Saturday 1 September 2012

The benefits of elbow grease

Hello!  How is your weekend going so far?  We've had sunshine today, the perfect day to be up a ladder and using a little elbow grease.  Where live beautiful though it is, has some draw backs.  It is cold and very damp in winter and slime and green muck tends to grow on everything outside including the guttering.  I wanted this 13 year old guttering to look like new again.  This photo doesn't show just how grotty it really was.
 

 And here we are at the end of the day, no sunshine but lovely clean guttering and eradication of all spiders and webs.  My arms have had a very good workout.


 This week I've been fiddling with a pen and watercolour pencils to make a few cards for Father's Day, one for my lovely Dad and one for my hubby.  Dad received a card with this sketch on it.

 

This was inspired by a photo of a vase of flowers taken at Chateau de Villandry in France.
   

  The sketch below is on the card for hubby.  Luckily he never looks at my blog so he won't have seen this when I give it to him tomorrow for Father's Day.  This sketch was also inspired by a photo taken in France.  After visiting Monet's gardens, we had a lovely meal at hotel down the road.  The had beautiful gardens to explore and this little/big pot was tucked away in a corner, planted with Impatiens and flanked by a large pillar and huge chunk of stone.  Trying to create the patina that was on the walls is very hard with watercolours, I might try this same photo in oils one day.



 I prefer the first sketch.  The Impatien sketch was done quite quickly today in between elbow greasing and when hubby was out visiting his black and white camera club exhibition in the city.

One of the other things that has been taking up my time this week is genealogy.  I'm researching my Dad's Mum's family and certain members are proving to be quite elusive.  It is so much fun and I had a very good friend come over on Thursday to help me out which was wonderful as she has quite a bit of experience with genealogy.

Wishing all the wonderful Dads a wonderful Father's Day tomorrow.

Anne  xx



10 comments:

  1. Wow - what a difference! The cards are lovely.
    Liz @ Shortbread & Ginger

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  2. Love them both. Clever girl !

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  3. Beautiful cards Anne. I know they will be very appreciated. :)

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  4. They are such lovely cards! You are a very good artist! :)

    Jerra xx

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  5. Your cards are beautiful - what a talent.
    Love from Mum
    xx

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  6. You certainly are one talented lady Anne, I love both cards and would be more than happy if I could reproduce something half as good.
    Nice personal touch, I'm sure they'll both be appreciated.
    Well done on sprucing up the guttering, always feels good to give something a good scrub and have it looking nice again........

    Hope you had a great weekend......

    Claire x (in NY )

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  7. Gorgeous cards Anne - or should that be Damelia?? Lovely soft colours, I love watercolour.

    Elbow grease - hmmm we would do with a bit of that around here I think. Funny how spring does that to you though! cheers Wendy

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  8. Beautiful sketches, especially love the one you did for Fathers Day.

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  9. Nice work on the guttering, it looks like new!

    The watercolours are lovely, I especially like the first one.

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