Happy Birthday to ....

A friend of mine on Twitter is having a special birthday tomorrow. When I celebrated this particular milestone a few years ago hubby and I booked in to a local hotel which assured us they were wheelchair friendly but as ever it proved not to be, they had got the sleeping arrangements wrong and we spent a very uncomfortable night and went home early. We were able to prove later that they were in the wrong, not us, so we did get a bit of our money back but it was a disappointment. Hey ho, such is life, our hearts are where our home is. Anyway, this is the picture that I would have put on her card had I known where to send it. It was a drawing I did of the view from our back garden before we moved back to civilisation which I hope would strike a chord with the person I have in mind

Experiment

I have been playing around with Paint Shop and trying to produce some nice images in the style that I have seen on other blogs. I suspect that I can't do what I want to do because of the type of blog I have got

My Beady Eye

A while ago a friend asked me to post up some pictures of jewellery that I had made in the past. I don't do much now as I find that holding little beads and threading them and rolling Fimo hurts my hands, plus I no longer have a utility room where I can cook it without the fumes filling the house. I found that trying to get decent photos was not very easy and so I scanned a few things, hence the boring background, but I think it gives you a taster. The first and second pics are some Chinese Knotting, which I find very theraputic. I can sit and tie long Snake Knots just for fun and then undo them which is just as restful. The big flat knots are Prosperity Knots and the little round ones are Button Knots
The third fourth and fifth show some Fimo beads that I made and strung. I did a lot of these, flat ones that are made a bit like peppermint rock with the design running through and then big round ones with thin slices of the rock rolled round them. I think you need cool hands, like for pastry, as mine tended to go a bit awry. I made some to match the colour of the clothes I used to sell as a party planner and sometimes sold more beads than clothes!
The last two picture are some of my purchased beads just strung in what I hope is a pleasing manner. A lot of the internet sites sell very similar stuff and I used to hunt around for unusual beads, and buy in charity shops and re-string. It's that thing I have about putting colours together again!

Another walk through the woods

Stripey sky

This is what I saw when I opened the curtains this morning

A Miximal

For reasons too complicated to explain, but if you want to know, go
HERE
I have invented a cross between a Polar Bear and a Bumble Bee which is, of course, called a BearBum. This is what it looks like!

Christmas cards

I've had a pleasant afternoon trying out some ideas for this years Christmas cards and I'm rather pleased with the results. They are a variation on the idea of iris folding - here's a couple, I'm going to do more. I just love playing around with all the different textures and colours and I found a pair of edging scissors that make passable rooflines for the Bethlehem scenes