Put your feet up!

That's just how I am feeling today! But chance would be a fine thing .. ..

Skip this next para if you just want to go to the card details, but if you want my latest saga, read on. Yesterday was yet another disaster on the DIY front with the mosaic tiles .. .. it has taken Jason all week to carefully re-lay them, and then the 'proper' grout, as supplied, did exactly the same as the previous one .. .. the tiles are ruined .. .. again!  So, they are all going to have to come off which is going to be harder as we aren't doing it today so they will be set to the wall and the grout rock hard  .. .. poor Jason needs to get away from it all at least on his birthday.  I have decided we need to go for plain black glass or ceramic then salvage the pretty glass tiles from the duff lots and create our own bespoke design .. .. But that wasn't the worst of it .. .. the big mirror is finally on the wall, but of course the wall isn't straight all the way around .. .. never mind, I'll buy a big vase and stick it in the corner where the mirror doesn't reach the edge!  Then, the sink went in, Jason went up into the loft to switch on the hot water whilst I waited in the bathroom for leaks .. .. none!  So we heaved a sigh of relief and exhaustion, and sat down to relax.  Then, at 10pm Mark went to let the dogs out via the conservatory to find we had a paddling pool!  Ankle deep in water that was coming from the laundry where the plumber hadn't put a stop on the hot water pipe put in for the sink that didn't go in .. .. a lot of mopping up to do, but fortunately there is a drain in the conservatory so it didn't take too long with Jason mopping and Mark bailing water out the doorway with a dustpan! So it's skirting boards off and fingers crossed the walls will dry out.  Fortunately I didn't have much craft stuff on the floor so although things feel damp, I am hopefull that not too much is damaged.

Anyway, the postman came with my crafty goodies at lunch time, a few of the older Marianne dies I've had my eye on for a while together with a bloc of paper, and that was much bigger than I was expecting!  I've not had a chance to play and had finished this card just before they arrived, so nothing new on this one.  The image is by LOTV and coloured with my Copics.  The background pp is a couple of pieces of Papermania from several years back, stuck together so they would make a piece big enough for my card.  The mats are kraft edged with Walnut DI and there's a scrap of grossgrain ribbon hiding the joins.  To make the lace mat big enough for my image I had to cut 2 pieces and join them together, quite easy to do with this die pattern.  The text is on that Marianne sheet I've had on my desk, and the snowflakes are all her dies - list in a minute.  To finish I've added the amber pearls made with my Wacco pearl maker pen.

The list of dies:
the lace mat - CR1202
snowflake at the top - CR1225
snowflake behind the text - LR0124
the 3 snowflakes the same - CR1227 with LR0124 behind
the small kraft snowflake - LR0123

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas challenge this week is to use old stuff, my image stamp is from last year, the paper is a couple of years old at least and so are some of the snowflake dies - and that Wacco pearl maker pen is at least 2 years old .. .. it just keeps going!  The Jingle Belles challenge is for food, hope a couple of mince pies and a mug of something warming will count!  And Lili's Little Fairies also have a food challenge so I can enter with them too.  Now, I am going to put my feet up!