Becki’s Ramblings

Where has the week gone?? Alan said to me today, “I can’t believe you haven’t updated your blog since the eighteenth!” - and I couldn’t believe it either. I meant to be so good and organised when I got back home, but it’s over a week since my last posting. Must try HARDER!!

Alan took me shopping last weekend. We went to Sir Stampalot in Peterborough (so much gorgeous stuff!) and I had to be very self-controlled. I did buy some white opaque Stazon and a clear Sakura Stardust pen, both of which I’d been after for a while. Alan bought a couple of gorgeous stamps, some watercolour paper and various other bits and pieces. I had to restrain him from buying a Wizard, which both of us want to get but can’t quite afford just yet. One day…. After Sir Stampalot, we went to Tescos - supposedly to buy food, but Alan treated me to loads of crafty stuff while we were there. What a lucky girl I am, to have such a lovely fiance!

Here’s a photo of all the stuff I can now play with:

So I spent a good deal of last week playing round with the watercolour pencils and the Whispers Strokes Alan bought the previous week. Having seen the gorgeous work produced by the lovely CB ladies, I decided it was about time my colouring-in moved forward a step or two. I’m pleased with the results though. The watercolour pencils are just gorgeous, and so easy to use, and I’m also getting better at watercolouring with my Sakura pens too. Here is the birthday card I made for Dad, using a Pink Petticoat download coloured in with chalks:

The backing papers are from a Dovecraft collection I have, and I’m please with how it turned out. Dad loved it, though he did say he wasn’t too impressed with my portrait of him! Typical!

I used the same download kit from Pink Petticoat to make the following bookmark, too, which is for the CB April bookmark swap. The theme was animals or sweetshop. Couldn’t resist the frog! He is coloured in using my lovely new watercolour pencils. The green ribbon is some raffia I had in my stash and coloured with an inkpad - first time I’ve tried this technique and I was pleased with the result:

More watercolouring - this time on an ATC I made for one of the lovely CB ladies. I used one of the pretty stamps Alan bought me from Tescos, inked it up using the vintage Whispers Strokes and then used my waterbrush to brush the colours in to make the overall effect a little softer. I love this technique!

The dotty ATCs I made for the CB April swap seemed to have got lost in the post, but turned up just after I had made two more to replace them. Ah well. Here they are anyway, similar to the last ones but a bit different too:

Alan had an arty weekend too last week, as well as buying lots of nice crafty stuff for me. I have an old set of dining chairs that I picked up years ago in a junk shop and have been meaning to get round to covering. Alan took my into the big new Dunelm Mill shop in Peterborough and treated me to some beautiful fabric. He then spent ages while I was resting, covering all four chair pads. They look absolutely gorgeous - look!

He also bought me a square canvas and covered that with some of the rest of the fabric too, to make a matching picture for above my mantelpiece in the dining room:

What a star!!

This weekend brought Alan’s Uncle Jack and Aunty Eileen’s 50th Wedding Anniversary party - my first chance to meet the extended family. This is the card I made, using a Keepsake board, fine peel-offs and a lovely embellishment from my gorgeous CraftyBitz stash:

I didn’t have time to make a box for it, so we wrapped it in some pretty gold paper and tied it with a ribbon, so it looked a little like a gift. Forgot to take a picture of that though…. I hope they were pleased with it. The party was certainly very enjoyable!