Romance and Relaxation ???

Happy Weekend Everyone,

Sorry, I've got to be very English here and mention the weather because it's glorious this morning where I am.  Beautiful blue sky with whispy clouds and bright sunshine.  At the moment the temperature is just right but it doesn't bode well for my craftroom later, lol!  I may have to brave the heat though as I've been away for a few days looking after little Izzy before nursery reopens next week and I'm getting withdrawal symptoms!  On Thursday I took Izzy to Newby Hall in North Yorks and we had a really fun filled day.  I haven't been in the hall but the gardens are lovely and there's a really great adventure garden for kids (which is where we spent most of the day, lol).  Izzy isn't four until December but she is such a daredevil and she spent the day making me a nervous wreck watching her daring exploits.  My Daughter said I would have been okay to sit and watch her from one of the many seats but as her Mamma I felt I had to be 'right there' to catch her if she fell, Ha! Ha!  I don't know who was the most exhausted at the end of the day but we did have a good time and I would recommend Newby Hall as a lovely family day out with something for all ages.  Oh yes, there's a really good restaurant too where I tried their very nice Beetroot and Spicy Parsnip Soup ....... delicious!

Anyway, on to the crafting now.  Finally, I have something I can show you on my own blog.  Everything I've made for quite a while has been DT stuff that I can't blog on here, at least not yet.  However, my card today was made for my lovely friend Jo's birthday a few weeks ago and I couldn't show that until now because I used some lovely new Chocolate Baroque (formerly Elusive Images) stamps which have only been released this week.  There are two new A5 stamp sets called Music Fanfare and The Art of Chess and if you check out the DT blog (link in my sidebar) you will see lots of inspiration from the Design Team.  Please scroll down over the last few days as Glenda has been publishing our draft posts since the middle of the week and she kicked the launch off with a look at the two stamp sets, some inspiration from the Queen of Stamping herself and a hint that there might be a random give away.  I would guess that means the more comments you leave on the DT blog and the teams individual blogs the more chances you have!

The colours I used for Jo's card were rather delicate shades of Versamagic ink blended over a lovely Tando Creative music score mask (mask available from Snazzys).  All the stamped images are from the two new Chocolate Baroque sets and the flowers and leaves were left over from the decorated initial I did for the Snazzy DT launch which fitted in with my colours perfectly.  The little violin charm (from IndigoBlu) was originally an antiqued brass colour so I rubbed some silver Inca Gold into it.

I always forget to mention that most of my photos are clickable, once to zoom and again to get a real 'in your face' closeup, lol!  I always like to look at closeups on other people's creations to get a better idea of the texture and dimension.  It's the next best thing to actually touching them I think.

 Don't forget to hop over to the Chocolate Baroque DT blog as there are some beautiful creations to see.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and thanks for sparing time to visit.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx



PS   I thought it was time I gave a bit of explanation for my lack of posting in recent months and lack of commenting on my favourite blogs to some extent too (I do drop by them often though).  Unfortunately we have had a few family trials and tribulations which are likely to be ongoing for quite sometime and these are also the reason I haven't managed to do the blog post I intended on Jenna and Tony's Wedding.  Around the time of the wedding I had set in motion an assessment of my 83 year old Mum and what we suspected has been confirmed, she has Alzheimers and we are now waiting for an ECG next week to see if she is able to have the drugs which will hopefully slow down the effects of this awful disease.  It will be October before she sees the consultant to get the prescription though so that's another month for the deterioration to progress.  The other event which  as a Mum and doting Mamma is occupying much of my time and thoughts is that our lovely Son's marriage has ended.  I know it happens all the time and is not the end of the world, it happened to me over 40 years ago but thankfully, I had no children at that time and could quickly move on with my life.  Jamie has a little girl (as my regular visitors will know) who he adores and the effect this is having on both of them is the really upsetting (to put it mildly) part.  Anyway,  that's the situation put very simplistically and I'm trying hard to recover my normal rather leisurely rhythm, lol!  I'll be back a bit quicker next time I hope but in the meantime thanks for bearing with me.  Lots of love Lesley  Xx