Bob the Bunny at Blue Sky Cafe, Bangor

When on our travels we always try to seek out veggie cafes, or if thin on the ground somewhere a bit quirky or wholefoodie.
We found just the place in Bangor, not totally veggie but certainly a veggie friendly choice of lovely, locally sourced food.


First off, this very tasty and tangy, citrussy type pink lemonade with pink grapefruit, the fizz got right up  Bob's whiskers!

Lunch, and here we have a sandwich of Welsh mature cheddar, with homemade chutney and a nice fruity salad, very yummy.

The Blue Sky is definitely worth looking up if you find yourself in Bangor and rather peckish. The cakes and bakes looked fabulous but I was quite full after the sandwich and so I had to pass up on pudding!


http://blueskybangor.co.uk/

A stroll around Llandudno

I had 4 days in Wales last week and the best of the weather in those 4 days was the afternoon of the day of arrival. So what better place to head for than the seaside and lovely Llandudno. 
I've only been once before as a small child and I didn't remember it.
I took Bob of course!

There are some wooden sculptures around the town of Alice in Wonderland characters, I only managed to get the Mad Hatter, I saw the White Rabbit but forgot to go back and take Bob's picture next to his hero!

Lovely old ice cream coloured buildings along the seafront.
Below is looking towards The Great Orme.

Next we walked along the pier and saw all those wonderful things you only see at the British seaside.

Bob spotted some shell bunnies, I can't believe the little huts still sell all those fabulously tacky shell souvenirs!

As you can see from above, most of them are not even made in Llandudno!
Do you remember these jelly, glitter sandal things?!!

Just a few final shots from the pier

We end our stroll with a trip to the very nice Victorian loos on the pier! Very clean with pretty tiles and stained glass windows.
Thank you for coming along with me!

Afternoon with friends

Yesterday myself and 2 artist friends had a long overdue afternoon, of chatting, cake and catch-up.
I made us a badge each, incase we forgot our names!

The weather was reasonable which meant we could sit in my friends lovely garden and admire her wonderful new outdoor studio, it's almost like a little house, I'd love an outside space like that. She's very happy with it and turning out some super work from within its walls.

After one lot of tea we made our way to nearby Pocklington, the plan was more tea and cakes, a gallery visit and charity shops.
I didn't get a picture of the cafe or cake because it was really busy and it's not a huge cafe so we ended up sharing a table with 2 lots of people so I thought it would be rude to get my camera out. The cafe was The Coffee Bean and the food was lovely.


We visited Art & Rose gallery where one friend has some work, there were some fab things, a whole range of craft and art items. I treated myself to some stationery by Angie Lewin & Mark Hearld. The mask / clown cards are by one of our East Riding Artist members, June Hammond, I thought they would look good grouped in a frame.

http://www.artandrosegallery.co.uk/

I have to show you these groovy fabric shoes we saw in an expensive clothes shop in Pocklington.

We whizzed around the charity shops and I think we were quite restrained considering, here is a tablecloth I found and a rather nice skirt, I didn't particularly buy it to wear as I thought it wouldn't fit, more for the nice fabric panels to chop up. That said, with a bit of adjustment I think it will fit so might wear it!

Finally, we ended our day with an art preview by other ERA artist friend Steve Dove. The exhibition is on at Pocklington Arts Centre for the next 6 weeks and Steve will be there on Tuesdays demonstrating his work. Really fab, colourful paintings of the Yorkshire area.

http://stevedove.co.uk/index.html

It was a really nice afternoon and just what we all needed to recharge our batteries.

We've been to Wales

Bob & I are just back from a few days in North Wales. We've seen some extreme weather like this sun in Llandudno and we've driven through a flooded area near Pwllheli, had mist and driving rain in Snowdonia.
Will post a few more pictures soon but first we need to unpack!

Crossbred biscuits!

I've crossbred biscuit recipes due to what ingredients I had in the cupboard.
They are shortbreads crossed with oat biscuits, and I added some almond essence. Slightly more firm and less crumbly than shortbread so they are good for dunking in tea!


I used one of the printers letters I bought at the vintage fair to emboss them.

Seaside street furniture

I found myself killing time in Bridlington the other day as I was waiting for a repair to be done on my car. As I was just wandering with nothing much to do I made the most of the few minutes of sunshine with a stroll along the front to take some photos.

After this shot of the harbour I thought I'd go for some fun pictures, it's turning out to be such a cold miserable summer that I decided to seek out the quirky things of the British seaside. Thought this was intriguing, 'what lies through the nougat door'?

