Postman's knocking again...

The card I had to make this time was for Jo on the theme of 'Yee ha!  Ride 'em Cowboy'.   I know several people have found this a difficult theme - though you wouldn't think so from the resulting cards,  but as well as the Britain's farm animals and horses I have, which I recently blogged about for the Collections theme, I also had some lovely little swoppit cowboys (so called because their bodies came apart and you could swap heads, legs , bodies and accessories to make different combination - though they're a bit ancient for such games now!).  After a bit of fiddling around with photo backgrounds and various ideas, I came up with this:

The caption reads:   The gang were amazed when Billy the Kid showed up - they were expecting someone taller'.   It seemed to fit the bill, especially as I was able to turn their heads around to look at the newcomer with something like astonishment!

On my theme of Water, I received a really lovely hand drawn and coloured card from Jo 

I just love the little pairs of of feet peeking out of the water.  Thanks, Jo, I love it.

Little collections 1 - Little wild horses

I've loved the toys made by Britains since I was very small and my father bought me a handful of the 'new' plastic farm figures made by Herald for Britains in the 1950s.  I still have one or two of those originals - they have 1954 and 55 stamped on them.  During my childhood I amassed a huge collection culminating in my early teens with a whole collection of lead toys sold by a local toy shop that was closing down.
When I left home and got married they remained at my parents' house and were rifled and decimated by various younger cousins and children of friends  At some point the entire lead collection was given away to someone who promptly sold them at auction for quite a sum - blame my father's soft heart.   After that I reclaimed what was left and my daughter and her friends lost quite a few pieces.  Eventually, the remnants were confined to the loft and when we came to move I couldn't find them.   Some months later, a box arrived from the new owner who had found what was left when doing a loft conversion - some of which were damaged, mainly by heat.  I was glad to have back what was left - and amazed that some of the tiny items had survived.   They are all made to 1:32* scale and include cats and rabbits which are incredibly detailed.
A few years ago I realised that such toys were being sold on ebay and couldn't resist buying the odd item.  The wild horses are some of the rarer lead ones - introduced quite late at about the time the plastic ones were coming out.  I love them for their depiction of speed and movement, though they don't have the fine detail which was possible in the early plastic figures.  They aren't easy to find but I've managed to aquire a herd of nine led by a Champion the Wonderhorse lookalike!

Mainly, they live in a drawer, but I though Lesley's suggestion of showing a few collections, taken up here by Jane, was a good excuse to let them out for a gallop.  Only trouble is that now the whole lot will be wanting their turn in the limelight  - want to see a collection of rabbits or goats anyone?

* each of these is about an inch and three quarters to the withers.