Modes of Transport

Hi you all! Hope today finds you all fit and well. Yesterday I made a little mini-book for the challenge over at Artful Times, who want to see something about modes of transport this week. I found a small transparent plastic box in my drawer, which still had a few pins in it, so I tipped them out and used it to make a box for the book. I covered the lid - which was very scratched - with a piece of the same map-printed paper I used for the accordion book, and stamped it with an old car.

The pages of the accordion book have been stamped with different motives to show various modes of transport. The car on the front cover has been stamped, fussy cut and decoupaged. The car and horse figures at the front are pieces from my Monopoly set. These stamps are all from Chocolate Baroque.

The reverse has been inked with ancient linen DI, and stamped with more - and some rather strange - transport ideas. Here the stamps are from Catherine Moore and Scrollswork.

Here you can see the little box at the back, it is just a bit smaller than a match-box.

This was a fun make; I love making little books! (And postcards and cards and tags and cardboard stuff and painting and....and....)

Have a great day you all, take care, and thanks for looking in!

Tag Tuesday

Hi everybody! The theme this week at Tag Tuesday is  'Swimming', and that includes everything  that has something to do with it. My first tag is a little man who was determined to fill his pool although his Mum had said no! The photo has been backed with some of my hand-painted papers, and I added some pirate accessories, and Noah's Ark, which I found in my button box.

I love this vintage image. I have mounted it onto a distressed and painted cardboard tag, cut in the shape of a beach hut. The shabby bow is a scrap of cotton, and the sun is a yellow daisy. I have added gold glass-glitter sand and some shells.

I discovered these 2 buxom wenches in their jazzy swim-suits, and had to put them on a tag. The tag is a piece of a cornflakes box, covered with some of the blue cotton I used for the bow in the tag above. I fussy cut the images and then rolled them round a pencil to make them stand out before fixing them with foam squares. I wonder what they won those cups for??

 And these are some mini-flip-flops, which we all need for the beach and swimming....

I made this card for my DT piece at 'The Cheerful Stamp-Pad', using the lovely silhouette from Floppy Latte Digitals, *Music of Love*. I have printed the image onto some glossy paper, over-stamped it with  music notes (LaBlanche) and distressed the background in gradient colours. I have kept the embellishments simple, just a ribbon and a small flower with liquid pearls at the centre. The text is mounted inside the card as easel-stopper.

Here's wishing you all a good day. Take care, have fun, and thanks for coming by!

Grungy Postcards and Salvaged Plants

Hi you all, hope you are enjoying your weekend. Here it has been quiet, and I have been rather lazy, couldn't get myself to do much today. I wanted to show you the pics of my 'salvaged plants'. At the supermarket where I mostly shop, they often put plants at the front which have definitely passed their sell-by date, and which you can take for nothing. These were all specimens which looked totally the worse for wear, dried up, drooping and sad. But I took them home, planted them in my flower box, or in pots , and here they are after a couple of weeks of TLC, looking fit and well.

Yesterday I made some grungy postcards for this weeks challenge over at *Out of a Hat* creations, where the theme is to make a travel postcard. I used the blended paper technique to make the background, and then made a collage of little vintage London images. The 'backsides' have been distressed and stamped using images from Artemio and Chocolate Baroque. I have placed the cards on one of my fave books to take the photos, *London Living* from Lisa Lovatt-Smith. The quotes on the second and third cards are  from Samuel Johnson, and the rather original spelling is also from him!

And as I want to send some mail out this week, I have made 2 mail art envelopes, which have been partly printed and partly stamped.

Okay, that was it, time for another coffee. have a good day, take care, and thanks for dropping in!

Cissie on the Isle of Man

Friday is Party Time, so welcome to Paint Party Friday, week 17 0f year 2, hosted by Eva and Kristin, and Darcy's postcard challenge, week 27. Our participants are off to the Isle of Man this week.

Last time Jason and Shannon were exploring Illinois along Route 66.
Jason can’t believe his eyes when he sees his Mum sitting at the table with Cissie and Thelma when they get home. Being Jason, he says ‘Bloody 'ell, Mum, what you doin’ ‘ere?’ But he- and Shannon- are very happy that Queenie is there, and Jason spends a lot of time sitting with his Mum, catching up on what’s been going on in their lives. Shannon is a bit put out that he wants to be alone with his Mum for a couple of hours. Thelma says, ‘Give the boy a bit of time. Just think of all the time we’ve spent together!’ ‘Rather not’, hisses Shannon, it was 28 years too long, if you ask me!’
But she cheers up when the ladies tell her that they are off to the Isle of Man for a long weekend, and she will have 4 lovely days with Jason all to herself….
The Isle of Man is another of Cissie’s special missions. Queenie has told her that Jason’s dad was planning to go there when ‘he b*ggered off and left her sitting with the baby!’
The three ladies pack their cases. Queenie can’t believe that Cissie and Thelma are taking so much stuff. She just takes a shoulder bag with jeans, shorts and few t-shirts. Jason and Shannon bring them to the station, and they take the train to Liverpool, and then the ferry, operated by the Isle of Man Steamship Company, to Douglas. The weather is good, and the ladies are hungry after the long train journey, where they just had an outside hamper of snacks to keep them going. After finding their hotel, they go out to look for a restaurant, and Cissie is really happy to see several fish-and-chip shops, where they enjoy double portions of everything before going to a café for their tea and cakes.
On the next day they do some sightseeing, and visit Peel Castle and other sights of the Island. They take a coach, and manage to see all the famous sights in one day, as the island is not exactly large.

