Jane got busy with her craftwork again, to create a mirror for our friends Kyriakos and Maia, who married shortly before we left Cyprus.
Reflective
Influenced by Greek styles and colours, the mirror includes the curvy glass that Jane is currently experimenting with, and butterflies – Maia’s ‘signature’ image.
Pining for Christmas
As we pack up our Christmas decorations, we have decided to keep for next year fir cones that we painted as a family.
We used poster paints and multi-coloured sparkly glitter.
They aren’t quite as spectacular as when first completed, because the warm and dry household air gradually opened the cones after we had decorated them in the closed state in which we had found them.
Maybe when we get them out next year we’ll put them in the fridge for a while.
Close-up as they open up
Jane continues to go from strength to strength producing 3D decoupage cards (which sell well among friends) and, in the last year, mosaic furniture.
She’s just finished another mirror, her second, this one for the girls’ bathroom. It features seashells picked up from the Mombasa beach (no living marine creatures were harmed in the prosecution of this hobby …) and mosaic tiles hand-carried from Canada.
This importation of heavy materials was quite an exercise. Our friend Marie drove Nigel round for a day in Toronto to find a the warehouse specialising in the tiles. They come in small squares stuck to a large sheet, looking for all the world like stamp collector sheets for big people (or at least, after you’ve got a dozen sheets, for people with big biceps, because they start to get heavy very quickly.
Nigel brought one load back in his suitcase. Two other accomplices, Paul and Robert, were roped in by Marie to carry another lot, accompanying the lads on a difficult working trip round remote locations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo before being dropped off with us on their way home.
Thanks Marie, Robert and Paul – here’s a picture of Jane reflecting on your hard work to help her!
To see the mirror with shells, take a look at our homepage, www.talesfromthemarshes.com.
