What a Hoot! - Saturday 18th July 2015

Hello Friends,

I finally caught up with all your posts yesterday, I don't think there has been a time I have blogged less since I arrived here about 4 years ago...the only reasons are just so little time at the moment -and- I really need to learn to write shorter posts with less waffle....hmmm!

Before anything else I would like to welcome my new follower Helen R, thank you so much for following along Helen...I'm really sorry, but when I click on my followers list at the moment I just get a weird box pop up, so please let me know if you have a blog too. I've also noticed I have a few more bloglovin followers, so welcome to you too!

 I've been outside a lot lately: the weather has been mostly lovely, too nice to spend time at my computer! We have been doing a lot of work in the garden and this weekend are enlisting the help of some of Tom's family to help erect a new and pretty large pergola...gosh it will be like a barn raising :) We've been so busy, I haven't even had much time to spend in my little garden craft retreat this year!

Next month we are having a conservatory fitted(so no holiday last year because of the new kitchen and none again this year,ah well will be worth it...) and as I'm home more than Tom - and live close to work, it will be mostly me 'project managing' it, lol...it's quite a big space, so will add a good sized extra room to the house. I"m looking forward to it, but they have said that from start to finish it will be about a month and then we have walls to paint and have to wait another month before we can have the floor laid...and of course it has to be furnished...so it will be October before it's complete. It's been fun though, because as it's going to be large enough for a comfy seating area and our dining table, I've been making a mood board on Pinterest and am looking forward to the 'interior design' part of it, including plenty of Annie Sloaning :)...I just hate using blogger on the iPad but I can sit in front of the TV and Pin to my heart's content!

Last week and next week I'm in the office more than usual: we have a 17 year old IT student volunteering with us for a couple of weeks and he's been doing some excellent work and also this week I had my first outing with the Hawk and Owl Trust and it was great!

There was also another 'newbie' volunteer, who we had actually placed through the Volunteer Centre I manage, so it was nice to see Joanne and she had a good time too. We went out with a group of 6 experienced volunteers and visited 3 farms where they have barn and tawny owl boxes sited. The aim was to check each box to see if it had been or was being used. As we approached one box, a barn owl flew out. Apparently it is very unusual to actually see a bird, so we were extra lucky on our first day. When the guy inspected the box, there was one owl chick inside and one egg. The chick was quite an advance age, so although owls do hatch their eggs in stages it was unlikely the last egg would hatch.

This is me being taught how to use a nest box cover. When inspecting boxes, a couple of group members approach and cover the entry hole with this instrument. This stops any bird inside from flying out. It's really heavy and quite tricky to place and you hold it there whilst one of the others climbs the ladder to check the box, no owls in this one though.

We were out about 4 hours and when I got home I'd intended to craft, but instead I went out in the garden and pottered with the hens, it was such a gorgeous day and after a morning of walking around farms I just wanted to stay outdoors!

If you're still with me...here is the craft part..

I'm sticking to owls for this post..this was my project for our craft group a last week...we made a hanger but I made this one so that it could easily be turned into a card, which is what I have done and shown below.

I've seen quite a lot of this type of artwork about lately, not stamped as these are, but having a similar printed effect. I deliberately left the tree plain and coloured the flowers with promarkers using a simple block colouring method, so it looks printed. The owl is the Mr Owl stamp by Sam Poole and is paper pieced.

This is the hanging decoration the group made: they all seemed to enjoy it, some hadn't done any paper piecing before or masking stamped images, which created the background, so it was fun for them to try these techniques.

For the tree I used a grand deckled oval Spellbinder die on white card, which I backed with blue card. I used the same Stampendous floral stamp set  as for the bookmark in my previous post, using the masking technique to overlay the images. I then inked the edges with salty ocean distress ink. For the tree, I simply drew it freehand and cut out in brown card. I've made a few cards, which will be in future posts, where I added markings to the trunk, but I wanted to leave this one 'clean' .

Here's one of the cards I made...I made about four of the decorations, so can make them all into cards! I just used plain linen effect blue card on a 7x7 blank and only slightly inked the edges with salty ocean distress ink.

 Well that's it (if you're still here...sorry it's so long and I still have quite a comical and poignant hen story to share, but we'll leave that for another day, I have a pergola to help put up!)

Thank you so much for stopping by and for leaving a comment! I will catch up with you all tonight after a day in the garden.

Love and Hugs,
Carole X

'O' is for Owl - Wednesday 8th July 2015

Hello Friends,

Well another week has passed and I hope you are still enjoying the fine weather (most of the time) too?

Most of Saturday was spent in the garden, working hard! We were 'helped, by the hens and it was lovely, Sunday we spent with our friends whose daughter's wedding we were at a few weeks ago, catching up on all the post wedding news.

Because I only get certain times for crafting during the week (my choice mostly, I've come to realise there are so many more things to enjoy as well), at least not blogging so much means I have a nice little back log of creations to keep me going for a while!

Today, I want  to share a small project, ahead of a  few bigger ones on the same theme,  which I'll share over the next few  posts.

We only have one craft workshop in July, so Amy and I decided to have a change and get the group to make something other than a card, such as a wall hanging. Tomorrow I will show you my project for them, but for today a little bookmark I made with some left over card.

We've been using the cute owl stamp by Sam Poole this month and I have made quite a few projects with it for ideas, so you will be seeing a lot of him...

I'll explain the stamping technique in my larger project tomorrow, but I drew and cut out the tree free hand. I wanted this project have very much a 'printed' effect, so used block colouring with promarkers and very little inking, just at the edges...more of a 'clean' look.

Mr Owl is paper-pieced.

I placed the bookmark in this book for a reason - other than I'm reading it for the second time - in my last post, I mentioned that I had joined a local volunteer group?

My job is to help people volunteer, I used to volunteer a lot and apart from the occasional one off 'event', always with animals. When I lived close to the centre of Bristol, there was no shortage of animal based volunteering and I spent about 10 years helping at the Riding for the Disabled school, as horses are my big love. Now I live in a small town, surrounded by rural countryside, surprisingly animal groups are virtually zilch. But for a while now I have been thinking about the local Hawk and Owl Trust, goodness knows we've passed quite a few people to them as volunteers.

So last week I put my name down and I'm now waiting for my first trip out... they survey local farmland, working with farmers and local Councils to preserve habitats for mostly kestrels and barn owls. They also take part in local community events, which eventually I'd like to help with. I am so in awe of these beautiful birds and am always reading about them, so I am really looking forward to finding out more.

One of the projects  I made using the  Mr Owl stamp, also features the photos I took at the falconry centre a few weeks ago, I'll be posting that soon.

Many thanks for stopping by, I really appreciate your comments,

Love and Hugs

Carole X

Owl Hidden Message Slider - Friday 5th September

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.

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