Mzansi Market Day

Every year, round about this time, the pupils get the chance to take part in a  market day at one of the large shopping malls. All products have to handmade and the children get interviwed throughout the day where they get to tell all hte shoppers abput theor products. The eldest gannet and friemd are taking part this year. Their stall is called "rock and Roll Recycling" and they are selling handmade candles from old candles and wax crayons, earrings made from bottle tops and soap.So....I have been giving lessons with all my crafty stuff on how to make soap and candles! 
See below, the idiots guide to making candles at home:

Step 1: Melt cheap white candles and crayons in old tins placed in boiling water. (If you want scented candles, put a few drops of vanilla essence in the tins.)

Step 2: Spray muffin tray with cooking spray. While waiting for wax to melt, wrap wicks from cheap candles around wooden skewers and rest over silicone muffin tray.

Step 3: Pour melted wax into prepared tray and leave to set.

Step 4: When set (about 2hours), turn out of pan!

Warning...! Don't use food colouring to colour the wax! It's water based and forms droplets at the bottom of the candle which then pop open and leak out afterwards.

I'll take photos of their stall with the other goodies and post those next week.

Onto drawing now, I started a zendala of my own about 2 weeks ago(drawn with a slightly skew compass), and finished it yesterday. It's A3 in size and I drew the patterns quite small. AFter finishing the outer parts I decided to leave the "flowers" because it just worked!

Tangles used: twisted rope around the edge, nzeppel, huggins, fife, facets and then stripes and a flower in the middle.

 Challenge #84 was a blind string, which I've never done before, so this is a first for me. It involves drawing the string with your eyes closed and then tangling what you make. I joined some of my spaces together because they were a bit too small, and I used another new tangle! (My tiles are rectangluar at the moment, because I'm using up my scraps of drawing paper!)

Challenge #84: cruffle, florz, bales, featherfall

Not bad hey.....I got the challenge done and posted and it's not even Wednesday yet!!

See you next week

Pennyb

Zendalas

We've had a wonderful few days of the most glorious winter sunshine, just so that we know that summer is around the corner. And then of course, just because it's the weekend, it's now raining and windy and cold all over again! This made watching school rugby this morning very interesting as it was freezing and VERY wet! I don't normally watch school rugby (I'm not that nuch of a rugby fan to tell you the truth), but the eldest gannet now has a boyfriend and he plays rugby, so we go and watch. It works quite well actually, because his younger sister and my youngest gannet are very good friends and his parents and us get on really well together! Us two moms both like crafting and creating and the two dads both like sports and anything to do with the sea!

Look at the weather they were playing in!

Tired and very wet boys and coach! (Look at the ground behind them to see how much rain fell!)

Creatively this week, I played with another of The Bright Owl's  Zendala Dares... my temp teaching stint has come to an end and I had time to myself to draw. So, in the absence of the Diva's challenge this week (she deserves a break every now and then) I tangled! I used 6 tangles I've never used before on this one and they all turned out beautifully! I'm busy with an A3 Zendala now that is almost finished, I'll post next week. In the meantime, on with Zendala Dare #20!

Zendala Dare #19: Clockwise from the top-huggins, flutter tile, Nzeppel, lanie, tink, punch, knyt, sunflower, drupe in the centre and twisted rope around the edge.

See you all next week

Pennyb

Sunshine at last!

Oh my gosh...the sun shone today for the first time this week and with NO wind! What an awesome day! 

We had a Winter Sports Festival at the Primary Schoool this morning with netball, rugby and hockey starting at 8:00am, ending at 1:00pm. There were 8 netball schools across 5 age groups, we played 9 minute games with a minute change-over for the next game. It was so well run by our amazing Parents Association and Staff. We will definitely have another one next year!

My awesome U13 netball girls at 8 'clock this morning!

 I loved some of the ideas in the Diva's CHallenge this week, and so I borrowed a few ideas. I didn't like the large assunta when I'd done it, but, I don't let myself redo until the first one's finished. (And then after it was finished, I thought it didn't look quite so bad!)

