My First Blog Hop

Hello there