catching up

Am trying to catch up on craft time, without a great deal of success! June has been a very busy time with markets and WI and I have not even been able to keep up with my favourite challenges - hopefully after next week things will be back to normal! Just to prove I am still here, these are some cards I made while back using the flowers I am currently addicted to making - I even made a pile during  quiet times when at the Easton College open day with Country Markets.

The cards all use sentiments from the loving sentiments plate from Chocolate Baroque, and a cuttlebug folder as background. As I am too heavy-handed with an ink pad to get a good finish if I ink an embossed card afterwards, I used the cheat way of inking the embossing folder using a brayer and a big'n'juicy pad before embossing the card. I inked the background, but you can also ink so that the embossing bit is coloured, depending on the effect you want - I found that you can get 2 images from one inking, the second will be pale and delicate.

At the WI meeting this month, we had a fascinating speaker on straw craft, with some beautiful creations to show us. We all had to make a countryman's favour - sounded simple, kept us all very quiet for a surprisingly long time, and we did all manage to produce something resembling the original! Considering that these little favours only used 4 straws, they felt surprisingly heavy after a few minutes working at arms length, and no way would I ever consider trying something as complicated as a bell!

If you are coming to the Norfolk Show next week, please visit the WI marquee and have a look at the cushions - there are some fantastic cushions (around 100!) going to be on display there. We sorted through bags of them on Monday - ranging from knitted, embroidered, ragged to patchwork, and probably some others I didn't see while I was fixing the lunch for the rest of the Home Economics committee - after lunch it still took almost 2 hours to sort out the winners from the shortlisted ones!