Tuesday, I had to do an 80 mile round trip to visit the dentist. Not through choice, I might add, but this was the nearest dentist with whom we were able to register! Really, you wouldn't believe how bad the situation is in Wales re NHS dentists.
Wednesday, I spent the day with my mum and my aunt, who is staying with her for a few days. We had a lovely day - just mooching around Carmarthen. Carmarthen is such a pretty town, with lots of lovely, individual shops, thankfully it's not all chain stores! One of the stores I visited was a new craft shop - Bluebell Crafts. The couple who run it started by running a market stall in the covered market, but have now expanded and have a shop in the market square. If you happen to be in Carmarthen and are into crafts, you really must visit. They have some beautiful stuff and are getting lots more in! Lots of scrapbooking stash, as well as a reasonable range of altered art items. The couple who run it are very friendly and helpful, like I say, well worth a visit.
Thursday, we went to see our two youngest in their school play. They go to the village school, which has a grand total of 7 pupils at the moment - that's from age 3 to age 11!!! Guess you could call that individual attention... To save the school from closure, it was federated with two other village schools in the area. One of these schools, Idole, is celebrating its centenary this year, so the children enacted a drama showing some of the events from its history. It was lovely, I only understood a few words, because it was all in Welsh! The little girls were all dressed in welsh costume, and the boys were wearing flat caps and waistcoats. Definitely one or two budding comedians amongst the children!
Today, I had a close encounter with some of our local wildlife. My eldest daughter wanted to know why there was a snake on one of my cats - these, I hasten to add, are cuddly toys - not the real cats! Having two boys, she and I assumed that it was one of their myriad of imitation creepy crawlies. Suddenly, my daughter squealed - it had moved its head! In fact, it turned out to be a common lizard. Absolutely beautiful! I hadn't realised we had them in our area, and never expected to see one - certainly not in my craft room!!! We duly released her into a nearby field - much to my youngest sons disgust! I feel really honoured to have been visited by this beautiful creature, and am still smiling about it now! By the way - bugs and spiders terrify me - I don't even hang washing outside because the thought of it having had insects on it freaks me out!!! (Added to that, we live behind a farm and it generally isn't very fragrant - all the excuse I need to use my tumble dryer all year round!)
Artistically, I've been fairly busy too! I've been trying out some new techniques - ATC's are great for this as they are so small. I've agreed to 4 swaps so far on one of the groups, the themes this month being Travel, Victorian, Serendipity and Height. I've completed the cards for the first 3, but haven't even started on the Height ones yet - still thinking about those!
For the Serendipity cards (serendipity means 'happy accident') I played about with some acrylic paints, gold ink and various colours of embossing powder on watercolour paper. The results were very pretty, and all I needed to do was to add a bloom in a complementary colour to finish the cards off. The final card in the serendipity series, is one made using heat-fused fabrics. A little while ago, on T.V., I saw a pyrography demo. Well, I couldn't afford to buy the kit, but wondered whether I could acheive a similar effect using a soldering iron! Not wishing to wreck my very expensive soldering iron which I use in my jewellery making, I bought myself a cheap and cheerful iron and had a go! One thing I must say here - It stank! The heat fusing only works with synthetic fabrics, and when they melt - they smell foul!!!!! All in all, though, I was really pleased with the results, but suspect that a much better result would be obtained using the right tool for the job.
I have also made a couple of cards this week, one was in aid of the Crafts and Handmade Cards ebay group adopted charity - Bonny Babies. Visit their website to find out more about what they do: http://www.bonniebabies.co.uk
As a group, we have adopted this as our 'group charity' and have decided to have a monthly event which will directly benefit the charity. After discussion with the lady who started the charity, it was decided that we would make 'Thank you' cards. They send these cards to people who are kind enough to make donations towards the running and upkeep of the charity. Those of us who chose to take part have all made cards, this months theme being flowers and/or leaves. Again, there was a huge diversity of ideas and the charity will shortly be receiving quite a large bundle of cards for their use.
I'm afraid you're going to have to wait for photos - for some reason they aren't uploading tonight!
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