Dartmoor Wild Flowers

After our lunch out today, as it was such a beautiful spring day, my hubby took Mum and me on a drive up onto Dartmoor. We drove around, doing what my hubby called “Proper Sploring”! This meant that when he saw an interesting little lane turning off, he would have to go down it, just to see where it led. He is nosier than a cat, and even nosier perhaps than those of us who take part in the weekly WOYWW blog hop when we satisfy our curiosity as to what’s on each other’s work desks.

From high up on the moors, we could look down towards the wooded valleys, and in one spot we saw what we originally thought was purpley-blue plastic laid out – we said, “That can’t possibly be bluebells!” But it was. We drove down to have a look.

We stopped a few times in a wooded lane, so that Mum and I could get out and have a wander, and I got my camera out. I’m afraid some of the photos are slightly out of focus but it was hard to tell at the time because the screen on my camera isn’t that big, and the sun was extremely bright. Further up, we came upon the masses of bluebells we’d seen from above.

Here are the photos I took.

I believe our American cousins call these beautiful flowers “Blue Bonnets” which I think is charming!

Buttercups:

Celandines:

Clover (a bit out of focus, I’m afraid):

Gorse – this grows in the woods adjoining the moors, and profusely on the moor itself. Very prickly, and the flowers smell of coconut.

Speedwells:

Stitchworts – again a little out of focus:

Violets:

Wall pennyworts. I love this little plant, with its delightfully round, rubbery leaves that “creak” when you move them, and the humble little green spike of a flower. Until he met me, my hubby had never heard of them, and had never noticed them, despite being brought up in the country! They are so insignificant, but so valiant, growing out of dry walls.

Don’t our British wild flowers have delightful names? They probably go far back into the mists of time.

Now for some non-flowering plants. Ferns unfurling:

Ivy:

Lichen. Don’t you just love that texture?

Gnarled old oak tree:

And now some of Dartmoor’s famous dry stone walls. Many of these have been there for centuries, and they are as solid as the moor itself. Dry stone walling is an ancient craft, and while the old walls sometimes may look a bit haphazard, they are carefully planned, with the largest granite stones at the bottom (how did they even lift some of these?) and they are probably the earliest cavity walls, with a double wall being built, and the centre being filled with smaller stones, and then topped with more stones.

They get a wonderfully weathered look over the years, and in shady places, moss and lichen grow there, as well as my wall pennyworts, and sometimes little birds will nest between the stones.

Sorry, I can’t resist it – got to quote my favourite Pam Ayers poem:

I am a dry stone waller,

All day I dry stone wall.

Of all appalling callings,

Dry stone walling’s worst of all.

She may be right. Inmates of Dartmoor Prison were forced to build them, and some of the best ones are found in the vicinity of Princetown! Beats sewing mailbags, perhaps, at least in the summer.

Just before turning back for home, we drove down a tiny lane which led to some pretty thatched cottages, and found this:

I count my blessings every day, one of which is the privilege of living in such a beautiful corner of England, with all this on the doorstep, and also having a hubby who so enjoys “sploring”!

Hope you enjoyed sharing our little trip into the beautiful Devon countryside. It is certainly at its very best at this time of the year.

WOYWW 259

For details of how to join in the fun of WOYWW and to expose all (on your work desk at least!) click on the WOYWW icon in my sidebar, which will take you to our hostess Julia’s blog, where she will explain all.

As usual, I seem to be between jobs again at this midweek stage, but at least my desk isn’t quite as bare as it was last week.

Centre stage is my recycled mini-album. The construction of the book itself is now complete, and I have started on the decoration of the pages. Unfortunately I cannot show you very much of this as it contains personal family information relating to the person for whom I am making it, but you can see how the borders are beginning to work. Each of the five signatures (made from recycled Christmas cards) is arranged so that the smallest pages are in the centre, and the largest on the outside. When the pages are opened as in the picture, the borders on the different pages build up in layers so that at the centre, there will appear to be quite a deep border, but it will be made up from smaller borders on the underlying pages. I have created two backgrounds for the first pages of the book (not visible) and this will continue as I proceed with work on subsequent pages. You can see two photos ready to be mounted.

The book is sitting on a new scratch paper made from materials going into the book – acrylic paints, inks, rubber stamp cleaning, etc. I decided to make some interesting swirls this time, from the brush cleaning. It’s already looking quite nice!

