Hardwick Hall

I'm still working my way through the photos of the places we visited when we added a year with the National Trust to our Life English Heritage membership,  It would be nice if I got the whole lot finished before too long. I've still a few places to do and then will need to do the facing pages and put the whole thing together.  Amazing really that I've stuck at it, however intermittently as usually long-tern projects like this end up in the "never finished" pile - some before they've even really started!
So, anyway, I've reached March 2011 and we're staying at the English Heritage holiday property The Lodge at Hardwick Old Hall.  Hardwick Old Hall is "next door" to Bess of Harcwick's New Hall, which was begun in 1590,
The Old Hall itself is still closed to the public for the winter, so we have that part to ourselves for the week we are "in residence",  Hardwick New Hall is open for part of the week so fortunately we are able to visit during our stay - and look how the sun shone!  Mind you the rest of the time it was thick fog!
Mini book page for Hardwick New Hall:

 I've used the new February Sketch File LO for this one.

  Instead of putting the photo on the top, I fixed all the background rectangles together then cut the circle aperture using a Spellbinders die to make it into a frame.  The photo was then slid underneath and fixed to the yellow paper.

I used:

Papers; Carta Bella "Beautiful Moments" 12x12 and 6x6

Lace, Red Pearls; Creative Treasures

White Pearls; Imaginisce 

Glossy Accents on mosaic squares

Spellbinders plain circles Die

Punches: 2 sizes of squares

Craft Robo for title

I thought I'd pop another couple of photos in too.
This is The Lodge, our home of the week

Part of the Old Hall:

The view from our bedroom window:

The nice thing about taking so long to get this book done is that it's lovely to re-visit these beautiful buildings via the photos, I hope you don't mind seeing a few of them!

That's all for now

Chevrons

Back home after a hastily arranged holiday in Kefalonia and trying to get back into some sort of routine.  It never fails to intrigue me how one week away can create so much extra work on either side of it. 
Still we needed the break - and to see a bit of sunshine.  We stayed in the village of Assos which has a stunning location on an isthmus and a fabulous almost enclosed bay which is a bit like a giant swimming pool- stunningly beautiful with the backdrop of buildings layered up the hillside. I'll add some photos at the end of this post.
Today is Daring Cardmakers Day - and unbelievably I made my card before we went away (one less thing to do this week woowoo).  I needed to get my uncle's birthday card in to the post before we left the UK so Nat's challenge provided a great background for a masculine card

Nat said:

This week I thought it was about time we paid a special homage to that very popular design element that is doing the rounds right now.

The Chevron

Or zigzags if you like!

Just make a card featuring chevrons, zigzags, or even a herringbone pattern and share it with us via the InLinkz gadget on our BLOG

My uncle doesn't enjoy the usual blokey interests of sport and booze etc so it's always a bit of a challenge to come up with something interesting.  He's a real whizz at puzzles though so I thought a few challenging Sudokus might amuse him for a while.  The ones I've used are from the "evil" section, so fingers crossed that I copied the numbers correctly or they may turn out to be even more evil than intended!

 Materials and Tools:

This chevron paper is from the "Tell me More, Tell me More" Quirky Kit from Crafty Templates

I think the numbers paper is from MME - but I can't remember offhand

Narrow brown ric-rac braid

Sentiment created on Craft Robo; "Birthday" is cut out of the fawn card and layered onto a matching piece of black card. 

 The "Greetings" word is cut from another piece of black and added on top of the fawn.

For the puzzles;

I used a blank Sudoku grid found on the web and then used another website to find the puzzles - I copied the numbers into the grids using Paint Shop Pro 

It all still looked a bit bare and unfinished till I hit on the idea of adding a pencil loop and little pencil - vut down form a regular pencil

I added a couple of extra puzzles inside the card

The Design Team have come up with some fab ideas for using the chevron pattern on cards this week - there's paper of course, but also stamping, masking and various other ideas too.  You can  see them all on the Daring Cardmakers blog - and find links to the personal blogs of all the team so you can find out more about how the cards were made and what was used.
Right, now for a few holiday photos - you can click on them for a bigger view ;-)

First, Assos from the top of the road leading down to the village - just to keep in with the DCM challenge - there are a LOT of chevron road signs and many zig-zag and hairpin bends before you get down there!

This is an early evening panorama taken on the terrace of our accommodation using a funky app on my iphone

and a more regular shot from the same place

And this one is from up on the hillside on the other side of the bay -I've drawn an arrow showing where we were staying - right on the beach, with the sea lapping at the steps - it was as near to being on a boat as you can get without the wobbliness!

Ohhhh go on then - another view from the balcony, this time a night time one

Thanks for visiting today, I hope you enjoyed your visit and will come back again soon - it would be great if you'd leave a message

