September morning

I love September mornings - they seem to be sunny more often than summer mornings. If I take the time to climb into the loft, stand on a box and poke my head out of the skylight this is what I see...

Earlier on there had been a band of cloud on the river so you could only see the very tops of the mountains but it had cleared before I thought about getting the camera out.

I find September to be quite a productive time as well.  This is what was waiting for me on my work table:

And this is what I had by the end of the morning (despite a few interruptions), all ready for my new shop:

Not a bad mornings work!

A new shop

I have had my original etsy shop for 3 years now and it has been rather neglected of late as the ffflowers have taken over.  So I decided it was time for a new start, a new look and a new name.  My new etsy shop hypsela handmade will still stock my handmade journals and seashore art cards but I hope to be adding new lines in time as well.  Please visit and show your support!

To get my new shop off to a good start I have been making a lot of my journals/sketchbooks, including several of the larger size, which I will be listing over the next few days.  These make a great present for those hard-to-buy-for arty friends and relations!

The books are filled with pages made from a mixture of different papers.  They are the sort of thing I looked for for ages without success - so now I make them myself.

This last book is a new style for me, covered with kraft paper ready for the owner to customise - an idea suggested to me by Maisy of OneLittleHouse on etsy.

Over the last couple of years I have been secretary (and acting chairman and refreshments provider and...) for a local group which has now given up the ghost - I have been left with a lot of paperwork to get rid of and a big pile of over-sized brown paper envelopes which I have no use for.  But they work really really well on the covers of these books!  Waste not, want not!

A new toy!

I discovered this new tool on the etsy forums the other day - developed by the man behind redrowstudio on etsy.  It enables you to post a copy of a real treasury on your blog, with clickable links and everything!  I have had to use the 'tiny' version to fit it in so the text is a bit small, but you should be able to click on each picture and be taken to the item listing - let's see if it works!  I'm testing it out with this pretty treasury by ScarlettRose featuring my Peach Melba Ribbon Flowers - thank you Scarlett!

'A Little Blush' by ScarlettRose

An adorable colour of pinkness!

A girl's heaven... slgdesigns $25	Blush Rose - Classi... BrideCouture $32	Beaded flower hair ... tessorijewelry $12	3 Peach Melba Ribbo... ffflowers $19.5
BLUSH PINK FLUFFY F... overtherainbow... $10	Dash of Blush Tissu... catywhompus $4	Pink Button Necklac... songsparrow $18	Tea Roses Blank Not... auntiescardsho... $5
Bubblegum 3-in-1 Co... mummumscrafts $7	Pearl Blush- Freshw... shesacraftyone $22	Strawberry Blush Me... YarnTails71 $11	Peach Melba spacers... mermaidglass $12
Origami Coin Purse ... AcuteAccent $8	Make Up Brush Roll HomeCharm $18	Gurumi 'O' ... gurumiorama $17.5	Blush Mini Skirt thepinkdesigns $27

Generated using Treasury HTML code generator by Whale Shark Websites.

Back in the tree

We spotted our fledgling wood pigeon back up in the tree today - apparently none the worse for his trip down to the ground and encounters with our window!

Leaving the nest

There has been a wood pigeon nest in our neighbour's small hawthorn tree just the other side of the fence. A very small tree for such large birds! About 2 weeks ago the tree, and presumably the nest, were no longer big enough for the baby wood pigeon, so since then he has been sitting on top of our fence amidst the honeysuckle. Our neighbour has a lot of cats so it is quite surprising that he has survived, but he has.

We have been lucky enough to see him being fed a couple of times - although it's not a pretty sight!

Yesterday he decided to take his first flight, sadly straight into our window. Here he is, having made it back up onto the bench, and not quite sure where to go next.

He had another couple of goes at flying yesterday evening, but sadly the window kept getting in the way.  His flying was pretty good but his sense of direction was appalling!

This morning he has gone - hopefully he worked out which way was house and which way was sky.  There are no feathers, so at any rate that's a good sign!

Busy busy busy

I am very conscious that I have been neglecting my blog of late... my excuse is that I have been gadding around all over the place. First we went off to see my Mum at the seaside and of course I managed to fit in a bit of beachcombing...

As usual Mum was in the midst of a clear out - I have no idea why she was the owner of a polystyrene display head but I was quite pleased to take it off her hands!  Meet Florence - as you can see I have already started to give her a makeover...

Then back home to mountains of washing...  On Friday I managed to sneak off to Rugby for the day to visit the CULTEX exhibition.  This inspiring exhibition was the result of a collaboration between 3 Japanese and 3 Norwegian textile artists.  Sadly it has closed now and is off to Norway but the CULTEX website is well worth a look.  I can't show you any pictures from the exhibition but I did take a nice one of Rugby school - Rugby itself is very pretty, I have only ever been to the station before which doesn't give the best impression...

I had a little time to spend browsing the shops in Rugby town centre before my train home and couldn't resist this find in the fair trade shop...

I'm sure it's going to be very useful for something!

And in between all of this gadding about I have been working on  a couple of lovely wedding flower orders, including some flowers in lovely new shades of blue - the new colours will be arriving in my shop shortly!

Back in the swing of things...

The blog has been rather quiet lately because I have been on holiday - yes, thank you, I had a lovely time and I'm nearly brown - at least, the gaps between the freckles are smaller!

I'm not really one for taking conventional holiday snaps, but I did love these palm trees - I'm not sure if these are flowers or seed pods but they looked like birds heads in the trees - I love the shape, a bit like a Bird of Paradise flower.

Of course I couldn't resist collecting some shells...

...and the fruit and vegetables came in these lovely peppermint green bags - well, I couldn't just throw them away, could I?