Scrambling and a Trip to Glendalough with Linda

Over at the Hero Arts Group yesterday Jayne hosted a 90 minute scramble. I just loved her scramble theme - use one or more white flowers, use a script or cursive sentiment and also use a gorgeous photo, of what looked like old tiles, for inspiration.

As usual I was all over the place during the scramble, I started off with one idea, didn't like it and scrapped it after 20 minutes. So I started all over again with 70 minutes to go and this is the card I made.



Stamps (Hero Arts) - Large Petal Background & Messages with Flourish

I started by making a card base and embossing the sentiment. Because I was rushing I didn't emboss it perfectly but thanks to a great tip from Donna, I added some white gel pen to the patchy places. Then I stamped portions of the background stamp four times and cut out the images to make a layered flower. To finish I added a dollop of glossy accents to the flower centre and threw on some beads. As the tiles in Jayne's inspiration photo had a distressed look about them, I did some distressing around the edges of the card.

Well now on to the next part of my post for today. Recently my friend Linda came over from the US to visit. I first got to know Linda in 2009 through the Hero Arts group on Flickr. I know a lot of good friendships have been made all around the world thanks to that group. Linda was a big fan of ScrapFest and I thought that sometime I'd go there and get to meet Linda and other friends from the group. But unfortunately ScrapFest is no more, so instead of meeting Linda in the US we got to meet here in Ireland. It was brilliant finally getting to meet Linda. Well I have to say when we met at Dublin Airport, I felt like I was meeting an old friend and we had plenty of time over the next week to chat away to our hearts content. Poor Linda must have been jet lagged but kept going the whole day and we even did a scramble together that evening. It was great fun scrambling side by side with Linda. Lol my scramble card is so awful I won't be posting it here but Linda made an adorable card which you'll find here. Linda completed her scramble card in no time, in fact I was still inking a background and she was done!

So after a sleep, we thought we stay fairly local the next day and headed off to Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains National Park and Russborough House. Unfortunately, after an absolutely glorious, warm, sunny day the previous day, the weather let us down a bit and there were drizzly showers every so often during the day. Now I'll stop rambling on and show some photos. Just an advance warning - I love taking photos when I'm out and about so this is a bit of a photo heavy post!

Glendalough Round Tower in the distance

Linda at the monastic settlement in Glendalough

A deer Linda spotted as we were walking along the boardwalk to the Upper Lake. The deer are usually in the more remote parts of the National Park so we were lucky to see this one.

Linda at the Upper Lake in Glendalough

Poulanass Waterfall

We came across this sculpture in the sensory garden that has the same uncontrollable hair as I do!

Lots of wildflowers were in full bloom including the Greater Stitchwort. It was thanks to the Park's lovely wildflower guide that I was able to find out the name of this pretty flower!


If you'd like to see different views of Glendalough on sunnier days, you'll find more in my posts here and here. I can't believe I didn't take any photos of Russborough House, but I've been there so many times and must have loads photos of the place stored somewhere (!) on my pc. Anyway if you'd like to see photos of this stately home built in the 1740s you'll find them on this website.

I think I've shown so many photos today that I'll leave it till another day to show more photos from a trip Linda and I did around the country. Hope you're having a lovely weekend:)