We three tags.....

I've been playing with my lovely little Spellbinders tag die again. This time I've given the tags a festive feel with some metal embellishments, designed to be held in place with brads (I'm sure they have an official name but I can't remember what it is!) that came in a Hot Off The Press Christmas kit a few years ago.

I'm joining in with
Addicted to CAS - Tag (I hope THREE tags is OK!)
Clear It Out Challenge blog - Gearing up for Winter, using metal

Poppies for Remembrance Sunday

Today is Remembrance Sunday and Tuesday will be Armistice Day,  the days when we remember the sacrifice made by our Forces over the last hundred years. The symbol of remembrance, of course, is the poppy, so today I've made a poppy themed card.

The stamp itself was from a grab bag of unmounted rubber (I haven't seen grab bags on offer for years, are they still around? I used to find some real gems in them) so I don't know the brand or image name, just that it's about 15 years old and has been a firm favourite for all that time.

I raided my bits box for the rest of the materials - apart from the base card, everything is made from those too-nice-to-part-with buts from previous projects. In the case of the poppy printed paper, it's been there ever since I started my bits box!

I'm joining in with
Allsorts Challenge Blog - Poppies and Remembrance
Pixies Snippets Playground - week 150

#randomrecipes - Teviotdale Pie

This month's task for Random Recipes at Belleau Kitchen is to pick a random cutting from our saved recipes cut from magazines and newspapers. What do you mean, you don't keep recipes from magazines? In that case I don't think we can be friends...... I have half a dozen foolscap folders crammed with them, along with 10 photo albums that I used to carefully store them in back in the era when days must have had 48 hours in them, I had so much more time. Oh hang on, it wasn't longer days, it was the fact that the internet hadn't been invented AND I lived in the Far East, where I had an amah to do all the dreary stuff.

Anyway, after picking my folder via an exciting game of eeny, meeny, miny, mo,  I stuck my hand in and pulled out a page at random, well, two pages actually. Two pages had got caught up together due to a bent corner, and although they were from separate publications, I thought the recipes on them looked as if they would go pretty well together.

The first had two pies on it, a beef and chestnut one and a dish called Teviotdale Pie, which originates from the Scottish borders  and consists of a base made from minced lamb or beef, topped with a rather strange sounding suet batter. If you would like the recipe, it is reproduced almost word for word  on the All British Food website except that they don't suggest lamb as the meat. But I had lamb, so lamb it was to be.  This was from a magazine called "Country Kitchen", the January 2006 issue. I don't think the magazine was around for very long, it was rather too old-fashioned for 21st century tastes.

The second page was also from January 2006, but this time from the still-going-strong Good Food magazine. it was a suggestion for a New Year's Eve menu of braised venison, Skirlie mash and creamy savoy cabbage with carrots. I thought the mash and carrots would work well with the pie.

The pie was made by pre-cooking the lamb with onion,  dark brown sugar (I replaced this with dark Sweet Freedom), Worcestershire Sauce and stock. Then a batter of self raising flour, cornflour, suet and milk was to be poured over the top. There was no thickening in the meat layer, so as soon as I poured the batter over, it sank to the bottom. I thought it was going to be a disaster, but as it cooked, the batter rose up through the meat and made a lovely light, golden topping.

Skirlie mash is mashed potato with the addition of onion and oatmeal that have been fried together in butter, and fresh parsley. The cabbage dish is simply carrots and cabbage, shredded and cooked together, and finished with cream, butter and nutmeg.

The verdict? The Teviotdale Pie was lovely - but I think some thickening in the meat would have improved it. I'd like to try this again using my normal shepherd's pie filling that has mushrooms, carrots and peas added (and sometimes a generous slug of red wine). The topping was gorgeous - not stodgy at all, very light and well risen with a lovely crispy top. I can see me using this on other dishes too.

The potato would really have been better with just the parsley, I didn't think the oats added anything to it at all, and I didn't like the cabbage and cream combination, some finely chopped fried bacon would have been even nicer. But all in all, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint Dom by reporting that once again, my Random recipe has failed to fail!

