Crab apples, ducks and Tower Bridge

Hi everybody!

We had another wonderful, spring-like day with lots of sunshine, and I just love walking with the sun warming my back!

At Moo Mania the theme is London, which is, of course, just right for me. I made a very simple tag, using a stamp from Artemio. The background was distressed with stormy skies,  London Fog and tumbled glass DIs. I stamped the image with archival black and clear embossed it, the birds were drawn, The label was in my stash.  I fixed the tag to some hammered  and distressed card. The Tower of London is very precious to me, as I was born and grew up just a few hundred yards away, and we often used to play around there, and at the Tower, or go bathing at Queen Mary's beach by the Tower in the summer. When I see the Bridge I feel I am home.

I am linking to Moo Mania  - London

Today I walked to Schloss Kalkum and visited the ducks. I hope you can see how much better my eye looks today!

The ducks were, as always hungry, and enjoyed their bread and salad leaves.

And I found the wonderful flowering crab-apple bushes  in the hedge in front of the house where I live.

Here's hoping the sun will shine for you today! 

Have a great day, take care, and thanks a lot for coming by!

Lots of this and that and Happy Mail

Hi everybody!

Hope you are getting some good weather where you are. Thanks again for all the nice comments and mails and good wishes for my eye, it is getting better day by day.

Today I am sharing a card I made for one of my DT pieces over at Gecko Galz, using one of the images from Bookmarks 2. I matted it with some dark green card and some hand-painted paper, and mounted it onto a metallic card. I used some turquoise ribbon to make a shabby bow and some die-cuts in coordinating colours. I am glad I made such a lot of stuff in advance, but hope to be able to do some crafting again later in the week.

We had a frosty night here, and a sunny, but cool day, which was lovely for walking, and good for me! I love the colours here at the Rhine:

This pair was also out for a walk and hissed and clucked at me:

Just a feather balancing on a twig and blowing in the wind:

The plants were budding and sprouting everywhere, and it was wonderful for me to see everything three-dimensional again:

On my afternoon walk I saw the swan on one of the lakes again, and as it was difficult to get a clear shot through the bushes, I walked across a field to get to the less wooded side of the lake.

I was pleased to get near enough for a clear shot, but my trainers look bad. Some parts of the field were visibly marshy, which wasn't too bad, as I could walk round those bits; other parts looked fresh and green, but were treacherously wet,  and it really squelched and slurped as I pulled my feet out of it - but I got my photos. My trainers will enjoy going for a spin in the washing machine.

And Friday brought me happy mail from the States. Sandy sent me this wonderful stamp from Rhyn, which I have secretly been longing for for ages - can she read minds? I will have fun with it!

And this lovely magazine, full of wonderful ideas, and with such a pretty bambi stamp!

  And a beautiful card to accompany my presents.

Diane sent me this gorgeous embossed and cut out Valentine's card, a real work of art,  and it should have got here on time, but the post/customs evidently liked it and kept it for a bit, so it had a long journey. There was something nice hidden in the card, too, but I'm not telling you what it is, that's going to be my sweet secret!

Thanks a lot Diane and Sandy, I very much appreciate your kindness!

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

As pretty as a picture is not always true....

Hi everybody!

Today I am sharing another of my DT peieces for Gecko Galz, made way back in January, and kept so that I would have some stuff to show now when I can't be doing new work. For the journal page I used an digi-stamp from Aurora Wing Stamps, printed onto my ready made background. The digis are available at GG, and great to combine with other GG products.. I added colour to parts of the image using gel pens and a white highlighter. The fish and shells are vintage scraps. I am sure some of you will now be singing 'I want to be....' all day - have fun!

 These 2 photos were taken from my wonderful balcony this morning. The view from the windows, and my big hall closet, aka 'the bottomless pit',  are definitely the best things my appartment has to offer....

And another view from this morning, even though it is not as lovely as the view from the balcony. But it is looking better than a few days back!

(Sorry, never had time to look for my eye make-up!)

And 2 nice views from my walk this afternoon. I love the different colours on the ground - the ploughed field, the green grass and the freshly harvested rape seed field.

The wonderful anchor:

Looking through the bushes to one of the little lakes:

 

I am linking to Paper Saturdays and AJJ - A fantasy scene

And I have a message for my dear Sandy: 

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaank you! Your lovely post arrived today!

