A Few Sunsets

I won't bore you with endless holiday pictures, but as we were staying in the sunset area of the island it's only fair to the Isle of Wight that I let you see a few.

Pretty darn lovely and a little wild. It looks so still when you look out to sea, but standing at the water's edge with the tide fully in, the power of the waves breaking against the sea wall was massive and rather scary.

Driftwood Boats

That is what I made out of the bits and pieces I showed you yesterday....boats and ships of different shapes and sizes.

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 You can see the scale of the boats by the size of my fingers holding tight to them while the early morning sea breeze tries to blow them away.

 I would put them on the breakwater at Colwell Bay and just as I focussed the camera to get the shot, the wind would whip them off into the wet sand below and I'd start all over again. In the end I gave up and held the ones that wouldn't stay.

 

The sails on this larger ship were found on a beach at Bembridge near the lifeboat station. When I looked up beaches on the internet before going away, it said that was a good place for beachcombing, and so it was. I washed the fabric and dried it, then tore it in half to use.

 The ones with the old leathery sails are definitely my favourites and I brought back a big bag of driftwood to carry on making at home.

What did I make on Holiday????

Well I made 6 things but I'm not going to show you what they are today...just a teaser first.

These are the things I took with me:

 Fabric and tattered leather pieces,

 

A scalpel, glue, a small hand-drill, wire, beads, a little hacksaw and a cutting mat so I didn't damage the table of the bungalow we stayed in.

And this is what I collected from the beach...

Lots of driftwood in a variety of shapes and sizes so, what did I make?
Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Fun With Matchboxes

I'm back from a week on holiday and raring to go!!

So let's start with another matchbox craft idea.

If you get 4 matchboxes and glue them together an end to a side all the way round in a square, you get this shape

Cover the ends of the matchbox trays with paper (I chose fake wood), cover the outside of the cube shape that you have made with paper and then put a strip of paper over the empty square shape left in the middle to make it look solid.

 I put jewelled split pins as the handle on each drawer, and the finished article looks like this...

It looks surprisingly solid and like a real wooden cube.

Spooky Trees on the Isle of Wight

We are going back to the Isle of Wight for our holiday this year: same place, same little area of holiday bungalows. We took a year off last year and went to the Bristol area, but this year everyone wanted to go back to
COLWELL BAY! Best beach ever. 

It's tucked away on the west side of the island, close to Totland (which has the best sunsets on the island), has its own cafe on the beach and a weird abandoned army lookout post, gently rusting into picturesque obscurity. There's sand, shingle, rocks, driftwood and a lovely walk with these really odd looking, bleached trees.

Lazy Workers

Back in April I posted a picture of the Ninja Builders, the kind we'd all like to employ, who get things done really quickly and efficiently.

Here is the unfortunate other end of the spectrum, the kind of people you hear about all too often, who can't be bothered and string the job out for weeks or months longer than necessary.

So to those of you thinking Sockletania was a Utopian place where all is well and the troubles of your land don't exist... sorry to shatter your illusions. It seems wherever you get people, of any race, colour, creed or fabric, you get the whole range of human nature: from the Ninja to the Slacker.

Holiday is fast approaching so if you see no new posts for a week either have some time off and visit other sites or have a relaxing wander through the archives of SockletWorld.

Marmite and Jack Sparrow

It was our 20th Wedding Anniversary yesterday this is what lovely husband gave me...

If you've seen previous Blogs, you'll know we are a Marmite obsessed family and I have a particular fascination with Captain Jack Sparrow when it comes to arty makes.

If you haven't seen previous blogs...you could go back and check the titles and you'll see a smattering of both  = )

Or see the many Arty-Marmararti things Hubby has done at
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=56759148@N00&q=marmite