Gracie 365

This is this week's trifecta for the Design Dollies. The challenges...

To use black, burgundy, yellow, and the option of white...

To include some autumn leaves...

And to use this sketch...

This week's subject choice was a 'no brainer' - on Wednesday it was the anniversary of finding Grace wandering on the road near Tescos. We now think she was probably dumped and being such a little kitten she almost certainly would have been killed had I not picked her up and brought her home. She is the best little cat and is great company (she's just followed me downstairs from sitting on my desk in my craft room while I was scrapping to now sitting on the back of my chair in my study as I type!).

Thanks to Jonathan, who came up with the title - Gracie 365.

Thanks for looking!

2nd Guest DT at LCOM!

Well, I'm delighted to say that my school card (the basket of apples) was the winner over at LCOM and I have been asked to be a guest designer for the week again.

The challenge was to make a card using the sketch...

...and incorporating at least two different ribbons.

I decided to use some more of the Graphic 45 Steampunk Debutante papers that I used on my gothic arch to make this vintage looking card...

Card Challenge Weekend!

My first project of the weekend was to make a card for LCOM as I was asked to be their guest designer again. Their challenge (and my card) will go live on their site tomorrow so I won't put a picture of my card on my blog until then...watch this space!

Next it was the turn of the dollhouse and I found myself a little stumped with this week's Design Dollies Trifecta, the colours were...

These are colours I don't often work with all together. The theme was birthdays and not having children I don't take many pictures of birthday celebrations.

Then came the sketch...

This gave me inspiration for a birthday card. Instead of having the usual shape of card I thought the two semicircles could be the card opening.

So here's what I came up with, using the colours, theme and sketch...

And here it is opened up...

I also wanted to have a go at the Chicken Soup challenge thinking I might get a LO done at last, but when I saw it...

...it reminded me of my very glam friend Ali, who is a flight attendant with Virgin Atlantic. Her birthday is coming up so I wanted to make her a card which had the same glam but vintage feel to it. She loves pink so I thought one of these vintage adverts would be perfect...

Now I just need to decide which one to send her!

Thanks for looking!

Gothic meets steampunk!

I was a little disappointed by the lack of interest in my last gothic arch daisies but I wasn't put off and decided to give the latest challenge over at gothic arches a go. The theme was matchboxes and I decided to recess matchboxes in the surface of my arch and then add 'bits and pieces' for them to hold. Having just bought the Graphic 45 Steampunk Debutante range from A Trip Down Memory Lane I was keen to do something a little 'steampunkish'!

So I covered the arch with one of the papers, recessed matchbox inserts that had been painted with copper coloured glaze into the arch and then began to add ephemera and cut out flowers and stickers...I used an old key ring stuck onto some acetate to make the monocle, some Tim Holtz and 7 Gypsies metal bits and a variety of rusty things from my collection. Here are some close-ups...

Rusty wire wound round a mini cotton reel alongside a rusty safety pin...

My 'home made' monacle...

This was actually an old oven light bulb!...

This angled picture gives a better idea of the dimension involved...

Thanks for looking!

Let us prey...

Today was birthday experience time again and this month my treat was a day spent at a falconry centre flying birds of prey. It was situated in the beautiful grounds of Dalhousie Hotel - a lovely little Scottish castle, and as you can see we had a beautiful sunny day for it...

We were met at the centre, first of all by an array of birds of prey sitting on perches. Owls, falcons, buzzards, eagles and crows. Here are a couple of my favourites...

Ruby the kestrel...

...and one of the 'little owls' - they were so tiny and so sweet!

We were then met by the falconer - whose name I can't remember! But she was incredibly knowledgeable and for the next few hours told us so many facts about birds of prey. She gave us our gauntlets and then gave us a tour of all the different birds at the centre.

The first bird we flew was a Harris Hawk called 'Brennan'. We went for a walk around the grounds of the castle and took it in turns to hold out our gloved left hands onto which our falconer would place a little piece of 'chick' and Brennan would swoop down onto our hand to eat, here he is swooping down to my arm to be fed...

After the hawk walk, we flew 'Dolly' the buzzard. Yes - that's a chick's foot on my hand that 'Dolly' is swooping down to eat...

Both the hawk and the buzzard amazed us because they were so light. You hardly felt them landing on your arm! The Eagle Owl was a lot heavier though...

Here he is getting to know Jonathan a little better...

After our Eagle owl flight, we had a break and it was lunchtime for one of their little owls who was very old with no sense of balance and arthritis, he hobbled around and was very sweet.

Watching the day old chicks being cut up with scissors for his lunch was not quite as sweet!

It was then time to fly the Merlin - the smallest bird we flew. Here he is on my hand just before he flew up to the trees...

...but he returned to the lure and was then rewarded with a mouse...

