Treasure Casket No 2

Last week I stitched, sprayed inks and glimmer mists to white lace and flowers, and finally managed to finish this second ' treasure casket' which is slightly bigger than the first. I never mentioned on the blog post that the first casket was for my cousin in Canada and will be going back with her in a couple of weeks, she was thrilled with it altho' she had already seen it on the blog.

No Pictures

Just to say I'm still around, we've just got back from a caravanning long weekend, had a crafty time with Jan and managed to get the OHs to take us to a local stamp shop for a little retail therapy. One good thing was that while we were away the MIL was moved from hospital to her new nursing/care home and should be well settled by now we hope altho' as she is 96 and suffers from dementia she probably isn't aware that she's in a different place to the one she has been in for the last 7 years, now we can settle and OH should stop worrying, I hope.

A new book

A book I bought a few weeks ago, Page after Page by Frances Pickering, has really inspired me to have a go at making stitched, paper books,(I know I'm doing too many things at once and we still have to get my MIL resited in a new nursing home whilst doing battle with the Social Services, but that's a whole other story)anyway my idea is to start some pages and covers and next weekend when we are caravanning with Jan and her OH hopefully we can both make a book or two together. This picture is of a cover made from pelmet vilene, coloured with spray inks and a daisy drawn on it, I then painted the petals with bleach to remove the colour and added some more colour with crayon, I used a soldering iron to cut the rough shape. Hopefully next time it is on this blog the book will be finished and the cover stitched.

I had a lovely day at Alexander Palace on sunday and managed to find a few things to spend my money on as did Sandi, my cousin, who had landed at Gatwick at 7am that morning from Canada and went straight to Ally Pally, She has been staying with me since monday so we have done a little crafting, mainly trying out our new Lavinia stamps , the card posted here was made by Sandi using a mix of both our stamps with Adirondack inks, as she is a rather newbie stamper I think she did a good job. I am really behind in my stitching and will catch up after Sandi leaves tomorrow, she is going up to Yorkshire, picking up our Aunt and going on a whistle stop tour of Scotland.

On to Colour.

The next part of the Sumptuous surfaces course is to use colour in your design so I have chosen an underwater theme and colour scheme to fit in with two other pictures I have framed, I hope this turns out as well as the pear.

My new Companion!

Pictured is my Easter present to myself - the left-handed embroiderers companion - I couldn't believe it when I walked into the lovely embroidery/yarn shop in my Aunts village on saturday and there it was on the shelf - shouting out to me!! hopefully now I can learn a few of those stitches that my brain has been unable to turn from right to lefthanded. We only had a short time at my Aunt's as Roy's Mum was rushed into hospital at midnight on weds as we were due to go off thurs am so we stayed until saturday then came back today and are about to find out how MIL is.