wine glass tool

20 days since I posted...... 20 days since I actually crafted. What with the heat, work and general stuff I never got round to doing much, so sorry to all the ladies whose challenges I normally take part in.

Well, the heat has gone - to be replaced with rain and dull skies although today looks like it could be nice and bright.

XXX work ramble, please skip if easily bored XX

Work has taken a turn for the worse , but only in the fact that I have gone back down to my contracted hours of 13, for the last couple of months I have been doing 30ish every week. (originally the job was 16hrs as this was the last vacancy when the new shop opened and I didn't want to be on the dole, so i took it, plus with my illness I didn't want full time hours back then)
A colleague has had to transfer onto the Deli counter from her own dept for health reasons so her hours have wiped out overtime hours, not that its her fault. I'm just worried that my little grey cells won't be able to cope with the sudden lack of work stimulation and I slide back into a depression - so trying to avoid this way of thinking I am looking at it as if I am having a rest, extra time out, play time, me time, whatever!

XX work ramble over XX

Last weekend I rejoined a Craft Artist users group and this weeks tutorial/challenge was to use the 'wineglass' tool which alters the transparency of something, in various ways.

Never used this before - didn't even know what it did, so have had a play.

original image gecko galz free collage images

digi kit used - Folk Florals by DaisyTrail

wineglass tool - Radial at 0% opacity (basically formed a circle round her head)

also entering in a Gecko Galz challenge 'orange and yellow'

monochromatic blue

Quick card this morning, before we went to Hardwick Hall to watch the Ladies Cycling Tour whizz by.

The image is from the Gecko Galz 'Blue Christmas' kit, reminds me of the old Willow Pattern grandma had when I was little. The die cut sentiment is a Tonic one, silly me die cut it out then stamped on it, my aim was good though *lol* As a finishing touch I added the blue gems to the Mistletoe's around the frame. (just about see them in the photo)

entering in: merry monday = monochromatic blue


We parked at Hardwick, then walked across the fields to Ault Hucknall and waited at the church, normally open Saturday afternoons for coffee and a look round, but not this afternoon which was a pity, beautiful old graves most people aged 70+ in the late 1800's. Must have been the farming life - plenty of fresh air and hard work!

The ladies whizzed past at about 1.30pm, if I have a decent photo I will pop one up. Not as many as you would get in a Mans race, again a female sport that isn't as high profile as its male counterpart, but its getting there.

Quote

Digitally Made Challenges have their new challenge up for this month and its "Quote - include a quote on the project or tell us the quote that inspired your project and how"

Doing things a little differently as usual,  I decided to use a quote from Supernatural. Oh boy, was it tedious looking through all the eye candy different characters quotes to pick one which I could use!

It actually took me just over 2 hours to do this page, as I kept trying different backgrounds but me being me, went with the first background I'd played around with...

There are quite a few layers/components to this page;

background 

Devils trap symbol

the Impala

material 

frame

writing

Had great fun putting it all together, especially love that the Devils Trap looks like its engraved into the picture, totally by accident when I was using the transparency tool to fade it.

The Impala image came from Pinterest, and the digi kit I used was "Grunge it" by Seaside Crafter over on DaisyTrail

entering in: Digitally Made Challenges = quote

It also looks freakin' awesome as a wallpaper on the computer:

okay, I'll stop channeling Dean Winchester now..... 

slight spolier alert for Twin Peaks

So I finally let Schrodinger's Cat out of its box and watched the new Twin Peaks pt 1 & 2..... yep, still Twin Peakerie, all was still highly confusing  fine until they arrested Shaggy.

Yep, that kinda killed the moment.

onwards and upwards to pt 3......

Remember when........

A comment on my post 'Ladies in Hats' by Di, saying the image looked familiar made me think straight away of the old Christmas Quality Street tins, circa late 70/early 80's. This was back when having chocolates at Christmas was like having another present - the tins were gorgeous, a bog standard box or normal design just isn't the same.

the letter M

So today is the first day of my June holiday, one weeks glorious sunshine at Costa d' Hilcote. or not, as the weather today is cold and wet,did I mention its very cold!!

Decided to do some crafting today and drink lots of coffee to keep warm. 

New challenges are up on the Gecko Galz facebook page, so I chose to do  ' letter M' 

I thought of mermaid straight away, just had to find a suitable GG image, then googled "mermaid poems" and the one I used was one of the first I saw, usually I end up trawling through loads of stuff and end up really fed up.

GG image from July 2015 email freebie

Coquette kit paper no 6

Ladies wearing hats

At the moment if you order from the Gecko Galz Etsy shop you will receive a free Design sheet, the lady used for this card came from Beautiful Belles.

The challenge was 'Ladies wearing hats' over on their Facebook page. Bit of an odd card design but I liked how it ended up. The frame is a Sizzix thinlite I won from Mrs A's Butterfly blog, the blue card was a scrap piece which I used for a practice die cut of the frame as I wanted to see how it looked, so used the middle bit of that... happy accident!

entering: Gecko Galz Facebook challenge group
             Pixies Snippets playground = week 283 & 284