Crafty Individuals' April Challenge - Time for Summer

This is my first bit of crafting since our disaster, but my goal has been to be in a position to make something for Crafty Individuals for their April challenge. I really struggled with it as I couldn't find any of my supplies, everything having been either trashed, or thrown into packing crates. Once I had got what I needed around me though, I really got into the zone and it was a lovely feeling of normality. We are still spending all of our time sorting out problems with the house and dealing with the insurance company, and have had problems with the plumbing in our rental accommodation which has caused additional anxiety.

Anyway, enough of that! The Crafty Individuals' challenge for April is 'Time for Summer'. I thought it would be fun to interpret it as Summer 2012 with a Great Britain theme, as I wanted to use the two new sets of GB stamps from Crafty Individuals, the collage one, CI 343 and the one with the individual images and the flag, CI 334. I wanted it to have a flavour of the Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, and a feel of lots of tourists visiting London this summer.

I painted the divided tray with Fresco Finish in Baltic Blue, then their crackle, then a layer of Sky Blue. I painted the grunge letters to spell out Summer using a mixture of the two, and 2012 using foam letters. I used Papermania Portobello Road papers for the backgrounds, and also cut the bunting out of the cover sheet and adhered it with dimensional Pinflair glue. I added a crown charm with some adhesive gems on it to the 0 of 2012.

Here's a closer view. For the first section, top left, I used the Beefeater image from People and Places Book 2 from Crafty Individuals, and added another crown charm again with adhesive gems. To the right of this is a section with the collage stamp of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben and the London Eye stamped in Cobalt Blue archival ink. Far right is the London Bridge ticket stamp and a London Bus charm, with a bus ticket I found in a coat pocket the other day after I had washed it!

Across the centre I have stamped the quote stamp. Bottom left is a piece of the Portobello paper depicting a post card so I have added some used stamps and a post box charm. The charms were on key rings and when I removed the shanks a little bit of the enamel came away, so I topped it up with red nail polish! To the right of this is the flag stamp and the Keep Calm and Carry On wording. You can just about see a tiny porcelain tea pot and tea cup as my idea of keeping calm is to make tea - very British! Finally to the right of this is the medallion part of the individual stamp set, with the 'In England's Green and Pleasant Land' quote.

It is my birthday today as I am writing this so we are trying to have a day off 'house stuff' although we hadn't had any water here for 24 hours but fortunately that is sorted out now. Yesterday we went out for an amazing Thai buffet and then my best friend took me for a facial. We are going to do a BBQ later although it is a little cooler than it has been, and I am off in a mo for a browse around Hobbycraft. So nice to do normal things! Thank you so much to everyone who has kept in touch; it means so much. I will try to blog now and again but am still a bit bogged down and don't have very much time.