Trees in their summer glory

On Tuesday my daughter, Daisy met at Winkworth Arboretum  near Godalming in Surrey. This is a National Trust property which I have visited in the past. Any time of the year the trees there are stunning. Our day was a hot sunny day and the trees and lake were glorious glinting in the July sunshine.

 We spent the day chatting and wandering in the shade of the trees. We also enjoyed a delicious ladies' lunch in the cafe and had an ice cream on the picnic blanket before we left. The colours of the foliage everywhere was stunning.

We saw ducks, fish and lots of bees and butterflies...and yes more dragonflies.

It was a glorious day and we also went hunting for the Plant of the Month, which we did find...I will come back to that another post.

The next day after work I was studying Day 5 of my Tim Holtz Chemistry 101 course, which I am really enjoying on line. The theme was Distressed Stains and one technique is stamping with picket fence. I also wanted to made something for the current A Vintage Journey theme which is to use Distress stains so I thought I would have a go at making "Mini Moment" using a tag using the wonderful trees I had seen at Winkworth for inspiration. There are also some lovely summer themed challenges that I wanted to take part in.

Well my slight problem is that I own the grand total of 3 Distress stains!  They are bundled sage, squeezed lemonade and Picket fence. Undeterred I thought these would actually be perfect for what I had in mind.

I thought I could use Tim's stamping with picket fence technique too.
I swished on the 2 colours to represent the tress and the sunshine...I wanted to sunshine to be glinting trough the trees. I then dried my tag and repeated the process to built up a couple more layers of stain.

 I then blended on some wild honey DI and a little spritz and flicking for some watermarks...just like the lake at Winkworth.

Next I put a word stamp onto a block and stamped using Picket fence

 I really loved this effect

I added an Imagination crafts tree stencil using the bundled sage distress stain again. I didn't want a perfect tree shape just the suggestion of the branches whispering in the sunshine. I really liked the way this came out.

I then wanted to add some simple butterflies, but as I wanted a crisp image I stamped them with Archival ink. I distressed the edges and added some Walnut stain.

So here is my Mini  Moment

which is also one of my homework pieces from Creative Chemistry 101, lesson 5. It just shows that you don't need all the colours of Distress Stains to still get a fun result. I really like the way the "sun" is glinting through the tree stencil and the butterflies look as if they have found some shade lower down.

and someone else who had fun in the sun was my precious Daisy Jane, can you see her new teeth ;0)

Do you think I love this little treasure just a little bit..........;0)

I would like to enter my mini moment into the following challenges;

A Vintage Journey Just stain it I used my stains for creating the background, stamping the text and also for the trees stencil.
Imagination crafts summer holiday or create a scene I used their tree stencil on my mini Moment
Our creative corner summertime
Artistic stamper anything goes
Addicted to stamps anything goes
Divas by Design anything goes
Simon Says stamp Wednesdays anything goes
Sweet Stampin take flight
Crafty boots summer holidays
Pan Pastel UK summer fun
Little Claire's summer time
Creative Romance fun in the sun
Bearly Mine anything goes

Here we are already in August, it's been a super summer so far and I have so enjoyed spending precious time with my girlies. We are trying to make the best of my daughter's last 6 weeks of maternity leave.

Thanks for visiting me and remember that my giveaway runs until 9 August..all the details are here

Enjoy the weekend,

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x