Saturday 31 March 2018

Scrapbooking layout

Last Saturday it was the Exeter Scrapaholics crop and I managed to complete one double page layout.



These photos were taken on our trip from Derby to Canterbury which included being spoilt with a champagne breakfast, mid morning pastries and an evening meal.  It was a trip we took back in April 2014 to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary.


The journey started off with a diesel engine but part way through the journey we were pulled along by the steam engine Tangmere.  I love steam engines and it was my idea to take this trip as it combined my love of steam engines and DH's general love of all trains.  I always take a book with me to read on train journeys which I read when we are going along train lines we have travelled on before, but stop reading when it is new scenery to be admired.


The food, drinks and waiting service is always fantastic and while the trips might seem expensive we thoroughly enjoy the experience, especially as we only ever do them to celebrate special occasions.

Canterbury was a wonderful place to wander around and I thoroughly enjoyed walking around the cathedral, so much history and the architecture was amazing.  I even found a little needlecraft shop while we were walking round the city.  It was a wonderful day and we have memories we will treasure for many years.

I played around with lots of mixed media to create this layout, using texture paste, stencils, inkfusions and some snip art pieces which have been in my stash for a while.  The papers and embellushments came with the monthly scrapaholics kit.  I had great fun putting this one together.

Friday 30 March 2018

Moving on

Well yesterday was my last shift at work and boy was it a crazy, busy, frustrating, sad, relief filled day.  My lovely work colleagues bought me some wonderful presents which included a lovely bouquet of flowers, a very tasty looking Easter egg and a Hobbycraft gift voucher for £40.  I am so going to miss working with them but I am so relieved I will no longer have such stressful and tiring days and will no longer be on my feet all day.


With the Easter weekend to look forward to it's going to be strange not having to think about going into work again after a bank holiday.  I guess I'll just have to build up a new routine of activity now.

Today we have delivered the first batch of Easter eggs out to our eldest sons children.  Tomorrow it is Lincoln's 2nd birthday so more celebrations to look forward to and we can combine the Easter delivery with that visit.  Sunday we will deliver Harlee-Jays egg.

Wishing you all a wonderful Easter x

Wednesday 28 March 2018

Easter leaving treat boxes

Thursday is my last day at work and as it's my last day I have made some treat boxes as a farewell gift for my work colleagues.   As it also Maundy Thursday I have filled it with Easter treats for them to enjoy.


While I am not going to miss the busy and what has become chaotic working conditions I am really going to miss the people who over the years have been great fun to work with.  Some of them have become good friends and so I hope I will remain in contact with them.  My wish for them is that management will begin to take more responsibility for the running of the pharmacy and make their working conditions better and be more supportive of them.  I also hope the customers show a little more tolerance as they really have no idea how difficult it is to work somewhere as busy as this pharmacy with a system that is not very user friendly.

Sunday 25 March 2018

Happier day

Today I can finally show you my first cross stitch finish this year.  I put the final stitches into the wedding gift for my brother-in-law and his fiancee.


Not the best photo but I'm certainly not going to complain about the sun shining today.  I just need to frame it now. If I can I will try and do the matching smaller design to go with it, the cross stitch won't take long it's the neat finishing i have the problem with.


For the rest of the month I am going to go back to working on It's Only Forever.   In April I might set up a rotation for all my smaller WIP's and see if I can get one of them finished in April.

Saturday 24 March 2018

Yesterday was frightful Friday

Well it ended up being frightful for me.  It started off well enough with sorting MIL out with her eye drops and then looking after poorly little children while Colette had some me time and had her nails done.  It's when I went out for a walk with my brother that it turned into a bit of a nightmare.  Halfway through our walk Max was attacked by another dog, not sure how but between myself and my brother we managed to get the dog off Max but was dreading what we would find.  Max ended up with two deep puncture wounds to his cheek/neck area.  The owner of the dog initially was nowhere to be seen but then came along the creek on a bike with a couple of other dogs in tow.  I'd put his dog on our lead and had told my brother to walk up to my MIL's but not before I had shown the man what his dog had done and obtained what I hoped at the time was his actual address.  I did take photos of him and the dog and because he didn't get abusive with me or just ride off I was hoping he was being genuine with me and we could sort out the vet bill with him later.

