My Altered Book Box

The doorbell rang this afternoon while I was busy in my loft creating a page for Sue Bleiweiss and as things were going well I thought, drat who can that be? It was the postman with a big box for me.

Sue's name and address was on the outside of the box and I knew what it was. I'm in an Altered Book Box with her, so I quickly opened it. My favourite colours seem to be black with red, yellows and oranges and when I looked inside it seemed full of tissue in these colours. Amongst the tissue was the most wonderfully made and thoughtful gift anyone would wish for. With a tiny book ready for me to use, made by Sue with this lovely poem written on it.





The cover is black and waiting for me to finish off in any way I please. Inside it has a box full of goodies , all in my colours. The tags have all been made by Sue using some of the digitzed images from my blog and they all have matching cords.






Can you see the three little pull out drawers with the red, yellow and orange buttons? It's a perfect box. Now I have to make Sue one. How can I compete with that? I will put my heart into it and hope for the best.
I'm sure there is no need to tell you how thrilled I am with my Altered Book Box?

Sunny weather

This is what the postman delivered today - a lovely page from Francoise in Belgium. Some of you might know that for my book I chose 'Curves' with a black base and yellow, reds and oranges. This fits the bill well doesn't it? Thank you so much Francoise, I shall treasure it. Here is Francoise blog, CREATILFUN, it's well worth a visit.

As I haven't put up any photos of the Conwy Estuary recently I have added some photos I took yesterday. Who needs to go to Tenerife on holiday when you have this to look at every day? But we did get up to warm, sunny weather every single day and enjoyed walking and relaxing. I wonder why their promenades are so well made while our 'cycle path' is rough and ready, made with a covering of chippings?

Lucky win

I won these beutiful threads by sending my email address in to Sassa Lynne by Winifred Cottage - Supplying Textile Artists Worldwide. My name was drawn out of the hat as it were. Thank you so much Myfanwy. These colours are called Midnight Siesta and I am thinking of some special way of using them.

I also had two more lovely postcards waiting for me on my return from holiday. These were from two friends from the Surface Design Yahoo Group and are based on the TAST stitches.


This one is from Phyllis Duffy. Thank you Phyllis, I love it.


This one is another lovely and unusual one stitched with ribbons. Thank you Jean(Spillane).

Artist Trading Pin

Before I start telling you about my lovely pin I must apolgise once more to the lovely readers who have commented on the work in the last post. I did start answering them all, but I haven't packed to go on holiday in a couple of hours yet. It's been a rush after my weekend course. Thanks one and all.


Here is the beautiful Artists Trading Pin I received this morning. It was made by Mary K McGrath, I'm afraid I don't know your blog Mary. I am wearing this in the lapel of my white linen jacket to fly to Tenerife in the morning. Thank you so much for making such a wonderful piece of art. The photo does not do it justice I'm afraid.

A Hercules plane overhead

I'm glad so many of you like my new look. I am very grateful for all the lovely comments this week and they are always very much appreciated. I do try to reply to everyone personally but sometimes this is impossible and I know you will understand when this happens now and then.

As I live on a slight rise above the estuary of the river Conwy we often see low flying Hercules planes passing by from RAF Valley nearby. Yesterday I rushed to get my camera, turned it on, opened the window and just managed to snap it. There was another one following, but I just caught the tail of that one unfortunately.


I have almost caught up with my TAST stitches challenge by making 4 cards to swap with friends on the Surface Design group. I painted Aida fabric with acrylic paints for these cards and when they were dry I painted Acrylic Wax over them and I am very pleased with the resulting fabric.

Lovely post received

I am in an Artist Trading Pin Swap with members of the Surface Design design group and this is my first pin. Isn't she beautiful? She is another Ms T for me from Sara who makes these wonderful dolls. Do go and have a look at her blog mainly zaz


This is the wonderful card sent to me by Joanna, she is the owner of the Yahoo Surface Design group I belong to. Thank you Joanna, I love it.



Here is the Embellisher postcard that arrived form Phyllis this morning and it really is a fantastic card. We are both members of the Surface Design group and we have swapped Embellisher cards, I don't think Phyllis has a blog, yet!

