In between the rain....

I managed to get some more done on my allotment today, I think everything is planted apart from the outdoor cucumbers now. I've also checked out the allotment next to mine which has been sitting empty for about a year and I've asked to go on the waiting list for it, so fingers crossed.

The beautiful foxglove can be seen all over the allotments along with poppies and cornflowers. The centre picture with the overgrown grass is the allotment I'm hoping to get, the other is mine and how it's looking at the moment, it's taken over 2 years to get to this stage, but I enjoy every minute of it.

It's back to work tomorrow.......

I've just had 4 lovely days off doing everything I love, sadly it's come to an end and I'm back at work tomorrow. So, I thought I'd better get my Tuesday Taggers challenge done straight away. I made a bit of a boo boo!!! on it, I thought I was using shrink plastic for the butterfly and when it didn't shrink I realised I wasn't......lol! Still, I thought it looked ok so I stuck with it.

I'm not sure where I got the flower stamp from but I stamped onto an old dictionary page then cut the flowers and leaves out and distressed them with Rangers Vintage Photo ink.

The script reads " If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies" a stamp I bought from Quietfire Designs.

I'm not sure what I used for the butterfly as I said before but was meant to be smaller.

Added a bit of distressing inks and a few buttons and ribbons to finish it off.

If you know where the doodle flower stamp comes from please let me know and I'll add it to this post.

American Life Tag

Well, I've been doing allsorts today, gardening, more gardening, but in the allotment, took the dog for a walk then came back and thought I'd have a go at doing something for the Tuesday Taggers, something I've wanted to do for a while but just never got round to it.

I have used tissue paper with PVA for the textured background, I then painted it with red acrylic paint.

The Coca-Cola stamp is one I bought in the USA, I stamped onto plain white card, coloured it with poppy red promarker (I didn't have any red card) then used UTEE on it to give it a tiled look.

The images are just ones I found on Google and Clipart.

Bird Hanger

This is my entry for Sherry's challenge on Art N Soul on Flickr. I used the pages from an old dictionary to cover the bird then used an assortment of old postage stamps, luggage label, air mail stickers and stamped French postage images on it.

Long time....no blog

Well, it's been months since I've been on my blog, just never seemed to find the time, so here I am again. I have so many things going on in my life......good things, like crafting, gardening walking the dog, cake making and then there's work.........oh! yeah, that thing that gets in the way of life.
I'm going to start adding recipes to my blog, mainly vegetarian recipes but sometimes the odd meat or fish recipe and definitely cakes and desserts so if you're interested just check out my blog from time to time.
I visited New York a couple of months ago and the brunches there are fantastic, you can't beat the Americans at brunch so I thought I'd start off with a recipe for the delicious Brioche French Toast that I tried.

Serves 4-6

6 large eggs
1/2 cup caster sugar
4 cups milk
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg
1 Loaf of day old brioche
1/4 cup clarified butter
2 tbsp. unsalted butter
Icing sugar
Syrup for serving
Fruit for serving

Method

1.Whisk together the eggs, milk and caster sugar add the cinnamon and nutmeg,
2.Slice the brioche loaf and layer in a shallow baking dish, pour the egg mixture over the bread and leave to soak for about 3 minutes. Turn the bread over and leave to soak on the other side for another 2-3 minutes.
3.Preheat the oven to about 80c (to keep the french toast warm)
4.Cook the toast in batches. Heat up a large frying pan and add some of the clarified butter and over a medium heat fry the soaked brioche until golden brown and crisp on both sides.Add some of the unsalted butter during cooking as this adds a nice nutty flavour and helps brown the toast.
Repeat until all the brioche and egg mixture is used.
5.Serve warm dusted with icing sugar, syrup (maple is best) and fruit of your choice, I love to serve with fresh blueberries, raspberries and strawberries.

Enjoy!

Altered Domino Box

Well I've got through another busy summer at work and it's finally time for me now. Today is the first time I've crafted in ages. I went to a car boot sale today and picked up a couple of things I can use in my altered art, one of them being an old domino box (unfortunately there was only one domino in the box) but never mind it was the box I was interested in.
It started off as a brown tatty box covered in an imitation leather type material, this is what I altered it into, it's a late brak for a lovely friend of mine, I hope she likes it.

Time To Play

Well it's been a while since I've been on my blog, not only have I not had the time but I haven't had the inclination either, but hopefully the drought has come to an end at last.

I was given a packaging box from a bottle opener from a friend who thought the box was too good to throw away (how right she was)

I started by painting it with black acrylic paint then using a heat gun on it to give it some texture. I then used metallic rub-ons on it to give it the metallic look, most of the other decorations on it are made from Fimo clay and coloured with Cosmic Shimmer mica pigment powders.

The lining is a piece of beautiful Indian fabric, the inside of the box still needs a couple of things adding to finish it off completely but this is more or less the finished item.