Crafty Mermaid

I love how the first card looks - it works really well with a random photograph I found in a magazine.

Another purchase from my trip to London... and not a project in sight for it but such cute yarn...

Without a television, I inhaled a number of books while I was back in Ireland - and these are the ones I bought rather than from the local library.

A thank you card for a friend who house and cat sat when BM came to visit me in Ireland.  We have two black cats who caused her a few brushes with the law!  Our alarm is monitored and the cats managed to sneak into the house twice while my friend was leaving the house and set off the alarm later, immediately notifying the police and monitoring company... Eek! A thank you card for Toby's friends who we went to visit in Cairo.  Photos of that trip will be found eventually! One of the things I missed the most when I was home was my sewing machine and dressmaking classes.  I had a half finished dress when I left and one of my mother's friend kindly finished it off for me on her machine (probably to a much higher standard than I would have managed!).  I'll have to post a photo of the dress soon. Finally a card for BM to say hi while I was away. As you may or may not know, St Patrick is famous for driving all the snakes out of Ireland - but if you look cl...

My purchases in London also included bedding for my mother.  I love decorating her house because I have much less emotional investment - its far easier sticking to a reasonable price if you know you won't own the end result anyway.  The bedding to the right is for my old room and the other is for a redo of my brother's room.  I love the bold stripes and how masculine the colours look.  Don't worry - my brother moved out years ago!  I wasn't quite decorating around him!

Yet another selection of cards from last year (and yes, it is mid Feb!).  The second card uses one of my very early attempts at using Fimo (a brand of modelling clay).  It wasn't great as a broach but I love how the card turned out.  I think I made this when I was 14 - wow! almost 10 years ago!  Its nice to finally find it an appropriate home. This card turned out great too! Love the sunny colours!

I was in London in late August/ early September when the Christchurch earthquake happened.  It was strange being dependent on Sky and the internet for information about my friends and BM's parents.  Thankfully, while it was a large earthquake, there was little human injury.  People where without power, water and sewage services for a while.  Things aren't back to normal yet as there's been a series of aftershocks; the most notable one on Boxing day (or St Stephen's Day as its called in Ireland).  In some cases the aftershock caused more damage than the original due to the location of the epicentre.  It'll take quite a while for the tectonic activity to settle down so fingers crossed there isn't another major aftershock (especially as they can be larger than the original one). When I was in London I was able to catch up with a friend of mine who had just moved there from Wellington to do a masters course.  I went to Egypt in later September and wa...

A few pictures of my parents' garden last summer.  I love, love, love the dainty flowers in the second and photos.

Another lot of cards.   I was beginning to run out of actual embellishments when I was home so necessity is the mother of invention!  I started to create a few extra bits and pieces... I really like how the bird turned out. I found a really nice brand of pens - although they seemed more like a pen and a marker cross.

I took a few photographs of different features in my parents house before I left in December.  Its strange what catches your eye when you deliberately walk around a house you know so well with a camera.  I limited myself to three pictures and these are the features I took.  Not the most obvious but I do like the different patterns. Picture 1 is a wooden cut out I bought my brother soon after I moved to New Zealand - he's moved out but the cut out remains. Pix 2. This is the wall paper in the hallway of my parent's house.  Its papered to the midway point of the wall and above that and a dado rail is painted.  They're the palate of colours I associate with my mother, soft browns and warm neutrals.  Unfortunately my brother (of the dragon above) wasn't so flattering and said the house now looked like a B&B.  Though I'm not so sure that's particularly scathing.   Picture 3. The sitting room has been completely repainted (from a light pe...

We've had an offer on our current house and managed to negiotate upward to something approaching what we wanted to sell at.  Unfortunately they also asked for the washing machine and the dryer so we'll have to do without a dryer in the new house for a few months and buy a washing machine fairly soon after we move in.  Its been a really interesting and stressful process.  I really didn't enjoy working with the real estate agent and found a number of reasons to mistrust them.  I also didn't like negotiating at one remove - hearing details about the buyers from the real estate agent and wondering what he was saying about us.  Its left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth over the whole thing.  But after a bit more sleep, I'm feeling far more contented.  And I'm happy it looks like we've sold!  No more obsessive cleaning up each morning and evening!  We have another week to wait until its all finalised - they have to get a title search and more imp...