Lace & Hessian Jar Wrap - Just Experimenting

Hi Everyone,

I hope you've had a great weekend. We certainly have here. Yesterday we took a trip up to Garelochhead, a small village on the Gare Loch in Argyll and Bute ... a lovely trip through some beautiful countryside ... and today we went along to Ayr Town Hall to see The Great Tapestry of Scotland. This was our second visit, it's so big it took us two days to see it all. Posts will follow once I've sorted out the many photos taken.

This evening I've been experimenting with how to make a wrap to prettify a jam (jelly) jar.

The base is a piece of white on white fabric from the scrap box. I added white lace borders, hessian (burlap), white satin ribbon, cream embroidered ribbon, a cream crocheted flower and a pearl to finish it off.

I decided to leave the ribbon fairly long so that the wrap could fit several sizes of jars.

As I'm always looking for a new container for flowers this is a great way of creating something different quickly and inexpensively. It would also make a pretty container for a tea light.

This was so easy to make and it's a great way of using scraps of materials that I may just make one or two more.

Many thanks for visiting. I wish you all a good day tomorrow.

Happy Crafting

A Snippet Card For Rudolph Day

Hello Everyone,

I've been so busy, with non-crafty stuff, I almost forgot ... how could I!!! But like our Pixie, Di, there's no way I can miss Rudolph Day over at ScrappyMo's. So here's my card for this month.

I've shamelessly copied an design seen on C&C TV which, apart from the card base, is composed entirely of die-cuts ... all cut from snippets of card too!

Materials used:
- white base card, 4¾" square
- snippets of cardstock - satin finish silver, red textured (Papermania), smooth green (PaperMill Direct)
- dies - Spellbinders Sapphire Basic Set A Circles, Spellbinders Layered Poinsettia (the two smallest flowers), Tattered Lace Mini Set Holly Leaves and Happy Christmas 
- amber and red gems

For once, I did a bit of forward planning and created a card that fitted in with another two of my favourite challenges:

Pixie's Snippet Playground - where the challenge is always to use snippets
Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge, CHNC 230 - use something die-cut or punched
Oh, and a third I almost forgot:
CHNC challenge extra for May 2015 - anything goes as long as it's Christmas

I need to catch up on Christmas cards - been a bit lax so far and that means I could be stressing at the beginning of December which won't do at all!!!

Right, that's me done for this evening and it just leaves it for me to wish you a wonderful weekend.

Happy Crafting,

WOYWW - Celebrating the 6th Anniversary

SIX YEARS!

AMAZING!!!

Congratulations Julia for keeping What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday going for soooo long :) 

We wouldn't be doing it without you!

I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say that all you do to keep WOYWW going is much appreciated xxx

Many friendships have been made and much fun has been had by so many Deskers and all down to one very brilliant idea to get us communicating over our desks, spreading the crafting love worldwide. Who would have thought it possible six years ago that we would still be chatting away like this today :) 

THANKS JULIA!

My desk today! As you can see I've been playing Scrabble :) Well, I had to do something to mark the occasion, especially as, unfortunately, this year I'm unable to join in the exchange of ATCs. Hopefully, I'll be able to join in next year for the seventh anniversary celebrations! 

The eagle-eyed will have no doubt spotted my new toy, Sapphire ... she's so darned cute :) And I'm sure some of you will be wondering why I needed yet another die-cutting machine! Spotted it on C&C TV, sat on my hands through several demonstrations, and then succumbed. Justifications, if any were needed, I found aplenty. It's just the right size for all those tiny dies I use so much - like the butterflies and the deer lying out on the desk today. It's small enough that it can be put to good use whilst wasting time watching TV! And, best of all, it's such a handy size that it's no longer a chore to get it out, unlike the GC or even the Cuttlebug, to use up tiny snippets of card, hence those butterflies and the pile of purple scraps on the left there.

So lovely deskers, happy sixth bloggaversary and have a wonderful day. Here's to many more happy years of blogging and many more special friendships being made.

