Autumn colours and card making

The weather is on the change now but there is still a little last colour to be seen.When we visited the National Trust property, Standon, last month I didn't show you the gardens there.As promised here are some photos of them, such pretty grounds for the house. These are the herbaceous beds outside the wonderful conservatory.

We also spotted lots of bees on these purple flowers in the vegetable garden.

there were fun pumpkins too.

At home I spotted a butterfly in my garden on Saturday,  probably the last of this season

and I really think we had the last of the warm sunny weather at the weekend

I also noticed that there are some lovely big spiders making their webs.This one is right next to my studio. I genuinely love spiders and find their webs fascinating. When little Daisy came to stay she called this spider Big Spider and she said hello to him every time she passed by.

My challenge card today is an autumnal themed birthday card I made for my dearest best friend. I used the same technique I used to make Tim Holtz tag for August. You can see all the details over on his blog.

I used a sunny photo of my pot of gazanias and cut out the flowers

I made a background with inks and Mod podge.

I used some other Tim products too.

Here is my finished card

and a close up showing the details and my metallic paint flicks

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

Country View  add some texture

That Craft Place  mixed media anything goes

Pixie's snippets playground #197 I have used snippets of backing paper in my collage.

We love to create  anything mixed media goes

Allsorts nature

Papertake weekly anything goes

Noor UK halloween/autumn

Frilly and Funkie autumn splendour include an autumn leaf. My flower charm has a leaves,which I have coloured in autumn colours. 

Simon Says Stamp Monday autumn is in the air

The week is racing by, it's Wednesday already and just to really scare you ....it's only 79 days til Christmas....woop woop!

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

A very happy Spider day

We had a lovely Valentine's day and I even had a couple of hours for some crafty play. The snowdrops are looking so pretty outside but I noticed that morning as we were going out the absence of spiders' webs.

I honestly love garden spiders and find them fascinating and for most of the year I am able to marvel at the webs they weave. Obviously at this time of the year it is far to cold for them, so they must be tucked away somewhere keeping snug.

I bought my Hb a box of chocolates for a token present but I also thought that in my few hours free I could make a little gift for him. I could also join in the challenge of "paint" over at PaperArtsy as well as a couple of other great challenges I wanted to enter.

My Hb wears a suit to work and all his shirts have removable bones in the collar. To give an idea of size I have put a pound coin in the photo.
The other day he asked me if we had a small jar that he could keep them in as they lie loose in his bedside table and he is forever searching for them.

I decided that not only did I have a little jar but that I could make it into a gift for him. This jar contained olive pate which we bought years ago in Rhodes.It is one of those things which has sat in the cupboard and never seen the light of day again. I emptied out the contents...the sell by date was 2010...LOL. I threw away the lid and washed the jar thoroughly.





Over at PaperArtsy the theme for this fortnight is paint and I watched Leandra's video. I was amazed to hear that it is possible to paint straight onto glass with acrylic paint with no prep at all. I decided to get out the few colours of Fresco paints I own and have a go.

I chose Vanilla as my base and gave the jar 2 coats.

The paints went on really easily and dried quickly. At this point I had no idea at all what I was going to use as decoration..it is so hard to make things for men. I had already used hearts for my Hb's Valentine's card...then I remembered the lovely green of the snowdrops and the lack of spiders from the morning. I remembered that one of his favourite stamps of mine is a sweet spider and spider's web which were the first ever stamps I bought in 1993.


I decided to add some Toad Hall green paint by dabbing it through some hessian as a stencil, my shop bought stencils would have been too fiddly.

I then added my stamping using Archival inks. First I added some random text using Wendy Vecchi's lovely yellow version.

It was very tricky as I had to roll the stamps around the jar but the end result was fun.
Any spider features which were not clear I just neatened up with a black permanent marker. Some only had 4 legs so I made them up to 8! A spider is only a spider if he has 8 isn't he.

So here is the finished spider jar, I glued some hessian to the rim to finish it off. 

My Hb loves it and it was made with love for him on Valentine's day...or should it now be called Spider Day?

I would like to enter my painted/stamped jar into the following challenges;

PaperArtsy paint;Topic 3 I was also inspired by Anneke showing that you only need a couple of colours to made something striking.
Stamping Sensations anything goes
That Craft Place Film inspired yes you guessed it...Spider Man!
Simon Says stamp Wednesday all creatures great and small my spider is tiny ;0)
Rhedd's Creative spirit anything goes
Our Creative Corner tic tac toe I have used the middle horizontal line; paint, stamps, stencil (I used the hessian as mine)
Craft Stamper Take it Make it stenciling I hope to have shown that you can use anything, even hessian as a stencil
The Ribbon Girl Ivory/cream
Art with heart projects to love

I hope you all enjoyed your own Spider(Valentine) days and have a lovely restful Sunday. We're off to Southampton in the next hour to catch up with Daisy and her Mummy and Daddy. Thanks for all you kind visits and comments and can I extend a very warm welcome to my latest followers, it's so good to see you here following my creative journey.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x