T stands for Taking flight at TIOT

One again I'm doubling up! You may need a drink to sustain you through what will be quite a long photographic haul!

Our new theme at Try It On Tuesday is'I Believe I Can Fly' and we would love to see something with wings, on any project you choose!
The Design Team have, I think, excelled themselves on showing all kinds of winged creatures, please do take a look!

I have taken the opportunity to make a Birthday card - stocks are getting low and I am going to have some distractions for a couple of months - this is made with someone in mind.

    
I have kept it flat for posting - I am pretty sure that the flower will lie flat enough!
I started by looking through my paper stash - need to get that down a bit..once I had the colours in mind I used some infusions onto some sketch book paper.

and cut out a random amount as I had a vague idea about what I wanted to do.

I used distress inks through a Paper Artsy Sarah Nauman leaves stencil, masking as I went along so as not to muddy the colours.I added some random text
I then trimmed it and layered it with the papers

I wasn't very happy, even though I had inked the edges it didn't stand out enough so I inked up the tail of a butterfly from a set from the Works to make a border. As you can see I used a piece of paper to prevent the ink going onto the paper underneath. 

Leaves using the same stencil, edged with Tea Stain DI 
I experimented a bit...

….and left out the doily.

Last week I had intended posting my photos from our visit to  Dalemain House but life got in the way…so here they are today, especially for joining Bluebeard and Elizabeth for T stands for Tuesday.

Lots of lush greenery but that wasn't the reason for our visit..

Dalemain House  is quite famous for it's blue poppies(meconopsis) and I must say when I first caught sight of them I gasped! They are in a less formal part of the garden

A great colour combination

One of my favourite views

A last look at the poppies as we headed back to the house

The gardener was tidying the gravel

I still have lots of photos of the garden so I will try to post them during the week

 This man decided to photo bomb my photo of the front of the house but I didn't want to wait to take another, we were headed for Larch Cottage Nurseries - I had a brochure that has been around for ages so we decided to take the short drive and go there for coffee.

I had a Polenta lemon cake and coffee, Hubby had tea and a pear and almond tart

The cafe is on two levels - we went upstairs to see the garden from above- we were the last customers of the day on the upper level

The nursery sells lots of garden ornaments but unlike the food were very expensive!
Elizabeth is waiting to greet you with your drink related post.

The birds remind me that I am also here for TIOT so please do hop over for details of the challenge and to see the DT examples!

Thanks for looking, Chris