopping.  NOT my favourite thing to do.  All that time choosing, shopping popping things in the basket.  Then taking it out of the basket, putting it onto the conveyor belt.  Then putting it in a shopping bag, then bringing it home, then unpacking it … and for what?  It all gets eaten and I have to do it all over again!  Dogs Sake!  It’s about time they banned shopping and just chose healthy stuff for us to eat with recipes on cards, (so that we knew what we were supposed to make with the purple sprouting Gourd-like Carbeet Skins) and just charged us a fee for the pleasure.

Actually … better still… let’s all just stop eating.  Yes!  They could invent something that would replace eating and keep us all slim and shapely so that we all look exactly the same on the beach!  PERFECT IDEA!

But anyway (sigh… I do seem to keep wandering off the subject today)  … we’re here to look at a little  painting.

#WorldWatercolorMonth

A little ATC which measures 2.5inches by 3.5inches, painted with watercolours on 140lb  Watercolour paper.

It’s not a painting of an area where I live, but just an idea of a fabulous place to perhaps live and see the view of from your kitchen window.  Cooo … wouldn’t that be a great place to live?  Perhaps an old cottage built from stone.  With deep, thick walls so that the windows could all have window seats built into them.  Gingham curtains.  Thick Pine table tops, and ….  oh heck!  I’ve gone off on one now!  tsk tsk.

Back to the topic Cobs… 

I really loved painting this little ATC for World Watercolour Month Challenge.  It just seemed to paint itself.

#WorldWatercolorMonth

And that … is all there was to it!

Thank you so much for sharing some time with me.  I love to see you.  I did ask this last week, and I’m going to ask again …  Are you joining in with the World Watercolour Month?  If you are and I don’t know about it, please give me a bit of a poke with the end of your pen and show me where I should go and see your wondrous creations.  I’d SO enjoy seeing what you’ve painted – or coloured with watercolour pencils.

Thank you for coming.  Love seeing you.  Have a truly blessed day!

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