Thank Goodness it's Friday!

Hi there,

Finally I've got chance to grab a quick coffee and sit down and blog. 
How is everyone?  I've managed to keep the germs at bay thankfully - I haven't time to be ill!

Where has this week gone!  I don't seem to have done that much but I haven't had a minute to spare. The old craft room looks like a bomb has hit it - no change there then!  The rest of the house is beginning to look the same, but at least the mountain of ironing has disappeared, for now!

I've been busy all week trying to catch up with everything. There's just my Timmie Tag to do over the weekend and then that's June done!  Half way through the year already - eeeek!!

I've spent most of this week working with the Craftwork Cards Goody Boxes .......

I showed you a few samples on Mondays post, using the Happy Days box.  Here's some of what I made using the Black Magic ........

Just adding a touch of colour changes the look of one of the papers that you get in the kit

I've used Copic pens, but you could use watercolour pencils, chalks, inks, whatever you've got on your workdesk.
Of course I had to add, not one, but two of those adorable bows from the Paper Bows pad

Something quick and easy .......

A touch of Candi added to the centre of a punched daisy gives a nice finish.

I also made something for the craft room .......

Now you don't get the doorhanger in the Black Magic kit, I made mine from a piece of chipboard, and it's been covered using one of the papers.  It's then been decorated with die cuts, ribbon and candi all from the kit.  The only other things I've added are the words, done using the Printers Block Alphabet stamps and the bow .....

I've finished this one off with a piece of silver candi just for a different look.

More Candi finishes off the design.

Speaking of Candi, Simon Says Stamp Challenge Blog are showcasing Craftwork Cards Candi in their latest challenge ....... Anything Goes
There's 2 prizes up for grabs ........ a fabulous Card Candi Box from Craftwork Cards, full of lovely Candi designs and a set of Alphabet stamps that fits perfectly onto Candi, and there's also a $50 voucher to spend at the Simon Says Stamp store
Seeing as the theme is 'Anything Goes', I think my door hanger qualifies don't you.  Why don't you give it a go.  You don't have to use Candi on your projects, but it would be nice if you did!

I hope your weather's a bit nicer than we've got here today - it's raining!!!  Let's hope the sun decides to show his face again this weekend though, it's time for the local Queenie Festival down at Port St Mary

If you don't know what queenies are, they're Queen scallops, a Manx delicacy.

This weekend sees a celebration of the sea, with lots of events and entertainment going on. Local chefs will be doing cooking demonstrations on what to do with your Queenies and there'll be a market down there selling local produce.  So it's seafood on the menu here this weekend - yum!

Hope you have a good one.
Cheerio for now

Linda

xx

It's Halloween ........ whoooooooo!

Morning everyone,

Can someone please slow down this week, it's going far too fast for my liking.  Too much to do, and not enough time to do it in ........  arghhhhhh!!!

I'm still busy with DT stuff.  I need to get everything done and dusted by this evening, then it's off to the post office first thing Thursday, so that Kay will get them on Friday ready for the show on Saturday.   Phew!  I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Are you looking forward Halloween?  I must admit I am - I'm off out!  No, not on a broomstick ....... we're off to Castletown on a Ghost Tour around Castle Rushen.
The Castle was originally built for a Norse King in 1265, and during it's time it's been used as a fortress, a royal residence, a mint and even a prison.  It's said to be haunted by a Grey Lady, who was hanged there for killing her son.  She claimed she was innocent but no-one believed her.  Later it was found that the boy had died from natural causes, but of course it was too late.  
She is said to be seen most frequently by the drawbridge, sometimes with a small boy.  Other sightings have been reported in the Eagle Tower at the top of the castle, and also in the dungeon below.   Spoooooky!!!
We don't start the tour until 9.30pm so it's going to be very late when we get out (if we get out !???!)

I managed to get my pumpkins done, although they're not very scary.  See what you think.

Enjoy your day, and if you are doing anything special this evening - have fun.

See you again soon.

Happy Halloween!

Mwahahahaha….

 

 Linda

x

BOO!! It's tag time .....

Hi everyone,

Yes it's that time again - Tim's 12 Tags of 2012. And mine is actually finished.  I'm a little bit earlier than last month, not by much though.

I've been looking forward to this month's tag, I knew Tim would do something spooky and Halloween themed.

