Oops!

Sorry, I forgot to mention I was going to be away with work this week. It sure made this week fly by despite lots of cold weather and grey skies in our part of the world...

So on a cheerful note, here is a little birdhouse hanger I made a little while back for Stamping & Papercraft (now called Cardmaking, Stamping & Papercraft). It uses products from the 7gypsies range (rub-ons and papers) and from Collections (house and bird chipboard shapes).

Looking forward to this weekend - I have lots of arty commitments and, as I stopped by the library on the way home tonight, I now have five fabulous looking novels if I decide to just stay in bed and read for a few hours!

PS I haven't got tired of birds yet!

A Little Book of Birds

(From top left, clockwise - pages by Keron Lee, Jo Wholohan,
Shirley Howard, Abby Evans, Jacky Williams and Kasha Rolley)

While over in Melbourne for the Art Retreat, a group of us participated in an "art party" one night at Keron's and we all made little bird themed pages to exchange with each other. We were intending to all get our book covers made and the books bound that night but some of us, including me, were a bit too dazed (or excited to be meeting so many people that had previously only been names and fellow bloggers) to get it all done!

I will get mine finished sometime soon but in the meantime here are the nine little pages of sweetness that will form my book. They all have some space on the left side for binding and I am still trying to decide what my binding will be. I tend to use big rings usually as I like my books to open up flat for display.

(From top to bottom, pages by me, Abby Evans and Gaye Todd)

And here is a photo of the lights that can be seen from Keron's front verandah at late dusk. What a beautiful view! I think I would be camped out on the verandah most of the time.

An Embarrassment of Riches!

Isn't it funny how some days (or weeks) you just have an embarrassment of riches that come your way? This week was like that - Monday I was off work feeling unwell and very very flat and what happened? A huge padded envelope (probably more accurately called a sack!) was delivered to my door. I was a bit stunned as I knew I hadn't ordered anything as I am on an economy "use my stuff" sort of drive at the moment and I also knew I didn't have any swap or trade packages due to arrive and certainly nothing big. So I opened it up feeling very Christmas/birthday like and found four individually wrapped and numbered presents inside from my wonderful and incredibly talented friend Coralee Barker (who needs a blog!!).

I spread out the opening of the parcels over a couple of hours as I was so overcome with Coralee's totally over-the-top incredibly generous gifts. And this was all to thank me for being understanding when she had an incredibly difficult time in her life and couldn't work in my green journal in a round robin!! So you can see why I was so blown away - I had done nothing to deserve them.
Look at all these beautiful pieces of art!! I really love bird art so I am so happy that Coralee is really into birds and I now have a wonderful array displayed on my inspiration wall.

And look at all of these treasures!! So many possibilities are swirling in my head - I need to get to my desk and start creating - nothing like new stuff and a few days away to really inspire me.

And then to cap off the week Sephi awards me the Arty y Pico Award! Thanks so much Sephi - I am very touched. I normally really like to participate in these awards by passing on the award to some of the gorgeous blogs that I love but this time I want to say that there are just so many wonderful blogs that I can't choose! Hope you don't mind.