Turkeys, Camels or Sheep for the Christmas Card Club!

Hello Everyone, how are you doing today, I hope your weekend is going well.
I'm much later than I usually am with my contribution to the CCC, just couldn't get myself together to schedule the post as I usually do on Saturday for today, anyway, here I am and this time around it's our lovely Rachel who is hosting the challenge and she would like to see Turkeys. Camels or Sheep, her is what I made;

I just love this fabulous stamp from Hobbyart, just look at their expressions, so funny and I love the take on the very traditional Christmas Carol.  I've coloured it all with SN Aqua Pens and distressed ink around the edges of the card, added a little bit of glitter to the camel's head gear and job done.
I was hoping to make another card with the sheep stamp, but didn't get around to it. 

Is your weather turned cold?? I've got the gloves and the socks out now and today we've had huge downpours, definitely a steak pie dinner night, getting into the comfort food now. I've even had to put the warmer duvet on the bed as Alistair was complaining of being cold.

We had a lovely night out at a concert last night;

Over 60 musicians from over the Highlands came together to play this fabulous programme in aid of Cash for Children a charity run by Moray Firth Radio. Being in the Cathedral the acoustics were amazing and what fantastic music from such a large orchestra. There was audience participation too, where instead of cannons firing at the finish of the 18212 we were given large brown paper bags to blow up and than bang at the appropriate time, such fun, and I'd noticed a wee boy sitting making paper aeroplanes from the programmes and wondered if he was going to let them fly at that time and that is just what he did, it was such a brilliant ending. Now I've never heard Tchaikovsky's 1812 played live before and I have to say it was absolutely marvellous, especially the percussionists, they must have been exhausted at the end of the piece.

The people who run the charity gave a bit of a talk about what the charity does and the amount of children that require help is just staggering, the numbers go into the thousands who have no hot meal during the school holidays and require new clothes to go back to school. The charity help with this sort of thing, disgraceful that in the 5th riches country that there should be such amount of child poverty, and many of the parents were working. It makes me so angry, as there is no need for it. Anyway, I'll stop my rant there, other than to say I look forward to the revolution.

Thank you all so much for you super comments on my last card, and a warm welcome to my new Followers, Mitzi and Heidi, so pleased that you pressed the Follow button and I hope you will pop in often.

That's me for now, enjoy your Sunday evening and take care,

  

  

Merry Christmas for The Rudolph Day Challenge!

Hello Everyone, I hope you are well and you are enjoying your day.

I've had a lovely few days, just doing my own thing, but Alistair is now back having had a great time despite the gale like weather. I had vision of them chasing a blown away tent yesterday The weather  has been pretty awful. I'm hoping that it will improve for next week as we are going away for a few days break, but just in case it's no good, I've book myself a Hot Stone treatment and a Manicure... we are going to a hotel that has a spa.  Never had the Hot Stone treatment before but certainly looking forward to it, it's meant to be amazing, so I've heard.

Thank you all so much for the lovely comments on my last card and I'm glad I could raise a chuckle with the telling of the tale A Night at the Opera. I have sadly lost touch with this friend, but  I have fond memories of the many brilliant times we spent together.

I've a little card today that I'm going to enter into The Rudolph Challenge over at ScrappyMo's

A rather simple card, but one that would be god for a guy. The die is from the Works and it cuts out a dream, I cut two and made a shadow. Mounted it onto red card and them some fab tartan card the my friend Mrs. D sent me, she also gave me a selection of buttons too, one of which I've used to embellish here. Some baker's twine and a gem, as I say simple.

The night's are fairly drawing in, 7 o'clock and it's already quite dark, I hate drawing the curtains whilst there is still a smidgen of light out there, but it looks like they will be drawn soon. Teallach loves sitting on the window sill and I forget he's there when the curtains are closed and sometimes when I'm passing he'll whack me from behind them and gives me a fright, especially if I'm passing with a coffee, he's a menace at times.

I've got a walk date tomorrow with Moreen and the Pups, I've not seen them for a few weeks so I'm looking forward to that. Moreen goes for longggg walks, so I'd better be prepared.

So, that's me for now, enjoy your evening and I'll see you soon,

https://scrapsoflifebyscrappymo.blogspot.com/2018/09/september-rudolph-days-challenge.html

Madam Butterfly..One Fine Day!

Hello Everyone, I hope you are well and enjoying your weekend. 
We are a bit chilly up here and some rain, but there's supposed to be a high coming in and Alistair and a couple of "the boys" are off tomorrow for a few days, doing their men stuff. Yeah! I hope the weather does indeed hold for them, I always feel a bit cheated when they come home early as the weather has been awful.
I've nothing much planned, choral practice tomorrow night and I might indulge in a wee bit of shopping in town and a cuppa at Costa.

