Wonderful Willow!

I have had a day off today and had great fun doing willow weaving with the children at my sons school. Between us we managed to get through 100 children doing one on one make and takes of shooting stars, bird feeders and vases. The kids were amazing and took to the weaving straight away. There were an awful lot of bird feeders made and not so many vases. I got to make one of each so I knew how to help the children with theirs and I was really pleased to be able to bring them home. The bird feeder went straight outside filled with peanuts and within half an hour had our resident blue tit on it! Here are some pics of my creations.

Ribbon Technique Instructions

As promised here are the instructions for the ribbon folding technique used on the layout at our last crop.

Step 1
On the rear of your card stick your ribbon at a 45 degree angle. I used the extra sticky double sided tape for this project as it holds the ribbon really firmly.
Step 2
Turn the card over and holding the ribbon taught place a square of the double sided tape next to the ribbon, parallel with the edge of the ribbon and level with the top of where the ribbon comes around the edge.
Step 3
Fold the ribbon up at a 45 degree angle so that you have a straight edge of ribbon across the bottom and use the tape that has already been positioned to hold it in place. Repeat placing another piece of tape ready to fold the ribbon again.
Step 4
Repeat the folding and sticking of the ribbon until you have reached the desired length.
Step 5
Make sure your ribbon is going in a straight line. The easiest way to do this is to have an edge to keep parallel to.
Step 6
To finish cut the end of your ribbon. If you are doing the entire length of your card you can fold the end over to the rear of the card and adhere. For this card we are stopping part way and the end will be covered with a flower.
Step 7
Stick your flower to cover the end of the ribbon.
Step 8
I used scraps of coredinations card left over from the layout for my card so I decided to distress the edge of the card to show the core colour through. Drag your distress tool back and forth on the edge to distress it.
Step 9 - Finishing off your card...
Cut a mount and distress the edge of this too. Mount your flower onto this and then mount onto a card blank. Cut freehand leaf shapes, distress the edge of these, score along the middle of the leaves and adhere next to the stem of your flower. Stamp a greeting on your card blank and your card is done.
I also did a second card using different colours.
Products used (click and you should be taken to them on our site)
Raspberry Lime Iridescent Ribbon
Teal Flowers
Metallics B Brads
Coredinations Cardstock (various colours)
Edge Distresser
Extra Sticky Double Sided Tape
Wild Plum Adirondack Dye Stamp Pad

Cre8tive Crop

The crop on Saturday went extremely smoothly. The class was a great success and I was really pleased that all the ladies had a go at the great ribbon technique I had come up with. It is fiddly but worth the faf for a great finished effect. I'll try and take some step by step photos of the technique so others can have a go too. Perhaps I'll take my camera to swimming tonight and then whilst the kids are learning how to do a perfect front crawl I can get some snaps ready to load tomorrow.

It is a scorcher today but my office is lovely and cool so much so that I had goosebumps earlier!! Lunch in the sun soon sorted that out. Time now to go and pack orders.

Don't forget you only have until the end of the month to enter our prize draw... just place an order for £30 or more and you'll get free P&P and automatically be entered in the draw. The winner will be announced on our home page at the beginning of June. Oh and the prize is over £50 worth of papers and cardstock... I'm looking forward to matching up some lovely papers and card for the prize :)

Summer is here!

Well at least for a few days. I have my youngest off school today. He came home last night and was fast asleep in bed by 4pm!! He woke at 6:30 for a few minutes and then proceeded to sleep another 12 hours!! He has a headache a temperature and a sore throat so what is described by the doctors as a 'virus' I expect! I hope he is feeling better tomorrow as it is our scrapbooking day and normally both Dave and I leave the kids in grandmas capable hands. When you are ill though you want your mummy or daddy so we may have to rethink in the morning depending on how he is feeling. I am teaching a class at the crop using core-dinations cardstock so I have had fun tearing, sanding, embossing and scoring. I have combined lots of techniques to use the card on one layout which isn't what you would normally do but I think it turned out ok in the end. The inspiration for the layout came from a core-dinations flyer.

Moths, child of the week and SATS!

We don't have fairies at the bottom of our garden (well not that I have seen anyway!) but the night of Sunday 3rd May we set out to see if we had any moths. The trap was set at dusk (8:30ish) and the mercury bulb gave Blackpool illuminations a run for their money!! Bright and early on Monday 4th May the 7 us us (the Savages plus a sleepover friend each for the big two) went to discover what visitors the night had brought. We had three brimstone moths and a three spotted .... on the ground near the trap (one met an untimely demise thanks to Jez's large feet! - eek) and in the trap we had

GGG

Dave had a brill time on Saturday on his Indian Cookery Course. He came home with not only dinner for Saturday, but also dinner for Sunday too!! He has all the recipes so we are looking forward to lots more currys! GGG is ginger, garlic and green chilli which is the basis for most of the recipes. Alex did really well as the meal on Saturday was quite spicey but he managed to eat it all.

On Sunday Jez had the Hampshire final for the chess challenge. He had entered 2 years ago and although he had enjoyed it there were a lot better players than him there (despite him being the school champion beating everyone else at Titchfield in the years above him!) This time he knew he was a bit better and had enough confidence to say in advance that he would really like to get through to the next round which he did winning 4 out of his 6 matches. He has a great rosette as a prize and is looking forward to the southern final now which he is quite realistically realising that he probably wont get through (but he will have a good try anyway!) There were two other boys from school both year 5's who enjoyed the day despite not getting through to the next round. I think using clocks was a big surprise for them (as it was for Jez first time he went). I hope someone takes on organising the chess at school from Bill as it would be a shame for Ben to miss out as he is a nifty little player too.

Fond Reunion

The visit to Ben went really well last night. It was lovely to see him and we had a really warm greeting. A massive hug and he even shed a tear (I don't think he was overly homesick or had missed us that much, I think he was just genuinely pleased to see us - and very tired). We had the guided tour of the site and all the facilities, played some ping pong, went on the adventure playground and bought a souvenir to bring home. Ben has spent all his money on sweets and the arcade! I am sure he must have had more sweets this week than in the last year!! I am looking forward to collecting him later and having him home again (even if it does mean we don't get out the door as early in the mornings!!!)

On the way back from the visit last night Dave dropped me off in Highlands road and I jogged home. I am so unfit that I was wheezing and spluttering by the time I got home. I measured the distance this morning and it was 0.7miles and I did it in around 7 mins. I am feeling grotty today (nothing to do with the jog) but I would still like to try and do some more running... got to get fit somehow!

The photo below was taken on Wednesday 8th April (Ben's birthday) and is the latest photo of the boys with their cousins. Sam is now taller than me (just).