Just beyond the book is a small silver-coloured card. This is actually a failure – my first attempt at creating a background using the empty sachets from my colitis medication – you can read all about that project here – after an epic struggle I eventually managed to make a birthday card for my hubby (his birthday yesterday) from this most unresponsive material!

On the left, the purple box contains my drawing pens for Zentangle etc. I have found out that the Zig archival pens I have been using have a problem dealing with acrylics – if I try to draw or write on an acrylic background, the pens almost immediately stop working – it’s as if something in the paint seals the flow of ink. I have wasted a couple of pens doing this, which is a real pain, because it’s something I need to do. After searching for the problem online, I discovered that the Faber-Castell PITT artist pens do not have this problem, so I ordered some last week and so far they are brilliant – eventually I shall probably go over exclusively to these pens which will be useful across the whole range of my work.

Arranged around the rest of the desk are various acrylic paints and gel mediums, brushes and other equipment, and you can see (as always, because it’s so useful!) Lunch Lady Jan’s pretty little pincushion in the cream coloured mini-bath.

I thought you might be interested to see how my knitting is coming along. I am making very good progress with the first sleeve, and this is how it looks now.

I am decreasing down the sleeve, following two graph patterns as I do so (one for the shape, one for the colour pattern, which I have to keep correct).

We are very busy at the moment in the run-up to my hubby’s retirement, with a lot of different farewell events to go to, and preparing for our holiday in June (the first for 4 years), so please forgive me if I don’t visit many desks this week! I have got a stack of boring paperwork to do before our appointment with the tax consultant immediately after our holiday, and am struggling to keep up with everything – today I haven’t done much but rest and sleep!!

Happy WOYWW everybody, and wishing you a creative and fulfilling week ahead.

Card from Recycled Medication Sachets

Those who follow or visit my blog will know that I’m in Full Recycling Mode at the moment, and lots of things I would normally throw away are prompting the question, “Could I make art out of this?”

For my ulcerative colitis, I take medication in the form of granules, which come in individual plastic foil sachets. Taking two of these a day, I realised I was throwing quite a lot of the empty sachets away, and asked myself if they could be recycled in some form. I asked my hubby, “Could I make art out of these?” He pulled a face and replied emphatically, “NO!!” I think he thinks I’m completely off my head at the moment with my obsession with used teabags and empty food boxes… but he should be used to me by now, after 28 years of marriage!!

Anyway, I decided to give it a try. The project turned out a lot more difficult than I’d anticipated as these sachets are made of the most unresponsive material ever!! However, I was determined to make my hubby a card for his birthday today – one in the eye for someone who so doubted my abilities to make art out of such things!

I have made a video of most of the process – disasters and successes – but unfortunately I got so carried away that towards the end I didn’t notice that the camera’s memory was full, so I didn’t manage to complete the whole thing. I also forgot to take very many photos. (Actually, altogether, this project seemed fraught with problems from beginning to end!)

Empty sachets cut open, with some “spills” made from them. The scissors are to stop the beastly things from curling up again!

Epic Fail! My first attempt at creating the background for my project.

I tried to stick the flattened out sachets onto a piece of card using gel medium. They kept curling up and not sticking, so I left it to dry under a pile of books. The result was anything but successful, with a very messy and lumpy surface.

I tried sticking the sachets with Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive (my favourite wet glue) but it didn’t work, probably because the surface was so slick, and not porous. For paper and card, that glue is second to none, but not for this, unfortunately. I was at my wits’ end, trying to think of a way of sticking them, when my hubby phoned, so I picked his brains without giving him any details about the project, and he suggested double sided tape. I was sceptical, but decided I had nothing to lose by trying, and lo and behold, it worked a treat.

I covered a fresh piece of card with strips of double sided tape, and laid down the opened-up sachets onto this, centring the first one and cutting the excess off the sides of the outer ones. It was really, really hard lining these up, because the surface was soooo sticky, and stuck on contact, and the sachets kept curling up. I managed some degree of success in the end, and once it was done, I embossed it with the Cuttlebug, using the folder “Diamond Plate,” which I thought would give the card a more manly air!

