Hello Friends!
Well what a couple of weeks this has been....this week especially! I have been catching up with your blogs again and it's really hard when you miss a few days isn't it? Our volunteer event on Monday was pretty good, people came along and had a go at micro volunteering (volunteering in the smallest amounts of time, mainly online); a few colleagues from the local Air Ambulance and Macmillan Cancer Support came along and got people liking them on Facebook and twitter, it was all good fun. We have also been holding a card making drive and supporting Age UK's Big Knit, but I want to have some photos before I tell you all about that. One of our volunteers took some, but I haven't seen them as yet.
Then yesterday we did a coffee morning with Action for Children, which is trying to recruit more Fostercarers. I was there to offer volunteering advice if anyone wanted it. That was less successful, but I did meet two young women that through conversation over our coffees, discovered that the three of us had something in common...we love up cycling - they had just tackled their first pieces of old furniture (as have I with that desk) and we are all massive fans of Annie Sloan chalk paint...I thought that for three of us to discover this in the space a few hours was quite incredible! The other really nice thing that came out of the morning was that a lady, who is a Foster Carer also turned up and we used to work together, for the Volunteer Centre and hadn't seen each other in ages! So we could have a good catch up.
The downside from being out of the office so much this week is that I have all my paper work to catch up on...I will be in a bit more often over the next few weeks before my 2 weeks off, as I need to catch up with my volunteers.
Last night we had the first of our September Out of the Blue workshops and this is the card that my group made...sorry about the photos, I temporarily mislaid my camera this week (a whole other story) and took them with my phone, which never seems quite the same to me...
The theme was a guy card, but I thought it would have to be something quite neutral and who doesn't like an owl? I used Mr Owl from Sam Poole's Woodland Creatures stamp sets and coloured him with Promarkers. The tree trunk is also one of Sam's Stamps, as is the leaf 'button', which I heat embossed with metallic bronze embossing powder.
The backing paper is from Pink Petticoat and I also embossed the cream backing card with a leaf mask by Stamps Away. The leaves are all Spellbinders dies.
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The card is a hidden reveal slider card: I made the aperture using a circle die cut twice and then snipped across the centre to form the window. Your could also use circle punches, but the die was easier. The slider is fixed between 2 strips of foam pad, enabling it to move in and out.
I stamped 'Have a Hoot of a Day' on the inside and Happy Birthday outside. When we made this last night, one of my group asked if I am left -handed - I'm not - but I had automatically made this card left-handed! I think I know why... when I am trying to think up cards to make for class, I search Pinterest for ideas if I am stuck. I only had a few days to come up with this week's card, so Pinterest was very helpful and gave me the idea for a slider, but the tutorials I looked at all had the cards going this way, hence I thought nothing of it!
I did take photos of all the finished cards last night, but haven't had a chance to look at them yet, so they will be here over the weekend...today we are off to a wedding. It's the couple I made the Pop Up Box card for the other day - they have already had it and really really loved it, so I was pleased about that! Thanks for stopping by...
Love and Hugs,
Carole X
