Time for Tea...

gorgeous wonderful coffee loveliness

...or coffee really, you know what I'm like. This morning I received a huge parcel of coffee themed loveliness from my Time for Tea swap partner Kathryn. Thank you Kathryn everything is so lovely, I'm going to light the candle in a bit, and have all ready stolen several chocolate covered coffee beans before taking a picture of the swap goodies. She sent me a fabulous latte cup, the aforementioned chocolate covered coffee beans, a candle with coffee beans in it, a metal bookmark with a coffee pot charm, a phone dangle with a coffee bean charm, cupcake stickers, and some lovely card stock that I can't wait to play around with...but I'm going to have to as we are down at the airport hotel tomorrow night and fly Wednesday afternoon so no crafty time for me, its holiday time.

tea card

What did I send to Kathryn I hear you ask well... that is a good question because I forgot to photograph everything but the tea card I made, and the tea time tag that I was so worried wouldn't be good enough for the swap. Yes I know I'm a ditz. I love how the card turned out through, with its vintage music paper, stained with black tea, and drawn with ink, pencil, and stamped with my lovely alphabet stamps. And as you will see I used the stamps on the tea tag as well! Big thanks to Vonnie for organizing the swap!

tea time tag

Right I have packing to do!

p.s. Katy I'm not addicted to fabric but I am having fun with it, you will know I am addicted when I come visit your house and steal fabrics out of your hoard! :P

Illustrator at large

Strawberries

I am so proud this morning H and I picked the first two strawberries of the year from the little strawberry plant in its little pot in the green house! I'm so pleased becuse the ones we tried last year didn't grow very well and seemed to go rotten before they ever got ripe. I didn't get to taste them as H dissapeared with the strawberries in a bowl with a tiny sprinkle of sugar and then re-appeared with an empty bowl 2 minutes later. I have been assured that they were very nice.

This morning after seeing M and H off to work and pre-school, I has a quick tidy and dragged my little paint box out and some book pages. Armed with a cup of very strong black tea, with the bar still in I stained about a dozen pages then proceeded to paint a few that were dry and a few that were still damp with tea. I really can seem to tear myself away from painting these little pages. There is something so romantic and bookish about painting on stained book pages, I love the effect. The only painting that didn't turn out the way I wanted is the tree one, it didn't turn out even vaguely similar to what my intentions were when I set out to paint it. I''m not sure about it yet, I will let in grow on me a bit and see what happens.

Lily

Little White School House

Anne

Defiance Tree

And to prove that I am not all together a coward I have added 4 painted page originals to my etsy shop we shall see if anyone out there likes them as much as I do. Oh and apparently I'm now an Illustrator, thats what Etsy says these paintings are called, Mixed Media Illustrations, very nice.

The Poison Apple Tree

The Poison Apple Tree

Is there ever an evil queen around when you have some poison apples to sell?

I can't seem to leave these vintage story book pages alone. And as I have a special fondness for drawing trees I really couldn't resist combining the two. As for the apples the tree just needed a splash of colour, there for some blood red poison apples on black tree limbs. The tree calls to me, its dying leaves whisper when the breeze is still. It says it needs a mount and a frame and I'm inclined to agree.

I have also been dabbling in a bit of monochromatic bead work, The bracelet below is Black agate, white jade (or possibly white quartz as they look pretty much identical), and silver, I am so tempted to keep it for myself, I have a lovely black blouse it would go great with. I am in dire need of some more silver beads so I have come up with a diabolical plan to drag M and H to Lichfield for the day tomorrow and disappear to Spellbound Beads for just a little while... honest.

Then I really must get to work on the garden, the poor little bean plants and pepper plants in the green house are desperate for re-potting, but at least I have some beautiful lilacs to sniff.

monochrome bracelet

lilacs

Toadstools and Tea

toadstools, tea, and printed words

I really was going to do the housework honest but I just had this idea in my head inspired by the plushie toadstool that LucyKate has done a beautiful tutorial for, alas my skills with a needle are quite lacking so instead I painted one. Well actually its slightly more complicated than that, I had a vintage children's book that was in very poor condition so I cut out the pages and stained a page with a tea bag, let it dry then painted it with watered down acrylics. Technically its black tea-ed down as I used the left over bit of black tea from staining the page as my water cup. I'm not sure if that is lazy or not but it was fun and I think the fun bit is what crafting is all about.