OG 175 Sweetheart....

Any day now it will be Valentines Day and that's an excuse to spoil someone special in your life, or maybe someone you would like to have in your life........or  just an excuse to go all out with hearts and flowers because you can. 

I made three ATCs for the latest Opus Gluei challenge, following the instructions to use a minimal palette of red, pink and white.  It might have been easier to use them all in one card, but I like ATCs, so any excuse to make a few at a time is a good excuse.........

I used a collection of papers from the cupboard............ pearls, ribbon, glittery bits, brads and even some chain and a bead. 

Happy Valentine's Day.

Ooops.... lost in transmission

Long ago, in a land far away, a dear friend celebrated a significant birthday. The presents were assembled, wrapped, annotated..... all it needed was the card to be finished. Then life stepped in and anything on paper that wasn't a school report or a budget spreadsheet went to the bottom of the pile. And the pile grew....and grew....and grew.
Okay, enough excuses. I lost the plot (Plot? What plot? What was the book again?), so finally here is the card, and the apology is heart-felt. She knows who she is, so the rest of my readers will just have to wonder...........

I saw this idea for a card like a pin-board somewhere when I was surfing. It has fine gold-edged ribbon criss-crossing a sheet of pretty blue and yellow nameless paper from Riot. There's a matching yellow mat to back it before being mounted on white CS. The various flowers are Kaiser and so are the brads. The birthday stamp was a present from friends across the sea and its embossed on yellow ink with iridescent powder.

I know your birthday was a happy one.......

Trees.......

I've never really thought about it before, but trees are a symbol of strength and security for me, and I often find myself doodling them when I'm not taking any notice of what my hand is drawing.........so this challenge is my sort of challenge.  My fellow Poobah Electra chose this theme for the 175th at Opus Gluei, and this is my response.

The image is one I stamped and embossed in glossy black, and all the other bits and pieces are from the various drawers and containers on the shelves.  I think I might go back to my neutral palette for a while because I like how this turned out.  I didn't photograph the inside, but as with all dark cards, I added a square of creamy paper so make it easier to write a message.............only crafty people seem to think having pens in every colour is normal!

Need a lift?

It might be a quiet time for you, or you might just have had ENOUGH...of the weather, of the questions, of just about everything.  If that's you, then I can only hope the card I've made is bright and cheery enough for you.

I think I might send it to my friend whose New Year has been anything but happy.  If it makes her smile just a little, it will have served its purpose.

This is the first Opus Gluei challenge of the New Year...why dont you join in too?

Left Overs...OG 173

Its the week after Christmas, and I just MUST find some room in the frig.  I totally forgot to put out the cherries on Christmas Day (no-one missed them, and there wasn't any room on the table anyway), and there are only so many cherries one can eat at one time.......so I turned them into spiced cherry jam.  Here's the proof that I did really make it (with the help of new kitchen tool, a super-expensive-but-impressive cherry stone remover thingy)....

...and here's the finished product.  I'm so glad I saved all the tall jars because it makes the jam look very classy. 

....and it tastes delicious.  Here's the recipe:

• 1 kg pitted cherries 
• zest and juice of one orange (should be about half a cup of liquid)
• 1 kg sugar
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 8 cardoman pods, crushed
• 8 cloves

Put everything except the sugar in a pot , cover and bring to the boil.  Simmer 5 minutes, crushing the cherries with the spoon as you do.  Add sugar and continue stirring until dissolved.  Boil 15 - 20 minutes.  Take off the heat and cool slightly.  Pour into hot sterilised jars, seal immediately.  Store in a dark cupboard.

Enjoy!!

Circles.... (OG 172)

How often have I walked through a store and seen these paper pom-poms and said to myself "they'd be easy to make"....and then totally forgotten once home again? Countless times I'm sure - but not this week, because my fellow Poobah Deena from the Opus Gluei team currently has us spinning in circles, and just before I fell to the floor with more than the usual dizziness, I had an "Ah-ha" moment....

First decide on the paper you want, and find some ribbon or cord that matches it, then use a circle punch to cut at least 5 circles from the paper.  I used 7 circles in the orange one and 5 in the black one.  I think 7 looks better, but if the paper was glittery and textured, maybe 5 would be fine (I've seen ones as big as dinner plates and they were made with only four).  Once you have your circles, fold them neatly in half and really press the fold to make it sharp.  Glue the halves together with double sides tape, slotting in the ribbon as you go.  If you use cord, make sure the adhesive holds really well.

