Sing for Joy

Well life has a way of tossing you around and upsetting even the best laid plans, and that is what has happened to me. My planned visit to UK for late October/November has been brought forward by six weeks or so, to enable me to attend a family funeral. However this will also enable me to get a much sooner than expected visit in with my new Great-grandson. Isaac Michael Edward made his appearance on Sunday morning, weighing in at a bonny 8lbs 2ozs. Did I make a card for this event?....Of course I did. Did I take a photo of it?....I thought I had but cannot trace it anywhere on my computer! So when I visit him I will take one then and blog about it later.

I now fly out next Thursday so one thing that won't be finished is my son's scrapbook. However there are only half a dozen pages to go so I will take him what I have done and add a few empty pockets at the end. Then I can post the final pages to him as soon as they are done. I don't return here until 26th September so my blog will be very quiet for nearly a month.For that reason I thought I would try to squeeze in a couple more Christmas cards but was a bit dismayed to find the Bah! Humbug! theme was 'Here come the girls'. Now I don't usually do 'girly' or even 'cute', but as Hazel's challenge over on CHNC was Build it up - lots of layers, I had a browse through my Christmas decoupage. At the bottom of the pile was a very ancient book of images, that I think I bought in Percy Thrower's garden centre at least ten years ago! I quite liked it at the time but I found the images were very intricate so I was lazy about using them. But looking through the book I came across these rather sweet little angels and thought they were probably girly enough. I emphasised their 'girlyness' by using a pink base card and layers rather than red, as the red of their dresses blended in with this quite well. They were very fiddly to cut but they actually layered up rather well. There are four layers which hardly show in the photo but as it is again very sunny this morning, you can see the shadows they cast. I mounted them on a left-over piece of scrapbook paper cut with a nestie label die, and cut a matching frame using a booklet of Christmas papers free with a magazine. They are not the sort of papers I would ever buy, so they have lurked in a box for several years, but I am making a real effort to use some of my 'past its sell by date' stash, and it fitted the bill here. The sentiment came from the same booklet. It still looked a bit stark so I used one more 'oldie' from my stash - a set of docraft peeloffs to add trees and parcels round the edge, and found a scrap of emerald satin ribbon to make a bow.

I hope my little angels are singing for joy, just as I am over our new little arrival.

I do apologise to all my fellow challenge-takers and followers that I haven't managed to comment very much just lately. After a busy fortnight with my visitors I then had to try to change my flights to UK and concentrate on things I need to finish off before my visit. But I will try to get to some of you before I go, and once I get back, normal service will quickly return!

I am entering this card in:
Bah! Humbug! Challenge 34: Here come the girls..
Craft Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 35: Build it up.
ABC Christmas Challenge: Q is for quote - use a quote or sentiment.
Crafts for Eternity Recipe Challenge 34: Recipe, Anything with a Christmas theme.
Christmas Crafting Challenge 2: Cute Christmas.

And I will link it to Shirley Anne's blog Stamping for Joy.