Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day 

to all the wonderful, loving, caring Mums
My daughter and I celebrated Mother's Day yesterday, and I'm glad we did because today's weather is overcast and chilly. Yesterday was beautiful, sunny and warm. 
My daughter treated me to a day in Canterbury

 browsing, shopping

soaking up the atmosphere

and a scrumptious cream tea at a lovely hotel restaurant

and of course no day out would be complete without a visit to one of my favourite shops!

And today I received this beautiful flower basket from my darling grandson.

~Keep warm and well ~

Polly x

A Concert and a Bit of Art

Today's concert at the Cathedral was Music from St Cedd's School, an independent day school for boys and girls from pre-school to year 6.  With an extensive programme of string orchestra, guitar ensemble, piano solo, violin solo, a singing group, clarinet ensemble, guitar ensemble, recorders, a beautiful solo singer, flute choir, oboe solo and the senior chamber choir it was a truly delightful concert. We are so lucky having these free concerts. 

Last Saturday I went to an art workshop organised by the art club I attend in the village. 

It was with some trepidation that I put my name down because it was for oils,
and I have never painted with oils before.

I enjoyed it, it was a good experience and I will do more at our club meetings.

Everyone enjoyed the day, and produced some excellent work.

This was mine from early on

And the finished project, which I was quite pleased with. I added the bow later.

I might do it again to see if I can improve on it (the whole painting, not just the bow!).

The following 3 were my favourites

~Keep warm and well ~

Polly x

Lunchtime Concert

Today's concert in the Cathedral were a brilliant duo, Maya Traikova on piano and Krassimira Jeliazkova-Jones on violin. Their programme was varied and included work from Pancho Vladigerov from their native Bulagaria and our home grown Elgar. 

Afterwards my friend M and I went to a lovely deli and tea room.

It's very pretty

~Keep warm and well ~

Polly x

The Dolls House Main Bedroom

I'm glad that's finished, well 90% finished, I need to add a few more embellishments, and I need to put a picture on the far wall between the doors, and a full length mirror on the wall at the side of the window. 

It started well

The wallpaper is a sample from a DIY store and the flooring is varnished spatulas again.

I decided to put fake doors in (miniaturists are allowed artistic licence! :-)  because

the lady of this house would definitely have a walk in wardrobe and an en-suite,

especially as her teenage daughter has an en-suite!

Don't look too closely at the bottom left of the fake door, I miscalculated and had to add a piece of wood.

It's nicely painted over now and hidden by the bed anyway!

I knew the furniture I wanted, I bought the bed at a local dolls house shop and ordered the dressing table, chest of drawers and bedside cabinets online. I planned to spray paint the bed to match the cream furniture, however, it wasn't all cream, the chest of drawers was white! Change of plan, I spray painted everything to match the white chest of drawers.

So down to the shed, because the weather was too bad to do it outside, furniture in a cardboard

box and spray away. It only took a few coats to get a good cover.

The bed was mahogany to start with, I used paint stripper to take off most of the colour.

It worked quite well. I thought it would be nice to put some decoration on it.

This cheap frame from Hobbycraft was just right for cutting out some of the swirls.

I tried a few designs

and looking at the photos here I wish I had gone with this one above

but I decided on this one. I glued them in place and spray painted it.

Now this is where it got very tricky. I wanted to decorate this little bed with some gold leaf............. 

dear reader, if you ever hear me mention gold leaf again, take me by the hand

and gently remind me how bad this was.

If you've done gold leafing before you know how fine it is. Oh boy did I get into a mess.

Just a gentle sigh from me scattered bits of gold leaf all over the place. 

I don't know if I bought inferior leaves, I just couldn't get it to cover nice and smoothly.

This is not pretty, but by this time I didn't want to start all over again either

sanding and painting or buying another bed.

THEN.....!!!

As if that wasn't enough punishment I decided to have a go with two ceiling roses!!

This one for the music room turned out quite well. 

The one for the bedroom, well it's a disaaaaster dahling. 

But the chandelier is very pretty and you can see more of that than the rose. 

So onto the curtains. I should have gone with straight forward pencil pleats, but no I thought 

Roman blinds would look nice which they do but what a fiddly job.

I went to a textiles exhibition last year. The ones I liked were out of my price range, but I did find this little package of material for only £5, just enough to make bed linen and curtains with, and I'm going to use that small piece of burgundy velvet to cover a bolster.

I'm currently hibernating making lap quilts.

~Keep warm and well ~

Polly x