A Nervous Trip to London!

Today’s blog is a departure from anything to do with papercraft, and instead I’d love to talk briefly(?) about my youngest daughter Jessamy.

Regular viewers of Create and Craft will know that I’ve talked a lot (probably far too much, but that’s a proud Mum for you!) about my daughter’s up and coming Final Recital. For the last four years she has been studying music at degree level at a Conservatoire in London, and the Final Recital is the last piece of the jigsaw. She studies the flute as well as the piccolo.  

Like all students chasing a degree, the years have flown by and there have been plenty of ups and downs; but at last, she reached the finish line, and the Final Recital took place last Friday.

 Her brother, my hubby and myself joined a throng of her friends to go and watch it, to give moral support and to constitute the audience that the recital requires.  We were very nervous – my nerves started the night before – so I can’t imagine how nerve wracking it must have been for Jessamy.  And there’s always the thought that her nerves could get the better of her, which of course made us all feel even more tense!

Jessamy had to choose half a dozen flute pieces for the recital which would allow her to display a range of playing, so classical pieces were interspersed with contemporary tunes.  Then in the weeks and months leading up to the recital she had to practice, practice and more practice! She also had to arrange an accompanist, a piano player, and rehearse the pieces with him. If all that wasn’t enough she had to advertise the event on social media, and produce the programme, writing programme notes describing each piece as well as giving a pen picture of the composer, and writing a brief biography of herself. She found that last part particularly difficult – I don’t think anyone likes to write about themselves do they?

The Queen's House in the foreground and the Old Royal Naval College behind it

 The venue was the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, a wonderful collection of imposing white buildings.  Many of the rooms in the buildings are practice rooms, and because it was approaching thirty degrees, all the windows were thrown open. While we were walking past the rooms it was fun to be able to hear all the different instruments in each of the rooms – piano, trombone, drums, clarinet, all playing completely different tunes.  To make it even more difficult for the students, a lot of tourists were standing by the open windows staring in at them!  It looked a bit like feeding time at the zoo!

At last the audience were ushered into the room. The three of us managed to get a front row seat.  The panel of judges sat at the back, stern-faced… we found out later that this was the fifth recital they’d heard that day.

As we waited for it to begin I couldn’t help thinking about all the things that could go wrong.  If the room is too cold the flute could keep going out of tune.  If the room was too hot then perspiration could mean the flute could slip away from the chin, and fingers could slip too, resulting in ‘bum’ notes. She could forget parts of the one piece she had to play by memory, not being allowed to see the sheet music. Or, as I mentioned earlier, her nerves could get the better of her.  Or what if the panel were just plain bored or jaded after listening to all those recitals in one day?  It just seems so unfair that so much can hinge on a 45 minute long performance after four years of hard work.

Jessamy walked on to the stage looking lovely in one of her concert dresses, and began to play…

It was marvellous.  The time simply flew by.  The audience clapped enthusiastically after each piece, and hubby told me to clap louder, as loud as possible, in case that persuaded the panel to increase her mark!

Happy and smiling now it's all over!!

Jessamy was buzzing with excitement at the end. As usual she was her own worst critic.  I asked her flute tutor, Anna, how she thought it had gone and she replied that overall it had gone very well and said she believes Jessamy has the potential to get better and better.  Next we asked the accompanist and he said it was “wonderful, amazing”.  Perhaps they were both being polite, or maybe they were being truthful – neither my hubby nor I know enough about music to tell the difference between a good performance and a bad one!  I guess time will tell, and Jessamy doesn’t know when she’ll be getting the results of her assessment! But when I asked Jessamy how she felt it went, she said she'd got this bit wrong, that bit wrong, this bit could have been a lot better... the complete opposite of what the tutor and accompanist had said!

So that signalled the end of her four year course as she walked away from the Old Royal Naval College… but she’ll be back in September to begin her two year Masters course.  We went for a meal to celebrate, and then on to the pub to celebrate a bit more!

The Awesome Staircase in The Queen's House

Hubby and I stayed in London overnight and met up with the kids again the following morning.  After a very nice café breakfast (Hubby opted for the ‘Big Breakfast’ then complained that he couldn’t move after he’d polished it off!) we went for a walk in Greenwich Park. Later we walked around the Queen’s House at the edge of the park and marvelled at the fantastic staircase.  Then it was back into Greenwich itself where we shopped until we dropped. 

Having a well earned rest in The Queen's House!

