Fungi Foray

Last year, we had a wonderful day out in Thetford Forest in Norfolk, foraging for fungi amongst the fallen autumn leaves, under the expert guidance of Jonathan Revett. Here is a picture of Yours Truly, looking very proud of my Fungi Finds!


Foraging for wild food in the woods and hedgerows is something we did quite a bit of when I was a kid. When we moved from inner city London to live on a smallholding in a Devon village, one of the many things we learned to do was to gather all kinds of "free food" to supplement what we produced from the smallholding. We would be sent off to gather nettles, elderflowers, wild garlic, mushrooms, herbs, berries and nuts and Mum would turn these into wine, jams, pies, soups, pickles and herbal remedies.

Some experiments didn't go so well - like the snails and the acorn coffee - but you have to try these things and my Mum was amazingly resourceful!

I am so pleased that there seems to be a growing interest in reviving these lost skills and I have a lot of respect for people like Jonathan who are happy to share their knowledge and experience.

Two different challenges inspired this page.
Firstly, the SSQ19 "Nature" Soul Quest at Soul Scrappers hosted by Libby. All you have to do is sign up when the Soul Quest is first posted each month, the DT member who is hosting the challenge sends you a fun packet of embellies in the post - free! - wooHOO! The challenge is to use the inspiration, ideas and embellies provided to create a page or other project. And you don't know what will be in the pack until it arrives - very exciting!
It was so fun to get a little envelope full of goodies all the way from Australia and I managed to use every single one of them on this page! Here's a close-up of some of them ...


I cut out the stamped leaves from the pack, added some more cut from a LunaGirl collage sheet and layered these with the fabric leaves from the pack. The spiral rose and the fringed flower were made from some fabric pieces in the pack. There were also some punched dragonflies and flowers, which I've layered for added dimension. The stamped and cut out trees and bird, the burlap, the strips of ribbon, paper, embossed card, word label and tag shape you can see layered in the background all came from the pack. I used Distress Inks in autumnal colours to help pull everything together.

This page was also inspired by the November challenge over at Scrapology where we are scraplifting a gorgeous page by Michelle Logan. Here is the sketch we're using, inspired by Michelle's layout - this is the fully layered template version created by Karen at Scrapdolly ....


The challenge this month is to use this sketch and some chipboard - as you can see, I've used a BoBunny chipboard flourish from my FrogDog kit, an ancient chipboard circle I've had so long I can't remember where it came from, and a little chippie centre for my vellum flowers.
Check out all the details over at the Scrapology blog  "C is for Chipboard"  - as always, there's a brilliant prize to be won, so why not give it a go? You have until 5th December - ages!

Thanks for stopping by, see you again soon :o)xxx

Comments

Lynn said…
What a fun page, and so topical for the season too. Thanks for joining in with our challenge on Scrapology.

Lynn x
Anita said…
What a fabulous page! i love Autumn, its my fave time of the year and this layout echos it so well, beautiful colours and a super photo! Thanks for joining in the Scrapology Challenge, good luck! xx
Linda said…
Gorgeous page, lovely colours.
Thanks for joining us at Scrapology this month.
Linda x
Unknown said…
gorgeous colour palate on your page, so warm and cosy :o) sounds like a fantastic day out too x