Friday, November 4, 2011

Bonfire Night and Happy Anniversary

In the UK, the 5th of November is Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night, which means a LOT of fireworks! Either in a public display or in the garden at home, there are usually lots of bonfires, sparklers and big bangs!  Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated every year on this date in memory of the foiled attempt in 1605 on the life of the monarch at that time, King James I.  A man called Guy Fawkes led a plot to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder to take the lives of the King and the Government, but the plot was discovered and Guy Fawkes was executed.  The survival of the King was celebrated across London with bonfires, and all across the UK to this day, every November 5th is celebrated with bonfires and fireworks.  Sometimes a 'Guy' (a man's shape made up of some old clothes stuffed with paper) is put on the bonfire, after the children take the figure around to collect a penny for the Guy.  I remember as a child that the bonfire at the public display was always enormous, but the fireworks were always my favourite :)

If you'd like to know more about the British traditions behind Guy Fawkes Night you can click here but to celebrate like a true Brit all you really need are some sparklers and fireworks and the will to light them and enjoy them :)

In our house, the 5th of November is also my parents' wedding anniversary; we used to buy fireworks every year to set off in the garden but since we now have five dogs it's not quite as important to us to celebrate at home; there are plenty of local firework displays so hopefully we'll be able to catch one tomorrow night :)

In the meantime, I'd like to share with you my card for my parents; I had a lot of fun with this card and it got a little grungy in the end!  The borders are scraps of BoBunny paper, embossed with swirls and then inked with gold ink and Fired Brick distress ink.  The central image is stamped in black StazOn, with the heart shape cut out and then inked in spiced marmalade and dusty concorde Distress Ink, with the central heart shape outlined with a black Posca pen.

I am actually addicted to small sparkly gems, so of course I had to use some to outline the heart shape, and then added the caption using letter stamps on some leftovers pieces of the BoBunny paper.

Thank you so much for visiting us today!

Happy scrapping!

Gayle xx

1 Scrappy thoughts:

dianapena8 said...

What an interesting celebration, thank you for sharing with us part of the history, I hope you had a sparkly day :)
Happy anniversary to your parents, the card you made is so pretty, you always use a lot of cool techniques.