I know things have been a little (okay, a lot) craft light around here lately. I’ve no real excuse – well none that I’d expect anyone to accept anyways.

But this week, I actually did something. It was small and quick, but it was a craft project all the same.

The book for bookclub this month was Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl and so we assigned everyone a character to lightly consider their motiviations, or point of view

Cardstock and waterpaper squares…

Quickly blended some watered down acrylic paint to semi-match the cardstock…

attached the watercolour paper to the cardstock and – ta dah!

The topic for shutterboo’s flickr challenge this week was lingerie, and I started the week with absolutely no idea what I was going to do.

I finally decided to enlist the help of my friend Amy – a lingerie addict if ever there was one – and gave much consideration to how it was I was going to actually ask her (how do you ask someone if you can take photos of their underwear??).

It was my careful phrasing of the question that actually gave me the idea I landed on…

I took a handful of shots, but these are the other two I considered submitting…

image by John White

Happy Australia Day to those so inclined!

Even if you’re not Australian, why not take the day to pretend you are? Wear thongs, have a barbie… get in the spirit of things :)

I’ve had these photos sitting on my desktop waiting to be sorted for a couple days now, and have only just had the time to play with them.

Last week my friend Vicky and I went on a little roam around the country side. She didn’t tell me where we were going, so it was all the better for being a surprise.

Turns out when I said that I had photographed every inch of the Nepean River and was in need of a new location, she was actually listening. Of course Vicky, being Vicky, her suggestion didn’t come in the form of a new location, but rather pointing out the error of my way and taking me to a new area surrounding the same river.

We started the day out at Yarramundi Reserve, which I’d never been to before. Turns out there’s a little river/beach where people go swimming and everything. Why did no one tell me this was here?

My favourite part was this weaving embankment of rocks dividing the river…

We even did a little wading ourselves! Kind of hard not to with everyone else splashing around having fun.

After the river we had lunch at a beautiful little cafe in Karrajung Village where Vicky and Andrew are planning to have their wedding reception. Then, since we’d already gone this far up the mountain, we decided to keep going to Mount Tomah Botanic Garden, where the wedding will be. This was perhaps a bad idea as now I’ll just have to go back and take even more photos.

And if the flowers were not enough, dispersed throughout the garden beds were curved stone steps and lovely little wooden benches to rest on. The best was the one below, overgrown with little patches of moss.

I’ve driven past this shiny red beetle about ten times, and every time I’ve wanted to stop and take photos but haven’t had the time, or it’s been raining etc.

But not today!!

Pretty, don’t you think? This beetle must go pretty speedy, being as red as it is…

It’s not unusual for Alex and I to go on photo hunts, just the two of us – especially if no one else is home. Our old standby, however, is down at Nepean River, and I think we’ve shot it from nearly every conceivable angle. So if anyone has any suggestions for other local spots, they’d be much appreciated.

(and yes, I borrowed Alex’s fancy camera for this last one – not a chance that comes along very often, so you’ve got to enjoy it while you can!)

The shutterboo Weekly Photo Challenge this week was ‘eyes’ – and if any of you know me in real life you’ll know that I have eye issues at times, so this one was a little hard for me.

My original idea was to take a close-up of my brother, who has really nice brown eyes – but he wasn’t exactly a willing model at the time and this was coming across in the photo.

In the end I managed to capture this scared look on my cat’s face. She really doesn’t enjoy being outside.

Next week’s topic: lingerie. I have no idea…