April Favourites...

Some of my favourite cards from April...and I truly don't think the owls were influenced by our outing.

The owl in the shadow-box card was a birthday gift - as were the Mermaid Markers I used to colour the leaves and flowers in the first card - love how reactive they are with water! Thank you, Di and Lorraine...

This month's blog header was taken just round the corner from our house in an open green area. Nothing grew there this year, sadly.

...and Owls

The owls were mostly in large cages - apart from the Little Owl (Gizmo, aged 7) who is in the reception area. I'm sure that in the previous premises he was flying around the room freely, I remember him landing on me. He's a little sweetie!

I thought the long-eared owl looked so foxy! Made me think of carnival masks.

We were also able to handle a tawny owl. I remember when I was working in Yorkshire, I could hear them in the woods beside the house almost every single night, and I spent a lot of time outside (in February and March) trying to catch sight of one, without ever succeeding. He made the funniest little sharp clicks with his beak, which instantly reminded me of Archimedes in the Sword in the Stone. He must have been very light, because the hawk only weighed a kilo and felt quite heavy in comparison.

I made an owl card to go with my owl photos...

I used the "Wise Owl on a Branch with Calligraphy" stamp - he's stamped in brown ink on linen-finish paper sponged with distress inks, and with the ends curled round an old knitting needle to create a scroll. I crimped some kraft card for the background, sponged it with some inks and then gesso. To finish I added some trailing ivy leaves, and finally a little ladybird from the "Whimsical and Kind Sayings" set. It took me a long time to decide whether to leave the bug or not - in the end I decided that I like it better with. 

Eagles...

We took a trip to the National Bird of Prey centre yesterday, as a birthday outing.  We went about three or four years ago, and I was glad I looked it up because we found it has moved to the grounds of Russborough House, and is much nearer than it used to be.

Here are some of the eagles - most of them are hybrids (Lanner, Saker, Gyrfalcon crossbreeds) apart from the peregrine, and the one we were able to hold is a Harris Hawk. We weren't able to stay long enough to watch them being flown in the afternoon, but have a complimentary ticket to go back and see them another afternoon. We'll definitely do that - not least because we also didn't have time to go into the various studio workshops.

I'll be back later in the week with some owls...

St Catherine's Park

A few more photos from our walk in the park last Saturday.

This is a type of toothwort - the greenery is all natural vegetation, mostly wood anemones. The tall pink spikes are the flowers of the toothwort which is a subterranean parasite on the roots of trees, as it has no chlorophyll of its own.

This is taken from a high woodland path, looking down onto the river Liffey as it flows below. 

And a card featuring a lovely steampunk feather stamp from Art Neko. I applied ink to the base with a couple of distress ink pads, and then collaged on a few antique timepiece images from a collage sheet from B-Muse, then stamped and coloured the feather.

Spring has sprung...

There were some grey days this week but today was beautifully sunny - has been all day, so handknits are almost dry on the line. We took a walk in St. Catherine's Park in the morning, a few more photos to follow in another post.

For a quick peek, here's the water meadow down by the river.

And here are the Spring creatures we saw in it. We did also see the Highland cattle, as per my blog header photo this month.

March Favourites

Some favourite cards for March.

The first two were custom made for the recipients - a lighthouse (of course) for Lorraine using an embossing folder that was in her Christmas gift to me, and a floral screen for my mother-in-law for Mother's Day.

And the rest were just made for various challenges...

I appear to have taken all of about 5 photos last April, none of which were suitable for a blog header. So instead I have used a photo from 2015, of the Highland cattle in St. Catherine's Park, Lucan. They weren't there when we visited last year, I'm glad we got to see them when we did.