Ely Cathedral & Harvest Festival

Just got back from a lovely weekend in Ely, Cambridgeshire.  We actually stayed in Stretham, a tiny village close by, in a lovely pub called the Red Lion which did the most fab food and had the best barmen in the world working there.  Only snag was the WiFi connection did not reach to our bedroom so I had to use it in the bar (much to the amusement of one of the locals).

When we arrived in Ely we went to the local market and I fell in love with this stall - look at the bread and then at the cakes.  Yum Yum Yum!

... and the ice cream van.

An d now to the Cathedral - this is a display in the outside entrance

and inside we have

Sheep ... and ...

 Hens

I like the idea of this Prayer Net

When the Cathedral was built Ely was an island in a sea of rivers and swamps.  fishing formed an important part of peoples' livelihood.  We were asked to take a piece of wool and fasten it into the net as a symbol of our renewed determination to follow Jesus whatever the cost.

Below is an impressive display of produce from the farming community...

... and these are just some of the wonderful floral displays that adorned every single pillar in the Cathedral

In the Lady Chapel they had a display entitled "Old Macdonalds Farm" - something for the children.  You can hopefully imagine how large it was from this photograph.  Sorry about the blue tinge, I forgot to change the setting.

Here it is in more detail ...

Complete with Old Macdonald

Who had his pint and food to hand

There was even a duck pond

And one other famous face was there, in the Cathedral

Do you know who he is?

I had better leave it there for tonight, might get a bit more done tomorrow or the day afterwards - hope I am not boring you all.  Night (yawn) night.

Kindness and Flying

First of all let me say a BIG Welcome to my newest followers.  Only ten to go and then we will be having a draw of all members (no need to do a comment) to see who gets a gift from me.  No restrictions on where you live.

Now to show you a couple of cards I have made and tell you the story behind the making.

Recently I wanted to take a flight and because of my breathing problems and the long walk in Manchester airport I asked for assisted travel (as usual - been doing it for a couple of years and it helps to not have the long walk).  This was with a travel company (Thomson) who when they heard of my problem said I would not be able to fly unless I produced a "fit to fly" letter from my doctor.  This was despite my telling them I had flown to America and back a couple of times with the same problem.

I duly went to my GP (she is lovely) but in view of my recent surgery she said she would rather I got my cardiologist to let her know this was ok.  Now all this was very last minute.

Rang my cardiologist's secretary, on the Friday, to get the wheels in motion but she was on holiday.  A lovely young lady said she would send for my notes so they would be on her desk for her return after the weekend.  Monday came and at lunchtime I got a call "from the cardiologist himself" to say I was fine to fly and he was informing my GP.

I was blown away that HE would ring me and so I felt he and his secretary both deserved a card making.  This is the one I made for Dr Little

A mask with various Distress Inks and a brush for the background and for the tag, Tim H stamps and a bit of masking on the tag itself, sentiment on the left embossed.  Underneath the tag are some more words.  No significance with the images to the consultant, he is into football but I have nothing suitable.

Now for his secretary (and a mention for the other young lady I spoke with on Friday) I made this one

Not a clue on her age but she sounded young, don't they all when you get to my age?  Thought those Clinton type images are popular with a wide age range so chose this one from Dimension.  Painted with my Twinkling H2o's, using my new Grand Nestie from Oyster (bought at weekend) and an easel card was ready for the post.

Now I need to make one for my GP - another story, but she pulled out the stops for me too.

Challenge 15 - Fur or Feathers

This is my circular card for the "Fur or Feathers" challenge, chosen by me on the Artful Times Blog this time.  The image is one of my little dog, Oliver, a Cavalier King Charles who is no longer with us.  It does not make me sad, it makes me smile as I remember all the happy times we had.

It was a competition run by a stamp making company in America who wanted photographs of your pets.  I had this charming photo of Oliver and so I sent it up - imagine my delight when I heard I had won first place - and two rubber stamps were to be made from the photograph and I would get an artists drawing too.  This is using the smaller of the two stamps (that has the words on as shown) and I made a small circular card with my Spellbinders die and my Grand Calibur to mount him on.