 The escutcheon

 Peel Castle

The Calf of Man seen from the Cragneash

The Braaid, in the central Isle of Man, with remnants of a Celtic-Norse roundhouse and two longhouses, ca. 650-950 AD

The Triskelion Sculpture

Manx Loaghtan Sheep

(All photos courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)

In the evening they meet up with a private detective, who has been making enquiries about Henry, Jason’s Dad. He says he doesn’t have good news, as Henry got killed a pub brawl some years back, and offers to show them where he is buried. Queenie does not really want to go, but decides in the end to tag along. At the graveyard, Cissie and Thelma are very sad, Queenie not. ‘I only came to make sure he really is here!’ she says. Thelma whispers to Cissie, ‘Now I know where Jason gets it from!’
Queenie says she doesn’t want to talk about it again, and they all go to the pub for the rest of the evening….
Cissie says to Thelma, ‘She can’t help being like that, she’s had a hard life! At least we tried!’

On the journey home, Queenie is a lot more cheerful than she was on the way there, and is happy to be getting back to London.

Here is the postcard they send Jason and Shannon. I have superimposed a statue of the Triskelion over Peel Castle, and the heads show Cissie, Thelma (with the blond perm) and the red headed Queenie. The triskele or Triskelion is an ancient symbol, consisting of three branches or legs, that radiate from a centre. The symbol is found on the Isle of Man, and earlier on Sicily.The Manx triskelion is known in the Manx language as Ny Tree Cassyn ("The Three Legs"). The symbol has been associated with the island since at least the 13th century.

For Paint Party Friday I have re-used an old canvas. It originally had a clock in it, which was broken. It has been over-painted to give it more colour, sprayed, and partly varnished and then heat-bubbled to give texture. I added a photo of my Great Aunt in 1918, which has been cut with a TH cabinet card die, and then varnished and aged, before being mounted onto the frame in the middle.

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

More cards

Hi you all! I can hardly believe it, we've had sunshine 3 days in a row - a wonder! But the weather men have warned us that storms are on their way, and it is very humid. But after so much rain and grey skies it is just lovely to feel the sun! I visited my friend yesterday, and we spend the day as usual, playing card, drinking coffee, eating, drinking coffee and nattering. And in the evening I made 2 more quick cards, done with my free downloads from Crafts you print. The only part that is fiddly is cutting out the small pieces.

 I have added a bit to the first one - some liquid pearls for the spots on the toadstools and the little girl's hair-band, and some litter flocking powder on the bunny and the little lady's skirt. I've had the flocking powder in my drawer for years, so it was good to at last be able to use it for something!

For the second card, I just added a hat pin, some ribbon to the handbag, and used some clear varnish on some of the objects to give them more shine.

Tomorrow I shall be back with the latest episode of Cissie's travels, and  - I hope - something for Paint Party Friday. Have a good day, take care, and thanks for coming by!

Wednesday

Hi you all, it's Wednesday already, and yesterday we had sunshine here and it felt like summer....Perhaps that's why I made a lot of summery things. At *Out of a Hat Creations* the team want to see work with the theme summertime. I have made a tag, inspired by a corn field where lots of poppies were growing, which I saw on Monday.  When I see things like that, I know it's summer! The tag has been distressed with tumbled glass and wild honey, and stamped repeatedly and rather randomly with a poppy stamp from the €uro shop, and then coloured with water-colour pencils. the beads have been made from some remnants of ribbon, rolled up and bound with gold wire.

The next card  is for a little boy who wants to be a pirate when he grows up....I haven't gone mad with the spelling - *ahoy* is *ahoi* in German! The background paper is cut from a 12x12" sheet, and the boy and the bird have been fussy cut and decoupaged.

The next two cards have been made with free downloads from CÜP. I printed them out onto glossy paper, and then cut out all those little squares and stacked them neatly I think the card looks quite nice, and was quick and easy to make, I just added the bow made of seam-binding and the glass leaves.

This one has poppies on it again, and was fast and easy to make. I think this is one way to get a quick card when time is short and ideas are dwindling....

 And I have another of Narda's jokes for you:

TODAY'S SMILE!

My daughter's third-grade teacher had assigned the children
To write a story titled "My Biggest Surprise."

Not until the end of the school year did we see Marina's
Work. It read: "I got up this morning and I ran into Mommy
And Daddy's bed and hopped in. But it wasn't Mommy at all.
It was Mrs. Del Campo!"

What her essay neglected to say was that we had called Mrs.
Del Campo late at night to stay with our children while I
Took my wife to the hospital to have our third child.

Hope the sun is shining for you today! Take care, have a good day, and thanks for dropping in!

Tag Tuesday

It's Tuesday already and that means it's Tag Tuesday again. Our theme this week is * seaside*. I have made 2 tags, I'm not really happy with either of them, but didn't have the energy yesterday to do more than read and rest.

The first tag has been made using an image from one of my old German magazines from 1898, showing a trip to the seaside! I have printed the tag onto photo paper, and mounted it on a piece of hand painted paper. I have added 2 of my hand-made beads, and 2 others from a necklace that broke last week. I wanted to use some shells, but the box with the shells and other fishy things has gone AWOL; I will probably find it at Xmas when I am looking for the Easter eggs, or something like that!

The second tag has been distressed with tumbled glass and wild honey. The stamps are from an American company that stopped producing last year, but I've forgotten the name! Update - it was Scrollswork! I added some gold glass glitter for sand. The fibres were from a hat I kintted for someone.

So, that's all for today. Have a good day, take care, and thanks for visiting.