Game

Monday again & another inchie to share...

Cannot remember the make of the stamp but it was part of a sheet I bought at Art from the heart a few years ago when I was in Harrogate.

Just been out walking the dog and the day promises to be nice - the swallows are here & thinking of nests in the roofline of the neighbouring hotel ;-) spring must be here!

Journal 52

How does your garden grow

Well, the one here in France doesn't! There are 3 pine trees, 4 Rowans (1 is bent right over due to snow when it was very small & 2 have almost been "decapitated" by the gardening man with his strimmer and there is also a larch with is currently bare....under the snow are some wild crocus that will eventually appear.

So I decided that I would share my garden in Scotland whe we have 2 mature trees, a silver birch in the back and an evergreen of some sort in the front that drops horrible prickly bits! I have that tree but the local red squirrels love it so it stays put for now.

There are some huge rocks in the front so we had to have a rockery as they were far too big to remove without a JCB. we've got heathers and assorted "dwarf" evergreens there, along the front of the house you can find rhododendrons, pieris, fuchsia, potentilla & clematis. There is also a 1/4 circle bed with potentilla, assorted peonies, oriental poppies, California poppies, Himalayan poppy,primulas, daffodils, crocus & snowdrops.

The driveway is separated from the neighbour by a cotoneaster & beech hedge.

At the rear of the house you can see an ornamental cherry and a maple in left hand bed along with day lilies, iris, lupine, primulas, dog tooth violets and wild cyclamen. There are pots in front of the garage that have geraniums in the summer,the rear rockery is under a birch tree that has a visiting woodpecker every year as well as a lovely white lilac, bluebells & heathers.

The right hand side has weeping cotoneaster, pieris, lilac, potentilla, a beautiful pink oriental poppy as well as a white one.

Then under/ beside the bedroom window I've got honeysuckle, mock orange and summer jasmine....how's that for a fragrant nights sleep?

A raised rockery/bed lies between the lawn & the patio with a cascading water feature, heathers, gentians, mini geranium, a bird bath that gets a lt of action... Against the house it's more poppies, bluebells and clematis with a very dark purple rhododendron and a twisting hazel at the back door...

My little garden of weeden!

Overall view

Right rear bed

Rear lawn & beds

Front of the house

Obviously not all the plants are there!

Bérengère

 A card in the post for a girlfriends birthday on Sunday!

Paper brand unknown

Stamp Hobby Art

Colouring Promarkers

Flowers paper scraps cut with Tim Holtz die + brads

Nature

Bill & I set off for the city this morning and we had our first sighting this year of a chamois, white near to the road, about 20m/yards away....

Just the one, with horns, but a lovely sight to see :-)

Further south & near the city ( about 18000 inhabitants!) we had the pleasure of cowslips

Mini iris growing wild

And hedges of forsythia 

As well as patches of cherry and apple blossom, I think I saw come blackthorn as well.

I did my duties of interpreter with the surgeon....no more anticoagulant injections, the compression stockings can come off, that's a relief as they are absolute buggers to put on! Then he added that Bill can start to use just one crutch - given that he's only been using them for a few weeks I thought that was a bit ambitious :-) and that Bill should be able to do without pretty soon :-) 

Lack of sleep has been a big problem, so now we have a prescription for some knockout tablets :-) fingers crossed that they do the trick!

Spring green

Spring had a relapse over the weekend! After the snow the sun did come out but it was rather cold twitch -6C on Monday morning :-( 

Tuesday sees us off for an X-ray & a visit with the surgeon.... And another glimpse of the spring flowers down in Digne!

Here is my Tuesday Twinchies entry

The flap of an envelope from my stepdaughter with 2 leaves coloured in Spectrum Noire & cut from the telephone directory. 

Happy Tuesday !

Journal 52

Another week, another page : this is week 12 a day in the life of me

So I wake with a cup of tea in my yellow bedroom 

Check emails, bloglovin & Facebook 

Have breakfast

Take my golden retriever Bailey for his morning walk. 

Do boring stuff like shopping, housework, washing etc. 

Snack lunch. 

Then it's time to disappear into my sunny craft room (used to be painted soft pink & grey) where I can craft all afternoon whilst listening to the radio or TV. 

a late afternoon walk in the woods with Bailey. 

Then it's time to get busy concocting some culinary delights in my black, white & grey kitchen - I love that kitchen. 

Chillin' time next: groom the dog, relax on the sofa, watch some TV. 

Now it's back to the yellow bedroom with a good book, pretty soon it'll be lights out and time to dream of my next crafty creation!

 

Monday

Can't believe it's Monday again! The weekend was a white affair...we had 9 1/2" or 25cm of snow on Saturday, so not what I needed for Bill trying to get about on crutches :-( I'm hoping that we have no more as I am due to drive down to the hospital tomorrow so that we can get an X-ray done & see the surgeon to make sure that all is as it should be before our long drive home that starts on the 5th of April.

So, another Monday, another inchie! This week it's all about figures. Mine is no longer anything to shout about so I've gone with a Paper Artsy image :-) 

Some mauve gingham paper, purple pigment ink + clear embossing powder and fake stitching.

My journal page seems to have gone down well on the Facebook Journal 52, I'm at 91 likes & a dozen comments, I guess this improvising lark must work!

Tuesday twinchie

Twinchie challenge day, hopefully with a link this week....

The theme is coins so I did some rubbings because what else would I do? No monopoly coinage here so I just keep improvising :-)

2 euros, 20 cents & 2 cents 

50 cents, 10 cents & 1 cent

Job done!

Journal 52

Week 11 already!

Stars is our prompt this time and, surprise, surprise, I've plenty of images/stamps/die cuts at home but nothing here so it's another week of making the best with what I have....

