THE SUN HAS GOT HIS HAT ON - AND HIS UMBRELLA TOO!

Hi everyone

Lots of lovely sunshine today, but unfortunately towards the end of the day it rained - again.  However, over the last week, despite some heavy rain, the temperature has slowly been climbing into double figures and we have had occasional burst of very welcome sunshine.

This week has been Big Shot week, working on websites week, research into different selling venues week and homing Henry week.  I love my Big Shot - I doubt I will use it for die-cutting as I use my Cricut for that, but for embossing it is the bee's knees.  I have bought a few folders this week, but (so far) my two favourites are the tree and the cake.  Here are photographs of some of the work I have produced this week:

The tree has been embossed onto black card and then the branches were rubbed with sandpaper - this puffed up the embossing and gave a different finish to the remainder of the card.  I also added jewels to some of the branches.

The cake folder also looked pretty good on the reverse side.  I am in the process of making some new ranges of wedding stationery for the events I have later this year, and thought the cake might make a good addition to a simple range.

I am going to rub one of those little sponge paint pads over some embossing to see how it comes out - I might try it on the tree or on the wording on a 'Thank You' folder I have.  By next week's main blog post I should have some examples to show you.

A friend and I (my cake-making friend, Linda) and I visited the Surrey Guild of Craftsmen's Milford Gallery on Friday.  We saw some absolutely gorgeous pieces of work, pottery, jewellery and various other crafts - lots of eye-watering prices for some of them too.  One piece that was really stunning was an owl, wings spread, made of chicken wire.  I could picture him in my garden and I am sure our cats (and the birds who occasionally are brave enough to come into the garden) would be fascinated by him. 

Another busy week looming during which I have set myself targets to complete my wedding stationery website and various other things that I have dragged my heels over.  My pottery course recommences this week and I am looking forward to hopefully collecting pieces that I finished at the end of last term and left for firing.  If they don't have that 'oh, good grief, did I really do that' look about them I will add some pictures to next week's blog post.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my post last week was also 'homing Henry week'.  Henry, is the lovely white and tabby kitten that I had been fostering for just over three weeks and he went off to his new home on Friday.  I understand his new family are waiting on him hand and foot (or should that be paw and paw?).  Some more good news on the Woking Cats Protection front, Timothy, a lovely three-year old black cat, was homed to friends of a friend yesterday.  They were looking for a cat (not a kitten which is always good as we have lots of grown-up cats needing homes) and were directed to me and a very happy ending was achieved.

It is a lovely evening, the rain has stopped and sun is back out so I am going to do some more gardening.  I hope you have a good week.  I will be back next Sunday and Milly will be writing her mid-week post on Wednesday but before I go don't forget to nip over to Handmade Monday to read the great blog posts added by my fellow Handmade Monday bloggers.

Jill