I went to the local thrift store yesterday and found these amazing wooden cutouts. They are make by Zebra Freieitmobel und Leitern GmbH in Halbe Germany. They are meant to be ornaments and I got a whole packet of trees, flowers and butterflies for 99 cents (that's about 67 pence in the UK). I decided to make an ATC for my Artful Ideas group and a topper for a card which is shown above. The background cardstock is covered with a mix of colours of acrylic paint, glimmer mist, and then flower stamped. I heat embossed it with holographic powder. The wooden tree I coloured with stamp pads of red green and brown and embossed lightly with gold powder. I mounted the ATC sized card on another piece of cardstock of a contrasting colour. I am so pleased with my thrift store find, usually I am not so lucky. I will be making more cards with these.

Cookie and Crunch and Seven weeks

Just thought I would add an updated photo of the baby African Greys. They are growing so fast and eating so much. I have started the weaning process and they are eating small amounts of softened weaning pellets and melon and licking small pieces of pepper, apple and grapes. Not sure how much they are getting from these nibbles. The are starting to climb onto small low down perches in the cage now and are very interested in anything new I put in the cage. They have started to love cuddles though are still unsure of getting on my hand.

Mother's Day Card

This is the card I made for my partner's mother for this Sunday. I used the smoke technique from La compagnie des Elfes where I put photo glossy paper in the flame of a candle and let the smoke settle on the paper. Had to be careful not to let the flame set it on fire. When I tried to stamp the flower stamp on it with versamark not much of the soot came off so decided to emboss with white powder. The contrast with the soot is good/ I made three paper flowers out of doilies and tinged the edges with a pink ink pad. I used metallic purple and copper wire to form the stems and leaves respectively and stuck the completed flowers onto the sooted photo paper. This I mounted on dark magenta card stock and edged it with a thin line of copper leafing. The whole topper was then mounted on the dark magenta card.