News & Updates from Helen Howell Designs · Page 5
Its school holiday time and my granddaughter came to stay with us for the weekend. As a treat we took her to Science-works in Spotswood. She had a great time especially in the Air play exhibition.
This was all about air and the children could see how it worked in many different interactive ways. She loved seeing how air could raise balls in the air. A good day was had by all.
While visiting one of my friends, she wanted to show me something that had appeared in her garden. Of course I was immediately interested and curious to see what it was. She took me down to the bottom of her garden where a dead tree trunk lay on the ground.
Its surface was covered with two types of fungus, one a bright orange the other by coloured in neutral tones.
Hmm.. very interesting but what type are they? With a little bit of research I found out that the orange fungus was called Scarlet Bracket and apparently is the most common as well as being colourful that can be found.
The other turned out to be a Trametes versicolor.
Amazing how wonderful and diverse nature can be.
I love creating designs for myself and others to make cards from, but I also love to paint. Ive been painting in watercolour now for over 30 years and every Friday morning I go to my Art Society for a social painting morning.
Its very friends, we all paint in different mediums, and a lot of chatting goes on, sometimes more chatting than painting.
Today, however I got stuck into what I was painting which was an English Blue Tit, and Im pleased with the result, which I have this afternoon turned into a card design.
Thank you to Crafts U Print for providing me the platform to let my creativity fly into card designs.
In the last news letter I mentioned that I had been to visit friends in Maryborough (Part of the Gold Triangle from gold rush days).
While I was with them the took me out to learn how to use a gold detector.
Just a few yards from where they lived was an old gold field - well and truly mined. Anyway I held the detector as shown and started to search, within 10 minutes of searching guess who found gold!
Yes me! They said it was unusual for anyone on their first go to find gold.
The tiny nugget I found weight one third of a gram and in todays market that was worth $25. Now I have to try not to get gold fever
A weekend ago we went to visit friends in Marybrough (Australia). On the Saturday they took us out and about and one of the country towns we went through was Dunolly, where we stopped off to look at this old Miners Cottage.
Marybrough and surrounding towns are all part of the Gold Triangle (Gold rush days), so a lot of gold miners were in the area.
This little cottage was made completely out of tin, we think they must have use old petrol cans or the like.
Such a sweet looking cottage, although not sure if I would have liked to live in it in the gold mining days.