my purchases.....

from Ziguzagu....Japanese warehouse.
The first thing that hit me when i walked in was the smell....cedar mixed in with paint. 2/3rds of the warehouse is filled with beautiful vintage furniture which they restore. I wish i had taken pics of this part. Such beautiful carvings and paint finishes on the pieces.


The other section is reserved for the beautiful vintage fabrics, kimonos which they pull apart and sell by the metre. Nothing seems to be wasted. They also have an instore custom made service for cushions etc.

I loved the indigo cloths but i think Jacky beat me too it :)

However, i did find two i liked , this one from the 1930-40's.....so fragile and faded...


and this one a narrow strip from the sleeves. I love the texture too , its sort of like a waffle weave.


I should've pressed them but the daylight is fading :(


I spent ages deciding which fabrics i like but in the end just went with the colors patterns and textures i liked. Don't know what I'll do with them yet ....more to add to the stash...


i do love the bottom on this one...bonus..


While wandering around the furniture wishing i had a big house and pots of money, i found these little prayer books with the most beautiful text and images. Each page is folded into four on the brown ones and the coptic binding looks wonderful.



Then after a rather lot of money exchanged hands i found these lovely tie dye leather belts. I couldn't decide so all three were added on the credit card :)

They will make lovely bag handles.



This is how they are used...


Jacky has some pics on her blog too. I bought some of the little bone skeleton heads and after i got home wondered what type bone they were made of ?!

And you know what i really loved? Its so nice to go into shop thats not sterile, where you can poke around to your hearts content and things have a history.....

All in all a very good time was had by Jen :)

a busy week....

We have had a very busy week but still no news of Fletcher. We are feeling very dejected and hope he has either found a good home or met a very quick end [not nice i know but i would hate to think of him suffering in this cold and nasty weather].



Last weekend we went to Melbourne with Lucy for her model horse show. We stayed at Beaumaris and had some lovely walks on the beach.The above pic was taken at Frankston, such lovely little sculptures on the foreshore.
We tripped into Ikea and Ziguzagu,a fantastic japanese warehouse.[Big thanks to Jacky for putting me onto it, it was wonderful, might be while before the credit card recovers!]
haha, both places could not be farther apart in style but i enjoyed them both!
I haven't taken pics of my purchases yet...next post :)

Anyhow amongst the all the wonderful nights out this week i have finally finished these atcs .
The lovely Margaret was a guest designer for June here and made these lovely atc pockets. I couldn't wait to have a go, mainly as i wanted use the cute little lanterns that i bought a little while ago. Ive lost the packaging so cant tell you who they are :(




The technique on the dresses is the string technique. The red is from my friend Les and i made the brown.[I never get it to work very well, its always a bit chunky.]
I am slowly getting around and visiting the other pocket atcs,the ones i have seen are just lovely.

and finally because i love seagulls, especially when they are fighting over chips :)

Some exciting news...not the dog :(

I found out this week that i was accepted as a member of the Design Team at

The Stamping Queen.

I'm pretty excited and cant wait to get my hands on some of their products to make some Atc's.

4 atc's a month to be precise , 12 between us, each month that you could have a chance of winning !

Congratulations to the other very talented DT Members too,

Fiona

Marcy

I've often wondered what was involved with Design Teams and know i know ;)

Thanks Barb and Ray for the chance to be involved !

wanna hear a story.....

We used to breed whippets [and border terrriers]. Anyway we gave one of our whippies, Fletcher to a guy who just adored him and used him on the rabbits.
Anyway two weeks ago, he went down to do some business with a lady friend about 100 kms away in Ballan. On Saturday 10[days ago]he was in the paddock and he hit the electric fence and ran off.

Much to everyones distress.

He has run off before and we all thought he would try and make it home but its 100 kms and lots of forest and highways. Plus its really cold now at nights and whippies dont have much on them to keep warm.

After numerous calls to pounds, rspca [who were not very pleasant], rangers and councils no one heard anything. After a week we were beginning to give up hope.

Hubby has been quite upset, so on Sunday , Lucy made up a some great flyers and they dropped them off in Daylesford and Castlemaine.

Anyway, Monday we got a phone call from someone who had sighted him in the tip road at Daylesford a few days ago.

Tonight , a lady rang and she patted him Castlemaine, 30kms away. She described his yellow eyes which you couldnt see in the poster.

so we know its him....

C'MON Fletcher, you are nearly home, provided he doesnt run over or shot :(

keeping everything crossed, keep you posted!

bat-tered bendigo...

