Wellies

Just thought I'd show you how wet it has been with us. This is just inside the 'Stackyard' field gate, also to show you that I am not one of the 'green welly' brigade. Real farmers wear black wellies lol.

DCM - Forever Autumn

Forever Autumn

I decided on this one after hearing the Justin Haywood song of the same name playing on the radio. I couldn’t get it out of my mind and kept singing it as I was working.So now I’m daring you to make a card that depicts Autumn.It can be an Autumn scene or it can be something completely different but using a palette of Autumn colours……the choice is yours!


Here is my version of the DCM Dare for this week, the background paper is a free one I printed off from Scrapbook Scrapbook, years and years ago, but I loved the colours and the leaves, so kept it. The stamps are the same one's I used on the paint challenge - sorry I've lost the company name, they were the cheap ones you got in The Works. The top and bottom leaves were stamped in Versafine Vintage Sepia, and watercoloured the middle one was stamped using Brillance Pearlescent Poppy. I found the quote on the Quote Garden website.

It's official!

Yes, I'm afraid I have finally become a fully committed card maker! I've started making my Christmas cards in October, I know there are some people who start even earlier but these are for personal use, so I think the end of October is quite early enough. The Holly card above is made using the stamp I won in the Think Pink Auction (thanks, Gez) it is a huge stamp, so you don't need much more on your card. stamped it on watercolour paper and 'painted' it with watercolour pencils. There is a little bit of glossy accents on the berries, but it didn't come out very well in the picture.

I got lots of these embellishments from Craft Beautful Magazine last month. They make really simple cards. The sentiment is a Papermania sticker, free from a mag last year.

This is another of the CB embellishments, doodles done with the Crafters Workshop, Swirly Vines stencil and a silver gel pen.

DCM Little Extra Sketch

Kathy here this time with a new card sketch to tempt you with for our Little Extra challenge.
Here is my version of Kathy's sketch, papers are 3bugsinarug. Apologies for the terrible photograph, I had to use flash.

Happy Halloween

I usually don't do anything for Halloween, however, I couldn't resist these digi elements and if you look at my blog banner, you'll see that there are some sneaky little changes there too. If you are celebrating by traditional 'guising', dooking for apples and treacle scones (all Scottish customs) or American Trick or Treating, then I hope you have a lovely time.

All elements and the green paper are from the Digital Craft Cottage Designer Gift A Day for October, the other two papers I made myself.

Fiskarettes Competition

Over on the Fiskarettes site there is a monthly competition. The October comp is to use the quote "A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song (Chinese Proverb)" .

These beautiful papers are digital downloads from Sugarplum Paperie, a kit called 'Little Birdie' . The tag is from Little Birdie too, I printed it out 4 times and did a bit of 3D decoupage to give it a bit of texture. The music element is from another Sugarplum Paperie kit called 'Classical Melody'

DCM Paint the Town

Paint the Town........red, green, sky blue pink with yellow dots on, or any colour you fancy, with acrylics, H2Os or watercolours, with brushes, sponges or splatters. We don't mind, as long as you use paint on your cards. So have some fun with the DCM and get Painty this week.

I love a to slap on nice thick layers of acrylic paint, so I had a lot of fun with this dare. The red background was Versamark stamped with the Cornish Heritage Farm 'Woodgrain' Backgrounder, the same stamp was used on paper with Adirondack Dye Ink in 'Woodlands'.

I stamped into the wet acrylic paint with three bargain clear stamps (sorry name has been lost) and then stamped them onto card. The sentiment stamp is Stampin' Up.

Scraporchard Template Challenge

We went for a walk on Sunday and, of course, the camera came too! The leaves are only just beginning to turn colour so a lot of gold and still some green. This LO is uses the template for the Scraporchard template challenge, papers/elements are either my own (the impressionist leaf background) or from the SO September Mega by the SO Designers, the Word Art is 'Elegant Word Art by Bethany Harty - The Simple Life'.

Sugarplum Paperie - Ad inspiration challenge

The Sugarplum Paperie Friday Challenge is to use an advertisement to inspire a layout or project. We are surrounded by inspiration everyday as we drive down the road, watch television or read a magazine. Use an ad to inspire your color choice, positioning of the photos/elements or even just to springboard your layout.
I liked the way this ad uses different sized text and I don't think I make enough of text and word art in my LOs, so I thought I would try this out. The kit used is Sugarplum Paperie 'Little Birdie', font is BN Machine and I used a CU overlay by Pineapple Plantation to fuzz it up a little.

