Am feeling rather fraught today for a variety of reasons. My other blog explains tonight's culinary disaster, my post- Christmas bank statement arrived today (ggaaargh), the dogs have been tracking mud EVERYWHERE in the house, and I realised I was nearly missing a deadline for an ATC swap. Sometimes you just have one of those days. It's generally a glum time of the year anyway - loads of people I know have been struck down by the various flu bugs that are circulating and Andrew has had a cold, which he does seem to be getting over. The weather is cold, wet, windy and squelchy. Anyway, enough moans. Even a nanosecond of reflection is enough to remember that I am immeasurably privileged compared to many - I have a roof over our head, we live in peaceful times, we have enough to eat, warmth, access to healthcare and transport and a whole raft of freedoms. So, on with the show.

Tonight is all about that ATC swap. This is another Do Crafts one, and is one of the regular colour swaps that I enter frequently. This month, the organiser's choice is "Tartan". I've done two cards. The base card is taken from a Blossoms and Butterflies stack, and is glittered - one is a bright fuschia pink and the other is a cheerful fresh green. I cut these out to regulation size. Then I had some fun with shrink plastic. We went to a Scottish wedding a couple of years ago, and I made a thank you card with a thistle stamp. I dug that out, feeling that a Scottish vibe seemed appropriate. So a number of thistles were stamped and I used some of the Sakura Gelly Roll pens to colour the green stem and the pinky lilac for the flower head. Then came the fun bit - switching on the heat gun. The plastic wriggles and curls as it shrinks, and you find yourself convinced it will stick to itself and be ruined but after a moment it magically straightens out, and you have a perfect miniature thistle. I mounted three of these onto a piece of fuschia card with trimmed curvy edges and this was put onto the main card base. Finally the whole was trimmed with some shriekingly loud tartan ribbon. On the green one, I added a square of blue and green tartan check card and layered onto it a picture of a pot of blue flowers and a little blue bird. Alongside I added a blue butterfly, then finally I added highlights to the butterfly wings, leaves and petals with a silver Gelly Roll pen. Labels written on the back, photos taken (one with flash and one without) and then into the envelope for first class posting tomorrow morning - hopefully making the deadline by the skin of my teeth.