April Showers!

Look at that sky! We have been having a lot of those and some heavy rain lately.

 Matilda Jane Gray My cousin Heather sent these two photos to me for my birthday. Love them.

 One of today's cards.

 My Poppy vase.

WIP my tile. A long way to go with this tile but I am documenting it this time which is fun.
No class until the 29th so I have pleanty of time to clean my brushes and maybe mix some paints and clean my tiles. My working tiles that is...
I am really looking forward to the finished tile as there are a lot of other techniques before it is finished. The tassel will be metallic grounded and then painted into hopefully. Stripes around the edge are to be painted and inside-where the green tape is, has to be yet another technique and then there is gold and painting into the gold, jewels at the bottom. So keep tuned.

Monday March 31st 2014

Well that's the Castle Hill Show over for another year!!!
 My Mucha lady got me a Highly Commended, my green lustre vase got a Second and my lovely jug got a First. So not unhappy with that.
The good thing about entering all these shows is that you get feedback from a variety of judges so after a while you think 'Can't be too bad!'
Might have done the right thing hanging on to that jug for 15 years before I painted it!
My NY Resolution might be to pop in every now and then and blog!
So until tomorrow...

Nearly forgot-I have completed another Mucha lady-I love these girls.

Now I am off to lunch...

Happy Birthday to me!

It is a Happy Birthday to me today-77 -I cannot believe it!
Well I have finally got my computer back and now all I have to do is learn how to operate Windows 8.1!
I felt a bit strange not having the computer even though I could see e-mails and Facebook on my phone. Not quite the same.
I have been making some cards and have finished a couple of my porcelain pieces. I shall upload the photos always supposing I can work out how to do that. I made my first box card and I have made a couple of cards with moving parts.
I have done my first porcelain piece using sneaky pen work-that was fun. It is still not finished as there is a lot of work to do yet.
So here are the photos!

I love my poppy vase finished too late to enter it in the Castle hill Show but there is always Penrith. I used wet grounding for the black in this vase and that was a first and so less messy than dry grounding. Then I used Dresden Base for Raised Gold to make the poppies rise out from the vase- then I painted them all this with a firing between each function.

These are the final photos.

Off for a birthday lunch with my Arthur now :) 

Good heavens! Happy new year 2014 and into the second month already. I have had nothing but problems with my computer for the last couple of months but as you can see that left out October November...
To cut a long story short Greg and Fran gave us a new computer at the beginning of December and we thought it was just Windows 8 that was the problem but turned out to be the motherboard. It was faulty.All good now all I need to do is learn how to use Windows 8.
 still can't get my old files to open with a permission denied notice coming up on everything.
However I shall take a deep breath and worry about that tomorrow.
I am getting to be like Scarlet O'Hara.
Anyway we have had a busy time with Kate's wedding in October and Pamela, the young girl next door, being married in January. Pamela's wedding was an African wedding and quite lovely.
I have also been into my new hobby and having been making lots of cards.
So as I need to go and have some lunch i shall download some of my latest photos.

The last two photographs are of my latest porcelain pieces. I am so pleased with both of these efforts so am now looking forward to the first item this year.
The other thing is that while I have been unable to do anything on the computer i have been watching a lot of card techniques on YouTube on the TV. And don't start me there one of the TV sets looks like karking it...but that would take too long to tell. Bye for now.

October 3

As promised I am trying to be more consistent with my posts. Not that I have anything very exciting to tell.
We are having the strangest weather at present -it just poured a minute ago now the sun is out. We could do with more rain -as always.
Not that I have read any of his books but I was very surprised to hear of Tom Clancy's death this morning. I wonder how many others like me only know about the films made of his books-Hunt for Red October etc.Too young to lose such a talent.
I have tried playing around with other people's blogs today so if you read this Paula you will know I have added you my list.
I love Gina K Design's videos and have added Gina's blog to my list too. I don't know enough about links and what to do with them or how to use them. One Day. I am even going to have a go at a couple of challenges-wish me luck-they have to be uploaded by Sunday and today is Thursday.
So it might be off to the craft room ASAP. Speaking of the craft room-I am gradually organising things-I upended my ribbon drawer,which was an absolute nightmare,and only kept ribbons and lace that I would use for my cards in there. All the other I have piled into another drawer-LOL-I will worry about that later-much.
It will be hard to believe -for my family-that I need to purchase another three drawers!!!

A beautiful butterfly at our lemon blossom

Another view

My daughter has zentangled this beautiful M for me-my first name is Matilda

One of my recent birthday card efforts

For my big brother Bob

Portulaca at it's best!

Stuart,my youngest son, gave me this after a day in the mountains. I keep thinking I have killed it and then it comes good again.

That is enough for today it is off to the craft room. :)