Happy Daddy's Day...

Hello there

Gosh didn't this weekend just woooosh right past your ears?  It certainly did mine, and I had an extra day off.  Myself, Debs, Sandra and Di had a Playground outing and along came Parsnip and Fergus.  It has been a while since Fergus and Parsnip met up.

I pinched the photo off Miss Di but I know she won't mind!

Right then.  Before June is totally over I thought I had better share my card I made for my Dad for Father's Day.  Here is the envelope which I made using my Memory Keepers envelope board. I just love how the dots were diagonal before I started it and now they are perfectly straight.  Freeky!

The snail stamps were bought ages ago and I have not used them so they are NBUS really.  My Dad shares his name with the Snail in Magic Roundabout, hence the relevance!  And here is the card...

Papers are VOS from Papermania and a Boofle pl sticker.

Not the most well lit to take a photo as the light was streaming in from behind the card.

But this close up is better.  The browns and creams were all Snippets so I am going to take this right down to the Snippets Playground.

I have had a bit of lovely news today too.  My number came up in Darnell's NBUS Challenge #1.  Yippee.  Sooo pleased. Especially on a Monday morning.

Thanks for calling by.

Hettie

Friday Funny

You think you have lived to be 80 plus and know who you are, then along comes someone and blows it all to hell.

An old Marine Pilot sat down at the Costa, still wearing his old USMC flight jacket and ordered a cup of coffee. 

As he sat sipping his coffee, a young woman sat down next to him. She turned to the pilot and asked, Are you a real pilot?

He replied, 'Well, I've spent my whole life flying planes, first Stearmans, then the early Grumman, flew a Wildcat and Corsair in WWII, and later in the Korean conflict, Banshees and Cougars. I've taught more than 260 people to fly and given rides to hundreds, so I guess I am a pilot, and you, what are you? 

She said, 'I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about naked women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about naked women. When I shower, I think about naked women. When I watch TV, I think about naked women. It seems everything makes me think of naked women.' 

The two sat sipping in silence. 

A little while later, a young man sat down on the other side of the old pilot and asked: "Are you a real pilot?" 

He replied, 'I always thought I was until a few minutes ago, but I just found out I'm a lesbian.'    

    

    

Only 6 months to go...Rudolph Day June

Hello There

Yep!  You read it right.  Only 6 months, 26 weeks, or 182 days or 5 pay days until the day when we will hopefully have been visited by the man in the Red Suit!!

So in preparation for this I join in every month with my Mate's Rudolph Day Challenge.  

Last night I had a rummage through my Christmas basket and came across my last piece of paper which measured about 7.5" square and wanted to practice a bit of thiftiness and get as many cards as I could without cutting the paper into small pieces.  So I cut it on the lines in the pattern on the paper horizontally, and trimmed to fit on a 7x5 card and chomped the corners with MS snowflake punch.  Now what next?  I found a strip of pale turquoise cardstock left over from a layout which matched as well as some white strips of TH "lace".  An idea was born.  On my desk, left over from a recent project was some dark turquoise card.  I cut three pieces of the pale turquoise to fit below the PP, I cut some more "lace" from Snippets of white, pale turquoise and dark turquoise card. I remembered I had some fine silver thread so threaded some through the top layer of lace.

Next I put it all together, having first cut some small squares of turquoise and placed behind the top corners.  I cut some snowflakes using Spellbinders dies and punched some tiny snowflakes which I adhered and then added Stickles in there.

Now to prove I made more than one..

I have two of something else I can share with you today too.  Two newbies to the Snippets Playground who were bought for me by Mr Hettie for my birthday...

Meet Hinge and Bracket.  Some of my older readers will know who they are.  Younger ones please feel free to Google them!

That's enough posing for you, time to find some food!

Right, off to call by at the Snippets Playground to check on my new Girlies and take my cards as they are made entirely from Snippets with only a few small bits left over.  Don't worry, I will use them too.  

