Creativity and Gardening

At last the sun arrived over the weekend. This meant lots of time in the garden. Time to pot up tomatoes, chilli plants and potatoes. Well the potatoes were just put out into a well dug over bed with compost added.

Found a few spare moments to get into my art room. It was a Gorguss time, made a button tree from a magazine article and tried out one of the stamps bought at Ally Pally. Then my distress pens came in for adding colour. Quite fun.

Green Skittles at Ally Pally

This weekend it was the Big Stamp and Scrap booking show at Ally Pally ! My friend joined to to travel to London for the day. We were to be meeting with ALL the Sweet Sister group at the Alexander Palace for a day at the show then on for an evening meal in London.

The day started well with no issues in the trains and everyone arriving at the venue around 10am. Paula was first and picked up the ticket for everyone while we were on buses heading up the hill.
Inge and Doreen had brought two new friends who work with Doreen. They were in for a surprise and a full day of shopping !! The first order of business was a very large bag of green skittles for Inge's daughter to be handed over. Lynne and I had empty the shelf at Tesco on our way to the station in the morning.

The large hall was open this year and there was plenty to see but it was SO BUSY on most of the stands. This year I felt there was less mixed media products about and very little sizzix or Tim Holtz which I had been looking for. Not that Lynne and I allowed that to stop us.

Everyone met up for lunch around 12:30 for a quick sandwich , share a few key finds before we all headed back into the fray with plans for a 5pm coffee before heading back down the hill. Doreen and I had small packets of fun for everyone. Sorry did not get a picture of my packets

Gift from Doreen.

Once the show was over we have more time to sit chat and have fun.

Including Doreen's Madonna with the eggs impression ... well perhaps you had to be there.
Then we were off to drop our bags and enjoy a nice meal together.

With the tubes so very busy as LOTS of football fans joined the tube at Finsbury Park & Arsenal  station, as sea of red & white. But Doreen who without an umbrella to hold up for the group improvised..Recreated for us all over dinner.

 

Here is all the gang together thanks to a lady of the next table.

So how well did we all do .. sorry to say that there are no on mass show and tells but here is my little stash ...

This year I bought more stamps than I have bought before and not as many stencils as I thought I would end up with. The "everything a pound" stall was there so I did top up on board books and inner pages too .. Those will be great for the holidays this year. A few wassi tape ended up in my bag including a great set from the Gorjuss line. You my spot Gorjuss stamp set in the pile. Spent ages in Lavina stamp stand, so many to choose from.  Only Sizzix I ended up with was a pocket watch and round movers and shakers ... more of those in a minute.

Sunday has been a quiet stay at home day getting a few jobs done. BUT could not wait to try out the die cutters, which I did before the rest of the house hold got up ...

Used my gear cutters and gears embossing plate to create the inner workings with extra layers of card and a plastic front (upcycling the die cutter packaging).. Cut in Kraft card with walnut ink and a little spritz of glitter and it looks great. I do wonder how it will work with a mixture of metal layers of gears. Well something to think about .

 

The rest of the day has been in the garden as the sun came out. We moved around our compost bins and started the veg beds going with a good layer of well rotted compost at one end. Running out of time to move all the rest of the compost to the veg beds, so something to look at next weekend.

 

Visit to Paulton

The drive to see our friends always takes us past Stone Henge. The new visitors centre has already started and the siding gave an idea of what it will look like. Seems to be quite a distance from the stones !

Saturday was an art day creating configuration boxes. 

This was the first time I had looked at Configuration boxes with my friend and we had a good laugh first fitting the boxes , selecting the papers and then looking at what could go into the nocks. Although my original plan was to look at books in general, it has become more fantasy pointing. A bit of gothic alice may work ... I am also still looking for the right feet. Two small piles of books would work, I can alter them to have the right titles. Plus the large area with the key hanging really needs a small row of books, something like you get for a doll house else the background papers will be hidden and I quite like the look they have now.

Sunday took a slower road home and selected to few interesting places to stop along the way.

First hubby wanted to show me the castle he had seen on the Saturday during his walk with my friend's hubby. The castle is right in the middle of a small village. As you can see it is a ruin now. One of the ones which Cromwell knocked about a bit.  While we where there also took the scenic walk round the village and back to the car.

Back at the car, could see a White Horse on the map which was not far from the  village and mostly on the route we wanted to take to head home. It was not the easiest place to find - headed to Westbury and there is was on the side of the hill.

You park at the top to visit the site which belong to English Hertiage. WOW the views are amazing if you can standing being BLOWN AWAY !

Next as we were very close to the Kennet and Avon canal we selected to go visit the staircase of locks. Really a busman's holiday for hubby as he now works on a canal contract. It was still quite cold and blustery along the tow path and really nice walk. We scrapped together enough pennies to buy a light lunch and hot drink at the cafe.

A really nice day to end a great weekend. Shame we had to go back to work on the Monday.