I also made one for the "feathers" part of the challenge and here is my bird card:

This is a tri-card with a bird stamped behind the aperture which was first of all coloured with my Pan Pastels and then coloured in with watercolours.  A tag was stuck on and then a Candi, over the hole in the tag, completed it.

I do hope some of you join in with this challenge - remember it is fur or feathers or you can do a combination.  See you over at Artful Times where you can see what Von and Sam have done.

ps only 9 more followers to go and I can have my prize draw for ... something with pages.

175th WOYWW

Thought I would change the heading around a bit and put the number first.  Can I please ask that WOYWW'ers put your number alongside your comment, it makes life so much easier to find you and  comment back.  It is especially difficult if you have more than one blog and we have to sift through them all to find the right one.

What is a WOYWW'er?  Well it stands for What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday and a group of us get together and show our work desks, courtesy of the boss Julia, and then have a nosey at what everyone is doing.  Join in, it's good fun and you make some lovely friends. Speaking of which lots of them are joining up for a GIANT CROP this coming weekend.  Sadly I cannot go :(   If you, dear reader, are planning on attending - have a whale of a time!  Sending my love to you all.

Just a reminder too that when I reach the double zero in followers I will be sending out a gift to someone (clue, it has pages).  Just one of my lucky followers will get the gift.  No need to apply by doing a comment to any posting - will just take a random person from the whole lot when it gets to 300.

Now to the real business - my desk - or as it was on Tuesday night:

My Tiny Stash of things bought at Harrogate

My bag that fits my Grand Calibur (new from a friend)

Shades of Bet Lynch?

Some of the Pan Pastel Diecuts 

Now this is really how my desk is/was earlier (10 minutes ago) - once Harrogate had been cleared away I once more tipped out my parcel of goodies from Jan (LLJ to you WOYWW'ers) and here are lots of trimmings for me to play with.

Sorted into colour families for ease of use when I get around to it. Well kind of sorted as some were so colourful they fit into more than one category.

And finally, here they are bagged up and ready to be put away. Thing is, I am so tired now that I think it will have to wait until morning.  It's almost midnight, I am shattered (five early morning get ups in a row) and bed is calling.

Night Night, God Bless.

Harrogate Weekend

This weekend was the Great Northern Papercraft Show once again - my very favourite of all the shows - which saw us heading up to the beautiful town of Harrogate once again.  First of all a stop at York Shopping Outlet on the Friday afternoon and then an "intended" trip into York itself.  I say "intended" because we were in a long queue of traffic and seeing so many people doing a "U-ey" in the road we did one too and headed straight back into Harrogate.  York will have to wait for me to visit it until some time later.  Once again, on the way up, we saw lots of fields covered in water, the aftermath of the terrible floods that the beautiful city of York and surrounding area suffered.  It must have been a mess for these fields to still be so under water.

Anyway, on to the show which found me once again working for the lovely "Oyster family" and I must first of all say "Joan, it was lovely to meet you".  A lady came up to me on Saturday whilst I was dem'ing and said "you don't know me but I am one of your followers". How lovely it was to meet a follower of my blog.  Joan, I am so sorry but I cannot remember the name of your blog but if you read this please make yourself known to me on here.  I was so chuffed to meet you.  Never had that happen before.

Saturday saw my friends Sam and Maz visiting from Grimsby and Lorraine from Crosby came along too.  We four were all at a workshop in Harrogate a while back so it was nice to meet up again. Here we are with Tracey - my lovely boss.

Wish I wasn't so tall as I always end up looking "stooped" on the photos when I bring myself down to all these shorter folks.  That's me on the left, Tracey on my Calibur, Lorraine, Maz and then Sam.

Saturday saw me demonstrating, first of all the Grand Calibur and then a change for me, the Pan Pastels.  Must admit I was enjoying myself so much with these that I carried on with them on the Sunday and my poor GC never came out of its bag.  Now if any of you want to try the Pan Pastels they have a great starter pack which I was selling. Normally the individual pots retail at £4.95 each (Tracy also does them at 5 for £20) but we were selling the starter packs for £35 and they contain seven pots (so that works out at your total price of £35) PLUS a tray (retailing £8) PLUS an applicator with two foam sleeves and two big sponges.  That means you get the sponges and the tray for FREE.  They were going like hot cakes so get yourself off to the website and have a look whilst they still have them in stock.  Well worth buying and they make a lovely addition to your Christmas list.