Leave me a little hello comment to let me know you've visited, please, and I will be sure to return the compliment as soon as I'm able. In fact, I'm off right now to a bit of blog hopping before lunch :)

Happy WOYWW, 

Birdie Cushions

Evening Folks

It will have been back-to-work-after-the-holiday day for many today so I hope you were rested and refreshed and ready for the fray, and that the day went well. Despite not having to go back to work, my day has been a busy one with lots to do, including the finishing of these two cushion covers.

And not before time either, they were started some time ago, actually a few months ago! It's a simple enough design, just 4 squares sewn together and backed with plain red fabric using the tried and true (and easy) envelope closure. Love the birdie fabric teamed with the red check - perfect for our recently decorated lounge :)

Short and sweet this evening. Time I went to bed - had a sleepless night last night and feeling it now - so I'll bid you a very good night and hope you have a great day tomorrow.

In A Vase On Monday - Rosy Glow

Hello Everyone,

Although it's not an official Bank Holiday here in Scotland, the children still had to go to school as usual, it seems many did have the day off. The weather was perfect, dry and sunny, so we took ourselves to Culzean Castle Estate for a wee stroll to admire the bluebells - spotted a cheeky pheasant too :) We also popped into the bookshop where I was delighted to make a real find, a very old (1973) copy of Cottage Garden Flowers by Margery Fish. It's now next on my reading list, just as soon as I've finished the very entertaining The Transplanted Gardener by Charles Elliott! On the way back to the car I spotted a display of plants from Culzean's walled garden for sale which I just could not ignore ... I now have two new plants, Thalictrum Glaucum and Centaura Dealbata.

Once home, the plants were popped into the nursery area until I decide where their permanent home will be, and then it was a ramble round the garden to see what I could pick because it's Monday and it has become the norm for me to join in with Cathy's meme, In A Vase On Monday. Although each week there's more flowers blooming in the garden, there's still not a huge amount to pick from, probably because of the cold snap we've been enduring these past weeks. However, the dark red wallflower, Erysimum, has been catching my eye for some time so that's where I started.

I could see that there wasn't much point in leaving them for much longer as they will soon be going over so I picked a few and added some stems of pinkish/purplish ones. Then it was a case of looking for anything that would look well with these colours ... so I added a few Aquilegia Spring Magic, Rose and Pink, growing in the alpine bed, Saxifraga arendsii, Carpet Pink and Carpet White, and a few sprigs of Cerastium tomentosum, Snow-in-Summer, just coming into bloom.

My choice of foliage is Honeysuckle, Gold Flame, a few frothy leaves of Malva Moschata, Musk Mallow, not yet in flower and just a couple of pieces of my tiny, but treasured, green beech, Fagus Sylvatica, discovered and brought back from a nursery on the shores of Loch Ness.

Every year I eagerly await the fresh and soft green leaves of spring on this lovely tree.

The photos were taken in our back garden, vase perched on top of the red brick wall with a backdrop of the old green wooden fence. My husband keeps threatening to pull it down but I like the aged appearance of it. Somehow, I think a brand spanking new fence would not be the same!

If you liked my vase this week, you might like to pop over to Rambling In the Garden where you can not only see Cathy's gorgeous purple storm in a teacup but also check out many other vases too.

In the meantime, I'm off for a cup of tea.

Happy Gardening,

 

Sunday Snippets Card - Another Year Older

Afternoon Snippeteers & All,

I hope you are having a wonderful Bank Holiday Sunday. So far, ours has been a good, if uneventful, one and I've even found some time to make a snippet card for Pixie's Snippets Playground.

As it's Sunday, a holiday one at that, I won't detail how the card was made but here's a list of materials instead:

• square black base card
• grey/silver foiled card, Kanban Sheet Metal, edges inked with Black Soot distress ink
• teal cardstock, PaperMill Direct
• snippet of white card, swirly template - no details because I've searched the craft room and can't locate it - and two shades of Buff-it - Dark Green and Dark Blue - mixed, all used to create the patterned cardstock
• ready-made topper, Kanban Happy Hour
• enamel dots, Simple Stories, The Story of Us

Before I go off to do a bit of blog-hopping, I just have to show you the EM's, latest project - with the assistance of his new apprentice - me!

