I love the little houses that others have made and decided to renovate a rather uninspiring birdhouse that I found.

Before

After

Round the back

On the roof

There's no place like home.

... but a couple of people are having a wedding in London tomorrow.

And everyone in the country has gone nuts to join in!  There are flags and bunting on the streets, shop windows are full of displays, people are arranging parties, and there have been all kinds of things on the tv and in the papers.  It has been impossible not to be influenced by it all.

So I give you... The Royal Wedding (in inchies)



Created from a newspaper special, postage stamp and some DIY mini-bunting.  Close up of my favourites.



The two that say "Everybody in the House of Love" refer to this.  I love it!

After great delay, all on my side i'm afraid to say, here are some pics of the excellent swap package I recieved from Southern Flower.


The books - The Sceret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd; Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer; The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni and a gorgeous h/b edition of Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen.


An amazing personalised embroidered bookmark.  I absolutely love this, and have started using it already.


Some lovely stamped bookplated in a cute paper box.


A wallet for my library pass made from patchwork fabric, a bibliophile ATC and some inchies showing part of the cover of some of my favourite books.  One is definitely The Handmaid's Tale, but the others I'm not so sure.  An edition of Lord of the Flies, I think, and something with a mountain on the cover - Touching the Void?

She also made me a funky body mop thing for a scrub-down after reading in the bath 'til I turn wrinkly.  I love sitting in a hot bath with a glass of icy cold wine and a good book.  Thanks for a great swap southern flower.  I hope my package gets to you soon!

Although it is pouring with rain outside and everything looks grey, the first signs of spring are appearing - hazel catkins, snowdrops, elder budbursts, pussy willow and sticky horse chestnut buds.  The birds are starting to sing and I love it!

I made a set of inchies to celebrate.


And a close-up of my favourites.

And thank you for your lovely comment too, malmow.

Some of the fill in pages in my book...  please excuse rubbish photos - I was in such a rush to get them done!

Front Page and Don't Panic!


Hitched, lying on the manky carpet in the living room.


And close ups.  Sorry for hogging the thread!

I started the project by pulling my book apart, then sticking bits together to make 5 larger spreads.  But I couldn't think of something to do for one of them, and then started running out of time, so I did 4 instead.  Then I folded it up and rebound it and filled in the blanks in between.

Big spreads:

Butterflies

End of the Line

Ashes

One Life

Finally, after post-holiday laundry, friends' weddings and a training course at the other end of the country, I've managed to upload my pictures of my fabulous swap package from alteredmommy.


Some foreign language papers, with Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese and other (Urdu?) text, and some gorgeous Oriental papers.


More papers with pictures of plants and animals.  I especially love the tissue with the atlas print.


Tree-themed papers and pictures, including an ATC with a fantastic hand-drawn knotty twisted old tree.


And lots of excellent stamps, cigarette cards and other ephemera. 

I can't wait to use it in my sketchbook, and was lucky to have such a great swap partner.  (And that the postal service of Whitehorse, Yukon, are good at mail redirections!!)

I love the backgrounds aroze - is that bubble wrap prints around the pink/orange one?

I've completed my first 'page', of four pages joined together.  I stuck them together with a thin strip of masking tape, so that I could paint/glue/write over the seams.


My theme is 'and then there were none', which I've interpreted as the loss of biodiversity (as 2010 is the international year of biodiversity), the fragility of our planet and how it is our responsibility to do something positive about it.

A new page, Plenty more fish in the sea.

An idea that I might use in my sketchbook, and a bit of a nod to Roy Lichtenstein.  The wrods are 'Lying with you half awake, stumbling over what to say.  Well, anyway, its looking like a beautiful day.' from One Day Like This by Elbow.