Snowman shaker card

This week's challenge at Winter Wonderland is "Frosty the Snowman" and I've really dug deep into my stash and pulled out some oldies for this card. The snow globe card is one that had originally been designed for Iris folding, but I thought it would work well as a shaker card. I stuck acetate over the back of the aperture then surrounded it with foam tape, making sure there were no gaps.

The snowman himself is a very old stamp from Dimension Fourth. I stamped, embossed and coloured him then piled some silvery star and snowflake sequins on top of him and placed the aperture over it all. I backed everything with card to cover all the edges, then added emphasis to the aperture with a peel off border, which I used around the edge of the card too.

The whole card has a retro feel about it, reminiscent of crafting styles popular about 10-15 years ago. But Christmas is a time to be old-fashioned, isn't it?

Starry, Starry Night

I was a big fan of Don McLean in the 1970s  and have been singing "Vincent" all day, ever since I saw that the One Layer Challenge at Less is More this week is "Starry Starry Night"

For this card I've used a snow scene stamp from an unmounted sheet made many years ago by Trish Bayley (I've lost touch with Trish, does anyone know if she is around in blogland anywhere?), adding some stamped stars and a starry Christmas greeting, all on a midnight blue base card. I stamped them all in white, then made a few dots with a Versamark pen - they could represent more distant stars, or snow, or both! - and embossed the whole lot in white. A little holographic glitter glue to give the stars some sparkle and the card is finished. The glitter glue looks gold here - that's because it's such a dark, gloomy day that even with the card on the windowledge I had to use flash which has reflected off it.

As well as Less Is More #197 - Starry Starry Night I'm also sharing this card with
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge #202 - Keep It Flat
Completely Christmas Challenge #37 - Anything Goes with a Twist.... Let's See Some Blue

Make one, get one free

I've seen lots of card recently that have looked like a sort of vertical easel card, I don't know the proper name of them but the front panel stands up and tucks under an embellishment on the back one, like this:

The panel untucks, of course, and folds flat for posting. I thought one like this would look good with a circular front panel, so I mounted a rose topper from an old Hunkydory kit onto a lace doyley - then realised, that even when backed with a circle of card, the doyley wouldn't have enough strength to hold the card up, so I mounted the whole thing onto a scalloped square from the same kit - but then it was so big that it obscured the rest of the card, so that was no use either!

I had prepared the base card by cutting a 6" x 12" strip of fawn card, scoring at 3" and 6" and folding. I cut cream card to fir the back panel, embossed it with a script embossing folder then lightly inked with Walnut Stain distress ink, wrapped it with ribbon and stuck it to the back panel of the card. I decorated the front panel with ribbon, lace and pearls.

So I had to rethink the topper. There were some pretty vintage childhood designed papers with a copy of Making Cards earlier this year, so I die-cut one of them and die cut a piece of the fawn card to mount it on. Then I stuck that onto a lace-printed vellum panel and mounted the whole thing onto tan card, which had the strength to hold the card when standing up. The rose and butterflies are from the Hunkydory kit I had started out intending to use.

But them I had my rose-and-doyley topper left. It is so big it filled the whole of the front of a 6" square card,  so with a bit of inking, a few flowers and some pearls, I ended up with a second card made from the bits I'd planned to use on just one card.

I'm joining in with Make my Monday, where the theme is Vintage.

Little Robin Redbreast

These cute little robins sitting on a branch are stamped with a free cover gift stamp from a magazine a couple of Christmases ago. They look super cute although I did wonder, when do you ever see three robins at once? They tend to be pretty solitary birds with a carefully guarded territory. When you see two together it generally means they are thinking about making baby robins, and as far as I know, the bird world doesn't go in for threesomes. Maybe I'm thinking too literally though -after all, when do you ever see robins wearing scarves and hats?

Sticking card onto glitter card can be a nightmare, so I've used Pinflair glue which sticks just about anything to anything. Some people suggest sanding the glitter down to make a surface that sticks, but this lovely glitter card is so well made that it won't yield to sandpaper!

I'm joining in with:
Winter Wonderland - Pick and Mix (I've used ribbon, snowflakes and gems)
Completely Christmas - Add a Robin
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - Sparkle
White Lily Green - Homemade Thursday