A Little Winter Garden in a Tin

I'm working my way through some half finished projects and came across this tin with a couple of half made cocoons in it.   I think the idea might have originally been for a midnight garden last summer, but I decided it was perfect to round off the winter and get another 'work in progress' finished!

The backdrop is a piece of old rust printed cloth that is lying on my desk waiting to be used in another project, but I thought they went quite well together!

  I hope you are all staying safe and well in these challenging times.  I have been amazed at the selfless acts of kindness from the folks in my community - it lifts the spirit and renews my faith in mankind when I see such a supportive group of people on our local self-isolation support group pages.  I hope you are all getting the support you need and are coping fairly well with this horrible situation.

Sending virtual hugs to you and linking up via Julia over at WOYWW.   

Paper Artsy - Grunge Paste Challenge

 The latest Paper Artsy challenge is to use Grunge Paste,and over on their blog I was inspired by Liesbeth Fidder's mosaic with it's beautiful frame looking like stained glass.  This gave me the idea to make a garden path, with some old pieces of sea-worn pottery, using Grunge Paste as the grout.  I also used it with rusting powder and stencilled it on the background papers.  I added antique clay pipe stems, wire and beading, threads around the wires, hand embroidery and a tiny needle-felted birds nest.

I wanted to create the feeling of moving away from winter, and to show the subtle changes as Spring arrives, growth coming up from below, little hints of greenery, the green beads replacing the white frosty ones and of course the birds nest with little pieces of green moss and lichen.