Just back from a few days in Northumbria, a friend has a caravan in a lovely site by a river and the van itself overlooks a duck pond and is surrounded by trees alive with wild birds and red squirrel. We took Paddy there last year and it was great fun if wet as it was during the floods, so the intention was to see how we would get on now we have 2 dogs and discovered that caravanning in the middle of nowhere in the rain with 2 dogs is pretty muddy! Anyway here are the lovely doggies at home gazing out of the front room window looking as cute as can be, which just goes to prove that looks can be soooo deceptive!

On the way home from the caravan we called into Graphicus in Barnard Castle to pick up some essential crafting supplies and say hello to the lovely people who work there.

Petal Pot

I seem to have a photo shortage at the moment, lots made but not yet got piccies just this Petal Pot here, painted with Lumiere metallic paint and collaged with vintage images, lace and buttons which is proving quite useful as another pencil / brush pot. Not quite sure how it happens but I seem to have a small forest of pencil, sakura pen and brush pots on the desk, I think they may be taking over! The brushes are actually Chinese calligraphy brushes bought when I was working in Singapore and they are beautiful to touch, in fact so far they have proved too lovely to use as I don't want to get them dirty.

Index Box

This is a blank Index Box we sell on the Happy Daze website which has been decorated with ink and papers. It could also have been done with paint, stamping, sprays.

Poinsettia

Glenda Waterworth at Artylicious set a challenge to make a Christmas themed card, ATC or whatever using Elusive Images stamps. This has been made using one of my petal pots painted gold and the poinsettia is from the Elusive Images Ruby Tuesday flower and leaves secured to floristry wires.

Sunday Barbeque

We have friends coming over this afternoon so just a quick moment to upload this little album I made of my nephew Christopher and his girlfriend Bex using the accordion album and the Delish papers and embellishments all from the Happy Daze website.

Three Curio Cubes

These curio cubes were lots of fun to do. They are 3 inches square and available on the website in packs of 4. I had decorated 4 but Minnie the dog ate one of them the little minx. One has been sprayed with glimmer inks and over stamped with gold embossing powder, one has been inked using the direct to paper technique with distress inks and over stamped with text in Memories Black ink the third is covered in photos from a trip to Cuba which have been sealed with mat Mod Podge.

Time moves ever onwards and although the web site is not quite ready yet it has progressed. It seems that whenever you make a change, like moving the domain name or upgrading the site, you have to wait a few days for it to happen. Anyway I have been making some samples that my lovely husband Richard has photographed so I can see how easy they are to load to the Blog and put on a Gallery on the web site. The first item is a Shadow Box which is available on the web site, it is 5 x 7 inches and made from very sturdy book board. I have used the Peacock Fan and Peacock Lady stamp plates from Elusive Images to decorate it. I used direct to paper to ink it up all over then on the outside stamped the peacock feathers in the same inks. The cover has a Peacock Lady in teal embossing powder on a sheet of acetate over a shadow of the same Peacock Lady in distressed foiling. Inside the left hand recess are gold embossed peacocks and in the right hand side the Peacock Head dress is again embossed in teal onto acetate which covers the opening behind which peacock feathers are stamped in teal and blue.