More Utility Box Art

The first one of these is just outside work - and I think the "gate" in the title must refer to St James' Gate...

The second one is very near my bus stop. I noticed it and stopped to take a couple of photos. It reminds me a little of some of  Escher's drawings, especially the tessellations with fish  - Tessellation 99 on the page I have linked to (it's listed alphabetically under F for fish).

 It was a nice sunny day ;-).

It evidently was still a work in progress, because the next day I was in work I noticed it had some further additions - but still no title. I'll check on that tomorrow!

France - part 6

More photos around Eygalières...

Looking up to the old village on the hill, from the campsite gate

Great Snails!!

Thank you, Lorraine, for the "rout of snails" group noun, which I didn't know. I think many of us wish there would be a rout of them from the gardens.

Simply three here today - the Silly Snails from Art Neko.

One was a mixed media card I made as a sample for the Splitcoast challenges, so it's not really a design team card, but I thought my garden needed something more than flowers in it.

The second one is more by way of being a design team card since the only other stamp I used is also from Art Neko - Whimsical and Kind Sayings.
When I was making this one, I was trying to decide whether to have the wall-climbing snail able to see the end in sight, and show some sky above the brick wall. In the end, I decided it was more graphic to show nothing but wall to climb and no idea of how much climbing was left to reach the top.

The Kind and Whimsical Sayings set is mostly sentiments, but comes with the bonus of a little ladybird and a bee. I used the bee for another Dare To Get Dirty card.

The background was an embossing resist with Brusho powders; I can't imagine using the black very often but it looked good here. It was very difficult for me to make a sentiment with no punctuation, but I have a very basic Dymo label-maker which doesn't run to either an apostrophe or an interrogation point, so I had to ignore my grammatical inner voice.  The mason jar die is from Sizzix, it came with a matching embossing folder and is great fun to use. (Thanks, Di!).

July Favourites

What with holidays, most of my favourite cards were made as samples for the week of Dare to Get Dirty challenges on Splitcoast, now over for another year.

I was very happy with the "What a Wonderful World" one. Normally I am not frugal - I don't have the space or system for storing a lot of scraps. But when I transferred my Brusho powders into squeezy bottles, I hated the thought of wasting even the tiny bit of powder remaining in each plastic pot - so I added water to them, and spattered the resulting drops of colour onto card, using the pots to stamp the circles.

France - part 5

The campsite in Eygalières was a lovely place to stay. It was small - only 30 pitches, 15 each side up a long avenue, but once you came out the front gate and turned left, you were only about thirty metres from the crossroads in the centre of the village, and it was lovely to have not just a bakery but also a butcher/deli, cheese chop, wine shop and general stores all within 5 minutes walk. I took a lot of photos around the village, so I'm going to spread them out over several posts. There is the main part of the town, and then clustered together up on a hilly peak is the old town - some of which is still in ruins, some has been beautifully renovated and some is on the way to being restored.


We were lucky enough to be treated to a free outdoor concert on our first evening. I don't usually take candid shots - being a private person myself I'm not very comfortable about taking them - but I couldn't resist taking a few of other members of the audience.

This photo and the next are the vew into a courtyard through the gate, the house beside the campsite.

Cafe at the central crossroad

Looking up to the old town

This month's blog header says it all for an Irish summer. Apparently I only saved and edited about 8 photos in August last year.

Enjoy the small things in life...

I had a bad cough and cold over our holiday weekend and have fallen behind in my photo editing. The only time I miss not having a laptop anymore is when I'm stuck in bed!

Anyway, today I was up and tidying a little. I threw out some old flowers, and was about to sweep up the gerbera petals and seeds when I stopped to think about how pretty they looked.
And luckily, the macro lens was on my camera.

Rabbits, Rabbits

When I think about it, it surprises me how many superstitions my otherwise very rational mother subscribed to - throwing  pinch of spilled salt over her left shoulder, greeting magpies to avert bad luck, and saying "Rabbits, rabbits" on the first of the month,  before speaking to anybody else. Even luckier, "White rabbits, white rabbits".

So here are some lucky rabbits  from Art Neko - white and brown - for the first of the month.
I used the Hiroshige Moon Viewing Rabbits, and some beautiful fabric paper for the first one. C was very impressed with the paper thinking that I had carefully stuck all the little gold leaves on myself - I had to disillusion him. Simple masking and sponging.

The second one isn't strictly a design team card, as I used stamps from various companies to create the retiform background. This time they are enjoying a harvest moon! Other stamps used were Timeless Textures from Stampin' Up! and an old Hero Arts script stamp.

My new blog header says it all for an Irish summer - wet. Apparently I only took 8 photos last August that I considered worth editing and keeping.

Beautiful Blue

We visited my dad today. He's moved from Waterford, so no more Waterford photos...
The hospital he is in now has a community garden beside it, maintained by volunteers. It has a hen run with a couple of ducks and several hens (and a couple of tiny chickens today, too), which apparently he really enjoys visiting so we spent most of our visit this afternoon sitting there. C went to investigate the small greenhouse (really a section of polytunnel) and came back telling me he had seen the most beautiful butterfly. There are several ceramic sculptures in the garden, and initially he thought the butterfly too was a piece of art - until it moved. I went off to look, and at first I only saw it with the wings closed - which was indeed very beautiful. It's a small butterfly - not much bigger than the top joint of my thumb when the wings are folded closed.
And then it opened them to reveal the most beautiful  blue. It's a (not very common) Common Blue.
Unfortunately I had left my camera in the car, and had to make do with my phone, so the quality isn't great.
The foliage is fennel, I'm not quite sure what the flower was...