Had a wee break - -

- from blogging as we had to get a bit of holiday in, organise Sixth Form stuff for my youngest DD, catch up on the gardening etc etc. You know the real life stuff that has to be fitted in somehow!! . Anyway Doug and I have been to Co Antrim in Northern Ireland and we had a great short break.We drove along the Causeway Coastal Route - absolutely beautiful - and have gazed in stunned awe at the Giant's Causeway, gaped at the castles, ruins, cliffs and caves an d even pretty villages, to be found along this truly beautiful part of the world. The weather was kind as well - no rain - though we were prepared for it as we took cags with us LOL!
I have made a mini book with some of my many photographs and here are a couple of the pages.It isn't quite finished - I still need to add the final bits of journalling and finish the cover. The design is based on a class I did with Shimelle - I just love mini books and she has so many ideas for them!
I have also taken advantage of Shimelle's offer of a place on her Learn Something New Every Day Class - which I did last year and she has invited former students to join in this years class too. If you haven't done one if Shimelle's classes do see her blog - this one is a great place to start - I am looking forward to joining in again as I found that using her methods I do get more done in the scrapping line, and I have tried to keep the system going with my Design Collective stuff too - it helps me anyway as I am a slow scrapper at the best of times - spend far too much time finding my stuff!!!!!

SWAP

I'm so excited - I am taking part in my first ever SWAP!! I’ve always been a bit too shy to make comments on blogs etc to join in with this kind of thing but always felt it sounded such fun and until I took a couple of on line classes didn’t have confidence to do this. Just at the weekend I plucked up enough courage to express my willingness to join in and was delighted to get an email this morning telling me where too send my offering. I have made and completed a tiny book to send, so do hope she likes it. I themed it on spring. I will edit this post to add the pics later as blogger doesn't want to play nice!
Had a bit of sad news today - Liz, who was my Head of Faculty when I started at the school 7 years ago is very poorly. She has been fighting cancer since she took early retirement on health grounds some 3 or 4 years ago and has had another recurrence of the dread disease. She has decided now to have no more invasive treatment and is coming home. So very sad, we know that now it is only a matter of time as there is no more that can be done particularly as Liz is such a lovely, kind lady who welcomed me so warmly on my first day at the school - I had made a huge decision to try to improve the quality of life for my family - got a job in a completely new area of work for me, moved to the island, left my family behind whilst I tried to find somewhere to live and was here on my own, so the warmth of her welcome cannot be over estimated. Please may I ask that any readers of my blog add her and her family to your prayers? Thank you.

Crafty Sunday

Doug has been climbing this afternoon which gave me a “craft afternoon” so I have made a few mini books – great fun to do. I should really be adding to my albums and getting some photos in them – but I felt like making little books so that is what I have done. Had a lot of fun this afternoon. Gone completely OTT on making books - I think I have an addictive personality!!
Have had two short walks today one down to the village this morning – the bell was ringing at St Catherine’s as we went down the hill and the parking spaces on the prom were fast filing up as everyone arrived for service. It was quite breezy down there in the village and there was a definite wind chill factor! Just confirms how very sheltered the cottage is as it was so much warmer in my garden.
When Doug got back we took some glass to the bottle bank at Grainger’s car park and decided when we got there that we would do the circular walk. The sky was quite amazing – great golden shafts of light streaming down over the water, making a huge silver lake of the bay out towards Ireland, yet grey cloud over our heads actually meant that the sun was totally invisible and we were treated to odd spots of rain as we walked along the coast path! Looking out over the bay from this angle, the Calf of Man and the hills of the Meayll Peninsula stretch out into the sea like the paws of a huge sleeping lion, brooding and a little menacing in this most peculiar light - all the green of the fields has vanished – yet the sea is silver; turning to head home the windows of the apartments and hotels of Port Erin are all gold and glowing with reflected sunlight from the shafts of light hitting them. There are spring flowers here in the glen already - daffodils and snowdrops in bloom together; how crazy is that? and in the grass here and there a soft shimmer of purple as the crocus start to appear. It's turning colder as well so am glad to be arriving at the cottage and tea!

A Scrappy afternoon

Had a great afternoon making mini books. I used the maze book pattern for 2 of them and the other I made using a method taught at one of our crops. So pleased with them all. The maze books are quite addictive, but so cute! I am going to complete them this afternoon hopefully, so will try to post more pics later. Off out now as the sun is shining - and I have to take advantage of it as they have forecast rain again later!
TFL

Mini Maze Book - - -

I made this with entry for the Manx Royal show in mind. It was a link on UKS that I investigated earlier this week an thought I would have a go at making it. It's a dinky little book and I am quite pleased with the way it's turned out. It was fun to make though I did have to think carefully about the way I placed my pages. I adapted for a slightly larger version as well - but made it a concertina of pages in the end as I couldn't quite get my head round the pages fitting inside.
edited to add - the pictures.
This is a little book full of picture of scarecrows from one local villages. The journalling is on tags tucked inside and tells of Laa Columb Killey. This is an agriculture show celebrated in the Parish of Arbory on St Columba's Day in early summer. One of the classes is a scarecrow and many gardens in the villages "sprout" scarecrows in late May/early June for the competition. Many families take part as this is for the children to be involved in the show - not just the best veg and flowers etc and it is very popular and I love seeing the ideas they come up with each year. This are my photos from 2005. So pleased I have finally got around to "scrapping" them.
TFL