Monday and the start of a fresh week ...

Morning readers, 

Hope you all had a good weekend and that snow didn't spoil any of your plans. My plans went pear shaped on Thursday but we had nothing actually planned for the weekend so it was lovely when our surrogate family stopped by on Saturday afternoon. I can honestly say that snow did curtail my walking a couple of mornings but hey ... better safe than sorry, (at my age) is my motto!

I've a make to share with you today ....... I love a sketch and this one caught my eye recently ....... as a normally Clean And Simple kind of girl, this took me so far out of my comfort zone but, sometimes, it's good to shake things up a bit, don't you agree? AND with the added bonus of using a sheet of Designer paper and quite a few "snippets" too - another YAY!

My  3½" x 4⅞" card

Materials used:

• White, 250gsm, 3½" x 4⅞" card and matching envelope
• Card in white and navy, for my insert and matting
• Designer paper
• Snippets of card in pink, navy, cream pearl and white, for my sketch panels
• Unbranded dies for cutting my matted circles
• Using a makeup brush and Distress Ink in picked raspberry I coloured my white circle
• Funky Fossil stencil (Make your mark III) used, with a makeup brush, to apply a combination of Distress Ink in picked raspberry and just a touch of festive berries - to make the diamonds stand out. Elsewhere on my card I used the same stencil but used Ranger Archival vibrant fuchsia ink
• Hero Arts foliage (from CL.477) and TGIFriday sentiment (from wish big birthday) stamped using Versafine Clair twilight ink

I'll be entering the above make for the following challenges:-

1. TGIF Challenges - challenge No. 411 - SKETCH - see below
2. HLS - March BIRTHDAY challenge - ANYTHING GOES
3. Craft Rocket - challenge No. 101 - FOR THE GIRLS
4. Stencil Fun - March challenge - ANYTHING GOES + (optional) Clean And Simple - which, unusually for me, I did NOT go with!!!!
5. Snippets Playground - challenge No. 449 - USE SNIPPETS

Now that Happy Little Stampers have made their welcome return from their winter break, I discovered that I was a December Favourite for their stencil challenge - thank you so much peeps.

Those of you who know me, or who visit my blog regularly, will know that I've taken to walking on a daily basis and sometimes post pix if I happen across anything interesting. Obviously, I've missed a few days recently because of the cold, the snow and the rain but .... at the weekend it was nice enough for the usual three miler so ..... off I went. As I passed the pond which has had a pair of moorhens on it for several years - imagine my surprise to see these much larger intruders!!! No wonder the regular (and pretty small) moorhens had made themselves scarce!

A visiting pair of Canada geese!!