Thank you all so much for your lovely comments on my last card and for the suggestions regarding the moderating thing. I've given pressed buttons so I've no idea if I've done it correctly, but if  I have no comments I'll know I've not.

So on to my new card, it's another Aurora Wings Lady and it was the first one I ever bought and I love it;

I believe her name is Miyabe and I've coloured once again with watercolours and some silver gel pen.
The background paper is from the Oriental Treasures pad from Papermainia. I found some little stickon butterflies which I've had for years and felt they were just perfect for the card. My lovely friend Mrs. Duck gave me a bunch of these lovely metal embellishments,again perfect as I thought they had an oriental look. A few pearls and some silver bakers twine from SU and I felt it was done.

Now I'm entering my card in to the Aurora Wings Challenge which is about music and one of my favourite pieces of music, well it's Puccini opera is Madam Butterfly. I've chosen the One Fine Day piece whilst Butterfly is still happy and so in love.. Yes she is eventually  betrayed by her American  Navy Lieutenant lover Pinkerton and has a tragic ending, as most of Puccini's operas do.

I have a wonderful memory of being at this opera many years ago when I lived in Edinburgh and took a friend along with me to see it. My friend had never been to an opera before and she was keen to go along, I didn't tell her too much about it as I didn't want to spoil the story for her.
Anyway, we met up after work, and my friend Pat at that time owned a little newsagent shop and had been up from the crack of dawn... therefore she was tired. Pat dosed off during the first half of the performance and was given a few nudges when the snoring started, but I thought a G&T at the interval would waken her up a bit.  So, we are now into the second half of the performance and she is absolutely loving it, no dosing off this time around, she is caught up in the story, tears streaming down her face and at the moment when Butterfly is about to end her life, Pat shouts out "dinne  de it hen... the bast..d no worth it!" Well at this point, the folk in front of us are turning round, people were saying shhhh and all of that, I'm sliding down in my seat totally embarrassed wishing the floor would open up, and Pat never daunted by it all, turned to me and kept saying  how awful and that's men  for you.  Anyhow the opera came to an end, Butterfly having not taken Pat's advice.. if she heard and we made a getaway to the nearest bar.  My friend, absolutely loved the whole experience, didn't know anything so beautiful could be so sad, and apologised for getting carried away. But, you know when you think about it what a marvellous way to show appreciation of the work when you get so lost in that you let your feelings out.  I always think about this night when I listen to this operatic work.

So, that's me for now, off to link this up with the challenge blog, and see to our dinner, haggis, neeps and tatties tonight..we love out gourmet food lol!
Enjoy what's left of the weekend and I'll see you soon,

I would like to enter my card into;   https://aurorawingschallenge.blogspot.com/2018/09/challenge-71-inspired-by-music.html

Vines and Berries!

Hello Everyone, I hope you are all well and having a good day, but sending kind thoughts to you if life is difficult for any reason for you just now.

I hope you are remaining safe from these high winds and floods, Autumn has fairly arrived with a bang. We had torrents of rain the other day, and high winds last night, Teallach refused to go out at night, didn't blame him.

Thank you for you lovely comments on my last card, I love reading them and do appreciate the time it takes you all to visit. I am however getting some strange comment from folks who have nothing to do with crafting....and usually it's men, haven't a clue how they reach here...nothing offensive thankfully, but I'm beginning to think that I should have the approved thingy on, that some of you have. Now I've looked at the settings but I'm not sure how to do it.... can anyone tell me what to press?? I'm always afraid that  I'll scupper my blog cos I would never remember how to start it all again.

Anyway, I've another card with a beautiful Aurora Wings lady;

I've coloured her with watercolours and added some sparkle pen, sequins and a mixture of leaf dies, a little bow and job done.
I just love these images and have quite a few, they do take time to colour though as there is so much detail, but so worth it.

Well that's me for today, time for a cuppa before getting down to sort out dinner. See you soon,

Inky Backgrounds for Back to Basics and Beyond Challenge 12!

Hello Everyone form a wet and windy Inverness, gosh has the weather turned nasty, storm Ali is headed for us, batten down the hatches folks.

It's time for Challenge 12 from Back to Basics and Beyond Challenge Blog and the technique this time is to have a go at Inky Backgrounds, here is my DT card;

Here I've used Pixi Powders for the background behind this lovely feather image from Chocolate Baroque. The main background is Oxides and heat embossed images.