It was an eventful train ride home.  First of all a man insisted on going into the First Class carriage and staying there, even though he hadn't paid for a First Class ticket. His argument was that he had paid so much money for his ticket that he felt entitled to sit where he liked.  It was a point of view that the train guard did not share, and only the guard's threat of calling the police persuaded the man to move. During their argument the man told the guard that he had drunk ten pints of lager, which I don't think really helped his cause at all!

Later on hubby noticed that someone who had got off the train at Market Harborough had left a bag behind.  While hubby went off quickly to find the guard, worried that it might be an explosive device of some description with thoughts of the dreadful events in Manchester still firmly in our minds, another chap had no such worries and recklessly opened the bag without a second thought!  It turned out to be a case containing the chap's wallet and laptop, and on going through the wallet the guard noticed that the owner was visiting from Australia - so there was no telephone number to contact him. Nothing for it but to drop it off at Lost Property and hope the Aussie got in touch with the rail company. 

A lovely and eventful weekend, lots of nerves at the beginning but lots of laughs (and a couple of nice new dresses from Greenwich Market!!) at the end. I am one very proud Mum.  Well done Jessamy, our favourite musician!   

Peek Of the Week - Tumbling Fuchsias

Hi, and for this week’s Peek Of The Week I’d like to share with you a card I demonstrated on air about two weeks ago.  I love the affect that was achieved. I just love fuchsias anyway, whether on cards or in real life, and every year I always make sure I have one or two in my hanging baskets!

This particular fuchsia doesn’t need watering every day, and is paper pieced by cutting it out in green, dark pink and a lighter pink.

Keeping the green layer intact, I cut into the dark pink and then the light pink to create the flowers.

Once they were stuck together, well, they looked nice… sort of. They looked okay, but I felt they were missing something (other than a hanging basket and some compost!). So, using my alcohol ink pens I added in shade and texture before putting in delicate highlights with a white gel pen.

The frame was made by cutting the Decorative oval die out of white card and then from a backing paper from the Country Manor Paper Pad.  Possibly a bit of cheating here – the backing paper is actually a tree, but I just cut out the blossom because I thought it looked pretty…!

The card base was made from a tent card, pink mat and then a sentiment printed from the Tattered Lace subscribers’ downloads.

A few pearls and a pretty bow later and the card was complete. Hope you like it!   

Photo Friday - Heroes

Another Photo Friday today, but this is a Photo Friday unlike any other.

As regular readers will know, it’s a series in which I show a photo that means a lot to me or which moves me in some way, and here it is.  Quite an ordinary, everyday shot of a guy delivering the largest amount of pizzas I’ve ever seen.

Yet the picture signifies much more.

When we see people out on the streets of big cities it’s as though everyone is so busy, rushing around, sometimes being quite rude and unthinking towards each other, everyone seems to be wrapped up in their own little world, concentrating on their own problems.  But scratch the surface and you’ll find that people, ordinary, busy, pre-occupied people like you and I, can in fact turn out to be fantastic true heroes when the need arises.  And this photo reminds me of that fact.

By now we’ve all been subjected to saturation media coverage of the horrific senseless evil of the Manchester bombing, but what a lot of the media haven’t reported is the incredibly brilliant way that people from all over the city and beyond came together to lend a hand, to stand together, to send out the message that we will carry on, come what may. The roll of honour includes:

·         Off duty medics, on seeing the TV pictures, went to work to help out;

·         Two homeless guys who just happened to be near the arena pitched in and helped the injured until ambulances could get to the scene.  When one was interviewed he merely said, “Just because I’m homeless it doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart.”

·         One lady amidst all the confusion led fifty children to safety, took them to a Holiday Inn, then posted on social media, saying, “They are waiting to be picked up.  We will keep them safe and we will stay with them.”

·         Numerous taxi drivers gave free rides to people throughout the night;

·         A Rabbi brought cups of tea to the police on duty;

·         Local shops offered free breakfasts, lunches and cups of tea to all members of the emergency services who hadn’t found time to eat;

·         A national pizza chain delivered free pizza to NHS staff to help keep them going;

·         When daylight came, so many people queued to give blood that many of them had to be turned away;

·         Fund raising was arranged online to help support the families of those who had passed away.  The target of £300,000 was easily met and surpassed.    

I’m absolutely sure there were many many more acts of selfless bravery and kindness done by lots of other people that I just haven’t heard about.  Reading about these people and the things they decided to do restores my faith in human nature, and that faith is sorely needed in these dark days.

Bless them all.

Velvet Lace Ruffle Die Collection - is fantastic!