Having finished painting our bedroom (you can see the newly painted walls in the photo) he decided to re-cover the bed box because it was suffering from a good bit of wear and tear. You'll have to take my word that it now looks a hundred percent better because I forgot to take a 'before' photo. The fabric is from Dunelm Mill, Beautiful Birds - love those pretty pink birds on the duck egg blue background :) I'm so lucky to have such a handy husband

Happy Crafting,

 

Super Cool - Card Inspired by ...

... Julee over at Poetic Artistry!

With my mojo firing on less than all cylinders, I was blog hopping looking for some inspiration when I found Julee's latest creation here. I liked it immediately, it was just the design I was looking for, so I CASEd it! Here's my card.

If you popped in on Wednesday to check out my WOYWW desk you will recognise the topper and some of the cardstock. I was trying to decide what colours would look best with the image of the rock climber and as I mentioned on Wednesday, photographing the cardstock spread out on my desk really helped - something for me to remember in the future.

Here's how I made the card:

• To make the base I scored and folded an A4 (8¼"x11¾") sheet of white cardstock to create an A5 (8¼"x5¾") portrait size card then rounded all four corners ... I did this to match with the topper and sentiment (Kanban Wild Side). Corner rounding was carried through all the elements for the card.
• I then trimmed another piece of white card approximately ¼" smaller all round than the card front and embossed it using Crafter's Companion Pebbles folder. The edges were then inked with Milled Lavender distress ink.
• Next I trimmed some deep mauve pearlescent card to measure just about an 1/8" larger than the embossed piece for matting. 
• The embossed layer was adhered to the mauve layer, using foam pads for dimension, then both were added to the front of the card.
• To make the topper embellishment: A piece of Black Magic Core'dinations cardstock was trimmed, eyeballing it, to make the panel under the topper - it measures approximately 4½"x2" - which was then sanded to reveal the pink core. Two scraps of card, pink and mauve, were used to create the flags which were then stapled to the topper. A length of purple trim was wrapped round the lower edge of the topper and knotted. All these elements were adhered together using foam pads and added to the front of the card.
• Finally, the sentiment was added to the lower right corner.

A little pocket, created from the mauve cardstock, was added to the inside - perfect for adding a gift card - and a sentiment from the Happiest Birthday Wishes set (My Favorite Things) was stamped in black.

I made this card for my granddaughter's 15th birthday. As you can see from this photo, Jolene is a bit of an action girl and her ideal birthday treat is to spend a weekend in Aviemore, in the Highlands of Scotland, trying out all the various thrilling activities on offer there!

Had another busy day today. We went shopping for new curtains for our newly decorated bedroom then, as we were so near The Range, just had to pop in there ... it would have been rude not to :) A crafty haul and several £s lighter we came home to potter - read weeding out the ground elder for potter - in the garden. It's been such a lovely sunny day, you'd hardly know that it's a bank holiday weekend :)

Hope you have had an equally lovely day too. Thanks for visiting.

Happy Crafting,

Friday Smiles - Week 120

It's Friday and time to join Annie in celebrating what's made us smile this week.

No photos of the children this week - I think everyone just forgot to get their camera out. I know I did when little Arihanna paid us a visit! Never mind, there's always our garden. I was delighted to see that the clematis montana 'Elizabeth' (yes, who would have thought I'd have a clematis named after me!!!) planted last year is doing well and flowering. Especially as just a couple of weeks ago we had to untangle her from her support and lay her down, ever so gently, to allow for the old fence to be replaced by a brand spanking new one :)

And what about this for a zingy colour combination - a purple allium bursting open against a backdrop of yellow and orange wallflowers. The allium looks very pinkish in the evening sun ... oh yes, the sun came out for five minutes on Wednesday evening!