Why not make a few Christmas cards and join in to the Rudolph Day challenge?  You have until the end of the month and there is a prize to be drawn.

Thanks for calling by.

Hettie

Red Snippets for Tracey...

Hello Helloo!

How y'all doing?  Another beautiful weekend has just whizzed by.  I hope you had a good one.  Mine was quite exciting as Hubby took me to a Chicken Farm which is about 10 miles from Chez Hettie and I got to choose two new Babies yesterday.  So my flock is now back up to 7.  One original Sussex Ziva, four recycled ex-batts Tracey, Mrs A, Miss Di and Caitlin and now a black speckled Maran called Hinge and a Black Rock called....yep!  Bracket!  Hubby came up with the names and as he bought them he could choose the names.

We then went up to Hereford for a little shopping session and then to a local Hostelry for my Birthday Dinner.

Now.  Enough waffle and on to the point of todays post... A few days before mine, one of my friends in work has a birthday and she is SIX days older than me.  I like to remind her of that as often as I can!  Bit like someone else I know who was born the same year as me. 

Everything on this came out of the Snippets drawer except the string.  That was a recent purchase.  Shhhh!  Don't tell anyone - I have been on a stash ban recently due to up coming holiday.  But a little bit of string will not hurt anyone will it?

The plain red was in with the Christmas stash, and punched with MS punch.  The stripey was left over from a layout which I did many moons ago. I flipped it over to punch the left side.  The flowers, all Memory Box were cut and then I added some glossy accents and sprinkled them with some glitter.

The sentiment was stamped and punched with SU labels and Hero Arts stamp.  Three VOS pearls and a card was born.  

I have a large stock of of envelopes with no cards so I am making my own cards to fit and use them all up and this was one of them.

Right, I am taking this down to the Snippets Playground to show the Girlies and to tell them about the New Kids on the Block Hinge and Bracket.  I will share photos just as soon as I can get Mr Hettie's camera off him.

I am also going to take this over to Darnell's NBUS challenge seeing as there is some new stuff on it!

My friend Alison has just reminded me that I may enter this into the Red Challenge over at Artistic Outpost.  Thanks Alison!

Thanks for calling by and have a great week.

Hettie

Friday Funny

Telephone Survey -Result, Interesting ..

Last month, a world-wide telephone survey was conducted by the UN.

The only question asked was:-

"Would you please give your honest opinion about possible solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"

*The survey was a complete failure because:*

In Eastern Europe they didn't know what "honest" meant.

In Western Europe they didn't know what "shortage" meant.

In Africa they didn't know what "food" meant.

In China they didn't know what "opinion" meant.

In the Middle East they didn't know what "solution" meant.

In South America they didn't know what "please" meant.

In the USA they didn't know what "the rest of the world" meant.

And in Australia, New Zealand and Britain everyone hung up as soon as they heard the Indian accent.

Scrapbook Tuesday ...Tea on Tuesday...T stands for BirThday Boy!

Hello There Tuesday!!

Yep!  Tuesday again and a warm sunny day here in Wales - now don't feint!

Today I am linking my post up with Elizabeth and her Buddy Bleubeard at Tea on Tuesday.  So first up my errr "tea" which came in a brown bottle and had lots of fruit and err.....cider in!  It is Swedish and absolutely gorgeous.  It did not seem too alcoholic...hic!

Behind the glass and bottle is a pot which I brought in from the porch the other day.  Can you guess what is in it?  Bettchya you can't...

An Amarylis in June!  It used to come up at Christmas and then for the last two years it hasn't come up at all.  Whilst discussing it with my Dad, who knows all about horticultural stuff, he said that it is probably past it, maybe too cold in the porch and that I should bin it.  Well, typical me, I hadn't "got round" to it and blow me when it starting firing leaves and then I could see a stem coming up!  Glad I didn't listen that time!

Rightio!  On to my Scrapbook offering...

A double layout which took me ALL flippin' day on Saturday as there was a fair bit of procraftinating going on between myself and my Buddy Mandy!  I am mighty pleased with it though I have to say.

