A Lucky Dip ...

Votes for what I stitched next didn't help my decision at all, one person voted for Fairies, one for Hardanger House and one for Gracious Era.  I asked a couple of friends and one said Garden Alphabet and the other said to start a new rota and do them all.  I was explaining this to yet another friend who said, why not have a lucky dip - number them and let someone pick a number - so I numbered them and she got to pick a number, the winner was Fairies and I shall make a start on that tomorrow night.

I will maybe bring another one in when The Water Pump is finished, but for the now I do not want to work them on a rota basis.  All are big projects and I know I will end up getting downhearted with no finishes again, so I need to concentrate more on one or maybe two at a time.  If for any reason I am not enjoying one then it will get cast aside for a while once more.

Back to the present and until last night I had been working on The Water Pump and I am pleased with the progress so far.  This is what it is looking like at the moment.

I do love the little bluebirds.

On Friday my daughter and I had a wonderful day together at the NEC Hobbycraft Show in Birmingham.  I spent far more than I dare admit, but it was real fun and we got to meet Joanna Sheene, Dawn Wheeler and Ali Reeves to name but a few of the wonderful and innovative papercrafters I admire.  I mainly bought dies for my lovely new Grand Calibur die cutting and embossing machine, and have been having great fun playing with them.  Tonight instead of stitching I have been cutting out decoupage for some new cards I have in mind.  I have made a number of cards recently but they are stacked on top of my computer cabinet at the moment until I get round to making inserts for them.  I enjoy making the inserts as much as making the cards but they are very time consuming.  I hate to see a beautiful hand made card and when its opened the inside contains nothing but a piece of paper with Happy Birthday stamped on it, it seems so unfinished to me. 

I will share with you one card because it has been made using one of my new dies, its a Tonic die called oriental lily. 

The pink lily was used making one of the precoloured card templates that you can get to fit the die, but it also comes with white ones that just have the foiling on them, so the second one I coloured  using a Tim Holtz distress ink called Squeezed Lemonade.  lol how do they think up the names for some of these colours, to me its just a pretty lemon shade. The wording and the flourishes are also new dies.

Its been a horrid weekend weatherwise with that horrible white stuff everywhere.  I hate snow, as far as I can see its only use is to look pretty on Christmas cards.  I desperately need some sunshine and think its time we started looking at holidays again.  We are usually very lucky here in that if we do get a little snow it has gone by the following day, so two days of snowing and the gardens all covered in white - yes they look pretty from the window I admit - is sending me into hibernation mode.  Its times like this when I wish we had a big open, old fashioned style, roaring fire in the grate (preferably with a maid to clean it and relay it the next day).

Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoyed it here and will visit again sometime.

Goodnight all,
Hugs


May your frogs stay in their ponds.