Carving pumpkins!

Halloween at The Botanic Gardens


It's been a lovely relaxing bank holiday after all the mayhem over the past few weeks. We took the girls to The Botanic Gardens to see the pumpkin display and it was a great opportunity to get those Autumnal photos. Plenty of new material to scrap!




Last night we met up with some friends for a drink and before we met them we took a trip to the cinema to see 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas'. It was such a moving story. I read the book only last week and usually a movie disappoints afterwards however this was not the case. The story was very true to the original storyline and was sensitively played by the two little boys. When we went inter-railing back in '95 we had an opportunity to visit Auschwitz with some Polish friends and it was a harrowing place to visit - but one I don't regret as it told a story that should never be forgotten. We stood in the original gas chambers and watching those scenes brought back that trip to me. It was an eerie place to be - even in the height of Summer when we were there, the place felt cold and you couldn't hear a bird sing...One thing that will never leave me about that place is the display rooms of shoes, suitcases, glasses, toys. Go and see this movie..

Jewellery Mania




I've been busy making jewellery for the Christmas season which is ready to be unleashed any day now - well probably the day after Halloween LOL! I'm taking a stand at the Castleknock Educate Together School Craft Fair on Sunday 30th November, so I thought I might get myself organised. I've made all of these pieces this week and they are currently available in stock. Contact me if you would like to order any pieces. I use the best quality glass beads and I have a love of Murano glass from Venice - and some of these pieces contain unique pieces from Murano, semi precious stones, Cloisonne stones, Swarovski beads and pearls as well as Indian and Lampwork glass beads to name a few. They will be on sale next weekend at the Halloween Megascrap ;-). Prices start at €25 - details on request. Further photos and details over on my jewellery blog.

TFL
XX

Sometimes things just go missing...

Last Sunday I attended a great workshop called 'Moving on with Textiles'. I had a fear of it as I have no machine sewing experience. However I cracked my fear and succeeded in making two items thanks to the great instruction from our 2 tutors. I came home quite proud of my achievement as it was way more than I expected...Anyway we were using disolvable fabric for our textile boxes so I dunked mine in water to dissolve the said fabric and left it on a plate to dry out.


This is what I made at the course - a little textile bowl and a textile box which are both made by adding layers of textile which is machine sewn together with lots of interconnecting stitches (around 7 hours of work I might add!!!). This is it in it's raw state - I have to add some beading details at some stage...


Anyway on with the story... so off I went to Amsterdam that evening and I left instructions to himself to move it into the window area to dry out. So when I got home from Amsterdam I looked for it and it was nowhere to be seen. HHHHHmmmmm???? So I rang himself and asked if there was anyway he would have thrown it out. Shock horror no he says 'I wouldn't do that to you'. He had no recollection of seeing it and didn't remember moving it etc. I was still slightly suspicious so I rummaged and rummaged in the bin and there it was - my beautiful masterpiece - all mangled up at the end of the bin. HHHhhhhmmmm!!! You can imagine the following conversation - steam and expletives! Still nobody died it was just some fabric....Even so do you think it looks like waste packaging???? ;-)LOL!

Fast forward 2 days and I arrived home last night after dropping the girls to a birthday party. Around 7pm I went to arrange to pick them up and couldn't find my keys (car, gates, house everything!!!). As I had used the keys to get inside the house and the car outside was unlocked and they were nowhere to be seen inside -I had to assume that I had left them in the front door and they had been robbed. Panic insued - thinking of all the stupid things to do!!! There had been a knock on the door - a salesman selling some tickets or other and I hadn't answered it. So there was my culprit. When himself came home and discovered the disaster I was using my textile box as amunition to excuse my amnesia and failing badly!

While himself went to a neighbours house across the road to see if she had remembered anything about the sales guy, a car pulled up - it appeared to be casing out the house and when they saw himself and the neighbour they pulled away quickly. At least this was the what we thought at the time!!! When I heard this my mind was working overdrive. We called the Gardai and started investigating lock changing on the house and the cars.

We were just waiting for them to arrive when we gave the car one more check over and there they were, sitting on the back seat. I have no recollection of how they got there or why I went back out to the car but there you go, sometimes things just go missing and sometimes you can get paranoid! So we're quits...me and himself! ;-)

Lucy's 'infections'

Well it's being a busy week all round, the after school hobbies are in full swing; swimming, violin, speech 'n drama, French, Gymnastics, Piano, Girl's brigade and Ballet. I've also started a few courses myself just in case I might get bored! I've began an intermediate acrylic painting course and a jewellery beading course which I'm enjoying. Tomorrow I start a 3 part weekend course in Textiles with a few of the crafty girls. Not sure about that one as I don't know how to thread my sewing machine just yet (!) but we'll give it a lash. In the middle of all this Lucy had her booster injections in school yesterday which she told me were her 'infections' -so sweet! She had a little fever last night but she's fine today.

Tomorrow night I pack my bags for Amsterdam for a little scrapbooking retail therapy - market research purposes you understand!