Ah, the joys that come with a garden, even when all there's time for is a quick trot round with the camera spotting what's in bloom today. At this time of the year there is something new emerging almost every day.

And now it's time for the joke of the day: 

Who's Toughest?

M6 and M25 are in a bar arguing.

M6 says, "I'm the toughest. I go from Birmingham to Carlisle and I can carry thousands of cars and lorries every hour".

M25 says, "I go right round London, and I can have lorries sitting on me without moving for hours and I don't flinch".

Then just as Red Tarmac comes in they both hide under a table.

When he goes they come out again.

Witnessing this, the barman remarked, "I thought you were arguing over which of you was the toughest!"

"We were," says M6. "but Red Tarmac there, he's a CYCLE PATH!!!

Happy Friday and have a wonderful weekend,

Using up Scraps and Snippets ...

... from the homemade Return to the Collection Kit featured in many a post over the last few months.

I did well with the kit, making 2 double page layouts and 6 single singles, finishing up with the Bird's Eye View page that I created with some of the leftovers, mainly strips with a few larger pieces. I was pleased that I managed to use up so much of the kit but I was still left with quite a few scraps and snippets, as you can see in this photo here.

What to do with them? I didn't really want to keep the patterned paper scraps, they take up storage that I'd much rather use for something else and the truth is I'm quite likely to forget they are there. I did stow the green card in the snippet drawer - it could always come in useful for die-cutting leaves - but for the rest I decided to challenge myself to use it up! So a satisfying few hours stamping, embossing, punching, die-cutting, searching through, labels, card and card bases, packets of gems and the box of ribbon/lace/twine snippets resulted in four cards ...

... and several decorated labels!

Not bad for a pile of snippets :)

And these few punched shapes were all that was left. They are now stored in cello bags - they might just come in handy some day.

So that's well and truly killed that kit and, oddly, I'm looking forward to doing the same with whatever is left over in any other kit I put together ... so much better than saving all those wee bits, never to be used again!!!

I'm submitting this entire post to Pixie's Snippets Playground - I've used so many snippets up I think my efforts merit a kiss from Parsnip!!!

Thanks for visiting and have a lovely day.

Happy Crafting,

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday - WOYWW 311

From a state of chaos at Casa Worthington ... the resident handyman is painting and decorating our bedroom this week ... I've finally found some time to sit down and write this week's WOYWW post. Though, truthfully, there's not much to see on my desk ... in fact, it's probably a tad boring by Desking standards!

I have a couple of speedy cards to make ... speedy because I forgot there's a couple of birthday's coming up ... which explains the selection of cardstock and toppers spread over the desktop. And one of the bonuses of photographing what's on my desk is that I can now see quite clearly what does look good with that topper on the right and what doesn't! A few ink pads that weren't put away when they should have been might just be useful again so they can stay for a while longer. There's a greeting in the pack of dies that I have plans for and I've been looking through the packs of Core'dinations card for a couple of sheets suitable for embossing. Just about out of shot is my stash of dimensional foam pads ready to be used for those toppers.

And that is it for this week. Not very interesting at all - the colours are nice though :)

I'm off now to do a bit of blog hopping - looking forward to seeing what Julia and all my fellow deskers are up to this week. Much of it, I suspect, has something to do with next weeks celebration :)

Have a great week and a Happy WOYWW,

In A Vase On Monday - On Day Late

Afternoon Everyone,

After a very busy day which took me away from home yesterday, this post is now a day late! Still better late than never ... though I can hear my mother's rejoinder to that ringing in my ears right now, 'better never late'!!! And because I know some of you come visit just to see what I've been out and picked from my garden, I'm hoping both you and Cathy, our inspiration behind this meme, will forgive me.

I did have to dodge the showers to pick this posy of sunny yellow Potentilla aurea.

I've had this plant for a good number of years now, indeed it's been with us through many a house move and transplanted from an English garden to several Scottish ones, struggling in some and doing better in others.

When we made the last move - our final, for sure - I popped it into the top of a herb pot (the herbs being long gone) and there it has stayed. It must like it there because it's blooming beautifully this year, better than it has ever done before! Spot it in the background of the photo above.

