Bottles and a splash of colour

Short post today, I am busy busy busy trying to find enough images, bits and pieces, embellishments etc for 12 ATCs for a swap with a very dear bloggy friend. 

The weather is still pretty horrid, not much rain today, but boy oh boy, it is so stormy. I was afraid some of our trees would come down, it was that bad on top of our hill. But all is well, phew, they bravely stood up to anything the weather god could throw at them.

Taking photos is a bit iffy at the moment though, because the light is still so very dull and because these old French cottages have small windows, it can get quite dark inside. So the picture of bottles on the windowsill, which I took for this week's theme at the Our Beautiful World blog, is not terribly exciting -

But also on the windowsill is a vase with some gorgeous and quite unusual roses, which my darling husband had bought for me last week. The colouring is quite amazing, splashes of yellow on the red, and once they had opened up, they looked almost like carnations from a distance -

They are a most welcome splash of colour on these dull days.

As always, thanks for stopping by, toodlepip xxx

Mail at the Cottage

It is always such an occasion when the yellow post office car arrives outside our gate. We get very little mail at our cottage in France. No junk mail, hurrah, just the English mail our son forwards to us regularly and the occasional much loved little package from a bloggy friend. 

The first piece of mail to arrive at the cottage after our arrival was indeed such a package :-), a birthday gift from my sweet bloggy friend Marie of Lost Bird Studio! 

This sweetly decorated little bag...

contained these two little packages, beautifully wrapped - 

Oh my, just look at those gorgeous dangly bits, teasingly poking out of the wrap -

This is the most beautiful soldered charm I have seen Marie create, I really love the image she used and the soldering is so beautifully done -

She also sent me something to play with, some enamel tags, yay! -

I think I may use that beautiful charm to make an assemblage necklace with. I have some rosary chain bits and some rather lovely beads........

And because it kind of fits in with the photos of the beautiful religious charm and because it is Sunday, I thought I'd also post a photograph of a beautiful statue of Christ outside a home in Luzy, the closest town to us where we have a couple of supermarkets and a regular Friday farmers market -

Have a wonderful Sunday, toodlepip xxx

DREAMS and early morning on the hill

I am squeezing two things into this post, otherwise I'll never catch up with myself, lol.

Firstly, Tag Tuesday's theme this week is DREAMS. I had a couple of images in mind for this tag, both quite romantic and sweet. I picked this one in the end, and embellished the tag with some lace, vintage crocheted flowers and some stunningly sparkly antique diamante which I used for the centre of the crocheted flowers -

Secondly, a few photographs I took whilst walking the dogs early in the morning a couple of days ago. It was a misty and quite dull morning, but the sun was trying to break through the clouds and the light got quite pearly at one point

Always beautiful, even on the dullest day.

Thanks for visiting, I appreciate you being here :-).

Toodlepip xxx

Danish Pastry

They are delicious, irresistible and I love them. But what I love even more than a Danish pastry is a Danish package :-). And one of those arrived literally hours before we left England to come back to our cottage in France. I took it with me to France, of course, and here it is, my beautiful birthday gift from my darling friend Dorthe -

The card is so beautiful and the present came wrapped in gorgeous shimmery shiny fabric. And when I unwrapped it, I found this -

You can read about how Dorthe made this beautiful collage on her blogpost HERE. It is absolutely gorgeous and is already hanging up in my craftavan :-).

Toodlepip xxx

The Big Black Hole

Oh yes, I am the unwilling and unhappy host of a big black hole. You know the kind of hole, the one things mysteriously disappear into. This black hole happens to love my computer. And it eats photographs. 

I had better explain, hadn't I? My darling friend Suzy sent me the most beautiful birthday gift well before my birthday. I took many photographs, you know that I love sharing gifts from my beautiful bloggy friends with you all. Before we left for France, I transferred all photos I had taken over the last few months from my computer onto the external HDD and also onto my laptop. A week ago, I wanted to do the blog post on Suzy's gift, and yes, you guessed it, the photographs of her gifts were gone. Just those. I spent hours looking through every file on the laptop and the ext. HDD, got my son to check my pc at home in the UK for them. NOTHING. GONE. Swallowed by the black hole. 

I had taken the main gift with me to France, but I didn't take everything, sob sob. So, without further delay, here are just a few photographs of my beautiful new NEEDLE BOOK created by the amazing Suzy from Suziqu's Threadworks -

And here it is, in my craftavan, amongst other much loved gifts -

Isn't it just the most precious lacy concoction? Love love love it.

Tomorrow, I'll show you photographs of something oh so beautiful, which arrived from Denmark just hours before we were leaving for France. I took it with me of course and photographed it here :-).

Toodlepip xxx

ATC Swap French General Style

I really love taking part in Kimberly's ATC swaps, she is the most wonderful swap hostess and her themes are always great. When I read the theme for the latest ATC swap though, I got a bit worried, because I had no idea what French General style was! So of course I googled and up came all sorts of French Generals, lol, as well as delicious looking country fabrics and lots of fabulous sets of embellishments like cameos and stacked buttons and ribbons. Needless to say, I didn't have a single French General product on hand. But I loved the colour schemes with those gorgeous deep reds, so French, and the soft beiges and sand coloured fabrics, and I thought to myself, being in France I must be able to come up with something, even with my very limited craft supplies.

I started out with a delicate floral design for the background, from an English paper collection, which looked much like a French General fabric. I liked the idea of using a cameo as a focal point and I found a beautiful one on the internet. I used thin strips of antique French ticking in beige and deep red instead of ribbons, and printed out a few little bits and pieces from the French General Jolee collection, fussy cut them and used them as embellishments. I glued some buttons together, found some old French coins and used a tiny little laundry marker tape number for decoration.

I don't often work with reds, but I really like this French General style :-).

Having come across so many great old images of French Generals whilst googling, I just couldn't help myself, I had to include a picture of a French general, lol, and this chap's name sounded so funny -

But at least I just stuck him on the back of the ATC, lol.

And here they are, packaged up and ready to go. Actually, they are being posted as I write, my darling husband has taken them to the post office.

The weather is a bit silly at the moment. Yesterday was the most beautiful Spring day, today it is cold and raining, and there is snow forecast for later on in the week. So whilst I can't get out into the garden to plant up some tubs and pots, I'll catch up with editing photos and preparing some posts. Oh my, I have such beautiful gifts to show you!

But for now, thanks for visiting, and a special big thanks to my new followers, I am so happy you are here.
Toodlepip xxx