I should have made these for Christmas........Ah well, there's always next year.

Brrrrr.......winter is upon us

...well, somewhere in the world it is winter, certainly not here in sunny Melbourne where the temperature looks set to stay warm for several days in a row.  And about time too.

Over at Opus Gluei, the challenge is to show off your wintery best, so I went back to the humble ATCs and had a rummage in the boxes to find these glittery bits and pieces, and than I photographed them against a backdrop of Whitehaven Beach in the beautiful Whitsunday Islands.

Winter for me is all about the cold crisp clear evenings, when the stars are like icy sparkles in the night sky, and star gazing means rugging up in a warm coat and gazing up........

Can you believe this is Challenge number 171?? Amazing, where did all that time go?

OG 168 For the man in your life.......

Many of my friends have birthdays this month, but the most important would have been my

husband Peter turning 60 on the 21st.  Its not a sad day - he would have loved a party and spent the night telling silly stories and topping up everyone's glasses and accompanying any smokers outside just to sit close by and inhale some secondhand smoke..........he was such a reluctant reformed smoker!!

It was no use making a card for him - he never noticed the front, only turning inside to see who it was from - so for this challenge I looked for something different.  The drawers were a chance find in a box of oddments, so I named each one for the loves of his life, and added a swing tag of his favourite movie, and a heart from me.  Just because.

And what do the drawers mean?  CT is me, SCT is our son, StKilda is the name of his football team, Mk1 is his first rally car, and 2002 is his last.  SJT is his brother, HHR is the company he founded, 23.4.79 is the day he left on a never-to-be-forgotten Overland tour of Europe that he never EVER stopped talking about, and CGS is his school.

Happy 60th Peter  R.I.P.

You have until the end of Saturday 2 November to join in with your fabulous creation. Add your blog post address to Mr Linky below.

If you would like to join in with a previous challenge we've set (life happens and lateness is absolutely fine, we don't mind a bit) just add your blog post address to Mr Linky below. Please make sure your blog post refers to the previous challenge you are entering so we don't get confused.  

We look forward to visiting you! This is a Blog Hop!!!

A list of lists

Last month I accepted a challenge to make a list for every day of September, and it took some thinking.....but that was the easy bit.  Since it was a challenge set by Jana from the Opus Gluei I couldn't just let it go at a bit of writing, there had to be some glue and glitter and lots of coloured paper involved.  This is what I came up with......

There's one tag for each day, and I chose one of the things on each day's list to illustrate on the tag.  Some are considerably better than others.........some took ages, and some did not (this is NOT a challenge to see which ones took me longest!!).  When they were finished, I gathered them altogether on a piece of ribbon and held them in place with a big black and white bead.  I'll just share four here, one from each week.

Week 1 included a list of things I'm listening to and one was Fatness (the oldest biggest cat) complaining that SURELY it must be tea time....



Week 2 investigated my wish list which includes keeping bees.....
 


 
Week 3 had me writing a shopping list which included my favourite tea...

and week 4 wanted to know about collections I've accumulated and I chose the alphabet books that are taking over my shelves.







You can see all the lists on my other blog.

BOO!! (OG 166)

Halloween is sneaking up on us all - even here in Australia where it is not a traditional celebration....but pumpkins and spiders and cobwebs and witches' cauldrons are in the shops nevertheless.  I dont think I'll bother with the spiders, there are enough real ones right here in my own back yard..........

So I stayed away from things with eight legs and hunted out the spooky paper pack from TE a couple of years ago.  All the dark and mysterious colours are an inspiration in themselves so here's what I made for my friends on the other side of the globe.........  A bat against the moon, some little creatures out for a walk along the branches one night when the moon was orange, and my favourite: a ghost!  Making her (its definitely a girl) was fun and just a bit fiddly.  

After the fun of inchies in recent days, ATCs seem huge by comparison.  Come and join us and show off your mysterious side........

*****

Now it's your turn to show off your creations.

You have until the end of Saturday 5 October to join in with your fabulous creation. Add your blog post address to Mr Linky below.

If you would like to join in with a previous challenge we've set (life happens and lateness is absolutely fine, we don't mind a bit) just add your blog post address to Mr Linky below. Please make sure your blog post refers to the previous challenge you are entering so we don't get confused.  

We look forward to visiting you! This is a Blog Hop!