Excitement with a stamp on it

Look at this! This gorgeous surprise arrived in my mail box all the way from Janey! She has created this fabric postcard of one of her fabulous drawings by stitching with various machine embroidery stitches onto patterned fabric (ingenious! I would never have thought of that!) and then, it looks to me like she has also added some ink into the mix just to finish it off. THANK YOU JANEY! I love it! And what Janey didn't know was that it arrived just in time for my birthday! And what a lovely birthday I've had. I had a nice one last year - this is the sketch I drew in San Gimignano last birthday.

And a year ago today I went to the Uffizi Gallery in Firenze (Florence, Italy). I LOVE art and (strangely) I love kitch. And I love it when the two coincide. This pencil case is what I bought in the shop at the Uffizi.

I said I've had a lovely birthday this year and here is just a small portion of it...
But the excitement that comes through the mail with a stamp on it won't be ending just yet. For my birthday I'm getting something I'm really excited about, and all I have to do is wait for it to turn up in the mail... Don't worry, you'll be the second to know (after me)!

It's that time of the year...

Spring is sprung, the evenings are warm and longer, the smell of mozzie coils fills the air... I find my mind, once again, turns to cocktails...
We've had visitors staying with us for the last week. It has been really great, especially as it resulted in my trying out a couple of new (well, new to my shakin' repertoire) cocktails. While my taste buds really jumped excitedly with the Margarita, the Cosmopolitan was the most popular, even with the guys completely ignoring its stunning shade of deep pink and just plain guzzling them down.

It's my deal...

I'm making a deck of cards. Here is another batch of completed cards. All cards are 3.5" x 2.75" and are drawn on both sides. (Each image shows both the front and the back.) My suits are a little different to the traditional ones. My 'Hearts' suit actually contains other body parts too. My 'Spades' suit used the basic shape of the spade, but turned it into a footprint. My 'Clubs' suit has a variety of objects that are all 'club' shaped. My 'Diamonds' suit is all food; many of the foods have an element of the diamond shape in them, some don't. It's all a bit of fun.

The King of tippy toes

The two of kidneys

The seven of staphylococci

If you missed seeing the other cards previously posted here, click on the 'playing cards' label below or visit my Flickr site and view the Playing Cards Set.