We were seen pretty quickly at the vet's who gave Max a dose of painkillers and antibiotics but said he couldn't put a stitch in the wounds as they were too deep.  The advice was to keep squeezing diluted Hibiscrub into the wound on a regular basis and also gave us more antibiotics for him to take.

I went round to see the guy later in the evening and thankfully he had given me his true address.  We have since given him a copy of the vet bill along with photos showing him the damage caused and he has come round this evening with just over half the costs apologising once again.

We are thankful that Max so far seems to be okay in himself although understandably a little nervous going out for his first walk this morning.  Our once enjoyable walk along the creek no longer holds any appeal to me and I think I am feeling incredibly anxious about going out walking with him on my own.  I know it could have been so much worse and I am so thankful I was not on my own that day but keep thinking what if.....

......it really doesn't bear thinking about.

Tuesday 20 March 2018

Waiting time stitching

This morning I had my hair cut and then took Max and my brother for a walk up to the sorting office to pick up a parcel.  Then I quickly popped into Tesco to pick up a couple of bits and called in to see how Lincoln was as he now has Chickenpox along with a touch of conjunctivitis, poor little man.  A quick lunch before picking MIL up to take her to the hospital for her cataract operation.  While that was being done I was able to enjoy working on my Starlight Santa which is my waiting time stitch.  


This is how far I got.  I am staying overnight with MIL just to make sure she is okay so I will hopefully get some more done this evening while keeping her company.


Monday 19 March 2018

Peter Rabbit

I had to drop the car off this morning to be serviced and then I was meeting my friend Dee for a cup of coffee.  After I dropped the car off I walked into the city centre which took me just under an hour and took me past Hobbycraft.  I was too early to meet my friend so I popped inside to pass away some time.  While there I purchased a couple of Peter Rabbit cross stitch kits which one day will be stitched up for our daughter.


My friend kindly dropped me home after we'd enjoyed a couple of coffees and a browse around a couple of shops which saved me from having to catch the bus home.  I managed to add a few more stitches to the gift stitch.

Hubby walked from his workplace to collect the car which took him about half an hour, he could have caught the bus as he has a bus pass but he decided he didn't want to wait for the bus and as the sun was shining he'd make the most of it and enjoy a walk instead.

I tried to do some knitting this evening but I went wrong so gave up. I think I'll do some reading instead.

Sunday 18 March 2018

It's a new day


The sun was shining brightly when I went over to mum and dads for breakfast this morning although it was still very cold.  My brother is down staying with them for the week so that will be nice.  We then called into see MIL after taking Max for a walk and warmed up with a cup of coffee, biscuits and a chatter.  When we left there it had clouded over and started snowing.


This was only a light covering and it is now just gone six in the evening and it has all disappeared again.  I have spent the afternoon stitching, putting all the stitches back in after yesterday's frog visited.  I believe it has been a good days stitching and I am now on the bottom section and hopefully there are no mistakes this time.  Fingers crossed if the momentum goes in my favour I might finally have my first finish of the year.


Saturday 17 March 2018

Some days....

...can be so frustrating.  The day started off pleasantly with a walk along the creek with Ian and Max.  We called in on mum and dad on our way back to drop off their wedding anniversary card.  


After lunch I decided to add some stitches to the wedding gift as the urge to stitch had finally come back.  All was going well until a couple of hours later I couldn't get the stitching to match up and that's when it became frustrating.  It turns out I had made a mistake on my previous session a few weeks ago and I ended up having to take all of today's and some of the previous session out.  Oh well, tomorrow is another day.  Here is where I'd got to when I showed you last.


And here is where I finally ended up today.


 Had I not made the mistake this top section would almost have been completed.  I am leaving it for today and hoping tomorrow will be better lol.