I hope you will join in with the challenge which you can find here 

There are You Tube tutorials to help you, but the DT will have plenty of inspiration for you, so give it a go.

Just before I go, just a thank you to everyone who left such lovely comments on my card for the CCC and for the information about polar bears.

See you soon, take care of yourselves,

Teddy or Polar Bears for the CCC!

Hello Everyone, well it's the weekend once again, didn't that week whizz by, I hope you had a good one. I also hope that you are well, but sending kind thoughts to those who are not so well that you will feel better soon.

It's also time for another Christmas Card Club card, and this time around it's our lovely Valery who has chosen the theme of Teddy or Polar Bears, here is what I've come up with;

I chose as you can see Polar Bears and this lovely image is from LOTV, I love this image of the daddy bear and his son carrying the Christmas tree home, have to let your imagination loose here as I'm not all that sure that there would be trees for him to find and also I don't think daddy bears bother with there cubs,,,, but there again maybe it's a Mummy bear and they live around Canada. Lol!
So, coloured with Spectrum Noir  pens and papers from Dovecraft. Sentiment is one by CB, added lots of snow that I got from Mrs. Duck at her The Duck's Doodahs Online shop which you can find
here, then embellished with buttons gems and silver thread.
Hope you like it Valery, I had fun doing it and using a stamp I've had for yonks.

We had a lovely day today at the Hub for a music session, not so many musicians, more  singers today, but we missed our Dougie who was too unwell to go along with us. He plays all sort of whistles and mouth organ and he is brilliant on them. Fairly miss is playing. 

Thank you all for you very kind comments on my last card, I would like to think I would do more,  will have to think about a different shaped flower.

This will be a scheduled post for tomorrow Sunday, that's me for now, take care and see you soon,

Hand Painted Blooms!

Good Day to Everyone and hoping the day finds you well and enjoying whatever you've got planned.

Thank you all so much for the lovely comments on my little Sprite, and also a warm welcome to Donna who is my latest Follower... my goodness I'm up to 140 Followers.  Who would have believed it. Mind you there are folks who are no longer around in blogland for whatever reason, I do hope they are all okay.

Anyway, I have something a little different today, see what you think;

Using the new Altenew Watercolours I created these blooms....now don't laugh lol!! I had such fun doing them. I'm no artist...as you can see, and my flowers are more stylised than real looking, I was trying to give them a quirky look. I've doodled with my Micron pen and added a lovely sentiment from CB.  I masked around the edges, but the paint seeped under nevertheless, but I quite like the edges so decided not to tidy them up. I splashed gold paint over it all and added black sequins. I've matted on to grey card and used a lovely deep eggplant shade for the base card.

Alistair is always telling me that I should try to paint something. I think one needs a bit of artistic talent to do so, but with looking at a few You Tube tutorials, and this lady in particular  http://www.creationsceecee.com This is is her Blog, couldn't find the link to her You Tube channel. Anyhow she is marvellous, so well worth a visit.

Alistair, bless him, thought it lovely, but promptly stared to tell me that I could have done this and that, and next time, he'll show me how to do leaves, all sort of constructive criticism I suppose, but it pricked my happy bubble a bit, he has such a patronising tone at times. However, I love it  and will do more. 

I had good news from my latest blood results yesterday, my HBa1C is down from 72 to 48. So pleased with this, all the tweaking and careful eating has help. For anyone wondering what this is, my blood glucose is measured over the last three months. I'm now hoping that I will be able to reduce my insulin doses a bit, and this will mean that my weight should reduce too. 

That's me then for now, see you soon, take care,

  

Succulent Sprite!

Hello Everyone, here we are at the start of another week... I hope you had a lovely weekend and got to do something you like. I was one my own for Saturday, well with Teallach, but he just ate and slept, as Alistair was away to have a meet up with some of the guys from his Mountaineering Club which they held in a Bothy near Newtonmore. There are guys who are in their 80s, but still climb mountains, Alistair at 72 is considered a mere youngster. Anyway they had a good time, but were rained off from doing much on Sunday, so he came home early.  

We had been a  fab Traditional Music concert on the Friday night, just a trio  of guys playing fiddle, whistle..various sizes and guitar and bouzouki, and they were brilliant, real foot tapping stuff, lots of music from Cape Breton.  Had to travel outside Inverness, but so worth it.

Right then on to my card;

Another image from Aurora Wings, Succulent Sprite. Coloured with water colours, having first sprayed the image with fixative, and it's worked well. The background is coloured with burst of Pixi Powder and I've embossed a panel at the edge. I sprinkle some gold paint on to the image and added pearls and Star Dust. A few wee flowers to embellish and a lovely sentiment from Chocolate Baroque.
This is a new image from AW and I fell in love with it as I love succulents... I can't kill them as I do other plants, but she was fabulous to colour. I hadn't meant to use such vibrant shades when I started out, but it sort of took on a life of colour all by it's self, if you know what I mean lol.