I thought the stuff might melt in an interesting way, and produce some nice wrinkled surfaces like Tyvek, but it was very stubborn and only rolled up on itself, but with further heating, it got quite tacky, and I was able to scrunch it up and make it stick to itself. I made six scrunched up ones and laid the three smaller ones on top of the larger ones, hoping they wouldn’t end up simply looking like scrunched up tin foil! I stuck them together with double sided tape and secured them to the embossed card with small jewelled brads. This piece was then layered onto a piece of black card, which in turn was stuck to a white card base.

I had a terrible job rolling the sachets to form the spills which I wanted to use for flower stems – the stuff was so darned slippery and it was very hard to get them to roll tightly enough, but after experimenting, I discovered the best way was to start them off around a wooden barbecue stick, and after a few turns, to withdraw the stick, and pull back on the roll to tighten it, before applying exactly the right amount of pressure (learnt by trial and error) to complete the roll. A line of ATG double sided tape secured the roll.

I stuck down three stems made from the spills, using narrow double sided tape, and then heat-embossed in silver the Happy Birthday sentiment at the top.

Here is the finished card:

and a detailed shot of the flowers.

I used the reverse side of the sachets for the background, being unprinted, and a slightly duller silver than the front surface, which I used for the 3-D pieces. I have got some dull silver card which would have been a lot easier to handle for the embossed background, and I would have ended up without all those joins, too, but I wanted to prove that I could make something out of the sachets!

I gave my hubby the card this morning and he loved it. When he opened it, he saw that I had stuck a sachet onto the inside of the card, with the message, “Who said I couldn’t make art out of these?!!”

Honour is satisfied! However, this was such awful stuff to work with – very unforgiving, and very unresponsive, and the whole project involved a huge amount of very frustrating work. The result wasn’t over-impressive after all that, so I don’t think I shall be continuing with this material. Some things are better for recycling than others! If anyone can come up with some other ways it might be used, I’d be glad to hear it, but from now on the empty sachets will be going into the bin again, I’m afraid. The only part that I think may have potential for the future is the rolled “spills” which could be quite effective en-masse, but it’s a lot of work! Is it worth it, I wonder?

WOYWW 258

Click on the WOYWW logo in my sidebar and visit Julia’s blog, to find out what this is all about, if you are not already part of the fun, nosing around other people’s work desks!!

Here is my desk this week.

I don’t know why it is, but each week these days, I seem to be between jobs when WOYWW comes around, so I never seem to have anything very interesting going on on my desk! This week you can see the mini-album I’ve been working on, now complete (the book at least – the pages have yet to be decorated). It is made entirely from recycled materials, and anything else (metal embellishments, paint, etc.) were already in my stash.

To the right of it, you can see the small piece of roofing felt with my test samples of different finishes – acrylic wax, gel medium and acrylic varnish – to help me decide on a finish for the half-binding of the book.

I tried to include my iMac in the picture, because on the screen there is a nifty little gear wheel that I have created in Inkscape, but it doesn’t show up at all! I’ve been struggling most of the afternoon trying to get Inkscape to work with the Mac, and it seems to be OK now. I am designing a gear wheels stencil which I intend using to embellish the pages of the mini-album.

The little purple box contains my Zentangle pens and other drawing stuff. The cream coloured tin bath is a convenient place to keep things tidy – on top is Lunch Lady Jan’s pincushion which I really treasure! Beside that is a selection of gel mediums, gesso and paint that I was using for the book, and a jar of dirty paint water. (Well, there has to be some sort of evidence of work going on, doesn’t there!)

You can see better pictures of the book if you scroll down to previous posts.

The rest of the room is, as usual, in utter chaos. Still loads of teabags hanging around feeling neglected!

Have a great week, everybody, and may your creative juices flow, your mojo reign supreme, and may you have lots of goodies to share with us!

Recycled Mini-Album–Finishing the Cover

I wanted to create a traditional look to the cover of this book, so it would have a half-binding over the spine. To do this, I needed some strong material that would be thin so as not to produce too much bulk, flexible so that the book would open easily, and above all, strong, so that the hinges would not wear with use, and eventually split.

In my quest for a cheap (or better yet, free!) supply of Tyvek, I approached the builder who worked on our new house, and asked if he had any offcuts. He said they didn’t use Tyvek specifically, but another brand of roofing felt which had the same properties – a breathable waterproof membrane. I suspected that like Tyvek, this would be a bonded polyethylene material, which would probably melt and distort nicely with heat, and also be very strong. He gave me a nice big piece:

It is very like the “fabric” type of Tyvek in that it has a pattern on it resembling woven fabric, and has a soft handle, unlike the “paper” type of Tyvek which is a lot stiffer, and with a flat surface. This roofing felt is more suitable for this current project, in any case, than “paper” Tyvek. Close up, this is what the texture looks like:

On its own, it is far too flimsy to form the spine cover, which needed to be made from cardboard. I have quite a large supply of small pieces of corrugated cardboard that were originally in some food packaging, and I cut one of these down to the size of the spine, allowing a little extra to create a convex surface.

