It Never Rains but it Pours

I thought it was about time I gave you an update on our home renovations.

Although we thought things were going fine, the room had lovely new plaster and it was drying beautifully.

We soon realised that all was not as it should be on the outer wall.

 

It just wouldn't dry out in parts and we soon came to realise that we had a problem on the outside wall.

Silly I know but for some reason in the back of my mind I was thinking porous bricks, the house is around 108 years old.

Sure enough when we got the builder to look at it he confirmed it was indeed porous bricks and pointing needed.

So although the fire and surround are being fitted today we are at a total stand still until the outside work can be done and unfortunately that is weather depending.

 

 

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Stenciled Woodland Card

After seeing a Poppy Stencil show it made me want to play, one problem though, my stencil paste was in the loft so I thought I would make do with some tester pots of emulsion paint.

Ok, ok it's not what I should be using but it kept me sane through the workmen noise.

I used an old stencil from Dreamweaver, it is one that I instantly fell in love with.

I matted and layered up with Hunkydory Adorable Scorable and foam pads to create lots of dimension.

Now the good thing about using the paint was it stayed wet long enough for me to add my glitter.

The bad thing however was that the paint seeped underneath the stencil a little on the top left corner, however I can live with that and call it unique ha ha!

The Work Has Started.

We new that updating our Living room would be a mammoth task but as you will see in the images the work has started.

So the above is our old fashioned living room, it was very tired looking and should have been done a couple of years ago but something always got in the way of it being started.

So out came the cupboards and the fire surround.

Then the room was bare ready for the workers.

The fireplace removed and the whole widened ready for the plasterer.

The arrived and everything got rather messy, electrics sorted and moved, chimney breast took back to brick and then boarded.

Skirting boards, Window surround, and windowsill removed, rendered ready for plastering tomorrow.

I'm hoping that this time tomorrow all of the muck and dust is gone.

If you are wondering why the carpet is back down, it's because we are buying a new one so this is being used as a good fitting dust sheet.

 

 

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Floral Craft, Bearded Iris

We are busy at home getting our living room updated and whilst the workmen were hammering and banging I retreated to my craft room for some sanctuary.

I cut out a few shapes and started with my Bearded Iris, hard to believe that this flower started life as white copy paper. I used the Sizzix Bearded Iris dies to cut the shapes.

I used Hunkydory Adorable Scorable for all of the matting and layering and all of the foliage and some of my floral craft leaf punches, as you can see the Adorable Scorable embosses beautifully with embossing folders.

I first coloured the copy paper petals and leaves with ink from my inkpads and then used pan pastels for the shading.

I used a ball tool and a scoring tool to shape and add lines to the petals.

The center stamen of the flower after inking yellow was dipped in glue and dipped into some flowersoft.

All in all a lovely morning well spent.

I did make another card so hopefully I’ll get that one wrote up soon.

Learning to Swim

We have big changes in the home this year, our
living room desperately needs a facelift and because of this we have started to
clear out built in cupboards that has had stuff thrown in them since the back of
beyond.

I found a DVD with no writing on it and last night
we sat for 2 hours looking through this, it was a DVD made out of old family Cine
film, both Chris and I sat, laughed and cried, sometimes in joy and sometimes
missing those who are no longer with us.

I captured part of it, this is my Dad learning me
to swim, I think I am around 3 years old as I was fully swimming by the time I
was 4.

Such happy carefree days

Jak xxx