Back with a tag.

Hi all :)

Sorry for being absent recently, have had a few things on. he the longer i was gone from here, the less crafty i felt. Not good.

So tonight i sat down and forced myself to do a real basic tag....



Nothing too fancy, background paper from the DCWV "Once Upon A Time" collection, some blending with Distress Inks, some ferns from my new Fern Family punch, and stamped willow branches.....not forgetting a fairy in the forest, courtesy of Maddy who gave me a set of lovely fairy stamps (Cheers Maddy xx). A bit of ribbon around the edge and that was enough for me to feel crafty again.

I made this because it has been in my head constantly lately. My youngest watched the video about the Cottingley Fairies the other day, it's her fave. She now wants us to go into the forest and find our very own "beck" (like a stream) where fairies live. :)

Thank you once again for all of you who have visited recently, and a big thank you to those who have commented. It's nice to come back to such nice and funny comments when you're up to your ears in it! :)

Fruit i inked today!!! Almost....

Hi everyone......huge apologies for the lateness of my posting this weeks episode of "Fruit i inked today!", it's been as eventful as ever, so pull up a pew....or take a seat if you prefer....grab that cuppa and let me tell you ALL about it! :)

This week my fruity adventures have been plentiful and sorrowful all in one! Plenty of fruit to ink, but a sorry state they all turned out to be.....well almost. I had planned to ink a kiwi fruit, that little hairy gem of a fruit, however once ink hit kiwi, it just went downhill from there on. I may put a piccy up later, but i have a reputation to uphold you know. ;)

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Then i went to ink a fig!!! I'd heard figs were an aphrodisiac, so i thought it may get some of my fruity fans in the mood for lurrrve! :) I'm sure it was an aphrodisiac, either that or a laxative.....not too sure now? Anyway the flamin thing was mouldy when i went to ink it....so in the bin that went!

So i had to make a decision, and not one that i took lightly. I decided to ink the fruit that i bought the other day "thinking" it was a fruit, because it was in the fruit isle.....but it turned out to be a vegetable!! Yes my friends, this week i have inked a "guest veg" on "Fruit i inked today". Now it was a bit shy at first, so I'll introduce you to it in the "before state".....fruity fans of blogland.....please say hi to the HARLEQUIN SQUASH!!!

Now this little beauty was just begging to be inked, but it needed something more. Now with that shape, there was really only one thing i could do wasn't there? Yep that's right people, i did what any other normal person would do on a Thursday night.....

I BUILT A FAIRY'S HOT AIR BALLOON!!!! :))))

How cool is that?!!! Oh yes my good friends, this veg was just built for this project, so build it i did! It was a bit tricky to ink, the long curves made the ink run away from me before i could do much with it. Photographing it was even harder! I tried holding it between my fingers under the light tent, but it was pretty heavy you know. Then when the fairy jumped in (they are quite heavy actually, very deceiving), it was very hard to hold, so i ended up whacking a hook in the top and using that.

Underneath you can see I've cut another coconut up for the basket, and of course crafty balloons do not have ropes, they have ribbons! :) I would like to thank my plant pot outside my front door for lending me it's fairy to use as a model, she was quite keen on the task actually, a change of view and all that jazz.

The maiden voyage went well, once around the craft room, the fairy threw up a couple of times but i never said i was a great pilot. I ink fruit for heavens sake......I'm not a pro balloonist!!! Yet look at her, bless....despite having ink in her hair....she looks so happy on her first balloon ride, who can argue with the satisfaction on that face? :)

Now then, fruityvegyinkability rating for this? I'm going to have to go for a mighty 8 for this one, partly because it was great to ink, but also for the adaptability of it. Despite being a veg, i think we can safely say it did us proud tonight. As for the balloon itself, I'm telling ya....Richard Branson would be proud of this one!

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I have to leave you all with a rather sad bit of news. In the next few days, i am going to have to bin all of my frozen fruit, my babies are going to that big grocers in the sky. :( Sad i know, but i think if we all rally round, we'll get through this together. I'm not saying it will be easy, far from it, but i do like to think that when one freezer door closes, another one opens. The old fruit will make room for the new. The next generation of fruit, and very shortly....the vegetable! :)

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Oh yes, before i go, here's the kiwi fruit, i sliced it up into segments and inked it randomly......turned out OK i guess but the rest was a mess....and at the end of the day it's no fairy hot air balloon!

So i thank you once again for sitting through what has to be the biggest load of waffle on the worldwide web.......some may call me barmy, but hey.......it's you lot who come back every week for more lol!!! ;) Cheers for that. :)

Take care everyone, tune in next week for another episode of, "Fruit i inked today!".

A magical discovery.......

Today I've been missing my girls quite a lot. They are back with me in a couple of days but it's so quiet around here without them, so i decided to make a quicky project that they would appreciate.

My girls, like most little girls, are fairy mad. Ok, they have grown up a little now, but they are still always on the lookout for that tiny hint of magic that may be evidence of fairies. In the woods they will run up to the slightest hole in a tree, thinking it's a fairy house. :)

Well yesterday i picked up a little wooden chest in second hand shop, very plain, very new.....well it was.....

I wanted to create the feel of something the girls would find on one of their typical adventures through the forest here. I could just picture them finding a tiny box, covered in twigs and moss, so cautiously and filled with excitement.....they open it.....

The squeal with excitement!!! Inside is a few leaves, and what appears to be the outline of a tiny fairy that has been having a lie down in old the dusty chest......

....it's tiny angel hair blanket, lined with delicate fibres lay strewn under the ivy, obviously "somebody" left in a hurry!

I started off painting this chest white, and was going to try distressing it, however an experiment with a homemade wood stain wash went slightly wrong, so i continued with the enchanted fairy chest idea. It was very plain to start off with....

Some dark moss chalk inks gave the chest a bit of green here and there, i used real twigs and a couple of bits of real ivy....from my fence again! :) The lovely dark red ivy leaves are courtesy of Carolyn's shop over at Crafts By Carolyn's, they arrived this morning in the post as part of a prize i won on the forum.....cheers Carolyn!

The fairy outline was done with part of a Lavinia fairy stamp, i stamped an image, cut it out, and did a light dusting of chalk ink around the mask.

So that's my crafty fix sorted for the day, thanks for looking, i hope you like it. :)

A work in progress for my girls.

My two daughters have believed in fairies from a very early age, but thier interest took a real turn for the unexpected the day they woke up to find a tiny wooden fairy door at the top of thier stairs and fairy dust leading into thier bedroom.

What ensued is a story for another time maybe, however since then they have had countless encounters and much fun with thier tiny visitors. So i am making them a little album to put the stories of thier adventures in, so they can look back in years to come and remember.

Very much a work in progress, but i'm pleased with the cover so far....




Lots of use of distress pad blending, with some gorgeous Prima flowers dotted around. All of the stamps are Lavinia stamps, my fave is the toadstool houses. :)

I will report back in as each part of the album gets done.