the rocky shore

These pages are from Seashore life of New Zealand published in 1971. I love the illustrations and  especially the seaweeds done by Eric Heath - so bold and graphic. When I was at primary school and about nine or ten years old the class spent an afternoon at a local beach were we poked around in rock pools looking at sea anemones and hermit crabs. My husband did the same. Probably every school child in New Zealand got to do the rocky shore project back in the day.

Anyway you can read more about Eric here and even get yourself some of his artwork.

Have a great week.

Reading: The iceberg by Marion Coutts - a beautifully written account of living with her husband's illness and death
Viewing: Unposed portraits by Lucien Rizos showing at the Anna Miles Gallery

Friday favourites

Reading: Make hey! while the sun shines - a deceptively simple craft book by the lovely Pip Lincolne from Meet me at Mikes.

Watching: Tabloid - the documentary about Miss Wyoming beauty queen Joyce McKinney and her obsessional love for a Mormon missionary.

Joyce McKinney

Listening: Camera Obscura. As always. Especially this. Abba never sounded so good (imo!)

Mr Fox

Last week a student set up a table outside the local library. She had a list of books that people felt had influenced their lives in some way. She'd written the individual titles onto strips of paper, folded them and dropped them into a box. The idea was that passersby would randomly select a title from the box - a bit like a lucky dip - then go in to the library and borrow the book.

I drew 'Fantastic Mr Fox' by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake. I decided that somehow this was serendipity and that I should borrow and read this book. Maybe something joyous would happen. So I did borrow it and read it. And I enjoyed it. I'm sure if I were seven years old I probably would've loved it.

I'm not sure of the purpose of the student's project. If you borrowed the book you were meant to return the slip to a different box inside the library - presumably for the student to collect later. Anyway, I think it was a nice gesture. It was an opportunity to read something you probably wouldn't normally read. Maybe even broaden your experiences. It lead me to rediscover my own Mr Fox and to borrow the DVD. So... not bad at all. Thanks.

Treasures from the library book sale

Our library has a book sale twice a year and there are indeed treasures to be found. With Xmas coming up, I was looking specifically for books with images I could use to make cards and gift tags.

The cards I made are quite small (11.5 cm x 7 cm) but I had some old tracing paper see-through envelopes that were the perfect size to match. Once I decided how I wanted the cards to look, they were quite easy to make - cut out picture, glue onto card, trim and round the corners.

• I recently bought a corner punch so the cards had to have rounded corners.

• I also used aerosol spray glue for the first time and it is the best thing ever.

I think I'll keep some of the cards for myself and gift some as notecard sets.


These pages are from 'Wild flowers of Britain' - also from the library book sale - but I can't bring myself to cut the pages. The photographs are just too fascinating and too beautiful.

Not that 'Looking after cage birds' isn't also a nice book ...