6 different darkish shades of bluePromarkers  scribbled onto the page,  

Followed by a layer of dark blue paint (children's paintbox) another layer of blue and a layer of black.... Starting to resemble a night sky!

Time to add some wavy edged strips from last years telephone directory and then add some doodling - black sharpie on the page strips & silver sharpie on the blue.

I've cut my star from a typed message from a friend & added more doodling on it in black. Around the star I added lines in a dark silver sparkle Gelly pen and dots with the silver sharpie. 

I shall probably add some stamping once I get home!!!

Forest

It's Monday so it's every inchie Monday time again and this week our theme....FOREST.

It's also a new week that I can start with a smile on my face as Bill is back home :-D so even if we are not sleeping well (pain in the hip :-( ) at least we are back together...

My share this week is made with a bitty stamp from Imkadinkadoo stamped in brown & coloured with different green pens.

Birthday

A card received in the virtual world by a friend for her birthday....

Random papers from my stash...and I thing it's a Hobby Art stamp - all I know for sure is that it was a prize (set of 4) and its been coloured with Promarkers .

Happy birthday Linda!

Happy

He may have an ice pack on his knee and crutches to help get around but it's so good to have Bill back in the mountains !

Time

Tuesdays twinchie challenge is here again...

I had nothing prepared because the list was not released until after we arrived in France so I have had to call upon all my bits & bobs again...and managed to come up with 2 options

1 very simple one, it's the TV listings for the equivalent channels to BBC1and BBC2 and I've just edged with a swipe of spectrum noire pen in blue.

2 I've used a little bit more of the chocolate box (see mirror post) which has been cut into a square-ish frame, mounted onto another square that I coloured with a silver Sharpie pen around the edges. The central part has had the roman numerals, hands & CARTIER added with a Steadler triplus fine liner in dark grey. It's not quite my Cartier watch but almost :-) and the time shown is when I made it!!!

I must admit I am quite enjoying having to improvise, the lack of supplies & equipment is leading to some interesting discoveries & ingenuity :-D

Journal 52 week 10

I can't believe we are on week 10 already and my husband has not seen a single one of these posts!

All that will change on Friday when I finally get him back with me at the chalet :-)

This week the subject for our journal page is create for a cause 

As I am still here in France with a limited supply of art materials I did what I could....

A simple grid using orange, yellow & green felt pens, 3 images that I got from Google and used my iPad as I light box to trace them....it's quite amazing how you learn to improvise! I cut the images out after I had coloured them with Promarkers and stuck them onto my page.

The edge of the page needed some colour so I filled in some of the triangles...

I've added some writing to tell the story behind this page :-)

I have some small daffodil stamps at home so I shall no doubt add some more images to this at a later stage.

Spring

Whilst I realise that to a lot if you this will sound completely ridiculous....

I saw a large bank of wild primroses yesterday when I went to visit Bill - I suddenly found myself with an enormous ( and no doubt ridiculous) grin on my face! It's amazing what will raise a smile when you are surrounded by white stuff for months on end!  

Monday

Yeay, my last Monday on my own! I am collecting Bill on Friday & bringing him back to the chalet. I hope the weather stays as good as it has been for the past 5 days- it's been glorious - in fact the full sun temperature has been in the high 40s but ambient has been nearer 16C - all in all very enjoyable :-)

So lets cut the waffle and reveal this weeks inchies, the latest theme in engrave, I'd not made anything for this one before coming away but I did stamp an ATC using a stampers anonymous stamp, I've simply cut 2 inchies from it!

The background is more interesting in that I wet dome card, sharpened some of my watercolour pencils and sprinkled the shavings onto the wet card...did a bit of finger painting& then added some more shavings before leaving it to dry! It's got texture & colour but I've yet to use it...it's going in the stash box I'm creating here ready for next trip !!!

Twinchie challenge

God save the queen! She has certainly come to my rescue this week for the latest twinchie challenge which is royalty

A paper scrap & some postage stamps, I would have used purple ones as the royal colour but I didn't have any so I have had to make do :-)

Explode

Monday is here again :-) not that I especially like Monday's but....it's one less before Bill gets back to us here in the chalet at La Foux :-)

It also means its time to share an inchie and this week the theme at every inchie Monday  is explosion

Well, I decided that a splat was more in keeping with the theme as there are too many explosions going on in the world for my liking!

So here is my inchie...a paper artsy  stamp (or possibly Inkadinkadoo ) on a paper scrap...

and because I could.... A twinchie that is definitely done with an Inkadinkadoo stamp

happy stamping!

Journal 52 week 9

Spring is on its way according to all my Facebook friends, something I find a little hard to believe when I am surrounded by chest-deep snow! 

I took a drive down the valley last week to visit Bill, who is still racking up the bills in the convalescence centre down in the "BIG CITY" of Digne les Bains...not the most exciting of drives given that I have some seriously huge potholes to avoid but...it has to be done....A WIFE'S DUTY & all that! The drive does give me small glimpses of spring however and I have taken my colour scheme inspiration from one of the plants that I see on my journey.

Shades of a lime green are my helllebore!

I had stamped some assorted sunflower/daisy stamps from chocolate baroque onto white card before I came away with the intention of making some ATCs, I'd even cut them to size last week....

Today they found a new purpose :-) I had a sheet of paper (?) that was meant for a card in just the right colour way so it has become the background (edged with a spectrum noire pen) the ATC, strips that were left over and some partial images from the edge of the sheet have been coloured with 3 different shades of green & edged with brown.

My limited supplies have done better than usual this week...I have also written around the page inspired by helllebore....

Thanks for looking & I'll be back again soon with inchies & twinchies to share :-)