How I love the autumn, with it's changeable days. Today I woke up to glorious sunshine and as I looked at the garden, I could see the silken threads of spiders' webs glistening with dew. All the leaves are turning now, with greens, golds, browns, yellows, brightest oranges and reds all burnished with copper and bronze hews. The berries are plump and bright red just waiting for the birds to come and taste. Everything appears to look mellow, getting ready for a winter's sleep.

This week we took the caravan to Shrewsbury and spent five days just drinking in the autumnal beauty of the countryside. We watched squirrels collecting their acorns, hedgehogs rooting for insects and feeding themselves up for the winter retreat, and birds building themselves up on juicey blackberries. Now is the time to be putting food out for our wild animals as they prepare for hybernation.

Even though hanging baskets and planters will look rather untidy if left to themselves over the winter, try to leave them as they provide a harbour for insects etc, which in turn will feed the birds. Look all about you and drink in the all the lovely sights, sounds and colours of this glorious season.

To mark the advent of autumn, I decided to take part in an altered tin swap with an autumnal theme. I really enjoyed this project and loved the bright colours used. The challenge was to alter a tin, box or spectacle case with the theme of autumn.

I was given a cd rom tin for my birthday - something that might have found it's way into the rubbish bin in any 'normal' household, but great treasure to me. It was from AOL and inside was a trial cd rom for their internet services. I had the idea of turning it into a small memory album.

I painted the edges of the tin with copper leafing pen, and found some images on a copyright free sight, of autumn leaves. I was given a sample of printable cotton fabric by a friend of mine, and so thought to print out my autumn leave design onto it. Unfortunately my printer decided to have a tantrum about it and wouldn't accept my material, and I ended up drawing all the leaves and painting them with my brush marker pens.

I must say, I thought the finished product looked very bright and gaudy - bordering on garish. Then I looked for an autumnal backing paper I knew I had somewhere which was printed with a photographic image of autumn leaves. When I eventually rooted it out, I realized that my painting wasn't too far out at all!! In fact, as I looked out at the trees over the last week I can honestly say that in nature the colours are even more garish.

I used the fabric to cover the top of the tin and the backing paper to cover the base. I then put some lavish gold braid around the edge. Whilst rummaging around in my craft box I came upon a beautiful gold button in the shape of a large cabbage rose - ok you might think it's out of season, but believe me there are still some late roses blooming in sheltered gardens. I saw them for myself this week in Shrewsbury - in fact a lot of the summer flowers are still in bloom down there.

I also found a lovely tawny-coloured heart that was carved in a beautiful swirling pattern. The heart had a bale and so could be used as a pendant. I stuck the rose in the top left-hand corner of the lid with silicon glue and just before it dried I added some beautiful fibres and ribbons in autumnal colours. A bow on the other side secured the heart pendant.

For the inside, I decorated the cd rom laying a background of butterscotch coloured mulberry paper, which was ripped and torn to give it a feathery edge. I then covered some card with double-sided adhesive film, layed down a piece of lace onto that. I sprinkled green glitter over the lace and pressed it firmly onto the double-sided film. Then I pulled off the lace, leaving gaps on the film where the glitter could not penetrate the lace, I then sprinkled on some gold, again pressing it onto the film. I cut leaf shapes out of the glittered card and arranged them on the mulberry paper background.

I wanted some pages, so that whoever received my tin in a swap could use it for keeping memories. So before I decorated the cd rom, I drew around it on some orange card - it took three sheet of A4, folded in half. I cut the circles out, being careful to leave about 2 inches uncut on the fold. Then I stuck them together to form a 'concertina' of pages. The cd rom was glued to the first page, and the last page glued to the base of the tin.

I finished the tin off by placing some letters (that looked like old-fashioned typewriter keys) to spell the word 'memories' scattered down the center of the lid - like falling leaves.

I want to thank my wonderful friends, who rang to tell us that they had booked to go to this lovely place and asked us if we would like to go along. We had the most delightful time and enjoyed their company enormously. In fact we have been caravanning together for many years and have experienced some of the best holidays we can recall. I love them dearly.