Saved by the freebie!

I really didn't think I was going to be able to join in with the latest Butterfly Challenge, where the theme is All Kinds of Fairies, because I don't have any fairy-themed stash. However the latest issue of Papercraft Essentials came to the rescue - the cover gift this time is a lovely fairy and butterfly stencil and set of stamps, just what I needed!

I sponged through the stencil onto white card, using Brilliance ink in pink to give a soft sheen and darkening some areas with a touch of purple ink. Then I stamped the "sparkle" from the wand in silver and embossed it with holographic powder and added one of the sentiments from the stamp sheet.

Because the stencilled image is so big, I wanted to use an 8" square card blank, but didn't have one, so I took two sheets of A4 and used my scoring board to score one along the DL/trifold scoring line. Then I attached the other sheet to cover the small flap, closed the card and trimmed it off so the edges were flush.

The image was mounted on metallic pink card - it looks a lot darker in the photo than in real life - and I added lots of sparkly crystals to emphasise the sparkly sentiment.

I'm also sharing this with
Fan-tastic Tuesday - Make it Sparkle
Allsorts Challenge Blog - Anything But Christmas
Inkspirational - Bah Humbug!

Holiday at Twofers

It's time for a new challenge at Twofers, and  this time our theme is HOLIDAY. With the festive season here, we were originally thinking of holiday in the Christmas sense of the word, but if like me you live in the UK and think of holidays more as seaside trips with donkeys, buckets and spades and fish and chips on the prom, then feel free to interpret it that way - or to celebrate any other holiday!

I'm still frantically making my last few Christmas cards, so I've gone for a very simple card with gold embossing on black. The tree is a very old unmounted stamp which I received in a RAK, so I don't know the brand, and the corner is from Clarity Stamps and is also Very Old Stuff, in fact it has the honour of being the very first clear plastic stamp I ever bought! Most of the early ones I bought have got dry and cracked now, but this one is still as good as new despite probably thousands of inkings.

I'll leave you with a thought - if White On White is WOW, is Gold On Black GOB?????

I'm joining in with Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge which this week is Anything Goes as Long as it's Christmas

Recipe - Egg and Cauliflower Cheese

This is a deliciously retro dish that is Proper Comfort Food, the sort of thing to tuck in to on a grey, rainy day - something we've had a lot of recently! I've written this post in conjunction with British Lion Eggs, who have an informative page about Egg Nutrition - you may be surprised to learn how few calories each egg contains, especially for something packed with so many vitamins and minerals. I love eggs - they are the ultimate convenience food, and can be used in so many ways.

Egg and Cauliflower Cheese
makes two hearty servings

4 medium free range British Lion Eggs
1 small cauliflower
125g finely grated Cheddar cheese
50g butter
50g plain flour
450ml semi skimmed milk
¼ teaspoon dry mustard powder
pinch each of grated nutmeg and cayenne pepper or chilli powder
2 tomatoes, thinly sliced.

Hard boil the eggs then cool, peel and halve them. TIP - to get eggs with no dark rim around the yolk, have them at room temperature then place in cold water and bring to the boil. Boil for exactly 8 minutes (for medium sized eggs) then plunge immediately into cold water and allow to cool. They will peel more easily if, after the first few seconds in the cold water, you gently crack the shell all over then replace in the water to finish cooling.

Break the cauliflower into florets and cook in boiling salted water until just tender. Drain and arrange with the egg halves in an ovenproof dish. Heat the oven to 200 C/400 F/ gas mark 6

Make the sauce  either by the traditional roux method or the super-simple way - put the flour, butter, seasonings and milk into a saucepan and stir with a whisk until boiling and thickened. Only use this method if the sauce will be cooked further, or you will get a raw flour taste! Stir in three quarters of the grated cheese, and when melted and smooth, spoon carefully over the egg and cauliflower, making sure everything is covered.

Arrange the sliced tomatoes on top and sprinkle with the rest of the cheese.

Bake in the pre-heated oven for 25-30 minutes until the cheese is browned and the tomato cooked, and serve with a green vegetable plus potatoes or bread to help you mop up every scrap of the sauce.

I am joining in with Simply Eggscellent at Belleau Kitchen - it's an Anything Goes month this month.





NOTE - I have received a gift from British Lion Eggs in exchange for sharing this recipe - however it's one I would have been sharing with you anyway. You probably know by now that retro comfort food is one of my signature styles, especially at this time of year!

Crafting with a kit for a change

A few months ago, I won two craft kits in a blog hop. These days I seldom use kits, preferring to design things from scratch, and the old kits I bought are gradually being broken up and the elements used individually, but these two kits included stickers that had been obviously custom designed for the job, with white outline stickers and sparkly hologram shape stickers that fitted exactly into the outlines so I decided to use them exactly as shown on the packet.

It was actually extraordinarily relaxing to simply follow instructions and have everything ready to assemble, cutting out all the stress of searching for that bit of *exactly* right paper that you know you have somewhere, and a chance to enjoy some pure crafting without any original art involved - in fact it reminded me of why I used to enjoy following a knitting pattern so much in my knitting days.

