Some musical interludes

Once more I have been dismally failing to keep my blog up to speed.
That is due to either being very busy, health issues or having fun!

Health - between having another mole removed; blood tests to check if my thyroid medication is the right strength and issues with my teeth - I'm fine!

Work - just always busy in different ways

Having fun - much nicer to talk about.
A week last Saturday I went to two concerts! one was in my church in aid of Save the Children and there was a good mix of different instruments and styles. It was also the day of the first (and maybe last?) Yellowfest music festival held at Torquay United football ground - which is 10 minutes walk from my house. The main acts were Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford from Squeeze and 10CC. Squeeze were a favourite when I was young and 10CC when I was even younger so a group of us went along. We bumped into a bunch of old guys on our way in - they were going one way and we were going another and did the sidestep dance. Turns out that was 10CC (v. embarrassing). Squeeze were good - although it was just the two of them on guitars, and they played some newer solo stuff too. 10CC were just awesome. In both cases they were all well into their late 50's and 60's and it was inspiring to see the love of making music hasn't left them.

This Saturday was Phil's birthday - we arranged to go out for lunch as there was another concert booked at church for the evening and I was doing the raffle (a first for me!). We walked down to the Cary Arms, a local pub/hotel right by the sea.

Birthday boy enjoying his birthday pint :)

A bit more of the view from the terrace. We live a street back from the white houses to the left of the rock fall.
After a delicious meal we walked along to the other cove (the one you can see in the picture) That is Oddicombe beach and so where we live should be called Oddicombe. Obviously people  preferred Babbacombe for some reason. It was quite warm anyway but Oddicombe is sheltered so we sat and had an icecream. I had just bought a new £7 sunhat to go with my £4 sunglasses...

We then had the extra treat of the Cliff Railway back to the top. It is a very steep walk otherwise (and we were full of food)

The evening concert had been cancelled so we biked over to Dartmouth for the music festival, to listen to a group called Wildwood Kin. Who are very good. (I say "biked over" so casually. It was sensible to go on the motorbike but I absolutely hate it. I was screaming "nooooooo" in my head most of the way there....)

Enough of your wittering, show us the cards I hear you say.
Or not.
Two weeks ago the theme for Daring Cardmakers was Doors, with the idea of having an opening door on our cards.
I made a card for a family who will be moving away to an exciting new adventure quite soon

On the front I used some Cricut gold self adhesive glitter card with a Paper Smooches die and an alphabet die. The middle of one of the "o"s became the door knob. I also stamped the rest of the sentiment using the Milo alphabet and white embossing powder. The papers are very old My Minds Eye

Here is the inside of the door. This sentiment was stamped with Delicta gold ink and clear embossing powder. The Christian fish symbol started life as a breast cancer hope one but they are very similar!
Then on the inside of the card

I wrote this with an embossing pen and added tinsel gold embossing powder but that didn't work too well so I went over the outline with gold krylon as well.

This week we made monochromatic cards based on the colours of the rainbow. I have to say that the blog looks so pretty :)

I bought some new shaker dies from Clearly Besotted and made this cheerful card for my lovely husband

Although I made a bit of a dogs dinner of it all...
I pulled out lots of different yellow papers and also inked up the white card in yellow distress inks.
What I should have done is die cut the "star" bit out of a large piece of paper. Instead I cut it from a smaller one and used another star die cut around it (from Spellbinders), using the larger star to cut acetate from as well. All of that was straightforward, it was the fiddly little bits of foam tape that was difficult. I thought I had just about got it all around, but then I filled the star with big beads and also some micro beads. Which all fell out again. You can just about see some of them left here

(right on the very edges of the star) but every time I moved it more came out. Ah well - I share my mistakes so you don't have to do them :)

Bank Holiday washout

I was hoping to have a crafting bonanza this weekend seeing as it was (Inter) national scrapbooking day.
But no.
Friday was filled with the sorts of things a day gets filled with right before a building project and then a little bit more. If you are a Church related blog reader rather than a crafty one (or both!) then my tip is - get a Project Manager - worth every penny. I think I would have exploded with stress without one :)

All of which meant that most of Saturday was taken up with work and by the time I had finished I had no hywl left at all. If you don't know what that means, allow me to quote from The Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (the big dictionary of Welsh recently published by the University of Wales) 

Hywl: A healthy physical or mental condition, good form, one’s right senses, wits; tune (of a musical instrument); temper, mood, frame of mind; nature, disposition; degree of success achieved in the execution of a particular task &c; fervour (esp religious), ecstasy, unction, gusto, zest; characteristic musical intonation or sing-song cadence formerly much in vogue in the perorations of the Welsh pulpit.

Yea, I had none of that.

Sunday afternoon's just a bit of planning for the youth group and then crafting actually turned into mostly planning and a little crafting. I've had a little time today although it has mostly involved a misty walk around Shaldon and Teignmouth. Lovely, lovely, lovely even in the mist although when we walked over the Shaldon bridge the estuary tide was out. We walked for aaaaaaages, right from the top of the car park in Shaldon, did the whole of the Ness beach through the Smugglers Tunnel and back; through Shaldon, across the bridge, on a little path that winds round the sea/traintrack right almost through until the train tunnel stops play at the other end of Teignmouth. And almost back again except we cheated and got the little ferry across the channel. We now have a very tired old dog. And two almost as tired old owners :)

That is the ferry across with the bridge we walked over to the far right. What a lovely boat eh?

The cliff on the far left is one side of The Ness cove (tunnel is through that I think!)

Proof that we were really there (you see this from the train. In the picture above this one, you see the walkway on the right and then a cliff? In between is the train track. It is an awesome run up country along the coast just here)

Tired dog availing herself of water in the "O"

The old codgers. I like this photo so expect to see it on a layout soon.

What we discovered was that the really nice places to eat are in Shaldon so we shall do this backwards another time. All of this is 15 minutes drive from our house. Just fab.

All of which is a long introduction to my Daring Card this week. May already! And it was my turn to choose a pictoral inspiration which turned out to be sadly in keeping with the weather just now.

I was inspired by the colours, the little handdrawn houses, the large amount of green and the kite on the string.

I used an Echo Park paper pad (Here and Now) which had almost the exact shades of papers all together.  Result! I added an embossing folder background to a white panel (which i had already drawn the black lines onto) and hand cut all the elements from different papers. I also used some new Lawn Fawn alphabet dies and some bakers twine for the string. Pretty basic lift really - some of the team have gone for more sophisticated take than me but I'm still happy with what I have done.
Here is hoping I have more craft time/better weather soon :)