Toadstools and magic in the New Forest.

A couple of weeks ago my Hb and I took Daisy out to the New Forest whilst her Mummy, Daddy and Jack had some time at home. We went to try to find the pannaging pigs with no success. However we did find other treasures...

 Lots of New Forest ponies..and cattle too.

Lots of lovely pine cones to collect,

tree stumps to jump on

and we also spotted some amazing toadstalls. 

We explained very carefully to Daisy that they must never be touched as they could be poisonous but we spent some fun time spotting different ones hidden in the undergrowth. 

I told Daisy that they always remind me of fairies.

Daisy was fascinated and we played a little game of who could find the best one.

We awarded the prize to this one Daisy found

What cuties 😊 

...we spent some time admiring all the markings on it.

It was such a lovely afternoon.

So I decided to make a Moment for my art journal and also to enter a couple of challenges using that magical afternoon for inspiration. I also wanted to use some new card which the lovely Tracey Dutton of Lavinia Stamps kindly gave me at Ally Pally to test drive . I have not had the time til now to play with it.

 The first thing I wanted in my magical fairy scene was a moon for some atmosphere. All the stamps I used are by Lavinia. I white embossed the moon.

 I chose some ink spray colours which reminded me of our visit.

I then got very inky spraying on my colours and drying until I was happy with my background. The Multifarious card stood up to all the water beautifully and did not warp. I was very impressed! My verdict, yes a really good quality card for wet inking and stamping and embossing. 

I wanted to make my own forest, the only Lavinia tree stamps I own are the half trees so I used the branch part of these to stamp with. 

I then just got busy stamping up my little fairy scene which of course had to features mushrooms and leaves!

Here it is

and a few close ups

My art journal page was made for the following challenges;

Lavinia on Face Book November; dark and mysterious

The Craft Barn 12 month challenge November  I can't believe this is the penultimate one!

The Artistic Stamper 2/3 use a quote
Craft Stamper take it make it 2/3 anything goes stamping

Happy Little Stampers anything goes/tags
We love to Create 2/3 anything mixed media
Crafting with an attitude 2/3 anything goes
Creative Artiste 2/3 anything mixed media
Mix it up 2/3 anything goes, optional stencilling

Thanks so much for stopping by today. I am off to catch up with a friend who is over from America who I trained with at King's College hospital in the early 1980s. We have not seen one another for over 10 years! Lots of catching up to do.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Keeping up with my 12 cards of Christmas

Good morning and for those of you in the UK, I hope you enjoyed your extra hour in bed? 

I had some inky playtime in the week and I have managed to get my 5th Funkie Junkie Christmas card under my belt, making for a few other fun challenges too.

We had a lovely day yesterday and took Daisy to the New Forest, I will share some photos soon but this is the glorious countryside we enjoyed and we met some of the wonderful New Forest ponies.

We spotted some awesome toadstalls too and Daisy had such fun exploring outside with us.

 So back to my card.

If you would like to play along with Linda's challenge you can see all the rules here. There are some great prizes for the winners too. The challenge is generously sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique Linda shares a tag each week and you just have to take something from it and make something Christmas themed. I have always chosen to make cards and it's a great way to make 12 very unique cards for Christmas.

You can also combine it with any other challenges...so that is just what I did.

This is her card for week 4 here
I decided to use her idea of post mark stamps, vintage Santa red, gingham ribbon and glossy greenery for my inspiration.

This is what I got up to;

I recently acquired some more D'Oxide colours in my DT package from Susan of Country View Crafts and I wanted to play with 2 of my new colours. I also used my Tim Holtz vintage Santa stamp as it has post card written on the side and adds to the "post" theme of my card

 These are my old Lili of the Valley post mark stamps

This is my background I made, the new Oxide colours are amazing! I stamped lots of my post mark stamps on top.

It was time to put on my creative hat and put together my card.

 Here it is.

This will be heading down to Dotty's Tearooms for sale soon.

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

The Funkie Junkie 12 tags of Christmas #5

Christmas at sweet stampin 2/3 anything goes

Happy little stampers anything goes with dies October

Happy little stamps water colour challenge October

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday anything goes

I also wanted to share some exciting news....I have been in print again...

Check out the latest edition (Issue 49) of Creative Stamping...

