Lubbly Jubbly and a bit of Bubbly!

LOL, that was a bit of a mouthful wasn't it.
I meant to post these pics at the beginning of the summer hols, but somehow they swept away into a dusty corner on my desktop!
I saw this trick with recylcling whilst hoppping round some blogs several weeks ago and thought we would try it out.
All you need is an old plastic bottle, some mesh, sock fabric or some stretchy fabric and an elstic band ( or ducktape like I used lol)....oh yes and some washing up liquid ;)

All you need to do is literally cut the bottom off of the bottle and cover it with some fabric and fix with a band or strong tape. Then make a strongish solution of washing up liquid ( I LOVE Fairy Lemon ;) ) and water in a bowl.......... dip......and BLOW gently :D ( please do NOT suck.....it doesn't come highly recommended LOL!
............................and blow............................


.....................................and blow! Yep, even I can do with and not mess it up LOL!
Next time we do this I think I might try adding some glycerine and maybe some food colouring too.

Good, clean, cheap fun! We LOVED it :)

'Orrible, Hairy Little Blighters!

.....that's what they are!

This year I have had a lovely display of nasturiums. Great big gorgeous leaves and firey blooms.....really lovely......well they were....for a while!

And then these little horrors got to them......
and ate.....and ate.....and ATE!!!!



and there are LOADS of the furry beasts ( and NOT many of my lovely big leaves anymore!)


But I guess there is one upside! As much as I am scared of and detest moths **shudders** I DO like Cabbage White butterflies, they are so pretty and I love how they flitter around the garden and judging by the amount of big caterpillars we already have munching away and now, as you can see below, we also have lots of teeny tiny ones ( they are ALL under the leaf too) the garden will soon be full of pretty flutterbys.
but alas.....no more Nasturtiums :(

Glorious in Green.....and so proud of our girlie!

This is a layout I made a few weeks ago and had forgotten to blog. Its based on a sheet of Bazzil Dotted Swiss and usess papers by My Minds Eye and Pebbles. The aqua braid is a length of original 1970's braid I have been itching to use some more of it. the piccy is of the girls, back in May at Abbots Wood in Arlington.


I used my large circle punch and punched out lots and lots of circles from the double sided Pebbles paper, I then fold some of them and placed them round the photo to make a dimensional frame.

The bird was an acetate shape that I just dabbed with 2 different alcohol inks and then hung on a metallic thread and popped on a flower and teal pearl.

Using a few of the punched circles I folded 2 of the sides inwards and then placed them side by side to create a dimentional border. And then, because it all just seemed too white and clean....I inked the edges of the whole page lol.


And I simply must end this post with a HUGE WELL DONE to Lauren! We have always been so proud of both our girlies....but today Lauren got her GCSE results ( which she has taken a year early!) and she has done really well and got some super results....we are thrilled for her and so very,very proud......
Well done Sweetheart....we knew you could do it. Good luck in year 11. Love Mum and dad..xxx

When is a rug...not a rug?

Well........it would appear it when it is more like a hat....as you will see in a moment!

At the beginning of the school holidays Chloe wanted to have a go at making something, so we hunted around for something different to do. Over on the fantastic Its' A Creative World blog we found this post about Hula Hoop Rugs
So we scouted through drawers and wardrobes until we had enough t shirts and started to cut them into strips.....lots and LOTS of strips LOL

After making the the initial weaving area ( or warp) on the hoop we started off with the first strip (weft) and attatched it in the centre and started weaving round
Eventually Chloe got it to this size.......



Unfortunately upon taking it off the hoop and tying the rag ends together, we found that the rug would not lay flat and instead looked rather like a bowl.....or indeed a hat!!! Being beautifully modelled here by Chloe LOL!

I think it was woven too tightly to be honest.....so, we have been out and bought a bigger hoop and when we have enough t -shirts to cut up again we will try another, bigger rug and weave it a little more loosely and hopefully it will sit flat.....just like a rug is supposed to ;)

R is for Ribbon ~ Scrapology August Challenge

For our Scrapology Challenge this month we are using ribbons on our pages and we have chosen to lift a beautiful layout by a lovely lady called Ingrid G, you can see some more of her gorgeous work HERE

Here is my DT page ( unfortunately not a great photo of the layout, the colours are much better in the flesh!)

The photo is my youngest on the beach at Pendine Sands a couple of years ago.

I have used papers by Prima, AC Thickers ( which I have coated with alcohol inks and then Stickled), some vintage cotton lace and then threaded through some baby blue satin ribbon.

I also used a ZVA pearl and crystal swirl and made some decorative beaded pins which I tucked in behind a large Prima bloom, I also added a few more Primas and added pearls or resin flowers to the centres.

I found 2 old metal plaques with a beach theme that I have had for years, I painted them with Cream acrylic paint and rubbed it back to give more of a distressed effect.

the largish clear circle is a glass watch face cover that I have added a shell ( from the actual beach in the photo) and some small precious stones.

I made the book print flower by cutting several layers out of old book paper and scrunching them up, then unravelling a bit and layering them together before holding them together with a brad. I then just gave it a gentle misting with some Cosmic Shimmer Mist.

I finished the page off with some extra blooms and mesh peices, the thickers, chipboard sentiments and some teeny alpha stickers.

Here is the original layout by Ingrid, beautiful isn't it!

And here is the sketch that we have all worked from. Why not pop over to the Scrapology blog and have a look at the rest of the DT pages....and hopefully also join in with us this month

Once again there will be a wonderful prize that you can win, very generously donated by our lovely friend Jill at Cardinal Colours, I shall blog that in a seperate post.

So, how do you fancy playing along with us this month then?...........xxxxxx