Here's Tim's inspiration .....

spooky!!!!! ......... and this is mine

I took the pictures outside and I don't think the colours have come across very well, they're a lot darker in real life.  I'm useless at photography!

This was so much fun to do, and some fasbulous techniques too.
I pretty much followed Tim's instructions to begin with.  Covered the tag with the Tissue Wrap, creasing it up as I stuck it down.  I then used orange and purple acrylic paints to add some base colour, blending with a damp baby wipe.
Next came the Distress Inks, Ripe Persimmon, and Seedless Preserves, with a little bit of Black Soot around the edges.
The spider's web is from the Indigo Blu set of stamps - Hocus Pocus.  I stamped randomly over the background with Black Archival ink and also stamped one web using flitter Glu and followed with Winter Dawn Gilding Flakes.

There's also a spot of Fran-tage on there too (oops!) couldn't resist

I didn't have the large 'Boo' Alterations die so mine is cut using 'Wordplay'.  I decided to use two zeros instead of the o's because they were bigger and filled the width of the tag.  And it meant that I had room to put the googly eyes !!??!!! (again, I couldn't resist)  The spider and the 31 come together in a Movers and Shapers set.  But the coolest thing about the die cuts is .......... the glitter. 
It's the new Distress Stickles dry glitter in the clear rock candy.  Yes, it was actually white when I started out.  But after following Tim's instructions, I made this fabulous sparkly black version.  It's so easy to do, just pour a little into a plastic pot, add a few drops of alcohol ink and stir,  however I did have an OMG! moment when it all went 'lumpy'.  But, it came good in the end ........

........   I'll definitely be using that technique again.

The die cuts were then painted with black acrylic paint, covered with glossy accents followed by the glitter.
While these were drying, I made the ticket.  As I didn't have the new Seasonal Chit Chat, I just wrote the work 'spooky' by hand.
Everything goes together so well for this tag.  I love the colours, the techniques are fab and I'm really pleased with my finished result.

I love Halloween, although over here in the Isle of Man, the Manx people celebrate Hop Tu Naa instead.

It's an ancient Celtic festival, celebrated on 31st October, which used to be the Celtic New Year's Eve.  It would mark the end of summer and the beginning of winter, and was traditionally a time to celebrate the safe gathering of the harvest and a sign that preparations had been made for the long winter ahead.

For the last 100 years or so, children have carried out the Hop Tu Naa ritual, not unlike Halloween these days, where they go from door to door, somtimes dressed in costume, looking for sweets.  Instead of pumpkins they carry hollowed out turnips lit by a candle or a torch, and they sing Hop Tu Naa songs about 'Jinny the Witch'.
If you want to know more here's some links for you
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hop-tu-Naa
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-15337057   (last years report from the BBC)http://www.isleofman.com/heritage/ePedia/Arts/Ceremonies/hop-tu-naa.aspx

We're actually going on a Ghost Tour on Halloween - whoooo ooooo!!  We're off to Castletown for the Castle Rushen Experience.  I can't wait.  I'll problably be scared to death but it'll be worth it I'm sure.

First though, I have to carve my pumpkins .........

....... here they are with my Timmie Tag  (the colours look a little darker on this shot!)  Then of course there's pumpkin pies to be made - yummee!!

Well, that's my tag done for another month.  What will be November's theme? ........ I'm going for Thanksgiving.

See you all again soon.  Thanks for popping by.

Linda

x

It's oh so quiet .....

Hi everyone,
Lauren and Alex flew back home last night so it's very quiet around here this morning.  I didn't get my early morning wake up call that I've been used to for the last few days.  
This morning it's a quick tidy round, load up the washing machine, then it's off to the old craft room for me.  I've quite a bit to catch up on, so I'm going to be in there a while.  I've got  DT stuff to do.  It's my first project for Sam over at Creative Studios, and I haven't quite decided on what to do yet.  Hope the old mojo hasn't decided to take off and have a break. It's to go on the Blog tomorrow!

The craft room hasn't been totally neglected while Alex was here.  We spent a little bit of time in there  the other day.  Alex found a copy of Craft Stamper magazine (start him on with best) which still had the free stamp on the cover.  Of course he wanted the stamp, so Grandma showed him what to do with it.

It didn't take him long to get the hang of things, although I do think he had more ink on his fingers than on the stamp.

We also did a spot of baking that day too.  Alex chose the recipes ........

we made scones and biscuits ......

of course, there's none left, I didn't even get chance for a picture!
Alex even found time to feed the birds with Grandad ......