I rolled this piece around my rolling pin to get a nice smooth curve, and glued the edges to the edges of the spine, using Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive.

I cut a piece of roofing felt to cover the spine and to extend a little way onto both the front and back board of the book, and allowing for turnings top and bottom, to cover the edge of the corrugated cardboard and to provide a nice neat finish to the end boards of the cover.

This piece was then painted with black acrylic paint. I had to work the paint well into the texture in order to get good coverage.

The first coat completed, and set aside to dry.

Obviously I could not speed the drying process with my heat gun, or I would have ended up with this!

This was an experiment I did when I first got the roofing felt, to see how well it would melt with the heat gun. It melts just like Tyvek, creating lovely bubbles and holes, and I know I shall be able to use this – I have yet to try ironing it.

As for my book cover, it needed a second coat of paint, after which I was better pleased with it. It had a completely matt surface, which was also slightly rough, and it needed something to finish it. The faux leather also required some extra treatment, to protect it and to give it extra richness.

I took a small piece of roofing felt and painted part of it with black acrylic paint, and then divided it into four sections, in which I tested different finishes: acrylic wax, regular semi-gloss acrylic gel medium, and gloss acrylic varnish. The final section was left untreated. This is what it looked like when dry:

It is rather difficult to see the difference on the photo; all three treated surfaces had a greater or lesser degree of gloss, with the varnish being by far the shiniest – this was not what I wanted for this particular project. The feel of each one was greatly improved – less rough, and all of them brought out the texture to a greater or lesser degree. Definitely ahead of the rest was the acrylic wax – I had read great things about this product and was not disappointed.

Like gel mediums, it goes on milky white, having the consistency of thin cream. I brushed it in well, working it into the texture of the roofing felt, and left it to dry. When dry, I buffed it with a soft cloth to achieve a subtle sheen.

As for the faux leather, I took three small offcuts from the book cover and tested them with the same finishes, and again, it was the acrylic wax which won hands down.

After two coats and a good buffing with a soft cloth, I was well pleased with the result.

I glued the half-binding onto the book with PVA adhesive. Firstly I painted the outside of the corrugated cardboard spine with a watered down coat of PVA to seal it. I had a bit of a job getting the roofing felt to stick, but managed it with the aid of rubber bands, paperclips and plastic clips. Once dry, it seemed securely adhered.

I then attached the Tim Holtz embellishments – the book label that I had created with one of the small metal frames, and the metal corners. This is how the cover looks now, and it is the finished result, as I have decided against cluttering the traditional style with the addition of a fastening.

There is more than enough space between the signatures to allow for expansion with the addition of material in the album and I do not think the book will be too fat to stay closed – in fact I shall take great care that it does not, because one of my pet hates is albums that are so bursting with content that they will not stay closed, but splay open all the time!

Here is a detail of the embellishments, which also shows the sheen and texture of the faux leather.

I cut the roofing felt large enough to allow for small turnings into the inside of the spine, and inside the front and back cover. Here is a detail of the spine of the book. The edges of the corrugated cardboard are now covered.

Inside the cover you an see the turning of the half-binding, and also the two mini-brads which secure the book label to the front. You can also see the backs of the metal corners where I bent them around the book, and hammered them flat – they are also secured with some Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive.

Here is a detail of the turning of the half-binding inside the cover, and one of the corners.

The middle of the inside front and back covers needed to be filled to bring it up to the same level as the folded-in faux leather, so that when the end papers were added, they would lie as flat as possible. Also, I did not want the brads to make an impression on the end papers – these are quite thin, being made from recycled commercial envelope paper. I cut a couple of squares of recycled card (the same stuff I used to create the faux leather) to level things out, and stuck these down inside the covers with Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive.

On the left you can see a little rectangle of paper stuck down – this was to cover one of the brads from the book label embellishment.

Now I was ready at last to add the end papers. Again I used Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive, taking especial care with the edges and the centre fold, to make sure they were well stuck down.

