Mother's day

Dear Cheeky,
Today is mother's day here and I thought I'd show you what I made for my mum.

When I make cards for my parents they end up displaying them for ages, so I had to make sure that I did something impressive. I know that, as my parents, they're meant to love whatever I do but if they're going to show people (which they do) then I had to make sure they were something I was proud of! 

I have this set I got with a magazine and it included a stencil, an embossing folder and a stamp set, all about hydrangeas. I originally started with the stencil. I used ink to pattern the leaves and then spread embossing paste over the flower sections and sprinkled on some glitter. I have been trying to sort out my craft supplies and I've discovered a whole heap of glitter that I wanted to try and use. But while it looked kind of cool, the glitter kept coming off and it was really annoying me. 

I didn't want to give up though, and so I made a background. I had this plan that I'd cut the stencilled panel down and stick it on the stamped panel. 

It looked ok, and I won't throw the page out because I might be able to use it for something else, but it didn't work with what I ended up doing. 

Since the stencil idea was annoying me (I need to figure out a better way of doing glitter embossing) I tried something else. I've had so much fun with watercolour painting over stamped images, so I decided I may as well give that another go. So I used the hydrangea stamp, stamped with a purple ink (just a generic pigment ink - one day I'll get slightly better inks, but for now these work). Then I sat down and did some painting. It's so much fun doing this. 

Once I'd finished painting I added some white highlights with a gel pen. I see people do that on line a lot, and while I'm happy with the way it came out for me, I'm not sure that it was as good as it could have been. But oh well. It still looked pretty. 

I had some more of the watercolour paper so I painted a background to go behind the flowers. It's intentionally messy, and I even managed to do some splatters to give it some texture. Considering how little of this you actually see, I probably spent too long doing this bit, but it was fun. I really want to do more watercolour painting, and eventually I'll even do painting that doesn't involve me painting over stamps. But I'll get up to that one day. 

I trimmed the flower panel down and stuck it on to some metallic purple paper you sent me. Doing the scalloped pattern was so much fun. Not! I don't have a die that would work (I would love to get some rectangle dies one of these years) so I had to use a border punch. This was really useful, but it is hard to keep it straight. Oh well. Still looked cool. 

Just under the punch you can see the label I did. I want more colours of embossing powder. I have the standard colours - gold, silver, black, white and clear. The only 'fancy' colour I have is purple, because it was really cheap. I don't use it much but it managed to be exactly the right colour to match this painting. 

Can I pretend that I did that intentionally, rather than just paint the flowers that colour because that's my favourite colour of hydrangas? 

So anyway, when I put things together I ended up with this card, and this morning I got up nice and early to give it to mum and she loved it so yay! 

Oh, I added a stamp on the inside as well, and added some colour to it. 

I gave her a cardigan and a top as well, and she liked them, so that's a relief. 

I also cooked lunch for her. We had been considering going on a picnic, but it was looking like it might be too cold and Dad was pretty crook today. So Mum decided she wanted Potato and Leek soup. I also made cheese scones. I love cooking soup, and this one is so simple. Slowly cook lots of leeks in some butter, boil some potato in chicken stock, then mix it together, put it in a food processor to smooth it out and then added milk. 

Cooking leeks. Told you there were lots of them!

Cheese scones. I always wish I'd added more cheese, but next time I'll add Parmesan, that should be a stronger cheese flavour. You know how much I love strong cheese! 

I know you will probably say it doesn't look very appealing, but it really is lovely and very comforting. It's been cold and soup is always good on a cold day!

I didn't make mum a cake, because we had mass this morning and a morning tea after mass so I didn't have time. But when I went to buy some leeks for the soup, and saw these cakes so I bought one for mum. $5 for a mud cake! Yummy. Unfortunately, when we were bringing it home it got a little squashed and the icing came off a bit so that's why it's messy in a corner. Still tasted good. 

So that was my day. We also went to the nursery because mum needed something for the garden and I saw these plants. They're a type of oregano called Oregano kirigami. Soo pretty. 

They were hanging in a basket above my head, hence the strange angle, but yeah. Aren't they amazing. 

Ok, that's everything. Sorry this is a bit late but I wanted to tell you what mum thought of the card and what I cooked for lunch. 

Hugs.

Dorky