The event was Mr Hettie's 50th Birthday Surprise Outing.  This railway is only about 20 miles away from home, yet we had never been up there before.  I was trying to rack my brain as to where to go as I didn't want to spend the day in the car and it was a great idea.  I just gave Mr the sat nav code and off we went.

I used a plethora of dies and goodies on this layout, including MME - paper, Bazzill - Cardstock, Sizzix - plane, enjoy, stars, Spellbinder - sign, circles, Tim Holtz - Rosettes, cogs (NBUS), stickles, DIs, Cricut - lettering, Stampin Up - bunting, Paperartsy - stamping on the tag, There are also some Snippets.

A lickle bit of a close up.

These tickets Hubby brought home from a Flea Market in town.  There weren't many but I love 'em.

Right then.  That is today's waffle finished.  I am also linking this up with the Snippets Playground and Simon Says Stamp as I see their theme is "anything goes"!  Wahoo!

Thanks for calling by.  Thanks also to my latest Followers Kathy and Donna.  Someone else followed me recently but I do not know who you are as I cannot find your name/picture.  Thank you all.

Hettie

PS Pelase excuse the not so brilliant pics, I took them on a bright sunny Sunday with my tablet - not as good as my Canon!

Chatsworth Quilt by Fergus...

Hello there!

I hope you have all had a good weekend.  Hasn't the weather been glorious?   I hope it has been where you are and that you haven't been frazzled by the sun.

Now as you may know, I have been involved recently in my Quilting Group's Quilt Exhibition and I promised I would share some pics of my quilts with you all.  So here is no. 1 done by our very own Fergus...

He is so proud of this, I can tell you!  The Cow's head is taken from a photograph of a tomb at Chatsworth in Derbyshire.  I blew up the picture and converted it to black and white to get the shading and transferred it to paper, from which I made a stencil of the design with freezer paper.  The stencil was then cut up into the individual sections e.g. ears, three pieces for the horns etc, and then I attached the whole stencil to the fabric with only one section removed.  This section was then painted using Markal sticks.  Something I had never tried before and had to learn "on the job" using some instructions kindly sent to me by one of the Quilting group.  

Once applied I then left it 24 hours and reattached the piece of stencil back on the fabric and started another section.  Note, this is not a quick method of designing a quilt!

Once I was happy with all the shading I then removed all the stencil and then set about machine embroidering the quilt front.  After I had carried out some embroidery on the front I then I could let Fergus set about quilting it.  He had difficulty with the painting as Fergus could not paint the front without stepping in sections he had already painted!

See!  I told you Fergus quilted it, with me helping him manage the sewing machine as he could not reach the pedal!

Once all that was done we worked on binding the whole quilt with two colours, a new technique to both of us which we learnt whilst at the AGM in Portsmouth earlier this year.

And here is the Boy looking so proud of his new quilt...

Before I go, I wanted to share a photo which I took the other evening.  I have seen this owl fly over the patio several times recently but on this occasion I looked out to find him sitting on the bird table which is only a few feet from the bay window!  He sat there for some time whilst I watched, took photos and even ran to get my camera, as opposed to using my phone.  He knew I was watching as he turned his head several times.  Once he realised I was just gawking at him, as opposed to photographing him, he looked at me one more time and flew off into the night.  A beautiful bird and I felt very honoured that he sat there fore me.

Rightio then.  Time to sign off as I have work tomorrow and need to get some sleep!  Just to say thank you all for popping over.  I am entering this quilt into the Snippets Playground as the darker of the two binding fabrics is a Snippet and the back of the quilt was made using a fat quarter I won at a Raffle at Quilting.  Besides which Fergus is a mate of Parsnip so he can sneak in the back gate!

I am likewise entering it into my Mate's NBUS Challenge as the fabrics were new and also it the painting is a Never Before Used Skill!  Tee Hee! 

Have a great week y'all!

Hettie and Fergus!