Tuesday 25 March 2014

WOYWW - From South Africa with Love!

Well, I have been away from my trusty craft desk for a couple of weeks enjoying a fabulous holiday in the stunningly beautiful Western Cape Province of South Africa !!

We had a wonderful time and saw some of the beautiful sights - and had a lovely Sunday craft session with Bella in her amazing craft room !

Here are some of the amazing views we enjoyed !

Here is the view of Table Mountain and the city of Cape Town from Robben Island.
On our visit to Robben Island we were privileged to have a 121 tour with a former prisoner at the gaol who gave us a moving insight into his life there & took us to see Nelson Mandela's cell and the lime quarry where the prisoners laboured each day.

Ironically for such a famous prison island, it has some beautiful parts including the coastline & the views across to the mainland are stunning as you can see.

Equally when we ventured up to the top of Table Mountain on the cable car the views over the city were amazing too ! 
It was like being perched on top of the world - at the bottom of the world ! 
Next stop Antarctica !


Being a garden lover, I couldn't miss the opportunity to visit the world famous Botanical Gardens at Kirstenbosch - they call it "the most beautiful garden in Africa" and having visited I would say you would be hard pushed to disagree ! 

And a major highlight of our trip was visiting the Penguin colony which lives on Boulder's Beach on the Cape Peninsula - we were amazed to see them so close up and to find out they live in burrows in the sand ! 
They were so very cute !! 

Another great part of the holiday was meeting up with Bella once more - we all had lunch on the V&A Waterfront where we were staying - which has a great fun vibe whatever time of day to visit ! 

 Then Bella invited us back to her house for the men-folk to watch football on the telly whilst we had some brilliant fun in Bella's amazing craft room !
Here's Bella working on the Finnabair canvass we made together ...
  Sadly our time was all too short - and now we are tying to work out if we can set up some Skype along crafty sessions !!
Bella gave me some wonderful gifts - here they are on my workdesk back in Wales ready & waiting for me to work on the next project !


And finally here are some South African stencils I hope to use when I get round to scrapbooking our trip - I just have to work out which of the 1,056 photos we took will make it to the scrap layouts !!

Have a great crafty week !!  Ali xx

Tuesday 4 March 2014

WOYWW - Packing !

A familiar tale of not much action on the desk this week !
This time it was due to a stinking cold which put me in a slump on the sofa all weekend !

So I only fiddled around with a couple of things ..

This week's Documented Life was to create a collage with recycled bits & bobs - I had these fish off Weird Fish clothing & these adverts from around my hometown were on the back of a menu.
My maiden name was a type of fish so hence the sentiment !
I think this looks thrown together & I am not really happy with it at all !
They say it is about the process not the finished page but it doesn't do it for me !

I have made a couple of ATC's - one to take to Cape Town & give to Bella when we go at the end of the week - only 3 sleeps to go !! Beyond excited now !!


And as well as our cases packed, here is my bag ready for Scrapclub tomorrow night - the boxes are to see if the girls fancy altering or decorating one each next month as a class project !
And the Bind It All will be on loan to Lynda whilst I am away !


Well hopefully will be joining in from the opposite end of the world by next week !
Love Ali x