Allium ATC

This has been a very busy week so not too much time to get the blog updated. We seem to be in the middle of a social whirl! But I have been making more ATCs as part of my Generosity ATC project where I send out random ATCs to people who comment on this blog (and send me their address, see e-mail address at right of this blog).

Most are based on the photos I took so far this summer and I don't think I showed you the allium one on this blog but here it is, on the ATC. We had tried to grow alliums before (you plant bulbs in autumn) but they were always consumed by the field mice before they could grow. However, this must have been our lucky year as all the bulbs (given to us by my mother) came up and put on a lovely display!

Even more Generosity ATCs

I've spend this morning on the road, to the library, the Post Office and to visit the Borders Bookshop and Hobbycraft, which made for a great though expensive outing! But while sitting in the sun when I came back, I did finish four more ATCs for my Generosity ATC project. There are 2 on show above and the other 2 are much in the same spirit. The photos are my own, the transparencies are from Artchix Studio and you'll recognize the background from my June Journal Quilt.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, click on the Generosity ATC label at the very bottom of this blog!

More Generosity ATCs

Just pictures this time of 2 more ATCs which I made for my Generosity ATC project and which will be winging their way to 2 people who left comments on my blog. Remember I will make you an ATC if you leave a comment on my blog as well as mail me your address (see my e-mail button on the right). I'm not saying when I will do so, but I'm keeping a list and whenever I have some time I will make these ATCs and mailing them out. Today I was contemplating a new project and also had to wait to one of my collages to dry so it seemed a good time.


This one is called I see a Lily and features one of my own photographs which you might recognize from a recent blogpost of my Lillies of the Valley as well as a transparency from Divasdeste

And this one uses the same white background (made with a collage of laces) and a photograph of the Bridge of Sighes in Venice, printed on fabric and topped by a flourish transparency (from Altered Pages).
To my great delight I myself also received a Generosity project, from my friend Lenna Andrews, who made me a gorgeous quiltie, using a photo of the pergola in my garden. She will be uploading pictures on her own blog just as soon as I let her know I have received it so keep an eye out for it there in the next few days!

Another gorgeous day at Macbiehill

and of course I made the very most of it. The garden is now like a symphony of colours and is slowly gearing itself up for the highlight of the summer (at least as far as I am concerned), when the roses are coming out and the poppies put on their sparkling display.

But before that happens other plants have already started to play. One of these is John's favourite, the lupin. We grow more of these plants from seed every year and plant them out wherever there is an empty looking spot. They are a very traditional British cottage garden plant and to me they look like flames raising their heads above the surrounding greenery. They are very susceptible to green fly but fortunately we have lots of birds in the garden so they keep the investations to a manageable level.

There are also smaller beauties clammering for a bit of attention and if you have this stunning yellow colour, it's hard to miss. This stonecrop grows in a trough (made by John) and is getting larger every year. It has now started to spread out over the ground as well as all over the trough. I love the textures of the picture above and below are the flowers in more detail. Remember they are only 3/8" wide, in other words, tiny!

I finished another ATC for my Generosity ATC project today too. As a reminder, if you leave a comment on this blog and provide me with your address (if I haven't got it already!) you will receive an ATC made by me, sometime! I have a list and will be working my way through it as well as adding the address of new blog comment posters. If you don't want to post your address on the comments (and it is really safer not to do so!) send me an e-mail. My e-mail address is on the right hand side of this blog! Gunnel in Sweden was the first recipient of an ATC and she was so sweet and mailed me a lovely one back, which is a wonderful gesture but remember by no means necessary!

Pink and Orange ATCs

After all the views, time for art today and this is one of the things I have been working on during the hot spell. I joined a fabric ATC swap on the ATCsforAll site with as its only theme the colours hot pink and orange.


I was actually sitting outside next to our rhododendron "Fanny" (that really is her name! She lives in a pot as we can't grow rhododendrons any other way) and what could be more inspirational. So I decided to prink out photographs of her in a size suited to ATCs. I printed onto a cotton fabric sheet and then proceeded to make a background using Fast2Fuse and a selection of hot pink and orange batik fabrics as well as orange and pink laces. These were all ironed on and also stitched by hand and machine. The image was stitched on by hand and orange size 11 seed beads were also added.



An orange fabric was ironed onto the other side of the Fast2Fuse and the edges were finished with satin stitching. All 4 cards are more or less identical and I also made one to keep.



At the same time I also worked on an ATC made as part of my Generosity ATC project (see previous post) which was made in the same way but I used a picture on fabric of a beautiful pink gladioli flower which I treasured last year. This card will be winging its way to someone very soon!!

To Blog or not to Blog?

No, that is not really the question! Of course I will continue to blog as it is just such fun. I love the comments and I also enjoy documenting my artistic life in this way a lot more than I had ever anticipated. Having said that I am sometimes enormously frustrated by my pathetic dial-up connection ( really the only drawback of living in this beautiful rural location) which means that everything seems to take forever and what really upsets me most is that it makes it very hard to pay return visits and leave comments on other blogs. This is further complicated by the fact that for some reason (if you know why, tell me!!) I can't leave comments at all on embedded comment pages. It's one of the reasons I gave up on Gothic Arches as I felt too guilty about not leaving return comments.

I have been giving this a lot of thought over the last 6 months and then, all of a sudden, and after reading this post by Lenna I found an answer. Lenna was inspired by a book which I discussed some time ago on my Now Reading link at the side of this blog. The book was Life is a Verb, by Patti Digh, based on what you would do with your life if you knew you only had another 37 days more to go. One of her suggestions is to Be Generous and this is what Lenna took onboard.



And that is also my solution to my comments problems. I'm going to send ATCs out into the world to those people visiting and commenting on this blog. I'm not saying when this will happen as I want them to be surprise arrivals. And they will go out at random, you don't have to comment on this post, any post will do! However I do need your mailing address to do this.



So if you are interested, let me have your mailing information (which I promise I will only use to mail your ATC!!). If you're not happy leaving it in the comments, just send it to me in an e-mail instead (address on the right of this blog) and I'll keep them in a file till I mail you an ATC. This is an ongoing project and I hope to mail at least one ATC a month. Just to say thank you for your visit. And rest assured, even though I can't leave commments on some blogs, I still visit and enjoy!



Finally so as not to make this post too boring with just text I'm showing you a very pretty picture of our clematis Sealand Gem, which lives in a pot in our greenhouse and has just started to flower!