longshot press

sarahmajury: Had another lovely day working with the folks at...

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:47:02 +0100

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…

Rhododendron, the Liberace of garden plants

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:34:25 +0100

Rhododendron, the Liberace of garden plants

1st attempt at home made crisps in the air fryer! Had some...

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:41:28 +0100

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!

The sun is shining and the sky is blue, but I’m wearing my...

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:04:00 +0100

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?

Mixed spice roasted apple rings cooked in the air fryer. Perfect...

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:43:00 +0100

Mixed spice roasted apple rings cooked in the air fryer. Perfect in my lovely Eden pottery apples bowl!

Campervan....

Sat, 04 May 2013 20:35:00 +0100

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!

Exhibition opening...

Sat, 04 May 2013 20:27:00 +0100

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

Needle felting

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:31:00 +0100

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!

Me on the radio talking about camping!

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 22:02:00 +0100

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.

www.longshotpress.co.uk

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 17:44:47 +0100

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!

Website redo....

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:44:26 +0100

Well after a lots of fiddling with images and pages the shop is all sparkly and new!

Rather than have a separate website and shop I’ve integrated them all into the one site so hopefully it makes much more sense and is easier to navigate. At the moment I only have my cards and notebooks available to buy as I am re photographing all of my prints so you can get a better idea of what they would look like framed up and on your wall.

At the moment the address is http://longshotpress.bigcartel.com but I am in the middle of changing it so it will be the old longshotpress.co.uk name. I’ll let you know when I get it change over but in the mean time you can visit the new site here.

On top of all the visual changes postage to the United Kingdom is now COMPLETELY FREE! So there’s no excuse not to buy that card you’ve had your eye on! *For those in the rest of the world postage rates are still very reasonable!*

Oh and I’ve added lots of fancy social networking buttons as well so if you want to like, tweet or pin me, be my guest!

Shop...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:16:00 +0100

I’m going to be making a few changes to the shop so apologies if it looks a bit weird over the next few days!

Craft Fest 2012

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 20:11:42 +0100

sorry for the lack of interesting posts lately. I’ve been so busy working at the BBC story fest sessions and getting ready for Craft Fest I haven’t had a chance to get all the lovely posts I’m planning done! I’ll get there next week I promise! This weekend though I’m taking part in Craft Fest at Castle Ward in Strangford. Its the second year I’m doing it and I’m really looking forward to it. When I did it last year it was the first proper big craft fair that I’d done and it really inspired me - meeting the customers and seeing what sort of things the were looking for and also meeting the other exhibitors, it really made me think about the sort of things I’m making.

So if you’re free this weekend do try and head down and take a look. There will be loads of different stands as well as workshops and demonstrations and on top of all that you can take a tour round the big house - where there is also an exhibition of work going on - My book Until Further Notice will be part of the exhibition.

Hopefully see you there!

I’ll be doing some book illustration at this event,...

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:21:00 +0100

I’ll be doing some book illustration at this event, tomorrow and Saturday. Head down if you get the chance, should be lots of fun!

Wedding!

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 19:40:00 +0100

Its been a few weeks since the wedding but I’m finally getting round to posting up some pictures. It was an amazing day, so much fun and possiblyone of the only days it didn’t rain in June!

The tables all set ready for tea in the hall.

Paper boats and washi tape flags as place names.

Favours - little jars of homemade Rhubarb and Champagne Chutney, made by me and my mother in law with rhubarb from my own garden none the less! (A while ago I made some printable Rhubarb Chutney Labels which you can still download here)

My mum made all the flower arrangements for the church and the tables in the hall, they were all from her own garden or from friends near by and included sweet peas, honeysuckle and little daisies. On the tables they were arranged in golden syrup tins and ordinary tins which my sister had decorated with ribbons and lace trim.

We decorated the hall and a marquee (which was outside for milling about in before tea) with all the bunting and paper chains we made at the wedding making session back at the start of June. As well as making fabric bunting we also made bunting out of doilies cut in two and sewn on to bias binding or ribbon - I had seen some mexican paper cut bunting on line but it was sooo expensive so i decided to go for this version instead, and with doilies from the pound shop it worked out very reasonably indeed!

The cake was carrot cake made by my mother in law and it was absolutely delicious. In the background you can see a blackboard with the seating plan drawn out, the hall was once used as a school house and I just couldn’t resist writing on the blackboard!

Me, my sister and my sister in law. Me, my bridesmaids and my family travelled to the church in this 1940s charabanc bus. It was so much more fun that going in a normal wedding car and me and my dad got to sit in the back seat! My sister and I made the bouquets.

Smooching in front of the bus!

We also had this 1960s bus to transport everyone to the evening venue for dancing. Its a bit hard to see in this pic so I will try and find a better one somewhere!

This is where we all went dancing in the evening. It is an old lightship moored in Strangford Lough which is now a sailing club!

And finally a picture of the back of my head! My friend Sarah did my hair and my make up - she is one talented lady - both still looked good when I finally went to bed in the wee hours! (She also makes beautiful jewellery but she doesn’t have a website yet)

Anyway it was such a lovely day and although it was hard work making everything in the run up to it, it was so worth it! Thanks for reading!

Wedding making....

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 22:04:39 +0100

One of my favourite things lately has been making all the different bits and pieces for the wedding - the dress, the favours and of course the decorations.

Over the Jubilee bank holiday I organised a making day at my house with crafty family members and friends. It was such a great day and we got so much made (so much more than if I’d been making by myself, many hands and all that) The chat, tea and cake (baked by my talented sister) made the day fly in and i could hardly believe how much stuff we ended up with. I don’t want to give too much away before the big day so i’ve only got a few shots at the moment but I’ll put up photos of the finished decorations once its all over!

working on many metres of bunting.

I really don’t know why I am pulling such a strange face in this one!

oodles of paper chains

Hard at work pining bunting together

My mum busy at the sewing machine

Yet more sewing - Carol and Tineke

More old paper creations

I look a bit manic in this picture, I don’t know why as it was a really lovely day and not stressful at all (although my sewing machine had given up the ghost by the end of all that bunting!)

Everybody seemed to enjoy it (or maybe they were just being polite because I made them lunch!) and we agreed that we’d try to get together again for another (non wedding related) making day very soon.

Until further notice - hardbound concertina book of lithographs,...

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 23:27:28 +0100

Until further notice - hardbound concertina book of lithographs, each page has a print of a drawing of a bus or train timetable, 10 in total, one from each decade of the 20th century.

sarahmajury: Called in to see the art college show and got to...

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 23:24:27 +0100

sarahmajury:

Called in to see the art college show and got to see Em’s book for the first time it looks great!

Thanks Sarah!

Colour party bags for hen party tonight, hopefully they...

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 16:13:52 +0100

Colour party bags for hen party tonight, hopefully they won’t all disintegrate in the rain!

The perfect lane and hedgerow, it’s definitely the cow...

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:06:33 +0100

The perfect lane and hedgerow, it’s definitely the cow parsley that makes it!