Good title for another post , wish i'd thought of it! It was the headline in the paper just after i my bat post.

This is what the sky looked like and i was hoping to catch late in the day last week. Isn't it amazing to see them swirling around the clocktower....Either they are on their way out for feed or something stirred them up.
these photos are from the Bendigo Advertiser staff....

cute little faces....


love the see through look and shape of their bodies...



Spoke to Di about the 'regurgitation' too at craft, there were quite few laughs to be had!

Its the long weekend, [Queens Birthday, even though its not!] always one of mixed emotions for hubby and me. On one hand its nice to have 3 days off and i wont go back to work til Thurs as i have meeting on Tues and my day off Wed. woohoo!

I have been painting the kitchen table and here are some peeks...hoping to mask it out tonight and start the fun stuff tomorrow...cant wait to start the actual painting!

And its 20 years ago today that our son Jack was stillborn. I don't know where that 20yrs as gone and i didn't think i would ever get through that first year but thanks to support from family, friends and the SANDS group, i think we both came out the other side pretty well.

Our midwife was fantastic , really ahead of her time and that helped so much with her kindness, validation, and the beautiful photos and clothes she had organised for our little one.
Sometimes i feel like it has happened to another person, it feels a bit surreal but I get his things out and the memories come flooding back.

i only have to look at Lucy to know what he would've looked like, same eyes, round face and dark hair :) no offence Luce!
One thing it has made me is stronger, be more compassionate and really appreciate the two beautiful girls i have now....

I thought long and hard about posting this and will probably still delay hitting the publish button but i need to get this off my chest today. I'm not looking for sympathy, but i think stillbirth is something not talked about much.
Enough said :)

Hubby and Lucy have just gotten back from Castlemaine and they picked these amazing hand carved stamps from the Gallery there.

arent they beautiful...

They are Indian, wooden and about 4-5 Cm's deep, unreal ))) They remind me of the twelve apostles

Might have to have play with them tonight!

bat love or not.....

For several months, our town Park has been invaded by fruit bats. I didn't realise how bad it was until we were in town one late afternoon and, no joke, there were gazillions of them flying around the park, it looked like something out of a vampire film, how i wish I'd had the camera then :(



The poor old park is quite infested and unfortunately its the main pathway for all the primary and secondary students to get into town. Its only a block from the main street.
I've heard the primary students wont even go out in the school yard to play because they are scared of them. They have destroyed two very old trees and there is scat everywhere..... Yuk..

It has quite divided the town and the council in its infinite wisdom came up with a plan to scare them off. They let off crackers and just succeeded in spreading them all over the Park, whereas at that stage they were contained to the fernery in the park.

Apparently this year and it happens every ten years or so, we have 3 types of trees in flower at once that they like to eat ...and you gotta go where the food is ! We are 6 kms out of town and they come out here at night and feed, breed and make a hell of racket. They stink to high heaven too.
They were supposed to go when the weather got colder but we are having frosts now and no signs of them leaving !



And....there was a big discussion in our house about how do bats poo when they hang upside down? This in turn led to a very interesting and funny discussion at craft and Di very knowledgeably set us straight!

* they regurgitate their poo.....even more YUK!!! [no poo hole!!!] Just thought you should all know ;)) *

EDITED!!! well after Melindas comment i thought maybe i'd better google how bats poo! guess what they do indeed poo normally , they hang by their wing claws and straghten up to poo!!

Wait till i see Di on Wednesday ;(

oh well it gave us a laugh!


I love how these four are hanging together...

and they do look rather lovely with the last of the sun on them...

sometimes...

sometimes it gets so long between posts that i don't know where to start!

I don't mean it too but it gets away on me sometimes. Anyhow, i have been sick with a cold / fluey type thing that has now lead to an ear infection. I had one day off work and its been really busy with lots of extra hours so i have just been going from day to day!

Today i finished my April Dress. We had so much rain in April that it had to be an April Showers dress plus Ive been dying to use one of those paper parasols.

I used the basic dress pattern but added a collar and slimmed it down bit. Its collaged with gesso and then lots of blobs of twinklings. Twinklings really resist so you have to 'blob' it and let dry naturally.

Jacky had sent me a lovely stamped tea bag with chinese lettering and Ive been waiting for something special to use it on. I ripped it up and gelled it on along with some mesh Debbi sent me [ so lucky to get all this interesting stuff from various swap partners]

The images i colored with water soluble crayons and i found the perfect flat bottomed fresh water pearl bead [its not really! well fake] for the parasol.




below is a very sad picture...






luckliy no dresses or dogs were destroyed in the process...