IF:Witch

Trick or Treat?

Excuse me as I blow the virtual dust off this blog......it's been quite some time since the last post!  I thought I'd start it up again and get into the swing of illustrating and creating things I love to make.


So to help get me started I'm kicking things off with my entry for this weeks theme 'Witch' for Illustration Friday. My take is of a trick or treater dressed as a witch complete with her pet cat.

IF: Bottled

The Illustration Friday theme this week, Bottled, made me instantly think of the times when me and my sister would make rose perfume and bottle it up in any random jars that were spare.  Those who are unfamiliar with making rose perfume and wondering what it's all about, it's basically mushed up rose petals in water.....that's it......and it goes an attractive brown colour......nice! 

We only ever made it when we went to visit my nan and grandad, I think we got the idea from my nan in the first place, plus they had lots of roses growing in their garden.  We only used the rose petals that had fallen to the ground, thinking about it now, it was probably a sneaky way of getting us to clear the garden.  So we'd go out, picking up as many rose petals as we could collect, nan would dig out some empty jars, then we would stuff them full with the petals, add some water and mush them up a bit (to bring out the fragrance of course). 

As you can imagine, my mum wasn't overly thrilled to receive a fresh batch of rose perfume, after all, it looked like really dirty dish water with diced rose petal mush, and didn't smell all that great either.......but it's the thought that counts right?

Pencil Portrait

It's been a while since I've done any serious drawing so it was nice to be asked by my friend to do this portrait of her and her boyfriend for his birthday.  As much as I like to draw portraits, I'm always worried about getting a likeness, so much so it puts me off doing them. 

You'll have to take my word for it, but I think I captured them pretty well (huge sigh of relief), anyway my friend was happy with it and so was her boyfriend, happy birthday Stu.

We went to see the Wizard.......

.......the wonderful Wizard of Oz. 

Me and my sister went to see The Wizard of Oz on Saturday in London, she was lucky enough to win some tickets and I'm glad she asked me to go along with her.  The show was great, the effects were done well, especially the tornado scene, and there were no mishaps with the wire work when certain characters were flying or with the dog, actually the dog was very well behaved.

We even saw a couple of familiar faces in the audience, Brian May and his wife Anita Dobson.  I'm just glad we weren't sitting behind them, it's quite a hairdo he's got!  The major issue I have about going to the theatre is the lack of leg room, I'm 5'11" so sitting through a show can be rather uncomfortable, thankfully they have intermissions half way through so you can get up and stretch your legs.

I'm always intrigued to see what the set design is like, that must be a good job to have, they come up with such good ideas these days, especially when they have to make things move.  Just imagine the amount of planning involved!



Me in a giant rocking chair, plenty of leg room!

While we were up in London we fancied a visit to the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum, it's full of all sorts of wacky and weird things like portraits made from fluff, shrunken heads, chewed chewing gum wrapper sculptures and loads of information about weird and wonderful things from the past.  We found out about one chap who made an exact sculpture of himself, capturing the tiniest of details and going to the extreme of plucking every single hair on his body to put onto the sculpture, but he didn't stop there, he also added his nails and teeth...............believe it or not!  We also got a bit lost in the mirror maze, funny thing is it's not even very big, just very disorientating!  We had fun though, it was a good day out.

Candy Cupcake Bracelet Giveaway

For your chance to win this lovely bracelet click here. It's made by Laura Sparling, a fabulous lampwork artist who makes glass beads. She regularly does giveaways and the latest prize is this wonderful cupcake bracelet. All you need to do is leave a comment on her blog post, simple as that, and it's open to anyone anywhere.

New Website

Our brand spanking new cake website is now up and running.  I've been working on it all weekend and I'm quite pleased with the look of it.  If you fancy a look go check it out at http://www.sprinklesandcrumbs.co.uk/.

Quilled Flower Card

It's been ages since I've made any cards but I'm gradually getting back to it.  Sometimes it's good to have a break from things for a while to recharge the creative batteries.  Some days I feel like I've lost the ability to produce anything decent and other days it will come naturally - like today.