So this month I have mostly been...

not blogging again!

but this has happened:

• My nephews from Canada came to stay and we found some new lovely places to eat
• changed my hair colour several times (the advantage of wash out colour is that every time you wash it is a surprise. I have some bleached streaks and they make me think grey will be ok!)
  
•  started Couch25K AGAIN. But it isn't as hilly here so I'm hopeful of getting back to 5k again. I've just done Week 4 Run 1. Yay!
• taught lots of lessons in senior school (well 4, 4 was enough).
• went back to Torbay for Ministers Spring School. Torbay behaved and the sea looked pretty awesome most of the time. Love where I live now but I miss the sea so much. True I'm only 20 minutes away but I did have a sea view from my bedroom. (play that tiny violin for me)
• Went to see the parents for Mothering Sunday weekend. We went to the Gower
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  and out to the Mumbles for tea at the new Prezzos which has gorgeous views (and a VERY noisy party near us)
• who says we look alike?
• 
  I crocheted a shawl for both mothers but forgot to get a photo of either! Also doing an Sue Pinner aran spinning top blanket and have just started the Nuts About Squares blanket crochet along because I am a sucker for blankets
• Joined in the short Quirky Kits scrap challenge day but not the weekend as I had to work that weekend
  
  
  
  

•  And a few cards, which mostly came late to the party because that is what my life is like at the moment

 March 17th it was my challenge which was "green with a glimmer of gold" what with it being St Patricks day and all

 I was going to make two cards like this but ran out of time so my mum had something different! This card is not like the ideas in my head! All of the green is watercolour paint. I die cut lots of different shapes from watercolour card  - actually no, a few were on paper and then weren't right so I turned them over and coloured them and it still worked! It all got the Wink of Stella treatment (which you can pretty much take as read these days, like the Sharpie pen on scrap pages!). I die cut the letters from glitter card and found the sticky heart in my stash. Then I went to town with various stickles and liquid pearls

Next came my major boo boo Enfys gave us a great challenge to use things wrapped around groceries - wrap it up.
I didn't read it properly and decided that it was about using packaging. So that's what I did. Doh. I quite like the card though

 I was so proud of myself for using 3 kinds of packaging too. Only one from shopping though. I die cut the Clearly Besotted feather from cardstock . I squished some Distress Inks onto some clear packaging, sprinkled water and smooshed them onto the feather. Then I used the matching stamp over the top to add the feather details. I saw a card recently with a large scallop on and it made me all nostalgic so I cut one from a Heidi Swapp paper with my mahoosive scallop scissors. The turquoise paper is from the same pad. The diagonal stripe is the back from some Pink Paislee embellishments and the coloured stripe is the shade strip cut from a Quirky Kits contents card. I found some thick vellum and heat embossed a Paper Smooches sentiment onto it. And yes, Sharpie pen around everything for definition. I assembled it all, with glue behind the feather and some Prima gems to hold the vellum in place. It isn't quite as squiffy as the photo looks.
Anyway, apologies to Enfys for not reading the challenge properly

And finally this week it is the first Friday of April and an Elemental Inspiration photo

 I looked at the photo on my Ipad and obviously should have had it portrait not landscape as I only looked at the bottom four pictures! 

 So my inspirations are:
the blue egg, tulips, twine wrapping, patterned glass, little daisies and the tag on the cup.
I remembered I had a Clearly Besotted tulip set so embossed that with a silver pearl powder. I coloured it in with Zig Clean Colour markers trying to keep the colours light and pastel (man, that is hard for me). I cut it out and wrapped some twine around it. I die cut an oval shape from watercolour paper and added turquise Clean Colour to it. I also die cut vellum and also dry embossed that with a circles embossing folder. I die cut a tag shape and heat embossed a sentiment from the same Clearly Besotted set as the tulips. 
I put foam pads on the back of the tulips and stuck them to the vellum which helped me to see where to attach the vellum to the blue card. One that was done the card base was looking a bit plain so I dry embossed that with a large embossing folder. 
The daisies were punched 3 at a time with a handy Stamping Up flower punch and once put in place I added some creamy yellow Nuvo drop centres

• that's all folks! well apart from my 40 Days journal which is up to date. I posted this one online and then realised it was actually Day thirty two so it looks slightly less pretty title wise now