I’m writing this blog entry on Tuesday evening ready for publishing on Wednesday morning… but I don’t want to. All day long the TV news has been showing coverage of the senseless and barbaric events that occurred in Manchester and I’m sure we’ve all watched on with heavy hearts.  When considering incidents like that, then greetings cards and papercraft becomes so trivial in comparison.

But, after a lot of thought, I’ve decided to go ahead with the blog, as difficult as that is at the moment.  A lot of people, politicians and top ranking police officers among them, have been saying today that we should carry on as normal and make it plain that we will never bow down to these savage acts of terrorism.  I've come to the conclusion that I believe they are right. So here I am, carrying on as normal.  I hope you manage to do the same…

I recently did a TV show that began at 8am.  This means my alarm goes off at 4.20am sharp.  How my hubby loves these early morning wake ups...

On the show I demonstrated the Tattered Lace Velvet Lace Ruffle Die Collection, and I am very impressed with it. 

They are ‘Essentials’ but they give you so much more than the basic essentials as you can use them for all sorts of things.  They are incredibly useful, incredibly versatile. You can use them for Shabby Chics, for Clean and Simples, you can add detailing, you can snip into them, you can use them for mats and layering, for frames, for apertures… whatever you want to do, these dies are going to work for you.

Ruffles is the name of the game here – ruffles and velvet are trending.  We’ve seen them on the catwalk and in the high street fashionable clothes shops, and now ruffles are coming into papercraft. The smart thing about these dies is that there is no uniform finish to the edging.  Each one is different from the rest, giving a very lifelike appearance of a real ruffle.

In order to demonstrate the many varied uses of the ruffle dies on the show, we used them to create, among other things, a rosette, a rocker card, a gatefold card, a layered Anniversary plaque, the ruffles on a dress and a decorative neckline on another dress.

In one brilliant card put together by the design team, there was a rectangular ruffle die used, then one edge of the same die used again, plus the smallest circle ruffle die, and the mini-ruffle rectangular die thrown in there for good measure.  The result was fantastic and I don’t think the TV pictures did it justice.

As I’ve said before in this blog, the only limit is your own imagination!

Peek Of The Week - A Birthday Card For Kern...

Earlier this month it was my twin’s 22^nd birthday and my blog last Wednesday showed you the birthday card I’d made for my youngest daughter.  For today’s Peek Of The Week I thought I’d share with you the card I made for my son Kern’s 22^nd birthday.

On Wednesday on my blog I was lamenting the passing of the years, and I said then that I don’t know where the time has gone.  When I look at my son it seems like only yesterday that I was picking him up and winding him after he’d had some milk… but now he could pick me up, quite easily!

Even though his father is mad keen on rugby and football and fishing, Kern has never shown much interest in any sport.  Instead he prefers going to the theatre and going to concerts.  He has a girlfriend who shares his interests, and those interests perhaps explain why he chose to do a degree in English Literature.  He graduates in July and begins a Masters in Creative Writing in September… maybe I can get him to write this blog for me!

In making this card I set myself a challenge to make a clean and simple one.  I wanted the focus of the card to be the sentiment itself, and I didn’t want attention to be drawn away from the sentiment by any overly ornate decoration.

I must admit I was quite excited as this die popped through my letterbox just recently from Florartistry. I’d fallen in love with the dies when I saw them on Create & Craft last week.

Taking a piece of stamping card, I stamped the Rare Earth circles in clear ink which I heat embossed with a clear embossing powder, as I wanted to achieve a ‘resist’.

Next, I die cut the ‘Birthday’ sentiment in red four times and layered them up to give some added dimension.  I then chose my other two colours of card stock, of blue and mustard yellow, and then I matched up my inks.

Putting some ink on to my craft mat in each of the three colours I wet my largest Rare Earth blending brush and created the three bold strokes of colour – and I was really happy about the way the resist came through.

I then took a small ‘Happy’ die from the Tattered Lace ‘Love Is In The Air’ sentiment set, cut this out in red, and mounted it on to the yellow card.

Then it was just a case of putting the card together.  I used foam tape underneath the main white layer and also under the ‘Happy’ sentiment just to add a little interest.

The final detail was added by using pearl drops in various sizes quite randomly over the card front.  Actually, this was more difficult than you might think, just because it is hard to position items in ‘random’ locations – however hard I try I seem to create a pattern with them!

Overall, I was pleased with the finished result, and I hope Kern was too!       

Photo Friday - If You Go Into The Woods Today...

