- 8:47 am - Fri, May 24, 2013
- 1 note
sarahmajury:
Had another lovely day working with the folks at Syndenham Court, as we all love a cuppa, we have decided the theme for our project will be tea.
Tea has a big role in life, vital for catch ups, settling nerves, breaking the ice, relaxing after a long day and is at the basis for a good natter!
Here are some images of our work today - mono prints made by inking up a base plate and then layering inked up cut outs. A simple technique, that I think works well even with just two colours to make bold colourful images.
Some lovely prints from a workshop my sister is teaching…
- 7:34 pm - Thu, May 23, 2013
Rhododendron, the Liberace of garden plants
- 7:41 pm - Mon, May 20, 2013
1st attempt at home made crisps in the air fryer! Had some sliced potatoes left over from making a potato bake for tea and decided to try making some crisps, they’re ready salted and very nice indeed. Just peeled, thinly sliced spuds ( I did mine in the food processor with the slicer blade attached) then mixed with one teaspoon of oil, in the air fryer for about 20 minutes. I had to keep checking on them and taking out the small ones as they went crispy but all in all pretty easy. Finally season with your flavour of choice, I went for plain salt. Yummy!
- 9:04 am - Tue, May 14, 2013
The sun is shining and the sky is blue, but I’m wearing my winter coat and am beginning to wish I’d brought my hat and gloves too. What is going on May?
- 9:43 pm - Sun, May 5, 2013
Mixed spice roasted apple rings cooked in the air fryer. Perfect in my lovely Eden pottery apples bowl!
- 8:35 pm - Sat, May 4, 2013
Campervan….
A few years ago we bought an old Land Rover Dormobile on Gumtree. Since then Dee has been working at it, totally overhauling it and fixing absolutely everything. All the hard work has paid off and it’s very nearly ready so I thought I’d share some photos of it….
I can’t wait to go on our first camping trip in it, although I really need to get my sewing machine fixed so I can get started on the curtains for it!
- 8:27 pm
Exhibition opening…
On Thursday night we had the opening of our joint exhibition, Land, Sea and Air in Castle Espie. This exhibition is the first time me, my mum and my sister have had an exhibition together. It was a lot of work getting ready for it but it was all worthwhile - so many people turned up for the opening night, we were really chuffed!
We started with a little celebratory glass of champagne…
My piece was called Irish Lights - a concertina book of lithographs of drawings of all of the lighthouses around ireland - 73 of them in total!
It worked out pretty long in the end, 7 metres when laid out flat, about 4 metres when concertina’d.
I also created a large print of all the lighthouses together (as I figured most people probably wouldn’t want to buy a 7 metre book for their house!)
Sarah had beautiful paintings of wildlife including hares, pheasants and stags. As well as a selection of drawings and prints.
and mum had gorgeous landscapes and still lifes.
The exhibition is on until the 9th June so there’s plenty of time to have a look if you’d like to. There is a lovely cafe at Castle Espie so you can team it with some tasty lunch or a cup of tea and a brownie, and of course you can always go and see the ducks as well!
Castle Espie
78 Ballydrain Road, Comber, Co Down
028 91874146
info.castleespie@wwt.org.uk
Open Monday - Friday 10 - 5 and Sat - Sun 10 - 5.30
- 4:31 pm - Mon, Sep 17, 2012
Needle felting
When everyone was round at my house for our wedding making day we all agreed that it was such a fun day we should definitely meet up again to try our hand at other crafty skills so at the end of August Tineke invited us round to her house to try our hand at needle felting. It was such a treat, her house is absolutely gorgeous with beautiful views of the Mournes.
After a cup of tea, a tasty danish pastry and a look round all the nooks and crannies of Tineke’s house we settled down at the kitchen table to have a go.
I’ve never tried needle felting before but looking through this book for inspiration I decided to try making a little fox.
We used the green foam cushions off an old sofa to work on which worked pretty well…
It took a bit of time to get the hang of it and start to see the shapes coming together but very soon the felt began to develop into little characters…
Just needs his beads for eyes.
Tineke made us a delicious lunch of home made soup and tasty bread, cheese and ham, all rounded off with some freshly picked blackberries. Yum!
Once we’d finished we took our little creatures out into their natural habitat to explore…
my little fox hanging out with Tineke’s dog and mum’s sheep.
It was a really fun day and I’ll definitely have a go at needlefelting again - i’d quite like to try making a little christmas robin for the tree.
Now we just need to have a think about what craft we’ll try next!
- 10:02 pm - Tue, Aug 21, 2012
Me on the radio talking about camping!
This morning I was on Radio Ulster trying to convince Good Morning Ulster presenter Joel Taggart that camping is good fun! You can listen for the next seven days here. I’m on at 1hr 21mins in. They didn’t quite believe that we’d gone camping for our honeymoon! I tried my best to convey how much fun camping can be but I don’t think I managed to convince Joel, Sarah, the other presenter, said she was definitely up for it though!
I realised then that I’d never posted up the photos from our honeymoon camping trip so I thought I’d do that now. There’s so many I liked I couldn’t edit it down anymore so I’m afraid this is going to be a long one!
Our tent with the sea in the background.
Me inside the tent with a piece of essential camping kit - the woolly hat!
Some more camping essentials! - well it was our honeymoon ;-)
Time for a cuppa!
Cooking breakfast.
Sunset at the beach.
This was the first campsite we stayed at and it was definitely one of the most picturesque campsites we’ve been to. All the pitches were really private, surrounded by their own sand dunes. Where we were pitched you could just step out of the tent and over the dunes and you were right on the beach. Lovely!
We had some rather changeable weather, the scenery could go from this to…
…this!
We took a day trip out to Inis Mór the largest of the Aran Islands.
On the ferry on the way over.
We took our bicycles over on the ferry and cycled to the Dún Aengus fort, where the views were absolutely amazing.
But taking a photograph could be perilous!
We mostly stayed in seasidey campsites that were out of the city but Dee wanted to see the Volvo Ocean Racers which were in Galway city so we stayed there one night. The campsite was in Salthill just a few miles outside of the city and it wasn’t exactly the most picturesque place in the world (especially in comparison to the first place we stayed!) but it was incredibly handy to the city - we were able to walk across the street and get on a bus to get into the centre with no problem. We saw the boats and had a really delicious italian meal in a restaurant we’d been to the last time we stayed in Galway four years ago. To round the night off we saw a brilliant band play in the Arches pub.
After Galway we headed down to the Dingle Peninsula where we stayed in the western most campsite in Europe!
The scenery was amazing and the pubs were pretty great too!
While we were looking around at the waterfalls a car of lads pulled up and one of them jumped out, stripped to his undies and ran under the water! It was freezing that day - I was wearing a winter coat, wellies and a woolly hat!
We drove along the Conor pass and saw this lake shaped like a heart!
The next photos are from a folk park which I couldn’t resist looking round.
Lovely trunks.
Dressers galore!
Lots of beds and quilts.
and bicycles!
Finally one of the lovely old roads we drove down with fuchsia hedges. The verges in both Galway and Kerry are gorgeous with lots of wildflowers and tonnes of oxeye daisies.
- 5:44 pm - Sat, Aug 18, 2012
- 1 note
www.longshotpress.co.uk
Just a quick note to say the new website address is now www.longshotpress.co.uk! Yay! Thanks to Eoin at Soul Hosting for helping me sort it out!