Challenge #83

The Bright Owl has a Zendala Dare  each Friday which I managed to do this week. I love Zendala's and did quite a few of them last year while I was recuperating. I did lots of Challenges, but needed something bigger to get me through the day. (You can see some of them on my Flickr page) This one got Mooka around the edge because I'd just finished The Diva's tile using Mooka!!

Zendala Dare #18: paradox, florz, bubbles, striping and the squiggles I saw on a Pattern Stack!

 Hope everyone has an awesome weekend!

Pennyb

Snow!!

We've had such crazy weather....it snowed over pretty much the whole of SA this week!! 
Ok, not in Cape Town because we're at sea level, but wow, the rest of the country was a white blanket! The photo below is of one of the lions in the Johannnesburg Zoo...poor thing, it doesn't know what to do in this white stuff! The last time it snowed in Jo'burg was when I was in Grade 9 (1999...long time ago!) We're also in for the storm of the year this weekend here in Cape Town with 65km winds, 80% rain and snow in the higher regions. If we're lucky, it'll snow on Table Mountain! Brrrr - duvet weather.

So, I managed to finish the challenge this week! Luckily I've done this tangle before, but I still battle to get the "hair" going the right way. I used Tangle Patterns string number12 because I was at a loss as to how to draw my string. I adjusted it slightly, but am quite happy with the result!

Challenge #82: Brayd, Lilypads, Huggins, Pokeleaf

This last week at school, we had out Interhouse Netball Tournament (we've had it early because we have 2 weeks of no matches). It's always so interesting to see the players in different teams other than the match teams!

My A and B team players and the social players in their house colours: blue, green, yellow. (I'm the tall one in the back of the photo!)

Well, the wind has picked up, it's now raining...so the storm has hit us!

Stay warm, create beautifully

Pennyb

BRRRRR.....

What a week! 

I know, I've said that before. Andrew left on Sunday for Durban on his whirlwind trip of SA....he was in Durban for Monday, then flew to Johannesburg for Tuesday, Pretoria for Wednesday and Bloemfontein for Thursday then flew home. The eldest gannet had her birthday party on Saturday and then got sick on Sunday. I took Monday off and took her to the doctor where she was diagnosed with pharyngitus aka throat infection, and booked off school for 3 days! Aaaargh....I had to find someone to look after her whileI went to work, so sent an emergency bbm out to friends and found an angel! On Wednesday, CAitlin couldn't run in the 2nd round of Cross Country Champs, nor could she play in her netball match.

Speaking of netball...I get to school on Wednesday morning, and find out 2 of my shooters are sick and can't play (my gannet is a shooter but we knew she wasn't playing anyway), so I spend most of Wednesday trying to re=organise my teams to make them both strong and competitive.

So, we get to netball, we win one we lose one, I then go with both girls to the Cape Dance festival. I do youngest gannets hair and make-up and watch her dance, then collapse for 20 mins, then start again with the eldest gannet for her dance. We get home at 8:30pm after leaving home at 7:30 am....and it was only Wednesday!

We're in the middle of the last cold snap of winter, with snow on all the surrounding mountains, so it's fairly chilly around here, and of course it's raining too. But in the middle of all of this, we started winter training at Nippers on Sunday. It was such fun seeing all of the nippers today, even though it was so cold (the water was only 13 degrees-all the kids had their wetsuits on). We played on the beach, and a bit in the sea. It was a great start to our new Nipper year.

Owen, me and Jimmy. We coach the micro nippers (5-8 years old), so we just play every Sunday!

The youngest gannet in the piggy back race where the older nippers had to carry the little ones.

Some of the U14s with Dave - check out my hair!

I haven't managed to finish the challenge from last week, but I made it A4, so it's taking a while. I did, however, find an awesome book in the library on Celtic patterns with a "How to draw the spirals/maze/knots" at the end of each chapter.....very exciting and I'm working on one now too. 

Excuse the quality of the photo, but my camera battery dies and I had to use my phone!

Ho hum, that's me for the week. Short week this week as we have Women's Day on 9 August and then a school holiday on the Friday! Blissful, a long weekend....duvets, coffee, books and dvd's!

Happy Creating

Pennyb