 On page 47 is my card made for Visible Image stamps..I can only give a sneak peek at the moment but at some point I will be able to give a full reveal. 2 of my teamies Pauline and Veerle also have project for our Face It! Autumnal feature.

It's so exciting to be in print again.

I am back tomorrow with my latest DT post for Visible Image and to give you a heads up a certain pussy cat called Billy might be writing it for me..tee hee 😻

Thanks so much for stopping by and for the kind comments you take the time to leave. Enjoy a mellow Sunday, we have a Strictly date on the sofa later to catch up with last night's Halloween spectacular.

See you in the morning,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Pannage in the New Forest

Two weeks ago we enjoyed a wonderful day out with our DD, SIL and Daisy in the New Forest. They live nearby and we love to see the different seasons and colours there. It is a truly unique landscape and is only maintained that way by the effect of the grazing of the New Forest Ponies and cattle.

They keep the heath land open. There is also the wonderful forest full of many different trees but especially oaks.

The colours were beautiful

The leaves seemed almost alight as they glowed showing off every shade of gold, red, brown and yellow.

Obviously the oak trees drop their acorns in autumn and in quantities these are poisonous to the ponies.
There is an ancient remedy to clear up the acorns which is called Pannage and it involves a wonderful natural hoover.....none other than............

yes seriously....pigs.
Every year sows and piglets are released by their farmer owners who pay a small token fee to allow them to roam free for 6-12 weeks, depending on the acorn harvest. As you know I adore pigs and although we have been aware of the annual pannage, the pigs are very elusive and many people never see them.

Well our luck was in. We drove to an area where my daughter had researched that pigs had been seen at the day before. Amazingly this girl trotted out across the road, followed by.

 her piglet who stopped next to where we were standing and had a good scratch!

They were joined by another sow...how apt it that sign...as the ancient saying goes a pig won't be druv!
They let us pat them as they wandered up the lane munching acorns as they moved on.

Daisy loved them. I was just ecstatic!

I could not believe that we had actually witnessed Pannage in person and we watched the pigs until they disappeared out of sight up the lane.

 We thought that would be our one and only sighting that day.

However as we walked toward Burley....there was some noise in the undergrowth and we spotted......

yes another group of piglets...Oh my I could not believe our luck.

It was just the best day and I want to thank my darling daughter for doing the research the day before which allowed us this glimpse of the annual Pannage which is seen by few people.

Now of course to remember this day I just had to make a Moment. I wanted it to be a thankful moment and I decided to use this photo of me.....I rarely use my own photos but I just though the sheer joy on my face summed up that day.

I used the same greens, oranges and browns from the forest. I wanted to try to capture the memory of the light shining through the tree canopy and also the gorgeous colours of the leaves.

I created  my inky background 

 I die cut some trees and also gave them the lovely mossy effect on the trunks I had seen by using a wash of colour and dipped them in.

 I added texture with my VI stamp. I also used my Bronte verse stamp which you will see later.

 I also added green leaves to the background using archival through my flourish stencil

 I added some texture by embossing some card

 and added clear embossing powder to the wet ink for this lovely glossy effect.

It was then time to put on my creative hat and put my design together.

So this is the thankful Moment I made for Jane's Journal

Here are some of the details in close up.........how apt is this quote!

 and I can really feel those crunching leaves under my feet.

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

Faber-Castelle take the challenge  with thanks.
Papertake Weekly 1/5 anything goes
We love to create anything creative/mixed media #22
Frilly and Funkie 1/3 Let there be light I have used different shades of ink to reproduce the wonderful light in the forest and the colours of the leaves there. I also used clear embossing powder and clear rock candy crackle to add to the feel of shining light.
Simon Says stamp Monday So Glossy I have used clear embossing powder over my embossed leaf card to give a lovely shine and also clear rock candy crackle to give a shine to some of my die cut leaves.
Simon Says stamp Wednesday Thanks/thanksgiving
Noor UK anything goes
Dies R Us fall
Creative Inspirations 1/3 sparkle my sparkle is the clear embossing powder on the embossed  card and clear rock candy crackle on my leaves..they both give such a lovely sparkle.
Inspiration Journal mission embossoble. I have used wet and dry embossing on my Moment.

I really do "give thanks" for such special times I spend with my family and especially being able to find the pigs during the annual autumn pannage...such joy.

I'm back on Friday with just a sneak peek of a Christmas guest design project I have been involved in...the big reveal is over here on Saturday.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x