As you can see I've been having fun with filters too. Trying to make a somewhat ordinary seaside image at Brid a bit more interesting.


I soon spotted those fabulous bits of street furniture, the big plastic ice creams, donuts and hot dogs, brace yourselves.....!

Above was a cute donut and below was one which I thought looked a scary!

The bar above reminded me of that wonderful Jam song Going Underground.

That's it, a chilly summer day at the seaside!

Sewing Needle Case - mixed media

This week I made the rubber stamped, embroidered bird into a needle case as a birthday pressie for a friend.
Here was the start of the project, rubber stamped and then starting to fill the design in with embroidery floss.

The plan was to make the needle case look like a little book so I choose some interesting fabric for the back and then I did a spine which is also a rubber stamped ruler design. Stitched all 3 elements together.

I used a floral fabric for the inside and I stiffened the book by lining it with some pelmet fabric.
The layers were stitched together and I sandwiched a ribbon at each end to tie it closed once it's done.

I then added some felt 'pages' stitched down the spine for attaching the pins & needles to.
I also added a little inside pocket using some groovy vintage decorative ribbon and this can hold a needle threader.

That's it virtually done, I finished it off with a bit more embellishing on the front and voila, a mixed media needle case.

A wet trip to York

This felt like the first free weekend in ages and I really wanted to go to York as I'd bought a watch a few weeks back and it needed returning as it seems to be losing time quite erratically. 

Saw some good cloud formations on the trip there, difficult to capture in a moving car, they actually looked more dramatic than this.

I got the watch sorted and then went for a quick coffee and cake in Spring Espresso. Bob didn't come out today as it's wet and he's knitted so I just had a little friend of his, Snowy, in my bag. Snowy is admiring a most delicious slice of Dark Chocolate Earl Grey cake.

There were some torrential showers today and I darted between shops and picked up this groovy apple scarf in H&M.

And then these lovely fat quarters. I wanted some neutralish fabrics for doing some more rubber stamping and embroidery.

I have finished embroidering the bird but not turned it into anything yet.

I've also been trying some new rubber stamps on fabric to do mixed media stuff with.

It is so wet, miserable and dark that I don't feel like doing anything much, maybe tomorrow will be better !

Update on craft fair

It was the craft fair yesterday and even though it's June and supposedly summer, being outdoors it was affected by the weather.
It looked like a sunshine and showers day but as I got to the church yard to set up my stuff I soon realised how windy it was. I had problems securing my promotional banner, it was flapping in the wind and then my bunting was taking off! Because lots of my things are small and light I wasn't able to spread my brooches out so I had to leave them in tins and rely on customers to rummage through, not ideal so I wasn't very pleased with how my stall looked so not got many photos.


Eventually I was set up. Lovely atmosphere and friendly people and sales got off to a good start.

You guessed there's a 'but' coming! It started to rain, it came with little warning and a keen customer was rummaging through my things at the time which made it awkward to start getting my plastic covers out as a sale was about to take place, so she bought something and then I tried cobbling bits of bubble wrap together over my stuff and dragged what I could under the table. A bit too late, all the little tags and packages I'd spent ages printing out had succumbed to ink running which has left some things a complete mess with imprints and of course all the labels need making again. Some greeting cards were damaged too. I think we'd only been open for an hour when it rained. 


It stopped but looked very cloudy so I kept the covers on and then of course people were just walking past as it all went to a bit of a damp squid.


Things resumed and I made a few more sales and towards the end, I think I've started packing up on this pic, you can see it ended up lovely and sunny! Darn weather!

All considered, when the takings were totted up last night, I did a tad better than I thought given the weather conditions.
Here's what sold best, I made some fudge and sold a few bags but I was next to a sweetie stall so maybe that affected fudge sales. The sweetie stall had nothing homemade, just tubs of bought sweets but the kids seemed to make for that type of thing. I was surprised to sell lots of lavender filled gifts which can be a bit hit and miss, I also did quite well with my cheaper brooches, the knitted bunnies like Bob did quite well and I always have a bargain bucket of £1 items which are either sample pieces or things which aren't to my usual quality standards and people like  picking over those.
I didn't sell any of those little handmade notebooks, greeting cards, purses, iPad covers, fabric pencil pots or pin cushions.


After all this frantic making over the last few weeks I think I can relax a bit with craft things and restock my Folksy shop with the leftovers!