I trimmed off the excess end paper from the first page of the book. Unfortunately I had not allowed for this when I stamped the music background onto the papers, because it meant that the image on the page that was trimmed was no longer in the middle – the front end paper wasn’t too bad but it was rather more obvious on the back one. Ah well, one lives and learns, and after all, this is a hand-made project and is bound to have one or two slightly “off” bits!

The final thing I did today was to stick together the innermost two pages of all but one signature (made from the smallest recycled cards) down their edges to create pouches for tags, using the ultra-sticky red-backed double-sided tape. The signature I omitted had a larger card in the centre so I thought I would leave that one as it was.

This completes the structure of the book. It just remains to touch up the rest of the pages where they had stuck together, and brush on some talc to prevent this happening again. Then I shall be ready to begin decorating it.

WOYWW 257

Hop over to Julia’s blog by clicking on the WOYWW in my sidebar to see what this is all about, if you don’t know already!

Not a great deal of activity on my desk today – I often seem to be between jobs when WOYWW comes round again, so I tend to have cleared a lot of stuff away.

I haven’t done much on the mini-album this week, but I have been thinking about the spine cover, and have been playing around with some corrugated cardboard which I think will form the cover for the actual spine, with a piece of roofing felt painted black covering the whole thing and extending a little way onto the front and back boards of the book. I was looking online for instructions for creating headbands on books (the decorative corded piece that protects the top of the spine when the book is pulled from a bookshelf) and entered the whole wonderful world of book binding – how I would LOVE to get involved with that!! Anyway, the headband has to be added to the completed signatures before they are bound in the cover, which is a different approach from this recycled dried milk box project, so I shall have to forget that for this project.

Immediately to the left of the album and the piece of cardboard are a couple of painted black pages that fell out – obviously a weak Christmas card that split when I stitched through it. No matter – I can use these sheets for tag pockets etc. Underneath them are the end papers.

At the back of the desk you can see the bowl with the talc, and the fat soft paintbrush for applying it to prevent the pages from sticking together. My posh Bosch glue gun is to the right. One of my better investments! It’s an awesome tool. You certainly get what you pay for.

Far right at the back: some teabags and tea-dyed fabrics waiting for me to get back to my teabag art. There continue to be heaps of teabags in varying stages of dryness arranged around the rest of the room! At church coffee on Sunday I got so carried away with the conversation I was having with someone that I completely forgot to ask for any teabags!!

The most important thing on my desk this week is the completed bee-themed card on the right – a new home card that I made from my new Stampin’ Up supplies. You can read all about it here. I’m very pleased with how it turned out. Underneath is an Ikea mirror that I painted some time ago (you can see it here) – this will accompany the card, as a house-warming present. Pale green crackle glazed background with painted daisies in acrylics.

Underneath everything is my black and brown scrap sheet that I clean my brushes and stamps on. I have several in different colour schemes and the colours build up nicely till they make great sheets for projects, or background sheets to photograph things against. Trying not to waste anything chez Shosh!

Happy WOYWW everyone.

Stampin’ Up Six-Sided Sampler Card 1–New Home

Today I made a New Home card, using for the first time my Stampin’ Up Six Sided Sampler stamps and co-ordinating punch.

Here are the materials and equipment I used to make the card.

Working from top left: Stampin’ Up Hexagon punch, Stampin’ Up Six-Sided Sampler stamps, Water Droplets stamp from Designs by Ryn, Fiskar’s embossing plate (honeycomb) (behind the stamps), Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive, black acrylic paint, selection of clear sentiment stamps (manufacturer unknown, stored in CD case), alphabet stamp set in wooden box, Pinflair glue, Glossy Accents, home-made ink blender pad, Inkylicious Ink Dusters resting on clear embossing powder, Ranger Archival Ink (sepia), Wild Honey and Walnut Stain Distress Inks, Versamark embossing ink pad, foam pads, selection of pens, embossing tool. I don’t think I’ve left anything out!

The foundation for this card is an A4 smooshed background from my backgrounds folder, created by smooshing the paper around in spritzed ink on my non-stick craft sheet.

This was embossed using a Fiskars embossing plate – I bought a whole set of these several years ago on Ebay. They are rigid plastic, double-sided, with a different design on each side. I have used this honeycomb one more than all the others.

