Iceland or Iceland?

Good morning you all, it's party time again. Eva and Kristin are hosting Paint Party Friday again. It's week 5 of year 2 already! And Darcy is hosting week 15 of her Postcard Challenge, where our participants goal is Iceland....

This week Cissie is off for a trip to Iceland, with her friend Thelma in tow.
A couple of days beforehand, Jason and Cissie are sitting in her living room, enjoying tea, cream cakes and a football match on TV. Jason is only listening with half an ear to Cissie....
Jason, I’m going to Iceland on Friday with Thelma. Could you drive us?
Yeah, why not. But 'ang on, didn’t we go there last week? You bought piles of groceries; you can’t have eaten them all already!
Jason, we are going to ICELAND, not ICELAND!

(Iceland is a well known chain of grocery stores in England)
Well, I’m not deaf, am I? I 'eard you the first time!
Jason, I should say, we are FLYING to ICELAND! You need to drive us to Gatwick!
Bloody 'ell, watcha wanna fly for? It ain’t that far!
No Jason! We are flying to ICELAND. We are not going shopping!
Slowly, reality dawns on Jason. He asks, rather horrified,
Ain’t that somewhere at the North Pole? That place with volcanoes and ponies and ice all over the place?
It’s not at the North Pole, Jason. Your geography is very bad. I looked it up in my atlas, and it’s 3 centimetres further south!
Jason nearly chokes on a bite of cream cake, while trying to make sense of Cissie’s description. He still can’t understand WHY they want to go to Iceland, but as he always loses every argument with Cissie, he agrees to drive them to the airport.
They hardly fit through the door of the car, as they are so wrapped in furs and boots, and clutching thick blankets and snow-shoes. Jason pays for the excess baggage at the airport without saying a word, and watches them waddle off, resembling 2 brown bears looking for a place to hibernate....

After a pleasant flight, they arrive safely and are transferred to their hotel. They spend 2 days in Reykjavik before travelling on to Akureyri.

They are delighted to find real shops and plenty of restaurants, all of which offer a large selection of tasty and high calorie food, even though they are not always quite sure what it is....Perhaps that's just as well!!

(Photos from Wikipedia Commons)

They see the northern lights, and swim in hot springs. And it is not quite as cold as they thought it would be, and Cissie is able to wear her new purple silk blouse and skirt, made by her dressmaker from the silk Jason bought for her in Singapore. And one of the Iceland ponies forms a great attachment to Cissie, and follows her about; she can’t understand why....

And Jason is enjoying his peaceful week at home....

For PPF I once again have a WIP, I quite like it so far, but don't know what to do to finish it again....I have re-used a canvas, which has been painted with several layers of acrylics, after using a stencil to add some texture with structure paste.

I'm sorry I didn't get round to visiting everybody last week; I had problems with Blogger and was not always able to comment, but I was at least able to read the blogs. Hope this week will be easier.
Have a good day you all, take care, and thanks for visiting!

More Tags, a little Giveaway and a Cloudy Face

Hi you all! The week is flying by again, and the day never seems to have enough time to do everything! Yesterday I went shopping and bought a new mouse - for my computer. The old one was struggling hard to do its duty, but was on its last legs or tracking ball or whatever it is that keeps a mouse going. I had the old one for fifteen years, so I'm not complaining, as it outlived several laptops, but now it deserves to rest.
Yesterday afternoon I had a fun time watching birds feeding on my balcony. I discovered some fat balls in the cupboard whilst tidying, and thought the birds could do with some extra food as it's still very cold out, and they were queuing up and squabbling like kids waiting for sweeties! And while watching the birds I saw a strange cloud scudding across the sky. It was real April weather, wet, windy, cloudy, sunny and cold all at the same time, with plenty of variations. I really can see a face in profile on the left of it - can you?

And I made some tags, playing about with a nice stock of paper which I found while clearing up, and some stamps which had evidently gone into hiding!
The first one has been made with a trimmed cabinet card die-cut. The background has been stamped using the LaBlanche BG stamp that I recently unearthed, and resist ink, which had also disappeared. Then I stamped over it with a script stamp before stamping and clear embossing the image. I have just used Victorian velvet; the image appears darker because it has been embossed and then given a dust over with some perfect pearls in bronze. I added some lace, flowers and a ribbon from my stash.

For the other tags I have used distress ink again for the background, and worked in one colour - broken china in the first one and a pink from colour box fluid chalk inks for the second one. They are just experiments, I do like to just play around and get inky....

I am entering today's tags into the *Inky Backgrounds* RAQ at Unruly Paper Arts

I got a new follower yesterday, Julia Stratford-Wright, so would like to thank her for joining! And I have just seen that this is post number 666! And the first tag today was image 666 - I wonder if this is a special day?? So I will pick one of the people who leave comments today to win a little giveaway; some tags and a few surprises. Good luck! The winner will be chosen on Sat. 14th at 6:6:6 - six minutes and six seconds past 6a.m.

I will be back tomorrow with the next episode of Cissie and Jason. Have a good day, take care, and thanks for coming by!

A Tag a Day....

Hi everybody, hope you are all well and fit. It's still cold, windy and wet here - it can only get better! (I hope!)
I visited a friend yesterday, so didn't get much crafting done, just one tag. I used a TH cabinet card die, but cut it a bit narrower. The background has been stamped with resist ink, using a bg stamp from LaBlanche, and then coloured with Victorian velvet and Memento London Fog. I stamped the text and the image - both stamps from LaBlanche - with Stazon brown before clear embossing. The trimmings are all from my stash. I am linking again to Artful Times

Have a good day you all, take care, and thanks for visiting!