Here are the sparkly and pretty fruits of my labours:

I'm sharing these with Fan-tastic Tuesday where this week's twist is "Make it Sparkle"

NOT a Christmas card

Is anyone else getting a bit tired of making Christmas cards yet? I've got one or two more to share with you before the big day, but I think I've now finished making them at last - although thanks to being  on the Sparkles Christmas DT I'll be making them again before the dust has settled on the tinsel! And in 2016 I promise I absolutely WILL make two cards or tags to go into my Christmas box every week, so there'll be no last minute rush to make me tired of them.  Well, that's what I say every year, one year I might actually listen to myself!

Anyway, it was such a nice change to be making something un-Christrmassy  that by my standards I went way over the top..... CAS this is most definitely NOT. Is it vintage, or distressed, or shabby chic? Or perhaps a bit of all three - I'm never quite sure where the dividing lines between the three lie. I suppose they overlap a lot. If I was really clever at graphics, I would now insert a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles to represent the styles, and this one would lie in the bit where all three overlap.

The images I have used are from a download I won at Suzy Bee's Blooming Challenge and the papers and embellishments are all from the Dovecraft Curiosity Corner range, with the exception of the die cut heart which was cut using a magazine freebie.

I am playing along with

Alphabet Challenge blog - V is for Vintage
Suzy Bee's Blooming Challenge - add buttons or a button
Mod Squad - Anything but a Christmas card   

A Cool Yule at CD Sundays

I have some exciting news to share with you today - I have been invited to spend 3 months as a Guest Design Team member at The CD Sunday Challenge Blog and today is my first post for them!

The theme this fortnight is "A Cool Yule" and I decided to use the Katy Sue Designs double CD, "Christmas Spirit". I love this set for the unusual, witty images it contains - in fact I love it so much I couldn't narrow my choice down to one and ended up making TWO cards.

The first is a simple gatefold card with the main image on the inside. Note how I have added white panels to the inside flaps of the card - whenever I make a dark coloured card that has no insert, I try to incorporate some kind of writing space into the design.

For my second card, the image included  the words "The perfect present" but I thought this wonderfully naughty sentiment from the Dylusions "Christmas Words" stamp set would work perfectly with this cool looking lady, so I fussy cut around the image to remove the words and made a panel featuring the image with the new sentiment.

I'd been feeling rather sad because I knew this would be posted too late for my second card to be entered into the "Naughty Christmas" challenge at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers,  so I was delighted when the latest challenge turned out to be X is for Xmas and I could still play along!

A trip to Mexico (very photo heavy!)

when I saw our room was number 404 I couldn't resist making this!

My blog has been pretty quiet over the last couple of weeks, because I was away on holiday. Earlier this year, I was delighted to  win a competition run by Kankun Sauces and sponsored by Aero Mexico  - a trip to the beautiful island of Cozumel off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.  We decided to take it in late November/early December to give us a break from the miserable weather we tend to get in the UK at this time of year.

Our destination was the lovely boutique hotel Playa Azul. The journey was rather long, as we had to fly to Mexico City, make a connection there, fly on to Cancun (passing close to the smoking volcano Popacatapetl which really excited me, the first active volcano I have ever seen), travel by minibus to Playa del Carmen, take the jet ferry over  to Cozumel and finally a taxi to the hotel. We were exhausted when we arrived, but when we looked out of the window of our room and saw this.....

... suddenly the long journey was worth every minute!

The hotel was lovely, a small, friendly place with very welcoming staff. I even ended up folding some paper bows with the lady in the gift shop - you can't keep a crafter from joining in when she can! - and I was very impressed by the towel folding skills of the maid, who presented us with a different, hibiscus-adorned, creature every day.

 

I might have to get hold of a book on towel folding now!

Naturally the local food was of great interest to us. We took most of our meals in the hotel, as it was a few miles out of the main town of San Miguel. There was a small line of restaurants opposite the hotel, but one of them sold nothing but lobster and two sold little else apart from it - not much use to us as Mark can't eat any seafood - and the last in the row sold nothing but key lime pie - not ideal for a diabetic! However the hotel food was excellent. There was a small selection of "international" dishes and a much bigger selection of Mexican ones. Breakfasts included a huge tray of tropical fruits, including papaya, one of my favourite foods, at the perfect peak of ripeness.  The soups, guacamole, black beans and all the different tortilla based dishes were delicious and beautifully presented, as well as being remarkably cheap compared to what similar meals would have cost in a good hotel back home, although the staff probably thought they were eye-wateringly expensive. The portions of guacamole were enormous - we reckoned that a single portion contained around 4 avocados! Here is a typical poolside lunch of guacamole and quesadillas

On the day we were meant to have a trip to the eco park on the island, the weather was wet and windy so our guide Yibran asked us what we wanted to do - naturally we said we'd like to see where local people shop for food, so our outing became a trip to the central market, a supermarket, a garden centre and lunch at the beautiful Casa Mission, set in lovely gardens, and a tour of the Tequila Museum that it shares grounds with. It was a fascinating day out and we stocked up on lots of ingredients - look out for lots of Mexican dishes appearing here in the New Year!

But for now I'm going to stop waffling and leave you with a selection of photos of our wonderful holiday.

the Cozumel promenade had some beautiful sculptures and statues

Flame of the Forest trees lined the walking/running/cycle track outside the hotel

with our guide Yibran and a rather silly hat

looking back at the hotel from a nearby jetty

sadly I couldn't sample the wares here

a pelican treated us to a close-up fishing display

this tiny lady sold a wonderful selection of herbs and spices

there was beautiful pottery everywhere

Grinding agave for tequila

Making masa for fresh tortillas

Perfect papayas