Beautiful Babies at Bearly Mine and Blackbird Chickies!

Its a beautiful babies theme at Bearly Mine Challenges for the next fortnight and with prizes from Bearly Mine, Lily of the Valley and Di's Digi Downloads up for grabs its well worth having a play.

For this I used an image called Bathtime Ellie by Digistamp Boutique coloured with promarkers.  The bubbles I coloured with a light blue promarker then added 3d gloss and sprinkled with glamour dust.  The papers are from the Simply Dots and gingham sets HERE.  These are great sets you can use as your background piece or nearer the front, well worth investing, I think the dots is my fav overall :)  I've outlined in silver peel offs and used a little bit of pink distress ink around the edge of the image.
Please pop over and see what the rest of the team have made and join in!

Would like to enter into...

Sassy Thursdays - Pastels
My partner in crafting crime - Inspiration photo

And onto the baby blackbirds again. Aren't they getting big now?  I took this pic this morning so they'll be about 12 days old now.  All 3 are thriving by the looks of them :)

Bottletops, Blackbirds and a Krimpvarkie!

The very talented Paula is hosting this fortnights challenge at The Spotlight Challenges, we've also had a huuuuuge makeover so please pop by and let us know what you think!  The Spotlight Challenges are a little bit tougher and we look at a style, product or technique showing various ways of using them and Paula's spotlight is on Bottletops!
I was a bit wary of this but she said plastic was fine so I remembered a project in Craft Stamper I'd saved in my 'to do' list from the January 2011 issue and its an altered box by Hels Sheridan.
The other girls samples are fantastic, I'm going to HAVE to get some metal ones next!

I used an old dishwasher tablet box and coated it with gesso then added a couple of coats of acrylic paint then I've stamped paper artsy stamps in brown, black and gold brilliance inks, edging with a gold paint dabber.  The feet are made out of milk bottle tops (the plastic jug kind!) and painted with gesso and gold acrylic then I cut one up and threaded the pieces through a blue gem brad to make the flower at the front.  Now I have a new mail holder to pop DD's mail into instead of leaving it on the stairs and its all recycled too :)

I'd like to enter this into...

Lexis - Anything but a card

Creations by Gill M - Birds in the Garden

Fabulous Friday - Birds

Fashionista Friday - Recycle (Earth Day)

And as promised here's a Blackbird update.  I took this on Friday afternoon so that was 5 days from the last pic here.  Mom & Dad had popped out for lunch and the babies were absolutely fast asleep ahhhh!  I don't get too close, I stretch and click and hope for the best lol!  Haven't they grown loads in just 5 days!  I'll try for another one on Wednesday so that will be another 5 days older and see how they're getting along.

Also as previously mentionned we have a resident Krimpvarkie!  In case you didn't know, my OH is South African.  I'm absolutely rubbish at languages but I pick up the occasional word and this one night during a dream I was speaking Afrikaans quite fluently.  When I woke up I couldn't remember it again except for the word Krimpvarkie which is Afrikaans for Hedgehog!  He's actually coming over quite quick for his supper now so I managed to get a pic or two :)  He might be a she, I don't actually know but I adore them!  I don't have many slugs in my garden yay!

Ta ta for now, need some anti-histamine as hayfever is getting baaaaaad now! x