Lorraine was staying in the same hotel as we were so Saturday night we went off to 'The Squinting Cat' for something to eat and Lorraine and I had a shared dessert - a chocolate dough pizza.  Having had one huge piece here is Lorraine debating whether or not to have a second.  We decided against it so it went home for her teenage son. Looks as if she is saying "ooh" here.

Sunday, Lorraine drove me into the show so Chas could stay on in the hotel for another 40 winks where she had a couple of workshops booked and we had a chance to look around and say "hi" to some old friends before the show started.

Sorry you are so "blue" Tracey, but I forgot to change my setting on the camera back to "daylight".  Unfortunately this is the only photo I have of her demonstrating the Shimmer Sheetz (click on the link to find out more about them on a blog and here to find out about them from Oyster Stamps and get an order in quickly) which were a big hit at the show.  Some beautiful samples where Tracey had used the sanding blocks to sand back the sheets and reveal the beautiful undertones they had.

Below, Graham takes a well needed coffee break whilst Martine surveys all her work with the new eBoss machine (on pre-order from Oyster Stamps) - I want one!  It cuts fabric as well as paper.  I really want one.

Here's the Lovely Liam taking cash as usual.

It was good to see my friends Leandra and Mark at the show with their wonderful Paperartsy products.  They have been sorely missed at a lot of shows so I am sure crafters will welcome them back.  Here you can see Mark in the red checked shirt and a little bit of one of the twins, George, who was doing his best to drive me mad by jumping in on the photo.

You can just about see Leandra at her dem table on this shot of the whole stand.

Finally a photograph of the lovely Martine with her big smile as she packs up at the end of the weekend show.  Love this photo of you babes, and see you in Anaheim!

Nearly forgot to show you a photo of Spencer, who went to the show with me on the Sunday but spent most of his time in my pocket.  Here he is lounging in the hotel with his winter hoody at the side of him as it was lovely and warm in the room.  He really is a much travelled little bear.  I'll leave him to say "Cheerio" to you all and thanks for visiting.

WOYWW 174 and Two More Cards

Well, I forgot it was Tuesday night and I didn't even think about uploading to my already started blog for Wednesday - went to bed. Hope I have not had any visitors from WOYWW (for those who don't know - follow the link and all will be revealed).  This post is in two parts - WOYWW ends part way through and two cards with instructions starts then.

Anyway, here is my desk as it stands at almost 1.30 Wednesday morning.

I was re-covering my Duster box - the brushes I now use with my Distress Inks.  Iain (Ali-Crafts) says this is the best way to use the inks and I have to agree they make a smashing job of it, no more of those hard lines that you can get, even when you use them correctly, with the "things a purpose".

On the left is my cd box (fabric from that Swedish company) with most of my Spellbinders dies in.  I was going to cut my circles out on that piece of white card, similar to the blue one which is a bit of a mess.  On the blue one I cut them out freehand but I think I have found some dies the right size now.  I also did not make a large enough border which is what brings it up a bit in the box.  Is all that as clear as mud?

This is how I store my dies.  On the picture above you can see they are in plastic CD sleeves with magnetic paper to hold them in place. Each has a label on.  Then they stand up in this CD case with cards between to show what they are, eg circles, rectangles, labels, flourishes etc.  I've had them like this for years and it works for me.

Well, the headache isn't going to go is it, so I guess I should put the computer away and either go back to bed and try to sleep or finish off my box for my Duster brushes.

Why don't you pop along to the Queen of BlogHopping's blog and see what others have on their desks.  Great fun having a nose around and sometimes you find a few tips along the way.  Can I ask please that you put your number down if you are joining in, it makes it so much easier to find you and leave a comment.  This especially helps if you have more than one blog listed.

