About Blackbutterfly Cards
I started making cards for pleasure in 2007, and quickly found my home was becoming swamped by cards everywhere. I decided to put some of them up for sale on a webpage in an effort to recoup some of the costs of my hobby. I called the webpage Blackbutterfly Handcrafted Cards, and it can be found at http://www.blackbutterfly2007.co.uk/ I try to take my cards to a couple of table sales or craft fairs a year, but make my cards mainly for friends and family. I would love the website sales to take off, as I nowhere near cover the costs involved in this all absorbing hobby, but for me the main thing is the pleasure I have in making my cards.Recently I have decided to expand my blog to cover my other interests too. It's a sort of substitute for going to work and chatting to people, as due to ill health I was unable to work, and since the beginning of 2014 I am officially a pensioner.Although I'll still show my cards, I'll also be covering my other interests and how I attempt to make ends meet day by day.
In fact anything that crosses my mind will be on here, so be prepared for waffle and a wasted five minutes as you read. Make coffee and settle in, why don't you?
Just going to give you a quick look at a card I made last week.
I'm slowly trying to get back into the crafting mode. It's so long since I made cards I'm finding that I gaze at my stash and don't know where to start. I desperately want to make some cards - I miss it - but inspiration is definitely lacking. I think it will be ok once I get into the right frame of mind, I seem to have forgotten how to do things......!
Anyway, this card is winging it's way to Holland as we speak for my friends birthday. I believe he is 70 at the end of the month, but I didn't dare put the age on the card 'cos I'm not 100% sure.
Anyway........this took me about 4½ hrs to make and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Yesterday I made 4 very simple cards, but I haven't photographed those yet. I found a very old set of Hero Craft Stamps, with flowers on that I'd almost forgotten I had. I'll probably put them up for sale on Etsy as a pack of four. I like them actually, but they are very simple.
Bye for now
Well, today I finally used the last of the left overs from New Year. I made a quiche, which I was told I had to write down the recipe for. That could be a bit of a problem as it was a 'make it up as I go along recipe' with whatever I could find in the fridge.
I knocked together some pastry using just 4 ozs flour, then blind baked it for 20 mins. Meanwhile I grated some left over Red Leicester Cheese, fried some onions until soft, found some cooked frozen peas in the fridge, along with half a pot of double cream which had gone out of date on the 26th December, but it smelt absolutely fine., and grabbed all the scrappy bits of Turkey and stuffing left from New years Day. I mixed the cream with 2 eggs and beat them together with some salt and pepper. Once the pastry case came out of the oven, it was just a matter of assembling it all. I sprinkled the cheese over the base, followed by the finely chopped cooked onion, then the peas. On top of this I scattered the turkey and bits of stuffing. Finally I poured over the double cream and egg mix. Lastly I added some sad looking chives I found in the salad drawer left from Christmas. I snipped them with scissors and scattered them in. I couldn't even tell you how long I cooked it for...Jo just sat and raved about how nice it was, and then phoned her father to tell him about it. Amazing!... It got a better reaction than the Christmas dinner that cost a fortune in comparison. Here it is with a 'last bitsa' salad.
All the decorations have come down now, although I haven't cleaned and dusted yet. I DID hoover up all the bits of Lametta from the tree, and all the decorations are carefully wrapped and back in the loft. However, my hips and back were so painful by the time we'd done all that, the dusting and cleaning can wait until tomorrow. Here's the last view of the tree for this year
We have also begun to decorate Jo's bedroom, It's got to be done before the 14th as that is when her new flooring is being laid. I'll take some pictures when it is done.
Happy New Year everyone!
