An Owling Success

 Happy Easter Sunday

4th April (Happy Birthday to my cousin Caroline Dale)

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe;  Augustine of Hippo

If you have been reading my blog you will have read that I have been playing with owls.  Well one owl has been completed and I am so very happy with the outcome.  It will be framed and given to DH as his birthday present.  (No spoiler here he doesn't follow my blog or my FB page) as joint gift and card.  There will be an inscription on the back.

To those of you who are of the artistic bent or are just curious how I have done this then here is a quick run down of the project.

 I started by masking off  the moon then coloured the whole of the card with various colours of Distress Oxide inks in various shades of blue and green.  I reverse masked the moon and stamped the marbling on the moon with a stamp and pumice stone distress ink (stamps all from a set from Hobby Art stamps - all the images are from various sets of stamps ).

I added the barbed wire stamp across the background and added the various grasses in black Adirondack ink for definition.

Oliver was coloured using pencils from Castle Arts which are good value for money and you can layer colours on top of each other to create depth and shading.

Inscription on the back will be I'll Owl-ways Love you!

I mentioned yesterday that I had finished the Hoarder so I started a new book yesterday and I have to say my choices of late have been superb.  Janet, this is one definitely for you.  It was the Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan and was totally impossible to put down. I had to read from beginning to end - not done that for a long time - such a very very good read and the highlight was Sunshine..... this book will make you laugh and cry and if like me have a daughter with learning difficulties get very angry in parts.  

I am now starting another book by Ruth Hogan called Madame Burova.  Madame Burova - Tarot Reader, Palmist and Clairvoyant is retiring and leaving her booth on the Brighton seafront after fifty years.

Imelda Burova has spent a lifetime keeping other people's secrets and her silence has come at a price. She has seen the lovers and the liars, the angels and the devils, the dreamers and the fools. Her cards had unmasked them all and her cards never lied. But Madame Burova is weary of other people's lives and other people's secrets, she needs rest and a little piece of life for herself. Before that, however, she has to fulfil a promise made a long time ago. She holds two brown envelopes in her hand, and she has to deliver them.

In London, it is time for another woman to make a fresh start. Billie has lost her university job, her marriage, and her place in the world when she discovers something that leaves her very identity in question. Determined to find answers, she must follow a trail which might just lead right to Madame Burova's door.

In a story spanning over fifty years, Ruth Hogan conjures a magical world of 1970s holiday camps and seaside entertainers, eccentrics, heroes and villains, the lost and the found. Young people, with their lives before them, make choices which echo down the years. And a wall of death rider is part of a love story which will last through time. 

Well that's me done done for today, have a lovely Easter Monday.  I don't think I'll be writing tomorrow as I am hoping to get my arse up off the chair and uncover the table in the courtyard tomorrow ready for the summer.  I do hope the blue tits that are feeding on the feeder as I write keep on visiting they really make me happy.   Trying to "spot" the woodpecker I hear but not much luck yet.