snow

My kids have never seen or touched snow, so a week before the school holidays we decided on the spur of the moment to remedy that, and luckily managed to find some last minute accomodation for our southern roadtrip. I'm so glad we did, it was great fun!

On the drive down we stayed a couple of nights in Canberra and visited Questacon (a great interactive science museum) and the National Art Gallery. We also squeezed in a quick trip to the Australian War Memorial, and while I would have loved to have had longer here we got to see some of the WWI galleries and dioramas (which A is studying) and were there to see a lone bugler play the Last Post as it closed, so moving.

We caught up with two lots of lovely friends in between, and then drove south through the beautiful Snowy Mountains country to Jindabyne, a small town on a big lake which is down the mountain from the NSW ski resorts. From here we made day trips to Perisher where we clomped around in our snow gear and tobogganed in the fresh snow. It was great, especially the second day when we moved across and found our own hill away from the madness and had races down the mountain. We ate picnic lunch amongst the snow gums at the top of the hill and Mr D and I made this snow lady.

Some other favourite things about the trip were the huge skies and incredible clouds in this part of the world, those very Australian landscapes and small town streets, where we op shopped and bought lunch at the local bakeries.

my creative space - biennale

Some friends and I took our school holiday kids on the free ferry to Cockatoo Island on Tuesday. The Sydney Art Biennale is on this month with sites around the city including a large showing at this old industrial island which has all its old buildings and cranes and slipways and tunnels. I didn't realise it before visiting but Cockatoo Island is also an old convict site too.

In fact I hadn't been to Cockatoo Island before and I must admit the space, the old industrialia, the old wooden, sandstone and fibro buildings, the tennis court on the edge of a cliff, the convict buildings on the plateau up top, the rickety stairways past large fig trees hanging by convoluted root systems to the cliff face, the ruined glasshouses and the views to the city were my favourite part of the trip.

The art was perfect in this context, and we just loved it all. It was the perfect day trip and great for the kids, they ran and played in the open space between galleries and then explored the art in between. There are some pop up cafés all around the island too and we had delicious noodles for lunch sitting out in the square in the sun.

A favourite part was this large gallery draped and garlanded with bits of coloured materials everywhere which were sewn with vintage buttons, buttonholes and magnets. The kids all played dressups and ended up looking like Persian and Japanese princes and garden fairies.

Another favourite was this fog installation (made by a 78 year old Japanese woman artist) which changed the light in a magical way. I also loved the carved sandstone tunnel that ran right through the middle of the sandstone plateau with these lovely old numbers painted along the supports. I only wish I'd taken my camera and not just my phone, but I will definitely be going back. It runs till September so there is plenty of time to make the trip again. If you get a chance to go do, this is a magic day!

Whats up in your creative space this week? To see more inspiration head over here.

the blues

Thanks for all the wonderful feedback on my foam printing tutorial, I've actually been showered with Pinterest love this week after the wonderful Rashida Coleman-Hale (of I heart linen fame) pinned it to her Fabulous Tutorials board. I love thinking that lots of crafty people will have a try at this simple printing style.

I've also been lucky enough this month to have my Filigree tea towel featured in a Moody Blues spread in this month's Homespun magazine. I'm in great company in this beautiful issue, with lots of great crafters, projects and tutorials this month.

Also in the blue spectrum, I joined in with Poppytalk's Summer Colours Flickr Group this past week.  I've played before a couple of times, in Jan's Collecting Nature and Spring Colours Weeks and I love the beautiful images that come out of these community projects, they're always stunning. I was really excited that Jan used my swimming pool image as the title image for the blue day, along with some others of mine (the waves on the left and the mountains on the right).

In the same spirit I'm also joining in with Ally from Everyday Miracles posting a monthly garden moodboard. This is my first, July.