Catching Up.....

We've been making the most of the last days of summer this year and decided to visit some more National Trust properties. First stop was Hidcote Manor Gardens in Gloucestershire......designed and created by the horticulturist Lawrence Johnston in the Arts & Crafts style, it is made up of exquisite garden rooms, each one possessing its own special character.

 

We stayed overnight at a wonderful B&B called The Kissing Gate in the nearby village of  Ebrington. It's one of the cleanest, most beautifully decorated places I've ever stayed in. (If you're interested you can read my review on Trip Advisor). The house is fairly new but Ebrington is a traditional Cotswold village with many beautiful thatched cottages. We had dinner at the Ebrington Arms...gorgeous place!

 

The next day we visited Chipping Campden and Broadway.......

 

 and finally Snowshill Manor....my favourite place of all. You can read about it here.

I haven't forgotten about 'the mystery photo' from my last post :-)

Heather was absolutely right when she guessed waterlily seed pod.

We spotted these little green 'bottles' bobbing around on our local canal ......

I found a picture of the flower on Wikimedia Commons....you can see the seed pod starting to grow in the centre.

So there you go...well done Heather!

I taught a mixed-media collage class last week at the Beetroot Tree and met a new blogging friend there called Donna. We've 'known' each other for a while through the Suzi Blu classes, but only recently became aware that we lived fairly near to each other. You can see the scrummy collage she created on her blog here.

I showed some of my examples on this blog post...here's another I did for the class; this one is mounted onto wood so is actually finished!

The others are waiting patiently for DH to get his special electric saw out and cut up some more wood......

 

And FINALLY (are you still here?) .......a Peachy update. He stayed with us last weekend -

and he's growing too quickly......

"I'm sure I fitted into this box last time I stayed here......."

Peachy and Bess......

This is one of a series of mixed-media collages I've been making over the last couple of weeks in preparation for my class at the Beetroot Tree on Monday. I've used images transferred onto fabric, lace, text, organza, dyed silk, pressed flowers, background papers, beads, silk paper, sari silks, machine and hand-stitching.

I'm looking forward to this class; it should be fun......

I've also been scanning all my inky backgrounds into my PC so that I can use them as layers in Photoshop. Here are just a few......I've got dozens! The great thing is you can enhance the colours and improve the look of them in PSE.
I used this one.......

with this photo I took in the gardens at Hardwick Hall....

to created this.......

I think I'm going to print it onto silk fabric.

We visited the beautiful Hardwick Hall last weekend.....it's about 25 miles north of us near Chesterfield. The house was built for Elizabeth Shrewsbury (hence the ES on the roof) but she was better known as 'Bess of Hardwick' - quite a formidable lady and the richest woman in England in the 1500s after Queen Elizabeth. She had 4 husbands and her wealth increased with each marriage. She left behind the legacy of a 400 year-old collection, known as the Hardwick Hall textiles; the largest collection of tapestry, embroidery, canvaswork and other textiles to have been preserved by a single private family. I did a special study of these for my A-levels many years ago.
There are some fabulous paintings in the house; I love this one of Bess.......

Here's her wonderful Elizabethan house.... (she also owned Chatsworth)

and the typically English pub at the edge of the estate where we had our lunch.

We looked after Peachy whilst my daughter was in Zante last week. He was quite a handful and LOVED rummaging around in my studio. He soon found the felt bird I'd made (and pretended it was real :-) and after causing mayhem fell asleep in my box of silk papers every day........

Liz collected him on Monday; its very quiet here..........

Princess Peaches

Just wanted to show you the gorgeous Princess Peaches....my daughter's new kitten. She brought her to show me yesterday and had great difficulty getting her out of my clutches to take her home!  DH is being very boring sensible and pointing out all the reasons why we can't have another cat. Boooo.......
Looks like I'll be visiting DD a lot :-)

We've been making the most of the glorious weather recently by using our National Trust card. Last week we went to Calke Abbey in Derbyshire (more of that in another post.....DH took the photos on his camera phone and has mislaid the download cable. There are some amazing wall textures on it for digital collage which I'll share! )
Today we went to the lovely Belton House near Grantham and enjoyed the sunshine, gardens, interior, home-made soup, ice cream, tea and biscuits (but not all at once :-)
The house was built late 17th century....'a fine example of Restoration architecture' and was used in the TV adaption of Pride and Prejudice. Just think, Colin Firth may have stood on those lawns......but you'll have to make do with me.

I'm always fascinated by the amazing beds in these places...my favourite is the blue bed at Calke Abbey which has a brilliant story to it  (next time :-) but this was the best one at Belton......in the Chinese room where the walls are covered in hand-painted silk wallpaper.

But this is my favourite photo of all. We bought a very tall echinacea at the plant stall and DH kindly carried it back to the car. He wondered why I wanted to stop and take a photo of him on the way..........

And finally.......I decided to join KiwiCaroles journal workshop last week, click here for  link.

I love all the vintage stuff thats being done but I'm not so good at that so I'm being a bit of a rebel.
Here are my hand-made papers ready to be embellished (they are grouped into signatures.....I've learned something already!) My book is going to be about my garden.......

I had great fun splattering ink and salt on watercolour paper.......

More next time!

Time Away........

I won't apologise for having been AWOL for the past few weeks.......I know you understand :-)

DH and I went away for a few days - more on that later - plus I've been spending some time reading, visiting friends and gardening. I'm sorry I haven't done any blog-visiting for a while ; I've spent very little time on my PC because of a problem with my neck. Anyway....following a visit to the physio earlier this week I'm feeling a little better.

A couple of weeks ago we visited my lovely friend Rosie and her DH, who looked after us extremely well. We spent a happy afternoon sitting in their garden in the sunshine, watching the blue tits in the trees around us, then Rosie and I played in her art room for a while whilst the men cooked us a fantastic dinner. Can life get any better? :-)

Over the next few days we moved on to the Malvern Hills, Great Malvern, Ironbridge and finally Wightwick Manor. This gorgeous house was furnished under the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement and has original William Morris wallpapers and fabrics....plus Pre-Raphaelite works of art. At the top of this post you can see the digital collage I created from the photograph below. This is only the side view of the house.........the full view is further down.
23/4...thought I should explain that the face is William Morris and the quote is his most famous one: "Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or beautiful".


Two more Wightwick digi-collages, with the originals below......

........and here's the whole house. More detailed photos to come in my next post.
Remember that house shaped box I showed you? Well some of you guessed correctly; it's for my father's ashes. We weren't sure where to put them and tried to think of all his favourite places. Whilst we were pondering over various possibilities Mum jokingly said 'His absolute favourite place was sitting in your conservatory Linda!' Over the next week the idea grew on me ...... and gradually people have begun to accept it.
So what's left of Dad is now in a sunny corner of our conservatory....I think he would approve :-)

And finally, I wanted to show you this rather gorgeous photo stand I bought recently; it's perfect for displaying my digi-art..........