A lovely weekend

It's been an absolutely gorgeous weekend, weatherwise - well, mostly! Yesterday I went to Fishguard to see a craft demo. The demo itself was fairly basic, but it was great fun and I met some lovely people there. Maria came with me, and we were like the bad girls in school - which, for the record, I never was! At one stage we got told off for chatting, but I think that was tongue-in-cheek, because we later agreed to meet up next saturday at another demo. On the whole, crafters are a friendly bunch, and most of the ones I've met have been distinctly on the mad side, as well. Probably why we get on!! Both of us managed to spend rather more money than perhaps we ought to have, but sometimes you just gotta do these things...
One of my purchases was 3 sheets of the most beautiful japanese paper, not sure exactly what I'm going to do with them yet, but I just had to have them!
I've never been to Fishguard before, and I was quite impressed. It's very pretty and the trip there was through some beautiful, and at times, breathtaking scenery.

One other result from yesterday is that Maria and I have decided that as there is no local crop, that perhaps we should do something about arranging one ourselves! Not quite sure what we are letting ourselves in for, but, as they say, Watch This Space!!

Today, we spent the afternoon at our local beach. It was really warm and sunny, so we ate chips on the beach and watched lots of people messing about on the water in their boats/jetski's etc. The kids were running around like lunatics, as was the dog. You have no idea how unusual that is! Muppet, a shih-tzu is possibly the laziest dog I've ever met. However, there was a little terrier on the beach who was determined that Muppet WAS going to play, so he pestered until Muppet gave in. I've never seen him run around so much. Mind you, since we've been home, he hasn't moved...

Whilst we were at the beach, I took loads of photos (over 100! Thank goodness for digital cameras!) As well as taking loads of Maddi and Loaghan, I got lots of 'texture' shots - rope, wood, rust on one of the dredgers that is moored in the bay, footsprints, lots of stuff that I hope to be able to use in some of my art in the near future.

Todays photos are of some ATC's that I've done for swaps in one of the groups. These cards have no particular theme - really I just did whatever came into my mind. I was very aware that one of the people with whom I'm swapping is a fella, so I wanted do some cards which are not too feminine. A lot of the ATC's I've seen seem to be very female orientated, so I thought it would be a bit of a challenge to myself to produce something a little more masculine, or at least unisex! I hope I have acheived this particularly with the chinese themed cards. I think my favourite is probably the dragon on black leather. I really like the combination of textures - the leather, which is incredibly soft and supple, the handmade paper and the metal of the charm. I also rather like the purple card, I found the paper first and used this as the starting point for the card. It is such a beautiful paper that I didn't want to cover up too much of it. The plaque on this card is made from shrink plastic - this is fabulous stuff, if you haven't already tried it, you really should! I used the frosted plastic and coloured it using chalk ink pads, then using a silver ink on a script stamp, I used the intaglio technique and stamped into the hot plastic, giving a textured and indented finish. ATC's are a brilliant way of using up bits and pieces, us crafters never like to throw anything away so it's great to find a way of using up all those bits and pieces.

These cards will be going in the post tomorrow, so here's hoping that the recipients are liking them!