It's friday.

I'm off for a long overdue girlie catch up with my friend and fellow creative Em tonight and so some simple hand made was required and so here it is. I'm hoping the wine will soothe the faintly sore throat that I have that I'm trying to ignore. I keep smiling thinking of playing game after game of draughts with that eldest boy of mine today, who was home from school with the dreaded earache that has now left the younger one .... I'd forgotten, I love draughts!

This is the way I wanna earn my pennies

Today I woke up really wanting to make something with my hands and since I have decided to stop using limited time as an excuse NOT to do, I settled upon a couple of quick fire handmade things. All you need are some shop bought labels, some letter stamps, an ink pad and away you go! The paperbirds are also very simple. I used an old cereal box as backing card and cut two bird templates back and front and stuck all three pieces together. The joy is in finding beautiful papers to use to make your birds, I used paper by rosehipcards. Watch this space for my birdies on a stick! I'm quite partial to sweet and simple designs on a stick, see here. These items both make me smile and will come in handy for all the upcoming July birthdays amongst close friends and family. Sigh ... I wish everyday could be like this!

The Art of Doing without Doing

It has been yet another busy domestic week. One of my precious working day's was stolen by school being closed for polling day and so I don't have much actual art work to show for the week but lots of images to add to my increasingly large mood board for future productions. (I do love a mood board!) I have been foraging and gathering materials this week, papers, frames, small objects, creating small drawings of birds and flowers (some of them were too bad to show here, I'm a little out of practice!) and playing with words and shapes using wire. Along the way this week, I discovered the hand made paper birds pictured here!!!! I am not an obvious girlie girl but this is the stuff of my dreams, so pretty. They look very simple to make, I haven't had a go myself yet but I'll post results here when I get round to it. I have had so much fun with my iphone making temporary collage images like the ones shown here, it's felt like playing shops like I did when I was a girl. Perhaps this memory of 'play' was left over from all of the role playing that my youngest boy and I have been enjoying this week, see the lovely pics of him having a barbeque! I was thinking about my word for the year too this week, looking at what 'nurture' means in various aspects of my day-to-day. I have been admiring the prolific work of my eldest boy, whose drawing is flourishing, he makes and writes book after book filled with adventure stories ... and now these beautiful and delicate drawings are emerging ... I'm a proud mama!

Beautiful drawings by Zachariah Acquaye-Tonge

Beautiful drawings by Zachariah Acquaye-Tonge

Beautiful drawings by Zachariah Acquaye-Tonge

Beautiful drawings by Zachariah Acquaye-Tonge

The frustrating moment that this jedi's lightsaber got caught in his belt loop! 

My boy's barbeque with fish and corn on the cob!