Owl in the rain

For this card I've used an NBUS digi that has been in my collection for ages - Hootie, Rain Rain Go Away from Crafty Sentiments.

I've teamed it with an assortment of snippets and this gorgeous little owl button, and tried to use the colouring to bring together the rather diverse elements I wanted to use. Hootie himself has been coloured to match the bigger owl on the button. I even managed to find a tiny heart sticker to add to his tummy. Hand drawn stitching finishes off all the edges - I had planned to distress them then realised it would have looked All Wrong.

I am sharing this with

Use Your Stuff - Weather

Crafty Sentiments - Anything Goes

G is for Galaxy at Sisterhood of the Snarky Stampers

Edna's gone interstellar! Well, for the next two weeks, at least, because she's given us the theme Galaxy for our challenge #103 at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers.

So, we'd like to see something connected with the Galaxy - a galaxy/night sky background, space travel, planets.... (I'm thinking of a Galaxy chocolate bar right now, I wonder how that would go down with Edna?)
Here's my card and if you don't get the sentiment I'm not sure how we've managed to become friends!

The background is my first attempt at a galaxy background. I searched You Tube and found several videos about it, but I didn't have the right stuff for any of them so I sort of made it up as I went along.

I used watercolour paper and a very wet light blue wash, and while that was still wet went over it with random splodges of darker blue and purple watercolours with a dash of orange. When it was dry I added the black, this time using a wide, almost-dry brush in roughly diagonal swooshes to give a patchy cloud effect. I let the whole thing dry then painted over it all with Jo Sonja's Opal Dust which has an unfortunate habit of never showing up on photos but leaves tiny reflective pearlescent specks all over the paper.

Once everything was dry and had spent the night under a pile of heavy books to flatten it, I stamped the random dots (an old Anita's stamp) all over in silver and heat embossed with silver powder.

Here's the finished background

It was trimmed and matted and a couple of die cut planets added then I used a Dymo Labelmaker to add the all-important sentiment. Apologies for the lack of apostrophe but there isn't one on my labelmaker.

Now I'm off to sit on my towel and contemplate the meaning of life while slurping on a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.

I am sharing this with Country View Crafts - anything but cute

RECIPE - pressure cooker ham hock terrine

The advent of the "Instant Pot" has meant that pressure cooking has become cool again. Well, not COOL - it's very, very hot - but you know what I mean.

I had one many years ago and I don't think I ever used it - it terrified me so much. But a few months ago I got a new one - not an instant pot, not an electronic one, but a good solid Kuhn Rikon one that would probably withstand a volcanic eruption, so an occasional overheated chicken isn't going to destroy it. So now I'm learning and experimenting.

For this recipe, I used it to dramatically shorten the cooking time of a ham hock.

To make this you will need

One ham hock - mine weighed 1.6 kg
flavourings for the liquid - 1 onion, 2 carrots, 2 bayleaves, 5 cloves and a teaspoon of black peppercorns.

Place all the ingredients in the pressure cooker, add 500 ml water and then cook, according to your pressure cooker's instructions, at high pressure for 1 hour. Reduce pressure using normal pressure reduction. Allow the ham to cool in the liquid.

Now remove the ham from the liquid and strain the liquid into a clean pan.

Line a small terrine mould or small loaf tin with two layers of cling film. If you have neither, you could use a pudding basin.

Remove the skin, bone, fat and gristle from the ham and shred or cut into small pieces. I used a mixture of shreds and slightly chunkier pieces to add interest.

Now put the pan of liquid over a high heat and boil hard to reduce it to about one third of the original volume. Set aside to cool for about 30 minutes - in the meantime pack the ham into the prepared dish, pressing it down firmly. Pour over the cooled liquid, slowly, while occasionally shaking the dish to make sure the liquid fills the gaps.

Cover with more cling film and refrigerate over night. The reduced liquid will set to a highly savoury jelly.

Cut into chunks or slices and serve - I served it with baked potatoes, salads and some of my Northern-style quick pickled onions. Oh, I don't think  I've ever blogged the recipe for those - must do that soon!

In the pink

I seem to have accidentally made a one layer card when I didn't have to!!!

The keyboard and treble  clef stamps on this card are from an old Kanban stamp set and the words from a set that I bought years ago from QVC, I can't remember the brand name but it has a rather lovely collage of Beethoven on it and some music related sentiments. I  arranged the words, meant to surround a circle,  like this around the keyboard to give some counterpoint to the movement of the image - it was only after stamping that I realised it is also reminiscent of a sideways treble clef, so there's a lot of subtle music reference going on there.

Once the stamping was complete I masked off the keyboard and most of the card to give a rectangle and sponged it with several shades of pink ink, using deeper ones towards the edges.

I am sharing this with

Cardz 4 Galz - Think Pink

Less is More - Music (and I've also included a birthday greeting as it's their 7th birthday)

Watercooler Wednesday - Feminine Anything Goes 

Butterfly splash

Rummaging through my snippets box I found a piece of card in a lovely iridescent teal blue with a plain lighter coloured reverse, and decided to use the back and front of it for this card. Actually I also found scraps of a plain deep teal and a splash-patterned teal, so I grabbed my First Edition Layered Butterfly die and cut several from each colour of card, then mixed them and matched them and picked my favourite. So my to-be-used tin now contains several teal butterflies.

To make the card, I used Peacock Feather DI  to stamp the large circle pattern from the Gentleman Crafter stamp set and the sentiment, part of a recent Papercraft Essentials cover gift.

I'll just end with a sigh - the white on my photos today looks perfectly white in the original pics but now I've uploaded them to my blog it looks pink.

I am sharing this with

Addicted to CAS - Teal 


CASology - Butterfly

Paper pieced roses

I don't often stamp onto patterned paper because colouring the images in can be rather hit and miss, with the background changing the colour that you use. However when you "colour" the images by paper piecing, that isn't an issue.

I made this card entirely from snippets of patterned paper, stamping the lovely rose-and-butterfly image onto all except the larger piece of orange, which I used for matting. Uning the text print as the background layer, I then cut out all the elements from the appropriate coloured papers and attached them, the larger pieces with Sticki dots and the more delicate ones with a Quickie glue pen. Incidentally I don't think I'd realised what detailed fussy cutting I'd let myself in for when I chose to paper piece this - some of that greenery was pretty challenging.

I am sharing this with

Pixie's Snippets Playground - week 319 
The Flower Challenge - Paper piecing

Stamping Sensations - Anything with Flowers

A Red Christmas!

Uh-oh, the curse of photographing metallic strikes again! All those snowflake embellishments are actually the same bright red - I don't possess any black snowflakes!

The image on this die is a little elf from one of the Lili of the Valley three-circle sets. I coloured her with Promarkers than used the Promarker Blender to make dots all over the parcel, removing the ink to give a spotty effect. I've framed it with a die cut made with the Gummiapan sketchy circles die. The background papers are from my snippets and the border is a row of self adhesive foam snowflakes topped with pearls.

I am sharing this with

52 Christmas Card Throwdown - sketch

Allsorts - Spots and/or stripes
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - quick and easy or anything goes
Winter Wonderland - All Boxed Up
Christmas Cards All Year round - use mainly red