We had a nice summer yesterday....

Well, much to my suprise, the weather stayed nice all day. I even managed to walk into our little town, and had a coffee and a croissant at the baker's - it was their special offer of the day, so I didn't need to get too bad a conscience. And I discovered a little charity shop that belongs to the hospital. It's only opened 2 or 3 times a week, and up till now it has always been closed, but this time it was open. I made a bee line for the place where I saw lace, and found a whole load of hand made lace, which I just had to buy. So what with the coffee and croissant, my shopping money for this week has gone, but I have a few tins and packets here, so will not starve. And I have enough coffee for the week, too, so it should be OK. All in all I have about 12 meters of lace, so I have enough for my next tags, collages and LOs,

And these 2 pieces of sequin waste and a beaded pendant were thrown in for good measure!

And when I got home I decided to make another Family LO. I used the same technique as the day before, stamping with resist ink, inking, spraying, wiping it off to leave just a touch of colour, and then putting on 2 more layers. I stuck to Victorian Velvet, Forest Moss, Ancient Paper and Garden Fairy Spray, as I want the LOs to match. I want to do one more,as I have one more picture to use, and then it will be good. I used a transparency of my Mum with me when I was about 1 year old, and decorated again with lace, sugared vellum, flowers, and leaves etc.

So, that was all for today. Hope you have a great day, take care, and thanks a lot for dropping in!

A family LO

Sssssssssssssh! Don't tell! The sun is shining! I'm holding my breath so as not to disturb it! Wonder where it came from?

Sometimes I don't really know why I bother making things about my family, as they couldn't care less about me, but I suppose I do it because I need to remember them. For this LO I used a photo of my Mum and my eldest sister, taken about 1939 /40. For the background I have used a sheet of 12 x 12" ceramic card - a speciality stamping paper. First I stamped the rose and the owl each twice with resist ink, and let it dry before rubbing over the paper with a mixture of ancient paper, Victorian Velvet and Forest Moss inks. I sprayed it too with some garden fairy green from My tattered angels, before wiping the colour away, leaving just a faint colour and the images showed up white, Then I stamped again, using Victorian velvet for the roses, and Forest moss for the other images. The roses have been embossed with bridal embossing powder, and the owls and clocks with perfect pearls in gold. After they were heat set, I wiped the rest away with an old nylon stocking, it gets rid of the excess powder in no time! You can't see too much of the resist printing, as the light is not ideal, but you can see the white shadows. I used different embellishments - netting, flowers, lace, some prima leaves and some acetate butterflies and a corner. Was relatively quick and easy to make! was ma second DT piece for *the cheerful stamp pad*, where the theme still is petals.

Okay, that was it for today, had another lazy day yesterday! Have a great day, take care and thanks for visiting!

Sunday again.

Hi everybody, another new week is upon us, time flies faster than I can think! Today is not a sun day but a rain day - I was thinking of going to the big flea market in town, but bot when it's so wet! Pity!
I had a quiet day yesterday - well, actually I have a quiet day nearly every day! and spent my time reading and crafting. I was planning on doing some dreaded h*******k, but I stretched out onto the couch to see if there any cobwebs on the ceiling, and then it was three hours later - the time for doing the H*******k was gone. Bad luck, huh? How good that I didn't fall asleep before my crafting time!

Yesterday I just made some tags. I bought some new pajamas at the discounter's, and they were folded up with two pieces of wonderful white cardboard and 2 sheets of tissue paper. I think it is sooooooo clever of them to give crafting supplies as an extra to their pajamas - they weren't bad either! Anyway, I used one of the pieces of card to cut 4 large tags using the TH die. These I distressed using gradient colours of inks, and then had fun stamping and decorating them. I have made them rather surreal, like the dreams of strange things which do not seem to fit together. The first tag I am entering into the *Simon Says Stamp and Show* challenge, the others are just for fun. Sorry about the light reflexes on the first one!

