A bit of a sea theme going on

 This little mermaid sits on top of a beautiful piece of Ocean Jasper.Her tail unfolds around the back of the crystal.
Approx 5cms long
£16 plus P&P

 ***NOW SOLD***

 This mermaid is sculpted onto a piece of driftwood found on Binstead beach, Isle of Wight. She has a real ammonite fossil in her tummy and is finished with a gloss varnish.
Measures approx 15cm long
£25 plus postage

  

Beautiful Water element wand.Crackle quartz point for the tip, Goddess face and swirls surrounding the tip. She has blue suede cord wrapped around the end and 2 hanging charms of beads and shells.Perfect for calling or working with the element of water, or for beach workings. The driftwood and shells were collected on the Isle of Wight. Approx 25cms long. £25 plus P&P

(why oh why Blogger do you insist on turning my photos around?)

Mermaid painting

Mixed media on wood

Prints available

£14 each plus P&P

Long time posting and Rockin your World

Hello there! Many of you have probably forgotten who I am as it has been about 6/7 weeks since I last blogged or visited any of your blogs. Apologies for that, all I can say is that it has been an awful start to the year in our household and as such I have not had the time, energy or inclination to blog. (I will try to get round and catch up on your blogs in the next two weeks.)

So in an effort to pull myself out of this funk that has descended upon me, I have forced myself to do my rocking post because there have been a few shining moments, nothing huge, but then it tends to be the little things that add up doesn't it? And I have to remember that all is not bad, there are lots of gratefuls to be had, they are always there even when you have to look harder to find them and that's the whole point of Virginia's Rocking your world Friday!

So here goes...

 

(Photo is from a phone and for some reason blogger always puts them on the wrong way, if anyone knows how to sort this out please let me know!)

 * Gathering hag stones, pebbles and shells with Paige to make hag stone talismans and then going to the forest collecting sticks and plants for more crafty makes.

 * The kids and me went to a Wassail at a friends house. I had never been to one before and it was great fun, especially as the Morris dance group that she is part of were all there performing for us! A wassail is a fruit tree, normally apple, blessing to ensure that the trees produce a good harvest later in the year.

 * A snow day!! The Island rarely gets snow even if the rest of England is covered in it, so it was wonderful to wake up to the snow and find out that both the kids schools were shut so we could go out and play.

 The kids had so much fun on their sledges! I bought them two years ago and this is the first time it has snowed since.

 When Stu got in from work they all made a snowman together. His name was Derek and it took him 5 full days to melt away!

* Going to see Damh the Bard in Southsea with fantastic friends. He was just as amazing as last year when we went and this year we got there mega early and got better seats so we could see him as well as hear him this time!

 * Receiving this wonderful 'mini me' drawing from the wonderful Carmen. It is fantastic and I think it looks just like me!

 * Getting paid for this commission really brightened my day last week.

* Starting a new pair journal with Lou over at Collabor-ART. Really looking forward to this.

 * My son turning 16. Now I know this is a grateful but i was so emotional all day at the thought that my baby is not a baby anymore (even though he hasn't been a baby in a long time!). I am so proud of him, he is such a great boy, well behaved, polite, funny, smart, etc (Biased much??) He has had a tough month this month as well for reasons I wont go into but he has handled it amazingly well. Love you Caleb!

* The amazing and wonderful WW ladies! Thank you so much for supporting me the last few weeks, things have been tough and I am so thankful for your friendship and words of wisdom. You ladies really are the best.

* A wonderful, generous act of kindness from the lovely Carmen (link on her name above), left me in tears all day last week! Carmen knows Of all my stresses at the moment through the WW group and she signed me up and paid for me to do the 'Getting started with the Gelli plate' course run by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. I was overwhelmed by her kindness and it really has helped me pick myself up a bit this week. Thanks so much Carmen x x x

And here are some of the lush prints i made after watching all the videos on the Gelli arts course. I love how they all turned out.

* As always, I am grateful for my family. I don't know what I would do without them, always there when I need them. My hubby bends over backwards to make sure I'm ok, my kids make me smile everyday, my sister can always be counted on to call people bad names for me when I need her too (thanks Zoobs!) and my Mum and Dad have helped us enormously this month. I am also grateful to my friends, my friends that I chose to be family, thanks for everything this month, you know who you are and my online friends who have been fantastic and who I feel like I really do know in real life!!

Well, that's my rocking post. Not terribly long for 6 weeks, but its a start!

Hopefully I will be back to post next week and I will find time to catch up on all your blogs...sorry for being a bad blogger x

Sami x

Rocking your world Friday-actually on a Friday!

 It is Rocking Friday again and I am actually posting on a Friday! Hook up with our host Virginia if you want to play along.

* On Sunday it was Oakley's 2nd birthday (the black and tan cocker spaniel in the photo and the golden ones Willow, his older half sister).He is such a little dufus dog but we love him dearly. They had just had a bath in the photo so still look a little damp!They had a big meaty bone each for Oakley's birthday treat.