........ until he spotted the football

Sorry there's no crafty pictures to see again today.  Normal service will resume shortly, I promise.
I do have a post over on the Craftwork Cards Blog today though if you really need a craft fix.  It's the last of my Memory Lane samples, and don't forget the competition is still running.  Just leave me another comment today, to be in with a chance of winning.

I'm going to leave you today with a few pictures from another of the National Glens on the island.  We walked this one yesterday - Ballaglass Glen, halfway between Laxey and Ramsey.

Again, it's a beautiful walk, and even though we didn't have the sunshine yesterday it was still very pretty down there.

 

The river Cornaa rushes like a rapid through the glen, with waterfalls and rock pools along the way.  And of course, we had to get in the middle of it.  There are lots of flat areas, large rocks, where you can stand and get up close and personal with the water.  It didn't take long for both Lauren and Stephen to get down there, and of course Alex had to follow.

what's down there Grandad?

He wasn't too sure about it once he got down there.  The water was moving pretty fast though.

Lauren managed to get hold of the camera, whilst stood in the middle of the river

 and she sneaked a rare photo of me

Well, that's another Glen off the list.  I'm beginning to feel like the IOM tourist board giving all these details of places to go and things to see.  Hope I'm not boring you all.  I know some of you enjoy  reading about the island, thank you for all your lovely comments.  It is a beautiful place to be, most of the time.

Speaking of time ..... it's time I wasn't here.  My craft desk is calling and, I've just heard the postman push something throught the letterbox.  I'm expecting a couple of craft deliveries - maybe it's one of those.
Enjoy you day whatever you're up to and I'll see you all again soon - hopefully with something to share.

Bye for now

Linda

x

It's Twinchie Time!

Happy Monday everyone, (what's left of it)

Hope you all had a good weekend.  As usual it was over far too quickly. 
I've got a really busy week again this week - nothing changes there then!  And I just can't seem to get going at all.  It could have something to do with a little distraction I have at the moment, called Alex! 
I'll apologise now if this post doesn't make sense, but it's really hard to concentrate when there's a little person riding around the kitchen on his Gruffalo trunki!

And you've got Thomas the Tank Engine in the background, for the 28th time this afternoon!!  It's going to seem so quiet when he goes home on Wednesday.

I thought I'd start this week off with a quick Blog Challenge entry, seeing as I didn't do any last week. 
Yes, it's that time again over at Show Us Your Twinchie. 
It's Challenge #7 and the theme is ANYTHING GOES, which means we can pretty much put what we like on there, as long as it's still only 2inches x 2inches.  The DT have already come up with some fabulous designs.

Here's mine .......

Talk about using up left over bits.  The words are the only thing I did specifically for this.  The butterfly was a spare from a challenge weeks ago and the black, Fran-taged 2x2 was cut from a piece of card left over from something I did last week, which I can't show you yet!
The words are from a set of Dylusions stamps which arrived in the old craft room last week (latest ebay purchases!) and had to be used straight away.
 
Well, that's one job done this week.  Unfortunately though my 'To Do' list just keeps growing and growing.  Never mind, I'll eventually get to the end, sometime!

We had a lovely afternoon out yesterday.  We went for a walk in one the National Glens on the island - Groudle Glen.

It was so pretty down there, and so quiet.

There's quite a few of these glens on the island, Stephen says he intends to walk them all.  We've done a few of them, and they're all different. 
Groudle Glen runs from Onchan, all the way down to the sea. There's a railway line that's open during the summer months which takes you up to the tea rooms at Sea Lion Rocks.  And in December they run 'Santa Trains' into the glen which take you to see the big man himself.

walking with Grandad

look Grandad ........ is that a bird?

If you're interested, you can find more info on Groudle Glen on Wikipedia

the Little Isabella

strange looking funghi

Lauren's 'arty' shot

time for a Tic Tac

Towards the end of the Glen we came across this guy.  He was amazing, someone's been busy. It looks as though he's been carved from an actual tree, recently, as the date 2012 was carved into the back of him.

Not quite sure who is, Stephen thought perhaps he was the island's mythological sea God - Manannan.

The glen does run all the way to the sea after all ....

Phew!  That was a long post.   If you're still reading, well done!  I promise I'll keep things shorter for the rest of the week.

Have a lovely evening. and I'll see you again soon.

Linda

x