I've teamed it up with a few pieces of Spiraea japonica 'Gold Flame' - the leaves are a pretty combination of gold and pink at the moment - and the dainty pink flowers of Saxifraga. I have two varieties growing together in the rose bed, as edging plants, the one most commonly seen, Saxifraga x urbium, and the other Saxifraga umbrosa 'Variegata'.

It's another favourite flower from my childhood - I don't think there was a garden in our neighbourhood that didn't have this plant growing in straight lines, edging the sides of the paths that led up to the front door. Although they are most commonly known as London Pride, ever since I was a wee girl I have thought of them as Pretty Maids All In A Row ... my very own interpretation of the line from the nursery rhyme, Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary!

The vase used today is a tiny silver julep cup - another purchase made from the Handpicked Collection the site discovered after Cathy mentioned it in a previous post - the perfect size for a posy of tiny flowers such as today's choice.

It seems that after a couple of glorious weeks in April we are now having all her showers in May!  Which is why these geraniums and antirrhinums are still sheltering under the potting bench, just crying out to be potted up. Just a couple of dry sunny days are all that's needed ...

... however, all those showers do mean that I don't need to feel guilty for spending so much time watching the TV coverage of The Chelsea Garden Show!

Oh, ho! The sun has come out ... hope it's for more than the usual half an hour :) If you have enjoyed seeing my vase and want to see more Monday vases do take a tootle over to Cathys at Rambling in the Garden.

Happy Gardening,

Friday Smiles

Afternoon Everyone,

Time for another Friday Smiles post - courtesy of Annie at a Stitch In Time. I did intend getting here earlier but the dreaded H-word raised it's ugly head again and detained me. Washing is now in the machine, bathroom is sparkling and the bed is made - so far, so good. 

Now, on to a few things that have made me smile this week. The great-grands have been having a lively time of it so plenty to share. Arihanna, especially has been having fun with her mum's high-heels ... here she is modelling them for a photo shoot :)

There's been a bit of a trend for amazing pony tails among the great-grands this week. First up was Arihanna - apparently she had to be bribed with sweets to pose for this photo. Photos taken by her mum, Louise.

Then Rhian had to have a go at hair-raising too :) This photo was taken by her gran, Juli, who tells me Rhian, who can be a bit camera shy, was actually looking at her hair in a mirror at the time and didn't notice her gran had the camera out!

Brodie doesn't have that much hair so no hair-raising for him, but he did have some fantastic news to pass on to me via Facebook. Yes, the newest baby expected in October is a girl. Rhian is super delighted because she forecast that she was going to have a sister weeks ago :)

Finally, my daughter, Juli, has been busy creating this lovely quilt for the other expected baby, a boy, that is due at the beginning of June.

These two will take the count to four grandchildren for Juli and as many great-grandchildren for me - two boys and two girls - you'd think we would be accustomed to it by now, but each one brings their own special joy :) 

That's the photo smiles for the week. It just leaves it for me to tell you this week's joke ... this one is another from Donald's farm. Apologies in advance to those who have trouble with the Scot's language!

Donald's Prize Bulls

Donald was away at the Oban Cattle Sales for the day, when his neightbour, McLaren arrived in the yard and parked up his old Land Rover beside Donaldina, Donald's oldest daughter.

"Is you Faither in?! he asks.

Donaldina, who was mucking out the byre, replied, "Nawe! He's away at the Sales, but if it's the Ayrshire Bull service you want, then it's £50!"

Nawe!, it's not that", barks McLaren.

"Well, the Belted Galloway Bull is £40, and the Highland Bull, it's only £30!"

"That's not whit I'm here fur", roars McLaren. "Your brother, Sandy, has put our wee Fiona in the 'family way', and we want to know what Donald is going to do about it?" 

"Ochone, ochone", says Donaldina, "you'll have to speak to Faither yourself - I don't know what he charges for Sandy!!!"

Happy Friday and have a wonderful weekend.