Painted Seashells Freebie

Here´s a little set of 3 painted seashells to celebrate my recent holiday on the coast. If you´d like them, you´ll find them HERE. 

Happy shell gathering!

Back Again...In More Ways Than One.

Well, I´m back from my holiday in Domburg and it´s taken me a couple of weeks to recover from it. To begin at the beginning...The first half of it was sunny and warm. In fact there was one memorable day when the sand was so hot it practically raised blisters on the soles of my feet. That really was too unrelentingly hot to be called a perfect day but it was preferable to some of the days during the second half when it rained almost non-stop and kept Dora and me confined to our little house most of the time with just short outings in between showers. That would have been bearable if the house had been well insulated but you can hardly expect that to be the case in a converted outhouse and it felt really damp indoors when it rained. I´ve suffered from back problems for years and they´re always worse during cold and damp weather. If I´d been able to turn on the central heating I´d have been OK but it was only shortly before I left that I finally discovered how to do that! So for the last week of my holiday I was creaking about like a superannuated robot in need of an overhaul. I´ve more or less recovered from the worst of it now but after I get back from Scotland I´ll have to see about getting more treatment in the orthopaedic clinic. It only only works for 5 years and my last course of treatment was in 2003 so it´s well overdue. 

Still, all isn´t doom and gloom and I wouldn´t want to give you the impression that I didn´t enjoy my stay in Domburg because I did and, of course, so did Dora. She spent most of her time rearranging the beach and creating mantraps for the unwary or plunging into the sea after her favourite toy. I sometimes think that dogs are like little children. You can buy them the most expensive toy but they often end up playing with the box it came in. In Dora´s case it isn´t actually a box but it´s the same principle. This particular toy I made myself from a piece of sacking roughly sewn together, filled with corks from wine bottles and tied with an old shoelace. It replaces the fancy floating toy I bought her which is a sort of fish shaped loofah which she shuns, much preferring the tatty old sack. Here it is in all its enchanting splendour. Ha! 

  

One thing I did buy her on holiday was a new and very smart red collar to replace her old disreputable one which had faded to a dirty pink from too much exposure to salt water and her penchant for rolling in mud. I´m sure she´d take it off and put on the old one again if she only had thumbs and could work out how it opens.

Well, I could go on about my holiday for ages but I won´t. The summer isn´t over yet and while I sit here chattering the sun is shining and the garden is calling my name so I´ll get off now. Before I do though, I´d just like to mention that Lajuana, as always, has done a great job updating the store. Not surprisingly, this month´s featured kit is Jewelled Sea which is one of my favourites as it perfectly expresses the joy I feel when I´m on the coast. In good weather or bad, it´s always been my favourite place. 

 

You´ll find larger previews of this kit HERE along with a couple of freebies. Thanks for looking!

A Perfect Day

Perfect days in life are few and far between and for me today certainly isn´t one of them. It´s dull and rainy and seems more like October than June. All the more reason to look forward to my summer holiday when good weather is forecast.

I love the sea and most of my perfect days have been spent on the coast. One of my favourite North Sea resorts is Domburg on the Dutch Zeeland peninsula where I rent a small cottage near the shore every summer, mostly just for Dora and myself as Herbert´s too busy to spend more than a few days with us. I get up early every morning as I particularly love the beach at that time when it´s abandoned by everyone except Dora and me and the seagulls. It doesn´t take much to keep us happy for the rest of the day. When I´ve had enough of lounging around reading I´ll go off to the high tide line to see what new shells the sea has washed up overnight and Dora will follow me carrying either her ball or the cork toy I made for her, and being Dora, sometimes both! 

  Click on image for a larger view.

I know that this isn´t everyone´s idea of a perfect day so, while we´re away, I wish you whatever makes you happy this summer. Hope you´ll have lots of perfect days.

Dora In Action

I was sorting through the photos I took in Domburg recently when it occurred to me that, apart from the video, I´d also taken several consecutive photos of Dora in hot pursuit of her cork toy. Taken singly they don´t look that interesting but blended into one I think they give quite a good impression of Dora in action.

Click on image for a larger view

I used the Marbled Blue background from Jewelled Sea on top of a few grungy layers, blended in the 3 photos and then, once I´d flattened the image, I lowered the saturation quite a bit. As you can see there was a LOT of splashing going on there – one good reason to stand well back when Dora takes off! - and I´ve heightened the effect by using the Paint Daubs filter. It was a lot of work and entailed a great deal of trial and error but I´m quite pleased with the way this composite has turned out.

