quick! bag a card!

I love cards and I love bags ...

and if they have a hare or two on them, well, so much the better!

Mother Hare Muskova inspects my gorgeous Winter Hare bag from Lucy and gives it the full (hare) stamp of approval!

Lucy has an etsy shop LilyBiscuit where she sells her cards and bags, all handmade by her ofcourse and

she has a website Lucy Rebecca Watkinson where she has more of her art on display.

After a visit there I just had to have the 2 sets of hare cards and this gorgeous bag!

it was hard to part with this adorable hare in a field but my mum had her eyes on it! I shall have to get a replacement!

ofcourse every time I visit my mum I get to see it because it's on display. My mum, like me, keeps all the cards she gets. Or should that be - me, like my mum?

and I still have this couple. They are keepers!

quite a while ago, a long while ago infact, I won a writing competition run by Tamera and her sister Toni based on this etsy treasury with the prize being a gift voucher from Toni's etsy shop The BuckToothed Bunny!

Well, the voucher was easily spent, plus a little more, and I received 2 excellent quality bags from Toni.

There were no rabbits to be seen in the Bunny shop so I settled for doggies instead and on my run arounds I make sure to hold my bag 'picture out'!

here it is filled with apple tree branches, on it's very first outing, for Arabella and Wesley.

I got these from the Secretary of the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society here in Edinburgh. He and his wife were so kind as to let me visit their apple-tree-filled-garden and stuff as many apple twigs, leaves and tasty branches in my BuckToothed Bag as possible!

Needless to say they have been devoured already with only barkless stubs left!

The RCHS was founded in 1809! Goodness, 202 years old! and did you know there are literally hundreds of different types of apples and the RCHS holds an 'apple day'? I didn't ashamedly! I've been whitewashed by the supermarkets but now I know better. Arabella and Wesley will be eager to visit it this year for 'taste testing'.

And one last non-card and non-bag point - if you live in Scotland and can hardly grow a green thing then rest assured that it's not really you, but the inclement weather here - this page on 'Hardy Plants' shows you the plants that will flourish under greenless-thumbs!

(hardy is the Scottish word for anything tough and robust - eg your teenage son going out wearing a T-shirt in the freezing weather - 'och! he's a hardy lad!')

(and for a few more 'Scottish words' check out Here - I rather like the last one, wabbit)

anyway! back to the bags - my second bag has a love heart on it with the word Love in many different languages

I speak Russian so I zoomed in on 'loobov' straight away, and I had a wee go at pronouncing the German version and er, a muffled noise for the Hebrew one ...

just perfect!

Tamera is a big rabbit lover like me and she has an etsy shop too, Tamera Herrod, and like me, she loves making etsy 'treasuries'.

I particularly love stopping by Tamera's Ts because they always, always make me laugh and smile!

Making a treasury is an art form and Tamera is very gifted in this arena.

Check them out, you won't be disappointed.

Another rabbit lover and owner, em, I mean co-habitator, is Diana from etsy shop QiPapers. I love Diana's work and when she unveiled these new old-cards on her blog a while ago I just had to have some.

(I had also been in the same boat myself, but on a different sea, ending up with something like 18,000 cards from my unresearched and over presumptuous marketing ideas!)(albeit 100% extra had been printed in error, so I got 9000 more than planned for).

Muskova approves of them, particularly the white rabbits!

For some reason one of each card never seems enough for me. Infact that could be applied to nearly all of my treasures.

and this is my other set from Diana. Love the textures! and I love the past years date on them. I'm not date fussy, or event fussy, Christmas cards at Easter are fine and dandy by me. Happy Birthday Son is perfectly acceptable if the hare is agreeable, thank you very much.

I was swithering whether to include this bag here, but decided to go for it as I love the illustration.

it came out last year, as a 9p recycled plastic bag-for-life by a UK supermarket I loathe.

Why do I loathe them? because a couple of years ago they ignored public outcries about their animal cruelty policies and still insist on selling caged battery hen eggs.

So in all the years I have lived here in Scotland I have spent less £5 in their store. (and that was all in one day because I bought 50 of these bags at 9p each as soon as I saw them).

I won't give them any more publicity though, I score out their store name at the bottom of the bag in pen and texters, and I try not to get irritated when I see actors on TV doing ads for them - do they not have a conscience?! or enough money already?! Don't they know that actors are 'acting' - not endorsing?

suffice to say it's name starts with T and ends in O.

Nice hare though!

so on a completely better note - and with full concern for an animal's welfare, I am proud to boast about the newest card to be stocked in the Hare Preservation Trust's online shop! I got my set just the other day!

This absolutely adorable card of a orphaned baby hare being hand reared by a fosterer is doing great work for the Trust which relies on donations, memberships and shop sales to keep afloat.

the leveret was photographed by talented photographer Sean Hunter who gave the image free of charge to the Trust to raise funds. Thanks Sean!

This is one of my favourite images of Sean's work and I could 'awww' over this baby all day long. I love that the feeder is wearing a heart shaped pendant, isn't that a lovely touch?

I have been the Volunteer Business Development Manager for the Trust for nearly 2 years now. In that time I have expanded their shop to include many talented artists, most of whom I met thru etsy, and raise awareness of the Trust.

I started a blog for the Trust and it gets updated occasionally. Depending on my own hare production activities!

I have plans in the works for the Trust, when I find a spare minute in my day between making hares and writing stories, and soon all the clothes will be from an ethical, environmentally aware supplier and I'm excited to say that Jane from etsy shop The Dog House will be doing our printing on them!

I'm lucky to live in the same town as Jane and now I own some of her bags! I've had my eye on the tiny treats bags for rather a long time, and I just adore the Tricks for Treats greyhound jumping thru the hoop on this small bag.

just how cute are those minature paw prints?? and I got to choose the numbers too!

Ofcourse Arabella and Wesley wanted to know why it was not rabbit foot prints on the bags instead - what's with the bun-poo-shaped toe pads they said?

Well, I said, Jane just loves her greyhounds Max and Molly but perhaps the Trust could get their own hare footprint pouches instead ? ... and that was definitely met with approval from my two!

so one last pic of that baby hare again! the sets come in packs of 4 - one to give and, er, 3 to keep!

cards - can I ever have enough? bags - always room for just one more?

Answers - No and Yes!