A new sea voyage and new card creations

For those of you who are not new to Jane's Journal you will remember that last year my daughter's fiance went to sea for 3 months, as part of his marine engineering course. Well a whole year has raced by and that time arrived again. 4 weeks ago Tom departed for Australia to board his new ship and my darling daughter bade him a very tearful goodbye at Heathrow Airport. He will not be back until 21st December.

Last year I made his a special card to take with him and to open when he got to sea. It was this one.

I commissioned a little painting for him of a mermaid holding a ship.
Tom was delighted with this so I decided I needed to come up with something different this year.









As a card maker I love to look at new designs and I have always been interested in "Easel" cards. They look quite difficult to make and I have never attempted one before. They are cards which are made in 2 parts and can be stood up like an easel. I looked at the Internet to find some instructions and then had some practice folding the card.

I decided again that I wanted a sea theme and this time I bought some wonderful wooden ship themed pieces.

These are some ships wheels, I also bought a boat. These lovely wooden shapes are plain and I used my pens to colour them.






Here is the front of the card

and below is the part that the "easel" stands on..

I even used a "reef" knot to tie the string (Tom will really appreciate that).

This is the card shown from the side..it shows how the front stands up..it tucks in behind the ship's wheel.

I hope he likes his card, that he has a good time away at sea and he comes safely home in time for Christmas.

I have also been making some other cards which you might be interested in seeing, as yes, I have been very organised and I have been working on some Christmas cards.Here's a little sneak peak......

As promised by the weather forecasters we finally finished our Indian summer and the wind has started to pick up. For the first time in some weeks we even had some rain. I admit that we really need it, my garden is so dry at the moment with the lack of rain. We finally seem to be heading into autumn. Time for drawing the curtains earlier, watching the leaves blow off the trees and getting out our warmer clothes. I think I will also feel more in the mood for making Christmas cards...making them in summer temperatures did seem very odd indeed. I hope you are all enjoying the beginning of the autumn season or fall as my american buddies call it. Here's to cosiness!

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x