It has been a long two weeks since my previous post, and one that has certainly been challenging and a little overwhelming.
Firstly, however, I will mention this week’s challenge at The Male Room.

This one would normally excite me a lot, and I would have had so much fun with it, but with everything else going on, I have had very little time to craft.  I love playing with watercolour techniques!!
So here is my very quick card…….

I started off with some watercolour paper which I spritzed with water.  Then I collected a couple of leaves from the garden – it is Autumn here in Australia and the leaves are starting to fall from the trees.
Then I used some Distress Oxide inks, in Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade and Fired Brick, and splodged (technical term) some ink straight from the ink pad onto a craft mat, and then spritzed it with water.  I then took my leaf and used it as a stamp, collected some random colour onto the leaf and pressed it onto the paper.  I did this three times, allowing it to dry in between. Then I outlined the shape of the leaves using a Black Dylusions Paint Pen.
Once I had completed my leaf “stamping”, I couldn’t decide whether it looked more like leaves, or like fire.  Which brings me to the reason for my challenging and overwhelming couple of weeks.

We live in a beautiful part of Australia, but as with most of Australia, bushfires are always a threat.  Ten days ago, a bushfire started not far from where we live.  Fortunately for us, the incredibly strong winds pushed the fire in the opposite direction.  Unfortunately, that direction was straight towards our favourite beachside town, one we spend a lot of time in, which is only 15 minutes drive away.  70 homes in Tathra were destroyed, along with so much more.

We are feeling incredibly grateful that we still have our home and that no lives were lost in the fires.  Still, we are small and close-knit community and the devastation is heartbreaking.  The pictures don’t really show how much devastation there is.

Our favourite beach is still just as good though, we spent the day there yesterday.  It was amazing to see all along the shore line, burnt, black leaves off the eucalyptus trees.  They must have been blown out during the fire storm and now the ocean is washing them back up onto the beach.

It’s going to be a long and difficult clean up and recovery.
I have made my card this week a “Thank you” card, in honour of the brave firefighters who saved so many houses and lives and fought the bushfires for days on end in extreme heat and wind.

That’s all from me for today.  I will try to get more creative this week and share some more projects with you.  In the meantime,
Happy stamping,
Chris
xx