Birthday Card for a Friend

Hi Folks, I'm safely back from Italy now, we arrived home last night. Lake Garda was as beautiful as ever, and the week passed very quickly. We visited Venice, Milan and Verona, as well as local towns around the Lake, with stunning views. We went with my Brother-in-law and his wife, My Mother and Father-in-law, and also my Son, so a group of seven of us. We didn't have a drop of rain all week, and the temperatures reached 32 degrees which was about as much as I could bear!

One of my favourite places to visit is Gardone, a town on the Lake, and a house there called Il Vittoriale, with beautiful gardens, reminiscent of Portmerion. I've been there twice now, and just love the atmosphere, it's so peaceful.

It's the Birthday of a very good friend of mine today. I made her card before I went away, and wanted to incorporate things that meant something to her. I created a background using some leaves from my garden, as she loves Nature, and her own lovely garden. Hopefully she'll come and see my garden IRL one day, and I'll get to see hers. We are crafting buddies, but long distance, only meeting at Craft Shows, and days out. I used a technique that I found on Marja's Blog. She gives a link in this  post, to where she found the technique. I sprayed some watercolour paper with Cosmic Shimmer sprays, after I had laid my fig leaves onto the paper. I then placed another piece of the paper on top, making a sandwich, and ran this through my Big Shot. The result is this lovely piece of paper.

I used a piece of background paper from a lovely 12 x 12 pad that I hoard in my stash with butterflies on  a teal background. I stamped the gardening lady stamp onto a piece of card coloured with Distress Inks, and matted onto a Nestie frame. I used a new Crealie Flower die to make the flowers from some left over card, adding large pearl brads. This image reminded me of my friend as soon as I saw it, and I bought it with her Birthday card in mind, several months ago. I bought it from an Ebay store that she herself frequents!

Some teal ribbon, and a butterfly charm finish the card off. I know that she has received the card, and I hope that she is having a very special Birthday.

Thanks for stopping by today, xx

Mother's Day and a Golden Wedding

Well, I've had a busy day today; I've been invigilating at the school, and making cards. It's my in laws' Golden Wedding Anniversary tomorrow, and we're all having a meal with them to celebrate. My MIL has just had a big operation so is not 100%, and it will be very tiring for her. Her family consists of three noisy sons, three daughters in law, seven granchildren, and there will be three boyfriends and a girlfriend tagging along with the older granchildren, Michelle who made the lovely card).

I'm putting some card pictures in this post of the anniversary card, made with two linked hearts created with paper sprayed with Glimmer Mists. (I used parchment scissors to get into the little areas for cutting out). The background paper is from a GG paper pack and I used a computer generated greeting, as I don't have an anniversary greeting that I like. I'm also including my mother's day cards, both similar but in different colour ways to reflect the different tastes of my Mum and MIL - My Mum likes turquoise, and my MIL prefers stronger colours. The Daisy collage stamp is another Elusive Images stamp, and the background paper is from the Damask Delight CD. I've used Inktense pencils, and decoupaged the butterflies and daisies. Finally, there is a card with a Ventian flavour to reflect my recent trip to Italy. I want to do some scrapbooking with these stamps as I mentioned in a previous post, but time is against me at the moment, so a card was all I could manage. Anyway, I wanted to show Michelle the joys of stampboard at the class last night, as she made an identical card.

We had a sad day yesterday, as a dog got into the garden, and attacked one of our chickens, and she died. This happened back in November as well, and we ended up losing three chickens as a result of the attack back then. We knew which dogs came into the garden before, but the police did nothing about it. We don't know what happened yesterday, so therefore, we can't do anything. Our chickens are very much like pets, and so it's sad for us when something like this happens; they have their individual characters and they are very quirky. All of our animals today appear a bit spooked, including the rabbit and the cat, and it will take them a few days to settle down. Life goes on, but it's sad.

I'm looking forward to Mother's Day, I won't have to cook at least. My poor hubby has just been diagnosed with IBS, and the dietician has given him a strict short-term diet taking away all of his favourite foods. He is not happy. He made her write down the bit that said he didn't have to eat vegetables as he told her that I wouldn't believe him! He is not allowed beer either, so there you go, you win some, you lose some! Have a happy Mother's Day everyone, Judith x