In the above photo you can see the Cuttlebug sandwich needed to emboss the maximum size with this plate. Starting from the bottom: A Plate, Fiskar’s plate (right side up), cardstock (wrong side up), “No More Shims” embossing mat (thicker than the standard Cuttlebug tan mat), 2 sheets of scrap printer card, B Plate.

This is what the background sheet looks like after being passed through the Cuttlebug. The Fiskar’s plate embosses a maximum of 5” square. At the top of the sheet it is not embossed, and you can see the impressions left by the holes in the embossing plate. I put the sheet on the tan embossing mat and smoothed these out using my bone folder.

Here is the background sheet trimmed to size, and resting on the base card which has yet to be inked.

There was a slight impression left by the edge of the plate, between the embossed part and the non-embossed, and I created an embossed line to cover this, using my Scor-Pal scoring board. This doesn’t show up very well in the photo, I’m afraid.

Using Wild Honey Distress Ink, I stamped a series of hexagons onto the background sheet, from the Stampin’ Up set. (The embossed line shows up a bit better on this photo.)

On a piece of pale yellow scrap card, I selected another hexagon stamp from the set, and stamped three shapes with Versamark, and then heat embossed them with clear embossing powder to act as a resist. This had the effect of darkening the yellow colour.

I inked them with Wild Honey Distress Ink, using an Inkylicious Ink duster, deliberately keeping the colour uneven and random.

These hexagons were then punched out with Stampin’ Up’s co-ordinating hexagon punch.

After this, I used one of my home-made blending pads made from an old wood block from when I unmounted my original rubber stamps, and some cut-n’ dry foam. I used Walnut Stain Distress Ink to darken the edges.

I was about to put the remains of the yellow card away, when it occurred to me that I could use the punched out shapes as a stencil to add dimension to the background sheet. (To the right, you can see the list I made, of the steps to create the card – useful for composing this blog post!)

I used Wild Honey Distress Ink with an Ink Duster to add some random hexagons.

To create a mask over the stamped hexagons, I laid down some greaseproof paper and traced around the edges of the hexagons.

I then cut around the traced line and held the mask down with a couple of small pieces of low tack masking tape.

This is the water droplets stamp from the backgrounds set by Designs by Ryn – one of my favourite stamps as it creates the most realistic three-dimensional water droplets!

For this card, I used sepia archival ink over the background, to simulate droplets of honey.

When I use this stamp, I accentuate the realistic effect by adding a tiny dot with a white marker onto the catch-light of each droplet.

To create the main embellishment for the card, I drew a honeybee, and then outlined it with a black permanent marker pen (one of my Zentangle pens) and used the fine one to create the veins in the wings. To add colour, I rubbed my Wild Honey and Walnut Stain Distress Ink pads onto my non-stick craft sheet, spritzed them with water and picked up the ink with a brush, and painted the bee.

(I picked up the excess ink by smooshing the yellow card stencil piece in the ink – another useful addition to my backgrounds folder.) After a quick blast with my heat gun to make sure it was completely dry, I cut out the bee with a pair of fine scissors, and painted the edge of the cut card with black acrylic paint.

Turning the bee over onto a piece of fun foam, I embossed the body with my large-sized embossing tool.

The wings were painted with Glossy Accents and the bee left to dry.

While it was drying, I attached the three punched and heat-embossed hexagons onto the background using foam pads.

I inked the edges of the base card with Walnut Stain and Wild Honey Distress Inks, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster. I put a piece of scrap paper inside the folded card to protect it from any misplaced ink.

The card mounted onto the base card, with the sentiment stamped.

I used one of a set of clear sentiment stamps, a small amount of hand writing, and my alphabet stamps from the little wooden box – a set I got on Ebay – stamped with the aid of my stamp alignment tool. I used Wild Honey Distress Ink for the stamping, and then accentuated the text with my sepia permanent marker.

The completed card.

The bee was attached using quite a large amount of Pinflair glue filling the embossed body, with some more under each wing to keep them raised above the surface of the card. The legs were stuck down using Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive. Both glues were applied with the aid of cocktail sticks, and the card set aside overnight to dry.

The impression I was trying to create is of the new home owner approaching her new home – in this case, her very first home of her own. Her first sight of it is definite and clear, and as she moves forward in time, things become less clear, but there is the promise of sweetness and joy as her life moves forward, into who knows what adventures! Onwards and upwards to a bright future full of hope!