Just finished uploading my final portfolio for Cheryl's online photography course - it was great fun to do and I learn't so much in 4 weeks.

Busy Bee Me!

A mother of a week...


I'm glad last week is over - it was a bit of a pain tbh. It started last weekend with my boiler going bust - it shouldn't really as our extension is only 2.5 years old but the less said about the builder the better! As a result we have had no heat and no hot water for a week as the emersion (usually the back up plan) is also working intermittenly - when it feels like it... We have been filling kettles of boiling water to wash and wearing heavy jumpers around the house. Then this week the tumble dryer packed up (only bought it in December last year) then followed by the microwave. Aaarrggghh! Eva then developed a kidney infection on Friday night so it's been stress stress stress... As I said I'm glad the week is over ;-) The men who fix these things are coming to save me this week - I hope!



So onto nice crafty things, I saw this LO (above) on Creative Scrappers by Jaz and loved the texture of it so I made my own version of it called 'He Loves Me' and it's all about Lucy's love affair with her best friend Rory who she has known since she was a toddler.


I love all of the fresh colours in these papers and flowers. The photo shows Lucy in her pretty dress up clothes wearing her ballet skirt on her head as a wedding veil (wubs!). So thanks Jaz for the inspiration ;-)




I have also submitted my entry to the Creative Scrappers Guest designer call up and here's my LO called 'Journey'. It reads 'somewhere on your journey, don't forget to turn around and enjoy the view'. I like the metaphor behind it.

For this one I layered ribbon and lace with copper wire and beads to create lots of texture and painted grungeboard alpha's and elements gold and added some stickles for effect.



Well one good thing happened last week - this LO I taught at one of my classes was accepted for the Basic Grey gallery - some amazing inspiration over there - go and have a peep!

Remember this...

Back in the 80's this was one of my all time favourite videos - Aha's Take on me. I even wrote an essay on it for my Leaving Certificate Art exam. Love how they have revamped it it here..

New photography Blog




I've been thinking of setting one up for ages so this morning I took the leap and here it is ;-)Feel free to comment or critique my photography- I have a hard hat on and I can take it;-)

I will be updating it regularly with any useful sites, tips, links, challenges etc. To kick start it I've uploaded my entries for the Conns Camera's Competition which closes this weekend.

Creative-Scrappers Weekly Sketch#19

I enjoyed this week's sketch by Kristine Davidson as I got to use my new K&CO Halloween embellies. The kids absolutely love these as the eyes wobble when you shake the layout. There's a new sketch going up today so go and have a look!

Saturday's class and crop in Le Cheile Donnycarney


We had a great day today in Donnycarney today and the theme of this class was about something we all know about - age and getting old ;-)I chose to scrap my beloved grampa who lived to be 90 and he was such a great character. The journaling reads 'Who old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?' and I love the concept of this as it allows us to be who we are supposed to be and not what our age dictates us to be...afterall age is just a number -right?



The story behind this layout is based on a conversation I had with my darling grampa when I was a child. He told me that a neighbour of his was complimenting him on how well he was for his age. The conversation went along something like this;

Neighbour 'So how old are you Mr X'
Grampa 'Well how old do you think I am?'
Neighbour 'Oh I wouldn't like to say!'
Grampa 'Well I'm 56' (note he was actually 70 at the time!)
Me ....'So Grampa did you tell her the truth?'
Grampa 'I certainly did not!'
Me 'Hahaha'

Friday morning in Grafton St...



I took a trip into Grafton St and it was lovely to take in the buzz of the city centre mid-morning. Everything is moving a nice relaxed pace and there's so much to see if you stop for a moment and open your eyes.


This is an exhibition I discovered in the windows of BT2 - by artist Robert Bradford and these colourful creatures are constructed solely from recycled toys - totally ingenious! I wish he would take a trip to my children's toy room as there would be no dearth of raw materials for his next project!


Then across the way in BT's store were these impressive machines. I'm not a sports car kinda girl but I have to say ...these were impressive! I saw grown men oogling at these machines like kids in a candy store;-)

Scrap Pink Challenge on Creative-Scrappers

I'm getting addicted to sketches and it's something I never dabbled in - I find it's a great way to make you hack into those precious supplies that gather dust on your shelves. Quite liberating really! So here's one from last weekend - I missed the deadline but I finished it regardless. Lucy recently asked me 'when you were a little girl mammy, was everything in black and white???'. It prompted me to make this LO and finish the journaling with 'yes Lucy before you and your sister came along, we lived our lives in B&W'...


Updated to add-was thrilled to see this layout picked for LOTD (layout of the day) over on Creative Scrappers! Whoo hoo!


So onto next weekend's class and crop in Le Cheile, Donnycarney we will be creating this layout with an age/older person theme. My layout is all about my Grampa and a funny thing he said. This sneaky peak will show you the gorgeous 'My little Yellow Bicycle' papers which we will be using. We'll also be doing lots of rubber stamping so bring any copper/gold inks along. Places still available if you would like to join in ;-)