Wakehurst Place

After a morning of jobs like hairdressers and orthodontist we discovered that all 6 of us were actually in the house at the same time. It was still quite sunny so I decided that we would go out together for once! After a family vote it was decided to go to Wakehurst Place, just up the road. We are National Trust members but don't use our card enough, so off we went.
It was quite chilly but when the wind dropped it warmed up again. I took nearly 200 photos but I won't bore you with all of them! Here are some of my faves...A rhododendron...a few were out even though it's a bit early stillMy lot sitting on a bridge. Love their boots in this, maybe I should send to Dob Martens for an advert!This cock pheasant was strutting his stuff and I kept trying to get a good pic. In the end he marched straight towards me but I had a zoom lens on so that is why his face is not quite in focus but I think it is still an ok shot.
And finally the gruesome foursome, what clones, all in their matching hoodies! I shouldn't think there will be too many more pics like this before Jess is off to Uni in the Autumn. They are from l-r Eliza, Jess, Jasper and Katy.

A textile panel.

Once a month I go to see my friend Burnice in her Craft Cabin and Linda comes along too. Generally we just chat but just occasionally we do "stuff"! Linda has just been to a class where they made these textile panels and she thought we might like a go too. She brought along tons of really sparkly fabrics, lamee, dance fabric, silks and satins etc. We chopped little pieces off and then laid them on a base. Next we added threads, fibres, ribbons and sequins and trapped everything under black netting by stitching up and down with a machine.

This is my one. Next month we are going to make them into finished panels with embroidered borders etc. I have decided I am going to make a set of 4 and join them together to make a wall hanging. This one is Autumn I think and I shall use different colour combinations to represent the other seasons.

Of course home I went all proud and showed Jess (my daughter doing textiles) and she just said "yeah, we did that at school aaaaages ago, you should have done......". Supportive huh!

Lambs

I know I didn't create these but they are just soooooo cute that I am going to show you the pictures anyway! So if you only want to see crafty stuff then read no futher!

These are some of the pictures I took yesterday when we went to see the lambing.

This lamb is about 3/4 days old...Eliza bottle feeding an orphaned calf who is about 3 weeks old,Me holding a lamb who is about 2 days old...they are very light and so cuddly!A proper white Easter lamb,These triplets had just been born, the little one lying down is the youngest and hadn't managed to stand up when I took this. He had only been born about 5 minutes!There that's my Eastery pictures for you!

Mini Hanging

I signed up for a Mini Hanging Swap on UKStampers a few weeks ago. Basically we had to make a 3"X3" hanging which would go to a randomly selected person and we would receive one back. The lady I was selected to send to likes all things beachy (according to her blog) so here is the little hanging I made for her....

Balloon painting

As I mentioned earlier, this week at school we have had an Art and Science Week. One of the best activities we did was filling balloons with paint and then bursting them on a huge piece of paper. There were a couple of tricky bits to this activity....I didn't quite have the top of the balloon held tightly shut enough as I was blowing it up so I got a face full of orange paint! The other bit was trying to work out how to pop them without getting covered with paint. Our caretaker made us a "patent popping device", essentially a broom handle with a screw through it. Problems solved and away we went! I think that if you were brave enough to blow the balloons up really hard then they might spray further but I was just a bit wary that they might pop in my face! All in all thought it was great fun!

A man card....

...a bit like Man Flu only nicer! So this is Ken's card. Remember, he had his birthday the day after Jess's 18th? He got a shop cake I'm afraid but I did at least make his card. I have to confess I borrowed the embossing foldeer off my freind Sharon and the die for the cog was Gilly's (Tim Holtz one). I just swiped over the embossing and then triple embossed the cogs adding pewter embossing powder or black glitter in my last layer. I'd forgotten just how much I like the glassy effect of triple embossing...might need to do some more....

I think this one (above) looks a bit like gingerbread!

Week 14.

And yes thank you! I am still keeping up! This weeks prompt is "Music, what was the first album you ever bought, list your top 5 and use some music or a music stamp." I can never decide what to do for a B/G or what colour so we went with red, for no other reason than that is what my daughter suggested! Distress Inks, smoosed and then I stencilled the notes in a variety of inks and also some of that red foil stuff. It looks a bit browny but it's red really! The heart is holographic silver.