*Also on Sunday, Caleb and me took the dogs to this little secluded beach we know so they could have a good run and a swim in the sea. I also needed to collect some more sea glass for the mobiles I am making. The beach was deserted and we spent a lovely hour watching the dogs having fun and searching amongst the shingle for glass.

*My wonderful Hubby bought me a beautiful bunch of flowers on Sunday. He knows I love these big cabbage rose flowers so he searched through them all and found the biggest one for me. What a sweetie he is.

* The rain has really been coming down this week, but I did see this beautiful rainbow from my back doorstep. The photo isn't great, the rainbow was really vibrant and huge.

*I also spent some time with my nephew this week as he was down for a few days from Crawley. He will be 17 next month and I have to wonder where the time has gone when I see him and he's so tall and grown up now.

* My new hoody finally arrived this week. I have been waiting 7 weeks for it to turn up. It is a beautiful purple and turquoise patchwork type one from Joe Brown and I just had to have it!

* I ordered the first of the Xmas presents this week from Amazon and they have arrived and been put away from prying eyes! I do need to get more organised as these are all I have bought so far.

* I have been working on secret Yule gifts for my pagan family the last couple of weeks. We always make gifts for each other to celebrate Yule, rather than get caught up in the commercialism that is Xmas!! I do think a handmade gift can be so much more thoughtful most times and I have enjoyed working out how I am going to put my gifts together.

That's about it for this week, it's been a very quiet week with me mostly working and not getting much else done.

I finished a painting I was working on last week. I am pleased with the end result and find I am really enjoying the freedom of this abstract style art.I used acrylics, ink sprays, texture paste, stencils and paint pens.

Finished piece

I have no idea what to call this painting, any ideas???

Thanks for popping by,

Sami x

Rocking your world Friday

Hello Friday Rockers. I have fallen behind again, both with my blogging and with catching up on other peoples blogs and have not joined in with Rockers for a couple of weeks...sorry!

Pop over to Virginia's blog, our wonderful host, to join in with us.

So digging very deep this week for my silver linings, my list of gratefuls and things that have made me happy, but I have managed it.

* My son, Caleb being chosen for vice house captain for his senior prefect role. I am so proud of him, he is the perfect role model. He applied to be a prefect and was then asked to attend an interview and give a presentation as he had been nominated for a senior role. I think he did extremely well to be chosen for one of the positions as there were lots of people who applied and didn't even get a prefect role. Also at 7pm on the day he found out, the head teacher of the school phoned me to tell me how wonderful my son was, how proud the school was of him and how he is going to achieve amazing things this year! I was gob smacked that the head had taken the time to ring all the parents and say such lovely things, obviously in his own time too.

 Caleb with his vice captain badge, he's still waiting for his prefect badge to arrive.

*The Equals Friendship Group that I run held a very successful curry night on the 29th Sept. We did this to raise the rent money for the scout hut we use for our weekly meetings. We offered two different types of chicken curry, one Thai and one Indian, a vegetable curry, Aloo Boona (dry potato curry), onion bhaji, prawn crackers and four different types of rice. People could eat in or just come and get a takeaway and we served nearly 100 people on the night, raising £469 and £39 on a raffle. Everyone commented on how wonderful the food was and asked when the next one would be! It took two full days of food prep, we peeled 20kg of potato's and 10kg of onions between us, so I think we will leave it a few months before our next one!

*Also, our first Equals Friendship group baby was born on Thurs 4th Oct. Both mummy and baby are doing well and we can't wait to meet the new edition to our group!

*The generosity of the women from the friendship group. We have not been able to meet at our hall for the last 6 weeks as a new roof is being put on. We could not afford to hire anywhere else so the women have taken it in turns to hold the meetings at their houses. Not only have they opened up their homes to all us, they have also each prepared lunch for the whole group each week. Hmm, not sure if I want to go back to the hall now for our meetings!

*The wonderful reiki share ladies for an excellent session this week which left me feeling a lot more positive than I have in a while. Everyone has such a lovely energy and I always get so much out of our meetings.

*Watching my husband Stu teaching our daughter his dance moves this week. Shelby does hiphop lessons and has done for the last four years. She is currently working at her level five certificate and had to put some moves together and choose some music for them. Stu is much more 'hip' than me when it comes to music so they started going through all the cd's and then Stu put some music on and started showing Bea his moves. Now, Stu is a really good dancer, that is how I met him. I saw him dancing in a nightclub and his dancing really impressed me so I was stood watching him and when the song finished he came over and asked me to dance. Watching him dancing with our daughter really brought all those memories back and made me think how lucky I am to be sat here watching these two dancing round the front room together 15 years later.

* My friend Paige for giving me a huge pile of clothes this week that she no longer wanted. I hate clothes shopping, it depresses me no end, so now I have some lovely new clothes and I didn't have to put myself through any tears or tantrums! Thanks P.