That's me for today, but before I go, just to say thank you for all the lovely comments on my last card and a warm welcome to Tante Kiki who had clicked the follow button, I hope you will come back often, and I will be over to see you on your blog soon.

Take care everyone and see you soon,

     

Ice and Crystals!

Good Evening to You All, I hope your day went well and that you're settling into a relaxing evening.

We have had quite big showers today, and whilst in the town, I was wishing I had a scarf on, it was quite chilly. It will soon be gloves and boots time.

Thank you all for the lovely comments on my last card and I hope that some of you take part in the BBB Challenge. Thank you too for all the suggestions on my query regarding colouring digital images.  Florence, suggested using a fixative on the ink as it was something that worked for her, so I gave that a go as I had a tin of fixative for using pastels and it had indeed worked on an image I was water colouring today.

M card today is coloured with Prisma Premier Colour pencils;

 This beautiful image is from Aurora Wings, and I tried to use cool colours  in shades of grey and blue, with a little purple and pink. I painted on Star Dust to give a bit of sparkle. I took inspiration from the fabulous DT on the Aurora Wings Showcase Blog.  I was near scaly eyed  colouring this as there is so much minute detail to the image. I then matted it on to blue card and silver and paper from First Edition and black card. My lovely swirly dies are from SU.  I was quite pleased with how this turned out, I just love these fantasy images.

So that's me for now, take care of yourselves and see you soon,

I would like to enter my card into https://aurorawingschallenge.blogspot.com/2018/08/challenge-70-sketch-challenge.html

Decoupage Back to Basics and Beyond Challenge!

Hello Everyone, hoping this evening finds you well, having enjoyed your day.

I'm back with my DT card for BBB and this time it's Decoupage which is the technique that's the challenge this time around. Here is my card;

I used this lovely decoupage sheet with the Robin that I've had in my drawer for ages, it didn't have a make. All I've added is glitter and matted it up.

We would like it you joined in the challenge, it's fun and there is loads of inspiration from my DT teammates. http://bbbchallenges.blogspot.com/

Thank you for your visits and lovely comments, see you soon

Foliage of Trees for the CCC!

Hello Everyone, I hope all is well with you and that your weekend is going well.

It's time once again for our little Christmas Card Club to show our latest cards and this time it's our lovely Zoe who's chosen the theme, which is Foliage or Trees. Well trees are my thing so that's what I went with;

The image used here is one from Creative Stamping Magazine and an inky background. I coloured the little lights on the tree with gel pens. The sentiment is also from Creative Stamping but not the same set of stamps. I love the Christmas stamps that this magazine gives, and I've always had good results from them. Since I started buying the magazine it's gone up a bit in price, but a full A4 sheet of stamps, I think is worth the money. Anyway, it's matted and layered with SU card and then glittered and gemmed. 

Thanks Zoe for the challenge, I always enjoy doing trees....as you know.

We had a night out....together last night where we were at our friend Ken's retirement party. He is one of the boys in the band. He had a BBQ, and apart form a shower of rain in the late afternoon, it turned out a fine evening. Ken built a fire pit which was wonderfully warm when the evening chill took over and we all sat around it playing instruments and singing, brilliant;

here is the fir pit, with candles around it.

The photos didn't turn out well as the smoke from the fire was blowing about,  Alistair is standing playing his fiddle and and Dougie is sitting playing his whistle. The other musicians are friends of Ken and Jan. There was also a lady there who sang Gaelic songs and what a beautiful voice she had.
Unfortunately, it's too dark to see but, the background looks on to Ben Wyviss, it's the most beautiful view.

Last photo honest... of Ken and Alistair with the Guitars and Jan singing.  It was  grand night, however for me it felt as if when we arrived that I'd stepped into a  mental health social workers meeting as all  the faces were well kent from my time at work. Ken himself was the lead MO for the Highlands, so I shouldn't have been surprised, it was lovely to catch up with folks though.

Our friends who had the BBQ last weekend, which I didn't go to, came over from Aberdeenshire and stayed with us so that they come go too.So we all had a fab time, good food, good company and good entertainment. A quiet day today though lol.

Thank you all so much for your lovely comments on my last card and the suggestions regarding colouring digi images, all so helpful.

We have a beautiful day here, so I'm away to make a cuppa and have a seat out in the garden. Have a lovely day and see you soon,