Dog Days In Domburg

The reason I always spend my summer holiday in Domburg is because not only is it just a 3-hour drive from here but also because I can take Dora with me. I´ve always had a dog and every one of them has accompanied me there and probably enjoyed the beach even more than I do myself though I have to say that of all the boxers I´ve had Dora is the only one who enjoys swimming. Like the others though she also loves chasing her ball along the shore, hiding it in the dunes, rearranging the sand and apparently trying to dig to Australia just to see if Bondi Beach might be a fun place too.

click to enlarge

I created this page using only the seashell freebie plus photos of Dora doing what Dora loves to do during her dog days in Domburg.

She Sells - or gives away - Seashells

Since I got back from Domburg on Saturday, I´ve shaken the sand out of my shoes and my luggage, washed it out of my pores, my hair, my clothes and my dog...and I´m still finding gritty traces of the seashore on my floors. I had a wonderful 3 weeks on the coast but it´s nice to be home again and to be able to eat a sandwich without any sand in it.

But now comes the inevitable part of any carefree laundryfree holiday. You´ve guessed it. The dreaded IRONING. I´m off to tackle that mind-numbing task right now but before I go, for all you folk who haven´t managed a trip to the coast this year or for those who have and would like a few extra decorative elements for your seaside pages, here´s a little freebie for you.

If you´d like this Jewelled Sea add on, you´ll find it HERE.

Wish I had time to use it myself but a huge pile of wrinkled laundry is calling my name...

Everything But The Kitchen Sink

I´ll be off to the coast in just a few days and I´m busy packing right now. It´s so difficult to make up my mind about what to take and what to leave but I´ve finally narrowed it down by deciding that I don´t need the kitchen sink. If I change my mind my husband can bring it the following day along with Dora . I don´t trust the weather forecast which promises warm but not scorching temperatures so I´m glad I won´t have to run the risk of transporting Dora in a 4-wheel sauna. She´ll be a lot happier – and cooler - in her kennel in our bus.

Before I go I´ll give you the link to this little seahorse which coordinates with Jewelled Sea. If you´d like it, you´ll find it HERE.

Have a wonderful summer!

Long Ago And Far Away

What I miss most about Scotland is something I took for granted while I was living there, namely my close proximity to the sea. No matter where I´ve lived in my homeland I´ve always been close to either the Atlantic Ocean in the west or the North Sea in the east.

It seems almost inevitable that every move we´ve made within Germany has brought me a little closer to the coast...and to home. Now we´re living right on the Dutch border and at last I´m able to spend part of each summer in one of my favourite North Sea resorts on the Zeeland peninsula which is only a 3-hour journey from here.

This photo was taken on a deserted beach in the far north of Scotland when I was 19. To me this page expresses how I feel about those days which now seem so long ago and far away when I still took the sea - and my youth - for granted.

No Dogs Allowed

I was strolling along the beach in Domburg when I saw this row of newly built, as yet unoccupied, cabins looking quite surreal against a dark stormy sky. My first thought was what fun it would be to leap out of bed in the morning and run straight into the sea. My second thought was they were so close together it might not be such fun if the people on either side stayed up until the wee small hours partying every night. As it transpired, there was no decision to be made anyway when I discovered that dogs were not welcome but I really don´t care. The small cottage I rent every year where dogs are allowed has its own secluded patio and no close neighbours and is only 10 minutes from the dog beach. We´ll be going there in just a few weeks and I´m looking forward to sun, sea and peaceful relaxing evenings.

As you can see, I´ve altered the photo quite a bit by removing everything but the cabins themselves and changing their colour. In place of the sky, sand and sea I´ve used backgrounds from Jewelled Sea. As a protest I´ve included Dora and I´m sure that she wouldn´t mind a bit if that lobster dragged those dog-free cabins into the North Sea...

Golden Evening

I was looking through my holiday photos recently when I came upon this golden North Sea scene captured a couple of years ago in Domburg, a small Dutch town on the Zeeland peninsula.

During the long sunny days of summer the beach throngs with sun bathers and joggers while children splash and shout in the shallows, but as the sun goes down and the beach is left mainly to the seagulls, it takes on a serene magical beauty.

I created this page using Jewelled Sea which you´ll find HERE along with a couple of kit freebies.