Wednesday 14 March 2018

Beginners card class projects

A couple of days ago it was the beginners card class at Scrapbook Magic in Mullion.  I had seven people attend this time which is full capacity so I was very happy.  They all made one of the two card designs in the photo, a treat box and a matching tag.  I also demonstrated the various ways they could use the envelope punch board.  They made the bows for the top of the treat box,  the treat box and they were also able to make an envelope for their tag if they wanted to using the punch board.  I believe it resulted in several boards being requested so an added bonus.


Sunday 11 March 2018

Happy Mother's Day

There has been very little crafting activity this week and even making these cards for our mother's seemed like hard work.  Inspiration was very much lacking but I came across some flowers I had stamped out several months ago and decided to use them.  I believe the embossing folder I used came with a magazine and the paper from a DCWV paper pad I've had in my stash for a couple of years and shame on me had never been opened.


Work has been incredibly busy and very frustrating with a new computer system which is not particularly user friendly.  Understandably we have had many disgruntled customers who have had to wait longer for their prescriptions, but we have also had some very unnecessary rude ones too.  It was so stressful for some that one of the ladies ended up in tears and another one just walked out halfway through her shift.  I am thankful that I only have four more shifts to do but feel so sorry for the girls I am leaving behind to cope with a situation which is only going to get worse when the pharmacy manager also leaves at the end of the month.  As of yet no replacement has been made.  I am feeling mentally drained so it's no surprise that I have not had the motivation  to craft.

Sunday 4 March 2018

Art journal page

Last Monday I travelled down to Scrapbook Magic and Margaret guided me through making this art journal page.  The original page where the idea came from can be found here.


It was great fun playing with distress paints, stamps and colouring pens I hadn't used before.  The whole process was very therapeutic and as usual lots of laughter.

The rain came back again yesterday and cleared away what little was left of the snow that fell Wednesday/Thursday.  Thankfully the temperatures have risen so the rain is not freezing which would have caused more havoc.

Today the sun did come out for a while and we were able to go for a nice walk around Devonport Park and also sit outside and enjoy a refreshing drink.  Sadly the rest of the week does not look all that promising.

I have spent most of this afternoon prepping for next week's beginners card class.  They wanted to make the treat boxes I had made for Valentine's so they will make one of them, a card and a gift tag from a set of papers by First Edition called It's a Boy but the trio I have made are not in anyway baby looking as several of the papers can be used for other occasions.


I will show the items made in class after next Monday.

Friday 2 March 2018

Scrapbooking Layouts from last weekend

I'm really pleased that I have started going to the crops at the Exeter Scrapaholics group again - I have so many photos to put on layouts and so much stash that needs to be used too.  I did buy the February kit and used most of it to create this layout of our eldest granddaughter Elisha which was taken last year when she was the Carnival Queens attendant.  The papers and embellishments were so pretty and worked perfectly with the photos.  I have a few scraps leftover which I hope to make some cards out of and some large word die cuts which I'll either use on future layouts or perhaps a canvas.


The second layout I have to share was the Wave of Poppies that was on The Hoe last summer.  Wave was one of two sculptures taken from the Installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, originally at HM Tower of London in  2014 where hundreds of thousands of poppies were displayed, one for every Allied life lost on the battlefields of the First World War.  


I used a set of stamps and dies from Clearly Besotted to create the wreath and used some texture stamps fro  Stamplorations to create the background.  I found the stamping and die cutting of all the poppies and leaves very therapeutic.

Thursday 1 March 2018

A stitch update

At last I can report another page finish on in It's Only Forever - for some reason this page took me far longer than I thought it would.  The owls face is now complete and I'm really pleased with how its looking even if its not coming along quite as quickly as I would like.



There were 4040 stitches on this page which gives me a total of 18,073 stitches so far. I'm now about a quarter of the way through this design and I'm including a photo of the whole piece of fabric to give you a better idea of its overall size.  Completed piece will measure 19.43 x 28.64 inches.


Next page will be the lettering at the top of the page, fingers crossed I can get another page completed by the end of March.

It's still bitterly cold here and we have a red alert for our area today with regards to more snow.  It was supposed to have reached us at midday but as of yet nothing has fallen.