 I will take some photos at the weekend! You are a Sweetie, that's for sure!

Have  a great day, take care, and thanks a lot for coming by!

What makes a man a man?

Hi everybody!

Just a quick post, as I need to rest my eyes as much as possible this week after the OP.

Thanks again to all who left such encouraging good wishes on my blog, they were very much apprecated, I will be round to visit you all again next week when my reading ban has been lifted!

 

I made this journal page last week, after listening to a talk show on TV about masculine and feminine attributes, so this time I concentrated on the masculine ones, and wrote all the words I could think of. Perhaps you can suggest a few more? The background was a brush-wipe page using blues and rust, and the silhoutettes were painted with Viva Color Rust paint and outlined with white.

I am linking to Paint Party Friday, hosted as always by Eva and kristin.

The lovely photos were taken on Monday, before I went into hospital, I love watching the beautiful sunrise each day from my window.

Have a great day, take care, and thanks a lot for coming by!

Eye am back....

Hi you all!

First of all, thanks for all the good wishes, it did me good to know so many people were thinking of me. The OP went well, and I can see very well with my left eye now, which is wonderful. BUT....the doc noticed some irregularities on the retinas of both eyes, and ordered some angiogrammes to be done, which is a special photographic procedure to get clear pictures of the retinas, and they do not look good. My next appointment at the hospital will be in three weeks.... For the time being, I have eyedrops 5 times a day for the operated eye, ointment for the night, and medication for the high pressure in my eye, so that should keep me occupied for the time being. And to crown it all, I look like a cross between a prize boxer with a black eye and Dracula's mother, but hey, who cares? I decided to show you a picture of Olive Thomas instead of me, she was definitely better looking!

The card here is one of my Gecko Galz DT pieces for February, made a month back, and kept in store till now. The images are from the Olive Thomas Collage Sheet. She was a star in the silent film era back in the 1920s. I matted the card with some silver and black sequined material and red card. I added the pearls to her hat.

Okay, I can only work for a few minutes at a time just now, so need to get off the computer now. I will be round to visit your blogs again next week.

Take care, have a good day, and thanks a lot for coming by!

Keeping my eye on you....

Hi you all!

We had a lovely day here, with lots of sunshine, and I was able to enjoy my walks in between getting some dreaded H*******K done, and clearing off my work-table so that the wood is visible again.

This card was one of my DT pieces for Gecko Galz this month, and I thought it would be appropriate to save it for today....(Black English Humour?)  I used an image from the Arty Jewels Collage Sheet and BG paper from the shabby Chic Garden 1 collage sheet. The matting is from coredinations and the rest from my stash.

Have a great day, take care, and thanks for coming by.

See you soon!

A journal page and happy mail

Hi everybody!

Thanks to all who left encouraging messages on my blog or mailed me, with so many people thinking of me the OP just has to go well. I think I am just nervous as I have already had so many eye OPs, this will be the 7th one, and because of that it is a bit more risk. But on the other hand, 7 is a good number!

This is another page I made last week. I pasted old book paper and tissue tape onto the page, and cleaned my brush on it after using the rust and blue on other stuff. I added more colour with pastel chalks to fill in the gaps. I have once again used magazine cut-outs and various stuff out of my overfull bit boxes and from my (rather very untidy) table. I had so much fun putting on layer after layer that I had problems to stop, but sooner or later I did. I am linking to Conny's Mix it Monthly - pets, and 

Moo Mania- old book pages.

I received happy post today from Chrissie, who sent me a beautiful card with good wishes for my OP, and some postcards, which bring back happy memories for me, as they are places which I used to visit when I was in living in England. One card shows a painting from David Hockney, who I got to meet many years back when he had an exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, near where I was living at the time. Thanks for your kindness, Chrissie!

Chrissie made this postcard herself:

My room mate at college came from Durham, and while staying with her I visited the beautiful cathedral there:

I found this beautiful tree stump covered in moss and lichens on my way to visit the ducks and geese on Friday:

I had fun standing watching this beautiful pair at Schloss Kalkum. They ate my salad leaves, then hissed at me and turned their backs!

Have a great day, take care, and thanks a lot for coming by, I really appreciate your support!