Grunge Flower Birthday Card for That's Crafty!

Hello on a rather dull Friday! It's still rather hot and sticky although we had a very loud thunderstorm in the early hours which woke us up and then there was quite a lot of rain. It's cleared now but is very grey and cloudy. I'm rather glad we don't get temperatures like they do in London as my daughter Sarah said it was an unbearable 37 degrees there yesterday and the design studio where she works was really awful. It was only just below 30 here but I still got puffy ankles!

I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with a rather colourful and quick to make card on a floral theme. Hope you like it.

Hoping for cooler weather over the weekend and that you're coping wherever you are.

Have a great weekend whatever you're doing.
Fliss xx

Holiday photos and more

Hello everyone, hope you're all well and coping if you have a heatwave as we do here on the UK south coast at the moment.
Just got back from our holiday to the Norwegian fjords which we greatly enjoyed as the scenery was spectacular and we were lucky with the weather as there was only 1 day with some rain. The rest of the time was mostly hot and sunny which made it rather weird to see snow on the mountain tops and ice on the glaciers we visited.

I have a few pics to share here. We stayed at Balestrand, a pretty village with traditional houses with carved wooden dragon decorations typical in the area. The fjord was the longest one called Sognefjord and it was strange the water was salt so far inland.

The food was largely fish based which I love as it's my favourite and I tried out several I haven't had before - catfish, coal fish and monkfish to name but a few. The only downside to going to Norway is the astronomical price of everything - £5 for a rather bad cappuccino (Norwegian ones are nothing like Italian!!!), the same for a 330ml bottle of fruit juice, almost £50 for a bottle of wine and so on.

Kvikne's Hotel in Balestrand where we stayed, room with a fabulous fjord view

Typical property in Balestrand with dragon decoration

View from the Akvarium jetty at Balestrand and apparently much painted

Little fjord view towards Balestrand

Further little fjord view

Esefjorden flora

Esefjorden reflections as the water was like glass

Waterfall seen on rib boat trip (exceedingly scary at first!!!)

Goats spotted on this very small scrap of relatively flat land, the rest of the area had trees everywhere and a few more lone goats were seen in these. Farming in this area is very difficult due to the lack of flat ground and we saw many tiny farms on mountainsides.

First view of the glacier area from the boat

Closer view with 2 glaciers in the distance

Supplebreen and yes, that is ice at the top, it was a blue grey in colour

Boyabreen with a top and bottom glacier as the middle section had melted

Mundal book town with lots of books in the most peculiar places, this one being the most picturesque

The top of Esefjorden

Vik Stave church complete with carved dragons

Vik Stave church and churchyard

Amazing view of layered mountains taken from Vik quayside and the photo doesn't really do it justice

There were lots of jellyfish in Vik harbour!

Bergen harbour where we spent a few hours on our way back. The tall ships race was on and the harbour was packed with masted ships (not shown here as it was too difficult for me to take photos of them). Andy was in his element and took 100s of photos.

Hope you like these and will be catching up as soon as I can.

Link to my post for last Friday at That's Crafty! Blog where I was sharing 2 cards made with 1 stencil technique.

Fliss xx

Catching Up!

Hello, I hope you're all well and sorry for the lack of blogging lately. I've been very busy again with accounting and VAT work, making samples for Hochanda shows (One Day Special last month and shows last week) plus still doing things for my father in law whose progress is quite slow. He comes to us every Sunday for lunch and I still do his shopping and various other stuff too.
I'm over at That's Crafty! Blog today with a rather frosty mixed media collage which I created for the shows last week - these were part of Hochanda's 12 Days of Christmas - and it was very odd making Christmas cards in a heatwave I can say!
This one is more wintery than festive and a tiny bit steampunk as if you look closely at the snowflake, you'll see the quirky spanner heads.

I also forgot to share the post for last week and this one is more than a bit steampunk, featuring the same bird and if you read that post plus this one, you'll see where the snowflake appeared on both.

I won't be around next week as on Monday quite early we're off on our travels, going to our long awaited holiday in Norway a very long way down a fjord and I'm starting to get rather excited!

See you when I get back.
Fliss xx