*The wonderful Wednesday Whine group. You ladies are all fantastic and I wish I knew you in real life so we could all get together and have a few glasses of wine! Thank you x

* Re watching Supernatural right from season one. I love this show and was ill with a really bad cold/flu bug last weekend and I thought what better to cheer me up than a bit of Dean and Sam.

*My kids, who do or say something to make me smile everyday.

* My hubby, who always does everything in his power to make my life easier. I am so blessed to have him in my life.

* Seeing that the little Robin family is back in may garden for the winter. They have been here since we moved in 8 years ago but I was worried that they wouldn't come back this year and we had the hedges cut right down really low this summer.

Well, I managed to list 12 things so that's not so bad is it? I must try harder to do this post every week because there is ALWAYS something that has been a positive, even if I have to look harder some weeks than others!

Just wanted to also share some art work I have managed to get done this week. They are all acrylic, spray inks, stamps, stencils and pen on watercolour paper.

Thanks for looking,

Sami x

Rocking Your World Friday and Pair Journal

 It's rocking time again, the time of the week to dig deep and find all those positives and gratefuls. I am linking this up with our wonderful host Virginia.

* My Dad was 60 in April and on Saturday night him and three of his friends from school, who all turned 60 this year had a huge birthday bash. It was great to see him enjoying himself, fit and well after his cancer two years ago. They had live music from a very well known band on the Island and they were fantastic. (Unfortunately after the party when they were loading their van back up with their equipment, some little moron jumped in the van and drove off with it. One of the band members who was in the back got thrown out into the road and had to go to hospital. The police later found the van burned out with the equipment still inside-a 1970's original drum kit and amps. But that's enough of the down side as I am supposed to be concentrating on the positive!)

*My DS, Caleb, got a letter from the headteacher to say that he has been accepted as a prefect. It also said that staff were asked to comment on his suitability for a senior role (head boy or house captain) and could he attend an interview for a senior role and do a 3 minute presentation on Thursday for the headteacher and head of year! He spent all of Wednesday night preparing his presentation on what he could bring to the role and he was really nervous Thursday morning when he got up! When he got home from school i asked how it went and he thought he did well. The teachers commented on how well prepared he was and what a good presentation it was. He went through what questions they had asked him and what his responses were and they impressed me! He should hear next week so fingers crossed!

* I have a job interview next week, on the same day that I have a family funeral to go to. Fingers crossed for me as well, that the interview goes well and I get out in enough time to attend the funeral.

*I had a little trip to the crystal shop on Wednesday with Paige. I only spent £4 though so am in no trouble this time from my hubby!

*Paige's Hubby photographed all my paintings this week for me, as the shop that is going to take two of them wanted photos first. The photos look great and I will be able to make prints as well from them. Thanks Trav, I owe you some beer!

*Watching Avengers Assemble with Stu and the kids. We never made it to the cinema to watch this so we bought it on special from Tesco. I really enjoyed it and I didn't realise until I saw the credits that it was written by Joss Whedon!

*Autumn is on it's way, the sun is still shining but theres a chill in the air. This is my Fave season, nice walks in the woods with the leaves falling, hot chocolate, cosy jumpers and boots!

Well, that's it for my list of positives this week. Check out the other rockettes to see what lifted them up this week!

 I have finally managed to get some work done in my pair journal. I didn't even pick it up throughout the school holidays so it was hard to get back into it. I am doing this pair journal with Sue over on the collabor-art blog. I was working in my journal this time and the theme is round and round.

I  added the freaky skull like drawing to this page with Indian ink and a few more words

 Some doodling of seed and pod heads

 Sue had done this page with the fab googly eyes. I added the speech bubbles and some red circles in the background

 I loved this magazine image, I thought she looked like a giant sea anemone

 Sue had started this page with the yellow background and the journalling spots with black stems. I added the word flower (which I am not to pleased with, I may have to paint over that!) and the little leaves to the stem, some washi tape 'grass' and darkened the background with ink and a flower stencil.

 Another of Sue's started pages. I added the clock hands, the stamped clock and 'time flies' image on tissue paper and the words.

 I had done the background on this page with paint left over from another project and then added a spider web and dandelions and some journalling.

 I used printed scrapbook paper for the background on this page, covered with paint and stencilling then added the balloon from an old book page and a compass and the letter stickers

 Sue had started this page off with some yellow cogs so I just continued on that theme, layering up with masks and ink and stamps on tissue paper and then outlined the cogs to make them stand out.

 Another of Sue's pages. I added the ruler stamp, tape measure washi tape and gave it a very light wash of watercolour.

These are the two paintings that I am taking to the shop in Cowes. Trav took the professional photos for me!

 This is a small mixed media canvas and I have used beeswax over the top of it.

This abstract one I did, influenced by Flora Bowleys 'Brave intuitive painting' book.

Thanks for popping by!

Sami x