We Went to the Zoo

The weather was fab all last week and as Sunday seemed likely to be the last of it we decided to have a jaunt. 
As an anniversary present I "adopted" a lemur at Whipsnade Zoo for Hubby hehehe and as part of the deal you get a complimentary ticket, It seemed a good day to make use of it.  Obviously, a lot of other people thought it the perfect day to go as the place was really busy - good job it's on such a huge site and able to swallow up the thousands of people who must have been there.
Whipsnade was one of the places I remember visiting with my family when we first moved south - I was always a bit jealous of the people who took their cars in - it seemed the height of decadence to drive around instead of just walking, but my dad was having none of it!  FAR too much money for that carry on!
On Sunday I ticked that little "want" off my to-do list yay!  And yes, it did feel a bit naughty and a bit decadent but it was fun....we bought sandwiches instead of making our own .....and we had ice cream 99's too - oooh definitely a treat-filled day of the not-dad variety. Amd boy, was it hot - so a regular blast from the car's air-con was appreciated!
We still walked miles, as the road doesn't go to all bits of the park, but it was nice to be able to go round and round as often as we wanted, and not to have to lug all the junk and camera lenses on our backs!
I absolutely adored one of the elephant areas - it's where they do the elephant "displays" but on Sunday the elephants were just chilling out and having fun.  The fencing was very minimal, with a couple of keepers just keeping an eye on proceedings - such as heading off Big Mama Elephant when she was being encourages to "ooooh come over here, we won't hurt you" by one daft visitor with small child in tow....well, nooo you might not mean her any harm but she's a few tons of giant mama heffalump and she's heading your way....doh!
There was a baby elephant being bay-sat by his big sister - I admired her patience - you'll see why in the photo below.
Whipsnade has lots of free-running residents with wallabies, muntjack, hares, pheasants etc all happy to muddle along with the human and other animals and the scenery is fabulous with wonderful views over the rest of the Dunstable Downs and Bedfordshire countryside.
 I hope you enjoy seeing the photos!

  

 

 Someone is hitching a ride on the rhino's back!

 

 The penguins have a pool with a view!

 

Thanks for looking

July Sketch File projects

The July sketch was published last week but I didn't get round to blogging my first makes using it on my own blog till now.

First I used it to make a page for my ongoing mini album.  You may remember I'm trying to do pages for all of the places we visited during a year's membership of the National Trust - now, as this was taken out as an Anniversary gift to ourselves on 31st July 2010 you'll see that I'm not quick!  I sat down and made a list last week and found I still have at least 7 places still to do!  I started off doing a facing page of info about each place too, but that has sort of fallen by the wayside big time.  I think eventually I'll re-do those I've already done in simpler fashion so that it will be easier to catch myself up!

Anyway, I've now got as far as September 2010 and a visit to Seaton Delavell Hall in Northumberland.  I just loved this photo hubby took of the fabulous staircase, so made it the main focus of the page.  The picture of one of the wings of the house was the perfect shape to cut down and use for the "ticket" shaped section of the sketch and the pic of the house from the garden side was just right to fit into a circle

I used:

Sketch - July's "Tickety Boo" sketch from The Sketch File    

Papers:  "These Days" 6x6 pad (Kaisercraft)

Border Punch: EK Success

Rosette die: Memory Box

Large Circle Punch

Ticket shape - rectangles and small circle punch on the corners

Next up I made a small and simple hanging plaque

Papers: Simple Stories "Documented" 6x6

Card Candy, Coiled flower is hand-cut, Seam binding to make the hanging loop

Stickles Glitter Glue

Ticket sentiment as before

Die-namics flower die

I'd really love to see anything you make using our sketch this month - anything goes, so scrapbooks, ATCs, Inchies or anything else you care to make is fine by us!

We had a good weekend - for starters there were no trips to B&Q for a change!  On Saturday morning we were at Cambridge airport for Hubby's introductory helicopter flying lesson (birthday present).  Although it doesn't look like it on the photos, it was a bright, sunny and warm morning.  I sat outside watching the various flying club Tiger Moths and other planes while he had his lesson. Just a shame I didn't think to take a bigger camera lens with me as I was a bit too far away (and behind a high wire fence) for getting any decent photos.   I think he's now trying to justify the cost of taking more "proper" lessons.... ;).  I think it would be fun!

Yesterday the Olympic torch passed the end of our road so we went pout and stood for an hour or so in varying degrees of rain waiting to see it!  We'll never get this chance again, so I wanted to be part of it in this small way.  Despite the horrible weather there were loads and loads of people standing out along the various roadsides so I guess I wasn't alone in thinking it was worth getting wet to be part of the event.

That's it for today - Thanks for propping by, please leave a message....

Patterned Paper Mania

For the Daring Cardmakers this week Leo has issued a killer challenge!

 'Patterned Paper Mania'

This week your mission if you choose to accept it is to create a card using

 a minimum of SIX different patterned papers. 

You can use more if you want to but you must use at least six different ones.

After a little bit of a panic at the thought of this one I realised that the current sketch on my other blog The Sketch File would be a great way to get all those patterned papers onto my card.  Here's what I made:

 I had some new papers arrive this week, so obviously felt compelled to use them!  I've taken to buying a few 12x12 papers along with a 6x6 pad whenever possible - its a great way to get an extra dimension to the designs as you get the same pattern in two sizes.  It also means I don't buy large scale designs that aren't much use for making cards.

These papers come from Carta Bella - a new company to me, but I'm so impressed with the quality - both 6x6 and 12x12 papers are lovely.  The 12x12 have a texture like the Crate Paper ones.

I used:

Sketch File June sketch:

http://kathyswafflesketchfile.blogspot.co.uk/

 All papers Carta Bella "Beautiful Moments" 6x6 and 12x12, the little birds are cut from one of the papers too

Peachy-pink dewdrops, button, narrow ribbon

Punches: circles, Tonic flower punch,  EK Success border punch

Dies: Die-namics Dainty Doily Duo (small size used), Perfect Petal Trio (largest shape used)

Craft Robo to cut the words

 I'm happy to share most of my Craft Robo templates - just drop me an email via the Contact Me box on the right and I'll get back to you.

A few more photos from Cornwall.  These were all taken at St Agnes on a rather dull day - but it was still giving some photo opportunities!

Thank you for visiting, please come again soon!