Tag Tuesday on Tag Tuesday, wow!

Hi you all, it's Tag Tuesday today and I have actually got my tag ready! The theme this week is *Spring Cleaning*, not really my ticket. But the reason why I just got one little tag done yesterday, was that I cleared out, tided and re-sorted all my stash drawers. Made lots of rediscoveries, met up with lots of old friends. Discovered that I now have 4 (yes FOUR) hot-glue guns, although mostly I haven't been able to find one....
The background of the tag has been stamped with resist ink, using a bg stamp from LaBlanche, and then coloured with crushed olive distress ink, before stamping the lady with Stazon olive green and clear embossing her. I added a few beads for a necklace. The fairy image is from LaBlanche, the flowers from my stash.

Have a great day you all, take care, and thanks for dropping by!

Challenges

Hi everybody, hope you are all enjoying your Easter break! Here it has been very cold, really freezing, but we have had some sun, so that was at least something!

I made a tag and a card this weekend. The tag is for the new Artful Times Blog, where the challenge is to make a tag. My tag has been cut from the cardboard packaging of some Prima flowers; as it is already printed, I just needed to ink the edges. I stamped the Leonardo da Vinci lady (Lost Coast Stamps) with olive green Stazon and clear embossed it. Then I added some pieces of gold chain from a broken bracelet and a scrap of lace to give her a collar. The flowers are from Prima, and the fibres and ribbon were in my scrap bag. The quote says, *May the dreams of your past be the reality of your future*. The tag was quick and easy to make, with the exception of threading the beads onto the fibres....

The card is my DT piece for the challenge at The Cheerful Stamp Pad, where the theme for the next 2 weeks is *From the Past*, sponsored by *Altered Pages*.
I have used speciality stamping paper from LaBlanche, distressed with Victorian velvet and crushed sage DIs. The background has been stamped with a script stamp and some flourishes (both from LaBlanche). I added some paper lace, rub-ons, prima-flowers and an image from my stash. The cameo is one of a boxful I bought years back from EBAY. I have tried to give the feeling of past times with the soft colours and floral images.

Have a good day you all, take care, and thanks for visiting!

Happy Easter & some freebies to download

Here's wishing all those who celebrate Easter a Happy and blessed holiday with your families and friends!
I have chosen some pictures from one of my old German Newspapers from 1899; please feel free to download and use them if you want to!

Have a good day you all, take care, and thanks for visiting!

Postcard Challenge, PPF & Calendar Challenge

It's Friday again, and that means party time. Over at PPF, hosted as always by Katrin and Eva, we have already arrived at week 4 of the second year. Darcy's Postcard Challenge has been running since the beginning of the year, and this week Singapore is our goal. And I am a few days late with my April Calendar for *The Kathryn Wheel*, but now it is finished.

After their long weekend in Istanbul Cissie and Helga are pleased to have a few quiet weeks back in their corner of London, visiting their fave restaurants to keep their strength up, shopping and playing card-games. Jason often joins them for a *light lunch* - fish and chips, cream cakes and pots of hot, sweet tea. Jason has been invited to a business holiday in Singapore, where he is meeting other antique shop owners to talk shop, make plans, and have a good time. Cissie thinks they could hold their meeting in London instead of flying so far away, but Jason tells her that they need a change of air to get their brainstorming going. Cissie wonders how people who are so brainless and gormless as Jason and his buddies are going to find anything to storm….But Jason is determined to fly, and so he packs his case. Cissie gives him some good advice, as always. *Take some decent clothes, not the shmattes (Yiddish for rags!) you always wear! Behave when you are there! In Singapore they are very strict, so don’t throw any litter onto the street and do everything people tell you! Don’t buy any drugs!*
Jason says, *Who bought those funny cigarettes in Holland? You or me??*
Cissie asks him to bring her a few yards of silk for a new dress. Jason says he will, whilst thinking, *Blimey, she’ll need a few miles, not yards!*
The flight is long, but pleasant. Singapore airlines is famed for it’s good food, service and beautiful hostesses, and Jason’s expectations are in no way disappointed.

(Picture Collage from Wikipedia)

In Singapore they do a sightseeing tour on their first day, enjoy seeing the clean streets, the stylish metropolis, the Lion of Singapore, the parks and the Island of Samosa. But for Jason, and most of his buddies, the clubs, restaurants and exceptionally beautiful girls are the preferred sights, as always. Shopping and food seem to be the main occupations of the people, and Jason is glad to enjoy their hobbies, too. He buys a bale of lilac silk for Cissie, and is sure she will love it. He manages to spend the whole five days with no greater catastrophes than getting drunk every night and running after each and every pretty girl he sees.

The postcard shows Jason in front of the flag, flanked by the lions, the symbols of Singapore. He looks rather bleary eyed, wonder what he was up to the night before?

The calendar page is my entry for the Kathryn Wheel Challenge. I painted the background with three different shades of blue, using a credit card to spread the paint. Then I added a bit more colour with some colourwash sprays. The *days* are made to look like egg halves. I cut ovals with a Sizzix die, and cut them apart by hand. The chickens have been cut from serviettes and fixed with golden gel.

For PPF I am sharing a picture I made back in 1992, which I *discovered* whilst clearing up my bedroom last weekend. Perhaps this is a sign to clear up more often!? I have used black ink and coloured pencils.

So, that was it for today. Have a great day you all, take care, and thanks for looking by! Happy Easter!