Decorating with letters

As you may or may not know my initals are A A A. I have been wanting to create a letter wall for quite some time and any time I am at the flea market I have been looking for A (or a) lettering. Unfortunately I have yet to find any there yet, I will go again tomorrow and look.


I have a hook letter A similar to the one above from Anthropologie

I bought this little letter A from CLUTTEREDmind on Etsy last week.

This should be arriving shortly I just bought it on ebay. I was in 2 other auctions today but I missed out because I had to go to work and my maximum was outbid. I probably should have put in a higher bid.


I am really going for a wall like this one created by Erin of house on hill road. Or the one below from Country Living Magazine.


P.S. I just bought this (below) from smallstudio on Etsy.

6 Unimportant Things

Yesterday I was tagged Olga of Where Are You... to come up with 6 unimportant things so that you can all get to know me better. I just started adding images as i thought of them, so here in reverse order of the way my brain worked ....

Chicken Tikka Masala. My absolute favourite meal, they don't really have great Indian restaurants here - unlike the U.K. - at least not as common. Take away from the Bokkarah when i get back to Bangor!

Barcelona, I spent 3 days here with my husband before we got married, we stayed outside the city though and took the train in. One day I would love to go back and stay in Hotel Gaudi.

Embroidery, I did Textile Art in College and I love all kinds of embroidery! it makes me ooh and Ahh. I don't have the patience for hand work although I have done it and know what it takes, I usually machine embroider.

The sea. I miss not living beside the sea. The sound of the waves crashing on the shore (or lapping depending on its mood) is a very calming sound to me. Also the sea air is just so much fresher than anything else. Sea, you and I have a date when I get home.


Art Nouveau. I am in love with this art movement, a lot of my personal work has its roots in this style. My parents have a beautiful mirror with the above Mucha Print on it (the one on the left) so I grew up appreciating it.

Toblerone. I love chocolate, I love Cadburys, Hersheys sucks! but if you could only have one piece of chocolate it would have to be a triangle of Tobelerone.


Well I probably have a lot more unimportant things that I could add, but that is 6 things off the top of my head. Now I am hungry and I have no Chicken Tikka Masala, but I do have Toblerone!

Floss' Birthday Garden Party

A little while ago i recieved this lovely invitation from Floss over at Troc, Broc and Recup' to attend her virtual Garden Party. The idea is we post what we will wear - and what we imagine the party is like so without further ado....
Seeing as the part is virtual I thought I would shell out the big bucks and go in this beautiful Tuleh dress. The design reminds me of silk scarves.

In my hair I will wear this gorgeous flower from Mandizzle's shop along with some beautiful vintage teal clips from kitchentablestudios's shop (below)

I imagine that for those of us who do not have hats Lace Parasols such as these will be provided for us.

I am sure there will be beautiful Hydrangea arrangements surrounded by tea lights - just like these ones (photo taken by me at my friends Morgan and Sara's wedding).

There will be fabulos multi-coloured floral bunting strung up all around the garden just like this set found at giggleberry's shop. (Bunting / Flags / Pennant Strings - Good Folks (cream)Floss is sure to serve some good old english tea in these fantastic flower teacups (found with google images) and then we might use these Garden Party Porcelain Spoons from Elizabeths embellishments (below).



We will probably pass around some flower cupcakes, the recipe is at jellybelly.com

To top it all off we get to the cake - in this case being a Garden Party Dirt Cake is the only way to go. I make this all the time, even for my brothers wedding rehearsal dinner. Unfortunately I have no pictures of mine, (I don't know how that happened) so I found a nice image here Edible Antics - Having Fun With Food.

I am looking forward to meeting all the other ladies who will be attending the party this weekend - I haven't peeked yet so now I am off to see who has posted their garden parties...

Elizabethd from French Village Life (France)
Jayne of Country Cottage Chic (England)
Sal of Sal's Snippets (England)
Carol of Katherine's Dream (England)
Melanie of A Country Dream (England)
Valerie of Dotty Dotty (England)
Lululiz of Lalaland (England and France!)
Bekimarie from The ramblings of an everyday mummy (England)
Olga of Where are you... (Poland)
Sarah from Red Gingham (New Zealand)
Lace Hearts (England)
Ashley from Peacocks and Dragonflies (USA)
Kris of Vintage Window (USA)
Isabel de la Maison Douce (USA)
Mel from Country in the Town (England)
Josie-Mary (England)
A Thrifty Mrs (England)
Betty G, from Betty G's Doublewide Cottage (USA)
Sonia of Vintage Rose Designs (USA)
Marie Reed of Cpaphil Vintage Postcards (France)
Louise, at The Whispering Poppies (USA)
Juanitatortilla (Switzerland)
Sarah, from A Beach Cottage (Australia)
Alexandra, Domestic Novice (Scotland)
Lissy Lou and the two little boys (England)
Sharon, of Clover Cottage (England)
Della, of Della Grace's Life (USA)
Fleur, at Marble Rose (England)

Play Day

The day was nice, I was off work and I didn't feel sick, Yay! I have a lot more free time on my hands now as the kids Art class I teach in the afternoons is over for the term. What better way to spend the day than do some experimenting.

In the most recent issue of Quilting Arts magazine there is an article titled "Florabundance" by Jill A. Kennedy which takes you through her step by step process to creating her pieces. I was intrigued and unlike a lot of articles in similar magazines - I had the majority of materials on hand. I did things a little differently though the basic idea came from that article.


The first thing I did was take my box of crayons to a variety of papers, I took this opportunity to recycle some paper bags, a catalog cover, envelope , grocery list as well as some old construction paper. I put my doodling hands to work and scribbled away over my papers.



Detail of the lovely urban outfitters brown paper bag, scribbled all over. I really want to create a teal piece for a project that I have in mind - so I went with greens, blues and browns as my colour palate.



Next thing I did was paint a weak teal dye over all the papers, I did a couple of coats because some of the papers were not as absorbent as others.



At this stage (after they dried) I took the papers back inside and ironed them between sheets of parchment paper, the paper absorbed the wax and they became sheets of batiked paper.



I then took out my crayons again and waxed different doodles all over the top of the previous ones. I wasn't as careful with the colour of the crayons I chose at this point and I added some pinks and purples into the mix.



The papers then got a coat of brown dye over the top.



After they dried I scrumpled them all up. The orange is the inside of the Urban Outfitters paper bag.


Then I ironed them all out, making my room smell like wax and making me yearn for my wax pot and tjanting. Detail below, I am impressed with how this technique looks - I will probably chop up the pieces and rearrange them next so that the urban outfitters lettering isn't so obvious. My favourite pice of paper is the top left of the image below.

Sick Bed Post

I have been sick since Sunday and have been unable to do much of anything really, I went to the Doctor today and I just have a virus that for some reason has hit me very hard. So I am trying to cheer myself up with a virtual look into items that ight make me feel better. First the Estrella Bedding set from Anthropologie - if you have to spend most of your day sleeping, why not snuggle up under that.


Second a nice pair of PJs these ones are from Victoria's Secret - actually it was kind of hard to find a pair of pajamas everything at this time of the year is short, but this is more like what I need right now.
Third these Yummy hot water bottle covers from Garnet Hill. I alternate between running temperature and shivering all over - this would be perfect for the shivery cold moments.