The final flight of the day was with Norris, an African crow who normally looks like a magpie, with a white back and chest. But he had recently done some filming for a tv series and had been coloured totally black. he was very friendly! This picture of him with Jonathan is one of my favourites of the day...

As you can imagine these are just some of the picture highlights, we took well over 200 photos in total and I'm looking forward to a few bird themed Layouts over the next few weeks!

The experience of having a bird of prey land on your arm was amazing and we were privileged to fly a great variety of birds and to learn so much about them. The location, weather and company were all excellent and I would definitely give my September experience 10/10 - maybe with an additional point for some of the excellent photos which Jonathan took (& some of mine weren't bad either!)

Daisy, Daisy...

This fortnight's challenge over at Gothic Arches was on the theme 'Daisies'. I decided to use the sheet music for 'Daisy Bell' (Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...) as a background. I clear embossed my daisies down one side and then used old linen and vintage photo distress ink to go over the paper - the embossed daisies resisted this nicely. I added a printed 'Daisy bride' from my altered art CD and a mini crown, a few gems and some letters finished off my arch...

Ok - off to charge up my camera ready for the birds of prey tomorrow, then off to bed!

Four cards and a canvas!

First of all I want to say happy birthday to Ann, (my father-in-law's partner). It's a big birthday but I'm not going to give away the number! Anyway - I hope she has a great day, this is the card I made for her...

Well - definitely a busy Saturday. I decided I'd like to catch up on a few challenges today before tomorrow's adventure with the birds of prey.

So I started with the school themed card challenge at LCOM and following on from the basket of flowers I made for Ann's card, I made a basket of apples for a special teacher. Funnily enough my favourite teacher when I was young was one of my infant teachers called Mrs Applegarth - I don't know where she is now - but wherever she is these apples are for her...

I love making things 3D...here's a different angle on that apple basket. Each apple is handcut from Sassafrass lass paper and layered up with foam pads, and the basket is woven from 0.5cm strips of Bazzill...

My next project was to tackle the Trifecta over at the Dollhouse. At one point I didn't think I was going to be able to combine all three challenges - the sketch combined with an altered item and ATC just didn't seem possible. But I thought if I altered an old canvas it might just work. The colour challenge was grey, green and white...

The sketch challenge was...

And the elements challenge this week was to make an ATC and then use it in an altered project.

So here's my ATC...

I then painted an old canvas white, used grey and green paint to create the blocks of colour and added my pictures, painted letters and lots of gems. Adding the ATC as the initial letter of my title and obviously following the sketch and sticking to the challenge colours...

The pictures are of my mum with each of her sisters, so I've decided to give the canvas to her to hang on her wall.

I'd like to thank the lovely dollies for always leaving great comments on my blog - it's one of the reasons they're my favourite challenge blog!

The next pair of challenges came from the Chicken Soup blog...they have a DT call out at the moment too so go and check them out!!

The first - recipe 10 was based on this card...

Inspired by the grid format and the bright colours this is what I managed to produce...

and the next one was based on this image...which, sadly I think looks a little like the butterfly has flown into a window!

But I liked the idea of the bright colours and butterfly - so I combined these to give this card - the butterfly is embossed on acetate and only attached in the middle to make it more 3D...

I have one more project I want to work on - the 'daisies' gothic arch, but that will have to wait until after I've been to Tescos for the groceries and made dinner!

Back to school with the Dollies

So I'm totally back in the swing of things at school - It's like the summer holidays never even happened!

Over at the Dollhouse the design dollies asked everyone to think back to their own schooldays for the elements challenge. The colours for the colour challenge were black, white, green and pink (any shades) and the sketch was...

So, remembering that I'm back at school and that it's been a really busy weekend, this is what I managed to do...

I might manage something a bit more involved next weekend, though I'm off on my September birthday experience - a birds of prey day next Sunday. Looking forward to getting some great pictures!

Chicken soup at the Goring?

Well - I finally got round to doing the Chicken Soup recipe 9 (and hopefully I'm just getting my entry in in the nick of time!?!). It feels a bit 'thrown together' for me, but it is a school night so amazing that I managed to get a LO done at all!

The interior design picture in the recipe inspired me to do a layout about one of the most beautiful interiors I have photographed recently. My eldest brother in law, David, is the Managing Director of the Goring Hotel in London. Whenever I go down to London I try to stay there and am always SO well looked after - it's really a home from home for everyone in the Hewitt family. Last time I went David treated me to a night in one of the Goring's 'silk rooms'. The rooms are so beautiful - the walls, instead of paint or wallpaper, are lined with silk brocade fabric - I stayed in the blue room. All the special rooms also come with sheep (no they're not real). Have a look at the Goring website if you're intrigued by this!

Anyway - I'm so proud of David and the Hotel - The Hotel won a Catey - last year (like an Oscar for the hospitality industry) and David was named Hotel Manager of the Year. So it seemed like a very worthwhile subject to scrap.

I hope you like it...