The Village Green

It's going to be interesting to see the entries at CD Sundays this time, because the theme is Country Living and life in the countryside varies so much from country to country.  In fact it varies even within the same country but here in England, the common features of a country village are still the church, the pub and the village green, all of which can be clearly seen on this image. The sign post and pump are traditional too, although nowadays if you turned the other way from the viewpoint, you'd probably see a bus shelter (disused), a Chinese Takeaway and a Tesco Express.

I had ever so much fun making this card! First of all I chose and printed the decoupage, from the CD The best of La Pashe 2014. The image is in the "Men's decoupage" section of the CD, although I'd be equally happy to use it on a card for a woman, I think it's a lovely, genderless scene.

Next I made the background by spritzing a sheet of dark green card with bleach and leaving it to dry, which then gave me the darkest green of the tree speckled with the blue of the sky.

Then I made the stone wall by using texture paste through a stencil onto pale grey card and then giving it an aged mossy look by sponging it randomly with olive green and dark grey ink.

Finally I assembled the decoupage which was slightly more fiddly - and therefore more interesting - to cut out than La Pashe usually is. I had to get the fine pointed scissors and the tweezers into action for this one! The layers don't really show on the photo so here is a close up taken at a slight angle.

Just look at those place names! My non UK friends might not know what strange place names there  are in rural England. Although I don't think any of those on the sign exists, we really DO have a Nether Wallop here in Hampshire (it sounds like a smack on the bottom!) and down in Dorset the River Piddle flows through places like Tolpuddle, Piddlehinton and Piddletrenthide - the Piddles and Puddles. In Kent we have Pratts Bottom while in Norfolk there is Little Snoring. Oh I love place names, I could go on all day! I think my favourite is Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, not because of any rude connotations but because nobody seeing the word for the first time would guess that it is pronounced "Ozzletwizzle". I seem to have strayed a long way from crafting - I hope you enjoyed our little diversion!