April in a nutshell

It seems I am now totally incapable of blogging more than once a month :(
Anyway, lets not feel guilty, just be glad I'm doing so. 

So this month I have been

•  doing Easter things (although that all seems like a long time ago now! I went to hear the St John Passion by Bach at Exeter Cathedral. It was heavenly. I did nearly blot my copy book at the beginning. There were five of us there and in front of us were kneelers with names of birds on. One of my friends had one which was rather dull (can't remember what now) so I thought I would treat her to a different one. I pulled one out from near me without seeing the name. It said "Thrush". Carys and I got the giggles. Fortunately we calmed down before the music. Its become one of our catchphrases though

•  Good Friday we held a Good Friday experiences for a few hours where you could try things out. Here are two of mine 

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  The dark tomb was the last one where we talked about Jesus body going after he died. It was made to look different for Easter Sunday
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  we also got up for a dawn service. that will be featuring in a layout soon
• went to visit number 1 son in his new flat which meant buying/making furniture and an Easter Monday trip to Ikea. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Everyone is a dab hand at the old flat pack now. It does seem strange not knowing when we will all be together again.
• lots of work - mostly really creative and challenging. I've started a new venture which means sitting in a cafe for an hour. Its a hard life.
• Eating an amazing meal at Fatbelly Freds in Barnstable which is a fish speciality restaurant. 
  
  that is about an hour from us but we ate there as we were singing in an Easter concert at a church not far away. We declined dessert as they were not sure we would be able to leave by 7. Just as well as it turned out it started at 7 not 7:30 as Phil thought. I've almost forgiven him. He also hadn't mentioned the refreshments after the concert. The tables were heaving. I had my first "tatty" cake which looks like a Welsh cake but tastes different as it is made of potato. Rather lovely though
• Got up to Week 6 of Couch 2 5k. I'll be running the 25 minute run when this posts hopefully. Then going out to the new pub which is opening in our town (our first and everyone is very excited) they are offering free trials of the menu provided you pay for drinks. I'm also thinking of starting another new venture called "wine Wednesday" at the pub. Also work....
• And in crafty news.... Daring Cardmakers first. Spring Garden was Kathy's choice and I went all floaty and flowery
  
  I do love colouring flowers, I've just bought some more because its my favourite cardmaking thing at the moment. I never tire of this set of doodle blooms. I stamped them with white embossing ink and coloured them with Zig Cleancolor markers. I decided to go with the colours of spring flowers, not necessarily actual flowers as I had used tulips the week before. I fussy cut round them (though I think I have the dies!). I used a backing plate die and backed it with vellum, leaving the vellum poking out the side. I then tucked in the flowers and leaves. Lastly I die cut the words and stuck them together. Everything got the Wink of Stella treatment. I should have done what I wanted to keep white first OR kept the brush clean as I had to turn all the letters yellow thanks to my boo boo
  
   
• That card was reasonably in the pastel zone for me, not my usual habitat but I stayed there for the 5 papers challenge where we had to use 5 patterned papers.
  
  I have some new pastel colour markers so I washed colour onto my background card and added water to make it come together in an ombre effect, matching the papers from an old collection - Pink Paislee Color Wash. I found various butterfly punches and dies in my stash and cut out 5 different patterned ones (the top left one looks single coloured but it is patterned, promise!). I added die cut words, carefully managing not to colour them with my wink of Stella pen. The butterflies were getting lost on the ombre background so I dry embossed some vellum and attached it with brads (brads! I've mssed you). I stuck everything together and decided the perfect finishing touch would be some Nuvo drops in buttercream. Except some of my dots became a line so they all had to. 
• Last week's theme was Superhero .  I was slightly miffed that Dawn nicked my fave one (at least graphically, Captain America is the best!) until I read about why she had made the card as she did - which is a wonderful reason for cardmaking.  Then I wondered if I could find any logos on the internet and a card idea was born. This is for Phil for our wedding anniversary (29 years at the end of May!)
  
  I printed the logos on good quality cardstock and punched them out. You can see my old punch doesn't like the cardstock but none of my many circle dies were quite the right size! They demanded outlining and some black cardstock to give that comic vibe. The words are made using Lawn Fawn tiny letters. Finally an old Studio Calico arrow finished it off (arrow had to get in there somewhere !) Everything was built up on pop dots
  
• Bringing us up to date with the first May dare.... Here is the inspiration photo and isn't it beautiful?
     
  I could just put "hello beautiful" on that and call it done. (the words would be over the cat of course, the cat spoils it!!!!) (sorry cat lovers, come baaaaack). Anyway that would be cheating so I did this
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  I used a peacock stencil, embossing paste and various glitters to make the feathers. I then die cut them, realised the paste was still wet, threw that away, die cut another piece and then stenciled it..... while I was waiting FOR IT TO DRY PROPERLY, I dry embossed a die cut rectangle and covered it with Distress Ink in peacock colours (one is helpfully called peacock feathers). I then went round the circles with silver pen to mimic the circles in the photo in the middle of the left column. I die cut "hope" once from blue glitter cardstock and twice from white card and stuck them together. When the feather piece was dry I added silver pen to the lines, stuck that to the background layer and added some lovely vellum butterflies from the recent Quirky Kit. I have some very old, very lovely stick on gems from Prima in my stash and I thought they were perfect on this card
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  I was going to mention my scrap pages and crochet activity but I think this is long enough for now!