Ah those fun filled days of Summer.  Huddling up to the radiator, freezing cold while the rain comes down outside like stair rods, piling the extra blankets on the bed cause it turned so cold, sitting on the beach wrapped in ten layers and three beach towels, eating sand laden sandwiches while the wind roars by at hurricane speed, dipping your toes in the North Sea and running squealing like a little piggy back up the beach because it was so cold you’d expect to see icebergs floating by!  Oh the joys of Summer in the North East of England when I was growing up!!  All that and more I have to say.  You did see the weather over the weekend for the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations didn’t you??  I rest my case, lol!

But one of the joys of Summer for me as a child was a trip to the Pick Your Own strawberry fields in July or early August, assuming of course that the sun had appeared long enough and was warm enough that year to ripen the berries!  We would go every year without fail, bringing home big containers of plump, sweet strawberries which we would have to eat in a few days because they don’t keep.  We would always puree quite a lot and either freeze or bottle/can it, and then in the depths of a snowy winter there would suddenly be a fresh strawberry trifle on the table for “afters” on a Sunday tea time.  I can still remember that blast of Summer on your lips when the snow was falling outside.

So when I saw the House Mouse & Friends challenge for this fortnight of “Here Comes The Sun”, I thought about what summer meant to me and I immediately thought of the strawberries, so I made this strawberry themed card.

I water coloured the image with Distress Inks and a few Marvy Markers, adding a few little drops of Crystal Stickles to some of the berry seeds, cut it out with a Deckle Edge Rectangle Spellbinders Die and mounted it on to some blue card.  The sentiment is from a free Molly Blooms clear set.

The lovely strawberry paper is from Making Memories and I paired it with some dotty paper from MME , a freebie from a UK card magazine, as was the Molly Blooms stamp set.    The ric-rac is actually sticky backed paper trim from a company called Trim W/Flair and it comes in really useful sometimes.  I based the LO on the current sketch at Sketch Saturday (rotated it) and kept it very simple with just a few gems from Kars to finish it off.

Card Recipe:

  • Card: Blank from Michaels ~ The Paper Company blue scraps
  • DP: Making Memories English Garden ~ My Minds Eye Summer papers
  • Stamps: House Mouse Sleeping With Strawberries ~ Molly Blooms sentiment
  • Ink: Versafine Black ~ Distress Ink Frayed Burlap, Vintage Photo, Antique Linen, Festive Berries, Aged Mahogany, Milled Lavender & Victorian Velvet
  • Embellies: Trim W/Flair Paper Ric Rac ~ Crystal Stickles ~ Kars Pearls ~ Marvy Uchida Markers
  • Tools: Cuttlebug ~ Spellbinders Die

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Challenges:

House Mouse & Friends Monday Challenge ~ Fun In The Sun

Sketch Saturday ~ Current Sketch (I rotated it)