The Clurichaun

One of the things I've been working on over the past day or so is this fellow. I've had it in my mind to make something for the wine cellar... a clurichaun!

The clurichaun is a cousin of the leprechaun. They are well dressed, always in green and red, and are never without drink. If you are very lucky, and treat them well, a clurichaun might just move in and take care of your wine cellar. Mistreat them however and you will find your wine spoiled and havoc run amok!

Butterfly wings and bees wax

Our house guests are gone and we now have a couple of weeks all to ourselves. The pull out bed has been tucked away and my craft room is now mine once more! Time to get on to the making.

I had about a dozen mini canvases laying about and it was about time to put them to use. The result are these sort of dreamy mini collages covered in beeswax. They have lovely things like lavender buds and four leaf clovers stuck in them. A couple even have real butterfly wings embedded in the wax.

Don't worry, I didn't go butterfly hunting for this project. The wings have been sitting in my stash for ages after finding them along a beach years ago.

Please don't let it be a dead cat!

It's a lovely drizzly day here today. A fog is hanging over the tree tops and everything looks dreamy and out of focus. Hang on a second. What's that down there? A black spot on the laneway at the bottom of the hill. It's not moving. Can't be an animal can it? Oh please don't let it be the neighbours cat!

We're expecting a full house this weekend so I've been cleaning, scrubbing, washing, and mopping all morning long. After a few hours of glimpsing the black spot on the laneway my curiosity got the better of me and I strolled down to investigate.

Thank the gods, it's a hive! Must have fallen out of that old maple tree. No bees or wasps flying about(though the mosquitos are out in full force). I was just thinking about hives last night and so I carefully gather it up and take it back to the house so I can dry it out and have my way with it.

What a beautiful thing.

Horseshoes & Pirates

My husband came home on Saturday with a lovely surprise. He'd gone to an auction and bid on a nice stack of old photos for me to play with. Some of them are from local photographers and it's fantastic to think that I've got some local history in my wee hands.

I'm in the process of scanning and cleaning up the dust and scratches in photoshop. This poor fellow had a scratched up eye (click to enlarge).

I like the aged look so I don't go over board with the 'fixing' but I do explore these people pretty closely. I was thinking about how intimate the process of fixing these photos is when I came across a lovely surprise. Check out the tie on that stuffy fellow above...

Horse shoes! How utterly awesome is that? I'm now madly in love with that old stranger :)

P.S. The pirate festival was a load of fun and we managed to pull costumes together, not only for ourselves but for our houseguests too! If anything, this encourages me to have more dress up clothes and costumes on hand at all times :)

Fairy Wands & Peeping Toms

I was sitting in my craft room watching Excalibur and making fairy wands when who should appear my my window? Another peeping tom frog!

 

I know he's a tree frog but it still amazes me that such a wee thing can make it all the way up to our second story window. I still prefer to think they are jumping up :)

Here's a sneak peek at the wee wands.

We're off to the local pirate festival in the morning and I'm very excited about maybe possibly dressing up. Hope the day is full of "Arrrgh, matey!"'s

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning....

We're all in a tizzy here as we're expecting house guests tomorrow. Our good friends from our old home town are coming up for a little stay. The kiddo is extra excited to see his good friend, whom he has known since pre-school, and has loads of things he wants to see and do with him. I'm crossing my fingers very tightly that no one gets into the poison ivy. Just in case I've done a happy home spell to encourage only good things :)

Not too much going on here craft wise. I've been organizing my stash which had somehow made it's way into four jumbled boxes. Now I just might be able to find those little bits and bobs that were escaping my crafty fingers. Here's a completed page for the the Round Book Tip In Swap now on it's way...

"Things with Wings"

A visitor in the clothespeg bin

I adore our new home. The air is fresh and the views are stunning. The night sky is filled with gorgeous stars that actually twinkle. Birds sing to us all day long. It's a dream land. I just thank my lucky stars every day that bugs don't creep me out because they are everywhere, and they are huge. If I was, in any way leery of the creepy crawlies I'd be in serious trouble here.

This morning, as I was hanging laundry to dry, I found this fine fellow at the bottom of my clothes peg bin.

He was such a strapping thing that initially I thought it was a plastic bug my kiddo had misplaced. Nope. The legs gave a bit of a wiggle and I knew he was the real deal. I felt sort of bed for the guy, he was pretty sluggish and looked a little 'dented'.

After a few photos we returned him to the wild. It was a pretty exciting few moments for a seven year old boy... okay, I admit that I thought it was pretty cool too.

P.S. So, I guess this guy is a member of the scarab family. He likely lives in a hollow of one of the old trees that we have on the grounds. Apparently you can keep them as pets! If I find another maybe we'll feed it lovely things for a while before sending him back out to fend for himself.