ArtyFartyAnnie

Here are my finished Rumtopf jars, all full of fruit and sugar and rum and ready to store away in a cool dark place until Christmas, along with the Quince Jelly and Sloe Gin from last autumn. I started with pineapple, then kiwi, nectarines, strawberries (from the garden) and finally some perfectly ripe pears. This is my first attempt at Rumtopf, so I'm a bit worried that they won't keep properly, but fruit has been preserved in this way for many years, so I must just have faith (and keep my fingers crossed!). I did have just a teensy taste when I was putting the pears in - nearly knocked my head off! but mmmmmmmm..........

This is my take on the  Daring Cardmakers  challenge this week - Patterned Paper Mania! The mission was to make a card using at least 6 patterned papers, and I think I've used 10 here, plus 4 different patterned ribbons thrown in for good measure! My first thought was patchwork, and I nearly went for pretty pastel prints, but decided instead to use a whole lot of bright summery colours based on the colours in the vellum butterflies These were cut with a Stampin' Up! die in my Cuttlebug. I've been joining in with the Organisation Celebration  blog hop over at  Jennifer's Jumbles  so in the spirit of organisation all the papers are from scraps which I've sorted  into files. Finally, I added some more vellum to the inside and my friend's name with some ribbon and a bit more bling! Let's hope she's feeling in a colourful mood when she opens it!

This page was inspired by Melenia Agapides' sketch for the July challenge over at  Scrap365 . It's a beautiful sketch so I thought it would be ideal for a romantic page like this one, which shows John and me outside the church where we got married nearly a year ago now (blimey where did THAT go?!) Just like us, it's a little bit raggedy around the edges but hopefully turned out all right in the end! Here are some close ups (trying to practice my photography skills!) Here you can just see the edge of one of the loveheart doilies from our wedding picnic. Plain white letters were tinted with green and pink chalk inks and just dirtied up a bit with distress ink. The plain white jigsaw pieces got the same treatment before the letters were stamped with Stazon. The mist is a Smooch Spritzer which has a shine to it you can't see here. I made liberal use of ready made die cuts and you may recognise the little flags as a freebie printable download from Scrap365 -...

It's become a bit of a running joke that when my husband says "token" in his Norfolk accent it sounds to me like "toucan" - well, to be fair, I probably find this joke funnier than he does, but he takes it in good part. Anyway, I made him this 3-D sort of card-in-a-box which he's stashed away with his little collection of cards which I've made him since we met just over two years ago. Here it is, next to the "Toucan of My Affection" I gave him at Christmas (because he asked me if we were really going to just do "toucan" presents hehehe) I was quite chuffed with how it turned out - the box was made from one sheet of scrapbook cardstock which I cut using an old gift box as a template and the toucan was made with scraps of card, feathers and a boggly eye. Thecute little wooden toucan was only 99p from eBay! But he doesn't know that ...

Here is my take on this week's challenge "You're So Sweet" over at  Daring Cardmakers It's for my friend Kate, who is famous for her delicious cakes. There were some little cupcake-shaped papier mache boxes in The Range last week...hmmmm......

Here is my effort creation for week 3 of the Summer of Color challenge over at  Twinkle, Twinkle  - each week Kristin gives us a different icecream flavour for inspiration and this week it was "Baseball Nut". Now, I had never heard of this (probably can't get it in the UK) but it looks and sounds deLISH A smooth, vanilla flavored ice cream swirled with a black raspberry ribbon and loaded with cashews" -Baskin Robbins Mmmmmmmm...... anyway I digress - and I am in danger of dribbling on my keyboard!  I've been wanting to have a go at ATCs for a while now, so I decided I'd try and produce one for each of these six weekly challenges. Not sure how successful they are so far, but I'm having a lovely time!  I got really messy with gesso, tissue, inks and liquid pearls for this one. I've also started working on a little fold-up book to put them all in at the end. If you haven't already, pop over and have a look at some of the amazing pieces o...

Here is my take on Shimelle's ANFSCD challenge for June over at  UKScrappers I had a lovely time following Shimelle's tutorial over at my scrap buddy Trina's on Wednesday evening and we both managed to completely finish a layout in one go (which is a first!) - this page just goes to show how far you can make a little patterned paper go and I will probably do several matching pages through our wedding album. This is also a great way to squeeze in several pictures AND some of the memorabilia I squirrelled away at the time...the confetti in the clear bag which is washi-taped onto the RHS of the page was some of what had been sprinkled in our bed that night (and there was a fair amount of it stuck to various unmentionable places too)