Hearts and flowers

The weekend was very mild again and I was able to get out into my garden and clear some leaves and have a general tidy up. It felt SO good to be outside again.

 As I was raking around I spotted lots of signs of my garden coming to life. There are lots of tips of bulbs and leaf buds swelling.I even spotted one daffodil head pushing eagerly up.

Have you spotted her sleepy head in the centre of the photo getting ready to unravel in all her beautiful splendour?

This variety is the Tete a Tete miniature which is usually is one of the earliest to flower. My heart skips a beat when I think of seeing daffodils in flower. It won't be long now.









Also I have been able to watch the shoots of some more Tete a Tete spring up from the pots I planted in the autumn.

This pot is on my studio workbench. I can almost hear them growing as I sit and craft.

Talking of my studio and crafting I also wanted to show you the necklace I made for my daughter for Christmas. I could not show it before as I know she does occasionally read my blog. Her request was for a black and navy long necklace. She likes her necklaces big and bold. These unusual  large flat artisan glass lampwork beads I bought at a bead fair. I have had them in my stash for a couple of years and she spied them a while ago. Each of those beads measures 3.5 X 3.5 cms. As any Mum of daughter's out there knows when your daughter makes the sounds of "Ohh I really do like those beads"...that means they cannot be made into a necklace for anyone else! I must admit I love navy/cobalt blue  and black as a colour combo, it really works well with the silver. I teamed it with black onyx gemstones, Czech faceted glass and some Tibetan silver beads. She loved it and it has already become one of her favourites.

I also want to show you today how my hyacinth growing in water is doing.


Remember this, way back in October...

Here are the roots appearing and a tiny shoot, at the end of  November...

This was last week

And here we are today, the flower is really coming up now. Hopefully in the next few weeks that wonderful fragrance will be filling my kitchen.











So I am sure you are wondering," So where are  the hearts in this post?"

Well here they are....

I also had the time this weekend to get my husband's Valentine card made.

I inked up a Penny Black cat stamp which I have had for ages but never really used. I used my trusty ProMarkers to colour the image and added some lovely red gems at the corners.

I also used a lovely new circular sentiment stamp, which sums up just how I feel about my Hb. Aaahhh! It's always a real challenge to make a card for a man but I think this is bold enough and of course anything with a cat on will make my Hb smile.
For the "Top Tip Tuesday's Challenge blog" My "Top Tip" I would like to offer is when using these very popular circular stamps is to stop trying to stamp them straight onto circular die cuts...they always go wonky! I now cut them out using curved tip decoupage scissors and then stick them onto another circle die cut (if needed).  They then look perfectly centred and no one spots that you have not stamped them directly!

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Penny Black Saturday Challenge 184 "Case it"
Penny Black Allsorts Challenge Love and hearts
Joanna Sheen January Challenge  Celebrations
Squirrel and Fox Something new my new is the circular sentiment stamp
Top tip Tuesday Challenge 67 Anything Goes  My top tip is for cutting out circular sentiments as I have explained above.
Dream Valley challenge 23 Anything Goes
Paper Sundaes Challenge 102, Saturated Colours
Scrapbook Sisters Anything goes challenge 66

Wishing everyone a good week ahead. Our dancing class restarts tonight after the Christmas break..I can't wait to get  back...it's the Tango for the next 3 weeks.....Keep Dancing!

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x