Welcome to another edition of ‘Photo Friday’.  Today I’d like to show you… a giant Hare!

Regular readers might recall that last month I visited Chatsworth with my hubby and son as a birthday treat.

Chatsworth is lovely and I’d encourage anyone to take a trip out there if they get the time and the opportunity. 

We first went there more years ago than I care to remember. My eldest daughter was still very young and the two youngest were in a pushchair. I remember walking through the grounds of the stately home for what seemed like hours.  It was a sunny day and we were all getting a little overheated when we crested the brow of a small hill and there in front of us was a fantastic, enormous sculpture of a giant Hare.  Hubby was just as taken with it as I was. 

  

This Hare wasn’t the usual timid animal that would turn and run at the slightest noise… this metal creature reared up on his hind legs as bold as you please, banging his drum for all to hear.  He just looked fantastic.

So I was overjoyed when we went back there last month and found him again! He didn’t look a day older!

Looking at the statue that second time, and looking at this photograph now, makes me feel a little wistful.  I think of all that has happened since we first saw the giant Hare; some loved ones have passed away, some good friends have moved on, never to be seen again.  But it’s not been all sadness as yet more loved ones have come into this world, and some new good friendships have been forged. We’ve seen the children grow up and fly the nest and we, like all of us, have made countless memories as we’ve experienced both good, bad and indifferent.  Yet through it all, as constant as ever, the giant Hare is still there, banging his drum with all his might.

And for some reason I like that idea very much!  

A Birthday Card For Pink...

As readers of my Facebook page may have noticed, I got more than a little Mumsie on Monday as I announced to the World that it was my youngest two’s 22^nd birthday that day. The thought that my youngest ‘children’ are 22 years old makes me feel very old indeed! 

All you Mums out there will recognise the feeling when I say that I just don’t know where the time has gone.  It seems like only yesterday that I was changing their nappies… and going back even further, I remember sitting in the car in the hospital car park after I’d had a scan and we’d just been given the bombshell news that we were having twins.  I was convinced we’d never be able to afford them and I got very emotional, crying my eyes out.  Hubby was sitting next to me, beaming with pride from ear to ear.  In despair I said to him, “Oh, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know about you love”, he grinned, “but I’m off to the pub!” 

I went with him and hit the orange juice! Looking back we were right to celebrate instead of worrying about money; like most parents, we muddled through somehow.  And so all these years on it was time to make their birthday cards, so I thought I’d share them with you, starting with Jessamy’s card – Kern’s card will follow in a later blog issue.  Ladies first!

Jessamy plays flute and piccolo and is studying music at a Conservatoire in London. That’s the reason that I wanted some sort of musical theme in the card somewhere.  As you can see, the floral backing paper has a faint musical score on it. After I chose the two backing papers that I liked, I cut them to the same size so that they would fit on top of each other exactly.  I then tore the top paper diagonally down the front, tearing from the top so that the white ‘raw’ edge was visible.

After I’d stuck the papers together I used a fine liner pen to hand draw a double border all the way around.

Next I cut a Tattered Lace Oval doily out of white card together with a decorative edge circle.  Using a smaller circle I dusted the edge of the decorative circle in pink ink. (When she was very young Jessamy liked the colour pink so much that ‘Pink’ became her nickname, and we still call her that to this day… that was many years before the pop star of the same name ever saw the light of day of course!)

Using the ‘Celebrate’ die from Florartistry I cut this out four times in a pearlescent pink card stock and stuck them together. After I had layered all these components together I hot-glued some pink sissal fibre on to the card front and attached some mulberry flowers.

The finishing touch was to add a few ‘girlie’ embellishments – a wooden flower, some heart sequins and some pink pearl drops.

I think it’s a pretty card, and it seemed to go down well with the Birthday Girl!  

Peek Of The Week - An Exclusive Peek!

This Peek Of The Week is an exclusive peek...

Tomorrow (Monday 15th May) at 8am the lovely Nancy Watt will be launching a new Four Day Deal from Tattered Lace.

It's a great collection called 'Back to Black'.  I'll be in the studio on Tuesday morning at 8 o'clock giving my take on this fantastic, brand new collection... but in the meantime I wanted to give you a sneak peek of a small detail or two on some of the cards I'll be demoing on some of my shows.

These superb frames can be used singularly or in various combinations to create beautiful scenes, and they carry the sort of intricate detail and innovation you expect to find in Tattered Lace products.

It's going to be fun.  I can't wait.  Hope you can tune in! 