I was also sent some 'shim' to play with by Helen, whose blog is Quilts & ATCs. Thanks Helen.

eBay Seller: joannavan2: Mixed Media, Art items on eBay.com

Don't forget, this is the last day of the Surface design group Auction on ebay. Have a look at all the lovely work there which includes wall hangings, scarves, bags and postcards to name but a few of the things for sale there.
Here is the url.
eBay Seller: joannavan2: Mixed Media, Art items on eBay.com

My New Look Blog

Thanks to Carol Ann Clasper of A Stitch in Time I have a Banner at the top of my blog. All I did was create the banner in PaintShopPro9 and then Carol spent hours working out why it would not work when I tried to insert it in the Template. She used a test blog and got it to work. thank you Carol, now I'm a happy bunny too.

Blogging will be resumed as soon as possible.

Messing about

I'm afraid I have been messing about with my blog this afternoon and I'm not sure where I am with it. So I might be absent until I manage to sort it out. See you soon!

Good Friday

Yesterday I was in a bit of a flap because I thought I'd lost the ATC's from my Australian swap that Dale organised. I knew they would turn up but when and where was the problem, when I had not even thanked the ladies who made them.
The little lady top left corner is MsT from Sara Hansson of mainly zaz, the middle one was by Joy Smith, Victoria, Australia and the one on the right was made by Yvonne Voss also from Australia.
Bottom row right was made by Caroll Pichelmann, also from Australia I believe and the last one was made by Val Duncan of NSW, Australia again. I have been very lucky to have these 5 lovely Artist Trading Cards, thank everyone. A special thanks to Dale of The Thread Studio for all her hard work organizing this exchange.
Traditionally for us Good Friday is a very quiet day, when we were children the men always planted the potatoes and we all stayed near home. We still stay close to home, but not for the same reasons. We now stay home because the traffic is very heavy around a holiday resort like this.

I continued with my tidying up in the loft and I am getting there slowly. Tonight I hope to start my TAST postcards.

A day of tidying my workroom

Tomorrow the 6th of April is 2007EarthDayAuction. Please take a look at this site for details.

I have spent most of today tidying up my workspace which had got completely out of control and I had problems reaching things off the shelves because of the surrounding mess. Unfortunately I have misplaced the ATC's Dale sent me from the Australian swap, so I can't reply or photograph them for my blog. Will these ladies if they happen to read my blog please accept my thanks and pleasure at receiving them? Now that I'm much tidier up in the loft I am sure I will find them.


This is the wonderful postcard I had this morning from Helen Bailey in the UK. The photo here does not do it justice as there is a lovely shine to it. This is a TAST postcard swap on the Surface Design group. I just love this postcard Helen.

Creative days

I have just had two very productive days, because I have taken on a few more challenges than I should have and I was just beginning to panic a little. But Panic's over and I'm in charge again. The piece of work above is a page for my FAF group page swap this month. Francoise's choice of subject is Writing systems past and present. I do hope this one qualifies as it is the method used for writing.



The next challenge was to make 4 Pins in any medium for my Surface design swap. I chose to make mine with the embellisher combined with machine embroidery using FME and a few automatic stitches. It was designed some time ago on the computer and just waiting for an excuse to make some.


This is a closeup of one of the pins.


I always enjoy making cards for my grandchildren and they have come to expect them now. this year I had 5 to make and it did become a bit of a rush towards the end, but I got there. Below is a closeup of the one for Charlie the new baby and Amy who is 16. I hope they all like them. The photos are not very good as I took them in the evening sun.

April Page

This morning I had these two wonderful pages from Kim of SkybellArts. Kim was not very happy with the first page she made shown below using Wrought Iron as her inspiration. I love it and I'm sure you will too. So Kim went about and made me the page above, this time using my initials as inspiration and it is absolutely wonderful. Thank you Kim for sending me both pages.


And to crown it all she sent me a card by Dale Chihuly. I love all his work and saw a wonderful exhibition of his glassware when I visited Seattle some time ago. I will blog some photos I took of some of the work.


Below is a photo of 5 Birthday postcards I sent this morning to members of the FAF group who have a birthday in April. I hope they will like them.