Night night!

ps Shaz, if you are able to see this I am thinking of you and sending lots of love and healing vibes.

pps Here are the instructions for the other two cards for the ladies from Port Sunny.  (see previous post for instructions on other two cards)

• Take your piece of card 5" x 11.5" and fold in half.  Make a further fold, on either side of the fold already made 3/4" away on both sides.  Punch holes down the front of your card as above to represent a journal page.
• Using a light brown Distress Ink and a mask/stencil lightly sponge a design on three sides.
• Using Archival Cocoa stamp "Ladies Diary" in the top left hand corner.
• Take a piece of card 2 1/4" x 2 1/2" and stamp "Lady in Hat" - mount on brown card and place on front of folded card.
• Take another piece of card 1 1/4" x 2 1/4" and stamp "I promise to" - mount on brown card.
• Stencil border on inside of card and put "I promise to" on left side. 
• Cut a slit (or use punch) in folded inside edge and stick with narrow ds tape so you can insert a gift card.

Here is a view of the inside which might help you to understand the above instructions.

Turquoise Card

• On a square card stamp the border matching up as carefully as possible with Peacock Feathers Distress Ink.
• On a piece of card 6" x 4 1/4" stamp a background stamp with Versamark and heat set.  Cover with a mix of Peacock Feathers and two other blue Distress Inks.  Place between the borders.
• On a piece of card 3 3/4" x 2 1/4" stamp the Lady in the Large Hat in Cocoa or Sepia.  Mount on brown card and set to one side.
• On a piece of card 4" x 1 1/4" stamp the words "Style ..." in Cocoa/Sepia; mount on brown card.
• Place both pieces on large background and adhere the whole to the main cream card. 

NB In order to line up the border stamps I used a clear mount that was more or less the same size as the stamp.  Then I placed it at the very base of the mount and marked the centre of the front of the card with a light pencil mark.

Next I went and lined the edge of the stamp up with the pencil mark and stamped, making sure the bottom was at the base of the card.  I repeated it but this time used the opposite end of the stamp to meet the pencil mark.

Graphic 45 Vintage Ladies

Hope you enjoyed the cards in Monday's posting.  Don't forget you can buy the Graphic 45 stamps from Ali-Crafts (see photograph in yesterday's posting for them - just tell Ali they are the ones Neet used.  As promised here are the first of the instructions for the cards.  (NB Larger versions of the cards on previous post)

White Embossing Powder Card:  you need a White DL card for this one.

In the top left hand corner stamp the script with a clear pad, or white, and emboss with white embossing powder.

Preferably using the Dreamweaver Brushes (on sale at Ali-Crafts and honestly the best brushes to use imo) brush on light colours of Distress Inks.  I used a pink, a blue and a yellow.

On a piece of card 2 7/8" x 7/8" stamp "Paris" in black ink and emboss.

On a piece of card 4" x 2" stamp the car and put Glossy Accents on the windscreen - and maybe a box or two.

Tall lady card:  you need an A4 sheet folded in half for main card then

Using Stazon ink stamp the top half of the lady on a piece of acetate. Allow to dry.  In the meantime get on with the remainder of the card next taking ...

A piece of card 7 1/2" x 5 1/2" and cover well with Distress Inks.  Put a stencil over the top and gently mist through.  Wait a minute and lift gently at the corner to see if the colour has begun to "wick" - when you can see the design remove stencil, repeat lower down then heat set and leave to one side to fully dry.

Using a brown DI colour a piece of cream card 6 1/4" x 2 1/4" taking ink from the edges towards the centre but leaving the centre cream and stamp the lady in the dress with black ink.  Set to one side.

Colour a piece of cardstock 2 1/8" x 2 3/4" and stamp the mirror in black.  Cut out the centre mirror part carefully.  Take a small piece of cream card large enough to fill the aperture you have just cut and sandwich the acetate you did earlier (ladies head image) between these two pieces.

Colour a piece of card, on both sides,  2 3/4" x 2 1/4" in a dark brown DI and one slightly less (2 1/2" x 2") in a lighter brown.  On the larger piece faintly with pencil, draw a margin 1/4" in on all four sides. From the corners of these margins cut a cross (corner to corner).  Curl each point over a pencil.  On the lighter piece stamp the words "true beauty in a woman ...".  Affix this behind the aperture on the curled card.

Mount all three finished pieces with a fine black border.  These will be affixed to the main card lastly.

The stencilled card does not require a mount and should be stuck to the main card.  Then affix the three mounted pieces.  A greeting can be attached in the space or it can be left as in my sample.

Hope you enjoyed seeing how to make these two cards.