Photo Friday - English Cottage Garden

Here we are on the second ‘episode’ of what I hope will be a continuing part of my blog – Photo Friday.

For anyone who missed the explanation last Friday, Photo Friday probably won’t have anything at all to do with making cards.  Every Friday I’ll be showing photos that have, for one reason or another, struck a chord with me – sometimes it will be photos that I or my family and friends have taken, sometimes it will be photos I’ve stumbled across while surfing the net.

I'm really pleased that a lot of readers seemed to like the first one so I hope this one meets with your approval too…

A few years ago I was out on a ramble with my hubby and kids.  I’m ashamed to say I forget exactly where this photo was taken, but if I had to guess I think it was in the beautiful Derbyshire Dales.  I remember the walk had been a long and exhausting one by our standards, and I recall we were all feeling a little bit tired and a little subdued.  The laughing and joking had long since subsided and we were all wanting the end of the walk to come soon – at times like these I hope and pray for a little tearoom to suddenly appear out of nowhere… a cosy café with a very large selection of cakes and sticky buns! And in a perfect World there would even be a taxi waiting to take me back to my car!

But as we trudged down a quiet country lane I happened to look to my left and this beautiful cottage garden just took my breath away.  It is superb, down to every little detail.

I won’t pretend to know a great deal about gardening but I do know that when it comes to planting a cottage garden, informality is key, and that style has been brilliantly realised here.  I feel that whoever put this garden together has an artist’s (or crafter’s!) eye.  No space is wasted – there are even plants growing in the cracks in the steps.

The whole thing looks so natural on first glance, as though all these plants just seeded themselves around naturally, but when I looked again I could see all the hard work that had gone into it… the container in the foreground, almost hidden by other plants, the hanging baskets breaking up the harsh line of the grey guttering, the cute little horseshoe nailed to the door… they’re all little things by themselves - but put together with the borders that are packed with flowers and bursting with colour, spilling over onto the path and highlighted by the late afternoon sunshine, and you have the whole picture, which never fails to make me smile every time I look at this photo.

And it never fails to make me very jealous indeed!   

Flash! Sale!

It was the Tattered Lace Flash Sale last Tuesday and I was in the studio with Ben Moseby - it was great fun. 

Just for a laugh, someone decided the studio lights would flash every time Ben said the word 'Flash', which you'd expect him to do at a Flash Sale.  Of course Ben needed no further encouragement and managed to say 'Flash' about thirteen times in the first minute!  I expected a few bulbs to fuse any second!

Ben then got everyone in the studio to shout 'Sale!' every time he said 'Flash!' but that was a comedy disaster - there was no synchronisation so no one said 'Sale!' at the same time.  So that idea didn't really take off because it sounded something like this:  "Flash!"   "Sale!" "Sale!" "Sale!" "Sale!" (short pause) "Sale!" (much longer pause) "Sale!"

What's that old showbiz saying about how you can never rehearse enough???  It was difficult to keep a straight face at this point, but the show must go on...

We began demonstrating the lovely Flectere system of dies. Flectere is all about the curves and dimension; I've written about Flectere before on this blog, more than once, but I feel they are so radically different and cards made in this way are almost invariably really eye-catching.

I showed Ben a card with a lovely picture of a mushroom on the front.  Ben said he would love to receive a card like that one because he is a Fun Guy (fungi).

Older jokes than that one probably DO exist but you'd have to ask your great-grandparents!       

Peek Of The Week - Pretty In Pink...!

This time around I’d like to show you a card I made for a recent TV show.  The object of the exercise was to demonstrate how to make a comparatively simple project, and at the same time make the point that, sometimes, a card that is uncomplicated, unfussy and straightforward can be much more effective than one that comes with all the whistles and bells that we can fit on to it!

I began with a piece of backing paper I liked and this dictated the rest of the colour theme. I created two matts and layers with a pretty pink pearlised card stock and backing paper.

Next, using the same pink card stock, I used two Tattered Lace essential square dies to create a thick frame.  On to this I layered the Totally Entwined square die cut which was then mounted on to the card blank with foam pads, which gave a little added dimension.

After creating the centre embellishment using the Charisma Frames One die set I then die cut the butterfly and sentiment out of white card stock which I’d first covered with Sticky Roll, which meant that once the die cuts were complete I could peel off the top layer and cover them in glitter.

When the butterfly and sentiment were stuck on to the card I finished it off with a few white pearl embellishments.

This card is quick and easy to make but I feel it’s as effective as some cards that are way more complicated and fussy… food for thought perhaps, next time you need to make a card in a hurry?