Foggy, Foggy Daaaaay . . .

Sung to the tune of  *Starry, starry night* if you like :o)

We have been held captive indoors for the past couple of months because of Shaun's operation & other health problems, but yesterday, I put my foot down with a firm hand and TOLD him in NO UNCERTAIN terms, that come hell or high water, rain, hail, fog or snow, we WERE going to walk into town, do a bit of shopping & then wend our weary way home again !!

I say *we* walk, of course I mean ME walk & he mobility scoot :o)

Maybe I should have kept quiet, because, as it turned out, it was a very foggy Autumnal morning. 

The garden looked quite eerie. I think Morty's preparing himself for Halloween :o)

The spiders had been busy in the early hours - the trees & bushes were just dripping in silver cobwebs.

There were so many webs in these bushes, but what amazed me were the snails climbing across the leaves. I'm always surprised at how leaves & branches can take the weight of creatures, be they birds, snails, slugs etc. :o)

As we left home, the fog seemed thicker in places. Didn't stop idiot drivers whizzing along with no lights on, though.

Normally, you can see quite a long way down the road here, but not yesterday :o)

By the time we'd reached the middle of town, there seemed to be hardly any fog around. However, along the front, it was a different story.

The harbour had its middle bridge up, so something was coming or going or had been & gone :o) Every now & then we could hear a bell on a mast or somewhere, ding-donging as a boat moved in the water. Through the fog, it sounded quite spooky :o)

Walking home along the prom, the sun was trying to get out & it was pretty hot on my back. Hardly anyone on the beach, but it wouldn't have surprised me if that changed during the afternoon.

I liked this view of the sea with the grass & wild flowers. Over to the left, is a small boat with a couple of people in. Not sure if they were fishing or just have a  bit of a sail :o)

Even though it was foggy, I thought the sea looked very inviting. As you can see, the sun was shining weakly on the water, but it still managed a twinkle or two :o)

Unfortunately, closer to home, the fog was thicker than ever !! There were two or three fishermen down on the path, but goodness knows how they could see their rods moving, let alone see what they'd caught. 

I LOVE living at the seaside, but to be honest, drowning worms is not my idea of fun !! :o)

From here, it's about a 15 minute walk to get home & by then, the sun really had come out. It was sweltering & for a couple of hours, it was just like Summer.

Today, the morning is bright & sunny, but there's that lovely nip in the air that signals Summer is virtually over & Autumn is just waiting to take over.

My favourite time of year :o)

Swapping the Swaps

August was our *Swapping the Swaps* month. All the bits & bobs I'd given to Liz & Terri & they'd given to me & each other over the previous months, the bits that we'd not got round to using or didn't know what to do with, were bunged into envelopes & sent on their way, in the hopes that inspiration & imagination would spring forth when we tore open the parcels :o)

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . . .

I'll let others be the judge of that :o)

First up, Terri's parcel. This month I made 3 cards.

I bought this old car stamp in a sale at Hobbycraft & hadn't used it, but when I saw the browns & creams of the paper & card in the parcel, I thought if I used brown ink, it would give the card a sort of sepia look. I used the same brown ink pad to stamp the greeting.The photo is a bit blurry & it doesn't do it justice AT ALL, but I really like this card. It turned out just how I wanted it to.

I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with this image, but after a while, decided to use a flourish type stamp on the plain green background paper to make it a bit more interesting. I stuck to different shades of green, mounted the fairy image on a slightly different green patterned paper & stamped the sentiment on white card, which I then edged with a green ProMarker.

A Christmas card ??? Already ??!! Yes, I know it's only 1 September, but Christmas isn't far away. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that it's down the road, round the corner, first left, third right, over the crossroads, right at the traffic lights & there it is, on the left hand side :o)

This little image is such a simple design, it doesn't need much to go with it. I just coloured it with Promarkers, plonked it on some silver mirror board & then stuck it on the check paper, which I'd already stuck on to a plain white card. I punched out 3 snowflakes from the same mirror board, stuck the greeting on to white card & then more of the silver & that was it.

I also made 3 cards from Liz's parcel :o)

I really must take more care photographing cards. They aren't really on a wonk :o)

This image was already coloured in, so all I did was use the green & cream paper Liz had included. I embossed the cream card, die cut the green, stuck the image on the green & stamped a greeting on what was left. I cut the greeting out, edged it with black ink & that was it. Plain & simple.

This little snowman is one of my favourite stamps. I have NOOOOOOO idea why she'd send it back to me !!! :o) Again, plain & simple - I embossed the red card, die cut a circle from the patterned creamy colour paper & edged the image with red ink. I then used a silver glitter strip across the middle & embellished that with 3 silver leaves I had in my stash. I stuck the image on top & added the silver greeting.

When I saw this image in the parcel, it just shouted *Cold, wintery Christmas !!* at me. So, all I did was colour it with grey Promarkers & mount it on a bit of silver mirror board. I used the green card as a background, edged it with silver glitter strips, stamped the greeting & added three white card candi.  

As my Mother in law would say - it's a NEAT card :o) 

So, that's August's challenge all done & now it's on to September - stripes !! My favourite :o)