I am blessed with a full and busy life..

...but I do wish I had more hours in the week to get things done!  This past week I've spent quite a bit of time with friends, which is lovely, and doing paperwork and going to meetings which isn't so lovely!  Oh, and Monday was spent at Paddy's doing one of Sylvia Wood's amazing textile workshops, 'Burnt Offerings'

[by the way, Paddy now has an active blog :)  find her here http://paddycosgriff1.blogspot.com/]

We burnt, stitched, heated, combined a variety of textiles and came away with a tiny book of gorgeousness...

I gave mine a love theme :)  I'm going to add more bits to it, and it has spaces for tags and weenier books.

 

  

I love using my sewing machine to draw with, and adding little snippets and fragments to miniature books so it was a blissful day for me :)

I am very lucky to live near to 'Creative Recycling', an art gallery run by a group of artists who use recycled materials as a central part of their work.  I introduced a friend to this artistic space on Thursday and we had a fabulous time.

The gallery now has an outdoor space with sculptural pieces made from recycled items.

I've wanted to make metal flowers for my garden for ages but am waiting to learn how to manipulate and combine large sheets of metal.  Until then, I can easily use my collection of rusted bottle tops, wire and tin cans to make some smaller flowers like these :)

And I have an area of garden too shaded and dry for much to grow so I'm now saving my coloured glass bottles :)  Even better, sherry comes in blue bottles so maybe I'll just have to get some more now it is a paving material lol

This pond is actually made from waste glass from the framing service offered by the gallery.  The glass is fused and used in pictures as a collage element, although here it serves as a frozen pond for these fabulous ducks :)

Some people are so talented :)