Autumn Flood Layout

I thought I'd scrap a flood photo, I chose this one because I wanted to use the Scrap Orchard September Mega Kit and this picture has the most autumnal feel to it.

A wee bit wet!

It's been raining! We've had quite a lot of rain this week and yesterday it rained all day, the result being quite a lot of flooding in the fields. This is not an unusual occurance, and we have had much worse floods, as far as I know none of the roads are flooded, but I thought you might be interested to see it. The picture above is the field to the left of the house 'side of the house' field, where we have a large pond and often have wild ducks visiting.

You can see that the weather is much improved this morning and I was pleased to catch this reflection in the flood. This is the middle field and the bottom field, these fields run down to the River Annan.

This picture is looking back at our fields from the ditch between us and the Bush Farm fields, that's the ditch just behind the strip of green. Our neighbour had just ploughed and reseeded this field, so I don't expect he is very happy that it is completely under water.

Looking down towards the middle and bottom field from Welldale, that's the cottage on the left.

This picture gives you an idea of the extent of the flood, all the low lying ground is covered, that is the Cheese Factory on the horizon to the right of the picture.

I'm not sure if all the grass seed had floated to the top of the field, but something had attracted a huge flock of seagulls to this newly reseeded field.

This is a lovely freebie quick page from Polka Dot Plum called Vintage Fashion. The photographs are my ancestors on my mother's side. I have three CDs of incredible photographs taken my by Great Grandfather Wemyss Erskine. A cousin of my mum's scanned them and put them on CD several years ago and I think it is time I did some scrapping with them.

DCM - Double Dare

Gotta Wear Shades
This week your challenge is to be Bright! Clashy is good, hot colours are good, anything super duper bright is good too.
If you want to double dare then why not use the sketch that Vanessa made for her marvellous mid week dare?

Is this bright enough Lythan? I decided to go with the double dare and use the sketch from the midweek dare. I haven't done a DCM dare for a while and this one appealed to me so much as I love bright!

Papers are Dreamstreet and the little birdie is from a Bubbly Funk kit.

Green Tomato Chutney

I made the chutney a couple of weeks ago, but came across this lovely Quick Page by LLIELLA,

the little recipe card is from Digitreats, the decorations on the card are from the Scraporchard, September Mega Kit.

Last gasp Think Pink

The Think Pink sale is drawing near and all donations of crafts need to be with Di before next Tuesday, so I needed to get a move on and try to finish off some of the challenges.
This is my altered gift bag, I used the Kirsty Wiseman free download papers generously gifted to Bubbly Funk, the colours went well with the pinky brown bag.

This is an oddball card that doesn't have any mates. I made it on the same principal as Kathy's Speedy Cards (1) but instead of baubles I used the Poinsettia template that came with this month's PaperCraft Inspirations.

Shock, horror, drama - I actually did an Art Journal Journey card! We had been talking about various transfer techniques on BF and there were some instructions in the Altered Art book I got for my birthday. This is a 'packing tape' transfer, except that I didn't have any packing tape so I used ordinary sellotape and a picture from a magazine. The picture transfers to the tape but is still slightly transparent. I'm going to try and get some wider tape so I can do more of this.

A couple of digi LOs from Oxford

I haven't done any digi LOs for a while (the calendar one's don't really count because I couldn't show them) so I thought I'd do something creative with my Oxford photos.

As well as paper I made myself, I've used 'Writer's Block' by Laura Boetto for Digital Craft Cottage.

New season, new blog banner

Sorry, I know it confuses everyone when I change my blog banner, but I get fed up with the same one all the time! Autumn is definitely here, we had quite a hard frost this morning and the berries on my holly tree and the hawthorn hedges are all red and autumnal.

New College, Oxford

I've just spent a week at New College, Oxford on a course in Higher Education Management, this is a view of New College from New Buildings where I had my room.

This is the entry to stair 4, my room was on the first floor.

I had to haul my suitcase up this stone, spiral staircase.

My room overlooked Holywell Street.

It was a bit spartan but large and there was a fantastic shower.

This is the cloister, they filmed a bit of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire here.

Stained glass inside the chapel at New College.

The WWI war memorial was very poignant, so many lives lost.

Inside the chapel, the light wasn't good for the photo, but it gives you an idea of what it was like.