Hosting The Craft Group Ladies

Greetings lovely friends & readers

Well it would seem that I blinked & July ended 😕 - the year is slipping by so very fast.

It was my turn to host the craft group ladies in July & I just managed this on the very last day.  When I look back at the busloads of Garden Groups that I used to host it is hard to believe how much work it felt like just to get ready for 7 ladies!!!  It felt like a marathon effort.

 In my attempts to tidy up prettify things a bit round here I went off to the Garden Centre with a birthday gift voucher from my friend Gail.  I could not resist the super healthy looking maidenhair fern above, as my last one was looking rather dead sad.

I also used the voucher to buy these lovely cyclamen above - just the pop of colour my outdoor space needed at the moment 💗

Mine is the one on the right - an old frame of Mums that I repurposed

We had previously decided to make this craft meeting a Mid-winter Christmas theme so I chose the "Joy" frames as our project.  Everyone had to bring along their own painted frame.  We had a lovely time glueing vintage music papers to our frames, stamping the word "Joy" & then making the tiny wreaths to go on them.  I love how everyone's turned out slightly different as each of the ladies put their own spin on it.  

Our challenge issued last month was from Gail.  She handed everyone a Daphne's Diary magazine & we all had to make a project out of it.  Gail works at the Op Shop & a large pile of almost-new Daphne's Diary magazines had been donated.  This is my copy above.

Wanting to try something a bit different, I chose the leaf art above.  I found a tree down the far end of my section with these large green leaves on it so I pressed & dried them for a week.  I was really pleased with how the painting turned out but unfortunately I put them too close to our fire to dry the paint & they burnt & crinkled up quite a bit.  You can see the brown markings above where they burnt.  So I decided to try another project.

The patchwork coasters caught my eye so I found my scrap bag of Tilda fabrics - Yes I save every scrap!  These were a fun & simple project to whip up - I used wadding in the middle & a pretty floral backing.  These would look lovely tied up with a scrap of lace & gifted together with a pretty coffee mug. 

I had originally planned to give the ladies another project after lunch so I trialled the snowflakes made from wooden clothes pegs.  You can find the instructions * Here *.  I found that the wooden pegs were very rough & required lots of sanding once I'd glued them, then when I painted them I wasn't that happy with the end result so I ended up mod-podging a paper serviette over it to hide the faults.

Though I was able to show the finished project we did not end up creating it - perhaps another month we may make it as our group project.  

This is our lunch table

I know I have said this before, but one thing we always get right at our meetings is the food!  We all bring a shared plate & everyone bought something christmas-themed along.  It was wonderful to have the hot food as it was a cold bleak day here.  

Our morning tea table above - Yes Willie, I made Scroggin Slice !

 I reached my hand into my christmas decorations box & pulled out a few little bits to decorate our table & make it feel a bit more mid-winter christmassy.

I picked Sid up at lunchtime on Tuesday as they had parent-teacher interviews.  He wanted to craft so we made this "penguin" above from toilet roll tubes.  Sid has named him "Frank" 😉

I captured this photo of Pippi last week ... she had been creeping up on Little One on the deck & thought that she was hidden behind The Mr's farm gumboots.  She was Not impressed when he ran away inside & she couldn't stalk him any longer. 

Wishing you a wonderful week ahead dear friends - remember to be kind to yourselves & to each other,

With much love & friendship to you all,

Love Julie & the furry ones (all 3 of them!) x0x0x