Ans as i is Sunday, it is time for *Sunday Sketches* over at *Sophia's Blue Chair Diary*. I am sharing a blast from the past again, another picture painted in my holiday in Switzerland so many years ago, reminding me of the duck ponds surrounded by lush green and plants. Sophia is visiting her father, who is very seriously ill, so I am sending her lots of hugs and sparkles and wish her strength for this difficult time. Heather is hosting the swap today.

Thanks for visiting, have a great day and take care!

Getting framed....

Good morning you all! Yesterday was a wild, wet and windy day here, hardly nice weather for going out, so I stayed home and passed the time reading, crafting and listening to music.
Recently I was given a photo frame, made up of 4 frames all stuck together, by a neighbour. She had got it as a present, and didn't want it. It has been mellowing in my hall closet for a few weeks, so I thought it was time to work on it, It was quite new, beautiful, shining, high-gloss white, so I decided to alter that straight away. I painted it with a mixture of old gold acrylic paint, and rock candy crackle in tarnished brass and peeled paint. When it was dry, I toned it down with some stazon timber-brown ink, which I rubbed into the cracks and along the edges. Now it looks as if it has spent the last 50 years in the attic.... I painted the hardboard inserts first with gesso, and then with acrylic paints in ocher, brown, khaki and gold. When they had dried, I stamped them with script and flourish stamps in stazon brown, which I then embossed. Even if not much of it can be seen in the end, I like to *hide* things underneath collages or in pictures.

Some time ago I discovered 4 tiny strips of hand-written manuscript, with illuminated letters. It had been used to sew the binding onto a book dating from 1663. I showed the parchment strips to an expert at the museum, and she said they are from the 14th century, and that old parchments were often re-used to bind or repair *new* books.

As the pieces are so small, they do not have any real monetary value, but I wanted to make something to keep them safe and show them. So I made four mini collages, one to fit in each frame. I have used more scraps of old paper, lace, sack-linen, and some vintage images in each frame. In each one is also a *guardian* -the wise looking man in the first one, a stag's horn beetle in the second, a Mexican deity and an eagle in the third one, and a wise old owl in the last one.

And the last one shows the completed frame, which I have hung on the wall behind my computer table, so I can look at it.

And before I forget, I made my black and white challenge for *Just For fun*. This time I did a fairy tale motive with a unicorn. The sentiment means *Once upon a time*.

Well, this post has once again turned out longer than I intended, sorry! Have a nice day you all, take care and thanks for looking in!

Thursday .... and no mouse!

Hi everybody, today I made it to the coffee maker without seeing any dead mice lurking under my kitchen table, no leaves, either! Got my first cup of coffee without problems, and sneaked back to bed with it for a quarter of an hour which somehow stretched into a good hour. That's one if the good things about being a pensioner!

Yesterday I spent the day with my friend Inge. I buy fresh rolls on the way to her place, she gets the coffee and eggs ready, and has the table nicely laid when I get there, and then we sit over breakfast for about 2 hours, solving the problems of the world - except our own! After that we play cards, then it's time for lunch, then coffee and all of a sudden it's time to go home again. Why does time go so quickly when you're having a good time?

After getting home, I had to make a decision. H******k or some creative time? If you know me a little bit, you will know that I went into my arty kitchen and started making a mess. Actually I wanted to paint, and did start, but ended up making a rather dismal collage instead. I used browns and greens and some gold for the background, and then collaged layers of torn maps and other pictures from a tourist prospect, before adding some sack linen, string, dyed flowers, lace etc. The picture in the middle is an old postcard of *L'inconnue de la Seine* - the unknown female from the Seine. In Wickipedia it tells us, *According to an often-repeated story, the body of the young woman was pulled out of the Seine River at the Quai du Louvre in Paris around the late 1880s. The body showed no signs of violence, and suicide was suspected.
A pathologist at the Paris morgue was so taken by her beauty that he had a moulder make a plaster cast death mask of her face. According to other accounts, the mask was taken from the daughter of a mask manufacturer in Germany. The identity of the girl was never discovered. The moulder who took the cast of the face was believed to be based at the Lorenzi family model-making firm. Claire Forestier, a member of the Lorenzi family, believes that the model was not dead when the cast was taken. She works in the family modelling workshop, and says that a dead body from a river would not have such clear features. She estimated the age of the model at no more than 16, given the firmness of the skin.
In the following years, numerous copies were produced. The copies quickly became a fashionable morbid fixture in Parisian Bohemian society. Albert Camus and others compared her enigmatic smile to that of the Mona Lisa, inviting numerous speculations as to what clues the eerily happy expression in her face could offer about her life, her death, and her place in society.
The popularity of the figure is also of interest to the history of artistic media, relating to its widespread reproduction. The original cast had been photographed, and new casts were created back from the film negatives. These new casts displayed details that are usually lost in bodies taken from the water, but the apparent preservation of these details in the visage of the cast seemed to only reinforce its authenticity.*

There are a lot more stories about her in the internet if anyone is interested. I always found her face and the story so intriguing.
I know this collage is rather different to what I often make, but sometimes I seem to need to do such things! The first photo shows the painted background,

Hope you all have a good day, take care, and thanks for dropping in!

Heeeeeeelp! A dead Mouse in the Kitchen

After getting up this morning, I staggered as usual to the kitchen to make my first coffee of the day. I have always been rather short sighted, and after having many eye operations in the past 15 years, I can't see very well. This morning was still rather dull, and as I stood in front of the coffee maker I looked down at the floor under the table. I have a bench along one wall, and could see something on the floor between the bench and the table - something with a long tail - a MOUSE under my table! It wasn't moving, so I realized it must be dead. Yikes!Now, I am more afraid of spiders than mice, but I still hate the thought of one on my kitchen - never had that before! But, feeling in a heroic mood, I pulled on some rubber gloves, took a piece of kitchen paper, and bending creakily managed to pick up the mouse. And when my hands had stopped shaking enough to look at it clearly, I just laughed out loud:

And all of that within 2 minutes of getting out of bed and before my coffee! Anyway, I disposed of the corpse of the offending leaf, which must have fluttered in through the window, and proceeded to make my coffee!

Apart from that, I managed a few tags yesterday, and spent a lot of time reading and sleeping on my couch.

The first tag is for the *Craft Room Challenge*, where the DT wants to see White on White this week. I used a cardboard tag, painted with gesso, and decorated with the TH Sewing room die, some lace, sack-linen, beads and a few other bits and bobs. I used some scrunched up tissue paper, painted over with gesso, to give the tag more texture and make the flowers stand out more.

The second tag I made just because I love the stamp I have used, and perhaps because it was still flying around on the table from last week....OK, I have put it away now!

And the last tag has been made for Rebecca's *Blog Challenge Garden*, and this time it's not too late! Rebecca wants to see a postage stamp on the tag. I stamped the background with various stamps in archival black, and then made a little collage of stamps and other things.

So that was it for today. Here's wishing you all a good day, take care, and thanks for visiting!

Tuesday Tags

Hi everybody, time is flying, as always, and I was out nearly all day yesterday, so didn't get much done.
All I managed was 2 little tags, and one of them is too late, but I wanted to do it anyway, so better late that never!
The *late* tag is for Rebecca's *Blog Garden Challenge* Faces Challenge. Both tags have been made as double tags - a tag stamped onto a piece of ceramic card, which is extremely smooth and allows easy blending and stamping, and the bottom piece, made from corrugated cardboard and distressed to match. The top tag has been stamped with archival black, clear embossed, and then painted with water colours, before adding some matching flowers and ribbon.

The second tag - this time not late! - is for the *Dragon's Dream it On*, and this week the dragon has been dreaming of nature's bounty, a lovely theme, so I dreamed with her! I made another double tag, as before, but this time decorated with some yellow sacking, autumn leaves, dried flowers and vintage fruit pictures. I also squeezed in the text of *Come ye thankful people, come*, because we do have a lot to be thankful for. I finished it off with a straw bow, which I discovered tied round one of my flower pots.

Okay, that was it for today! I hope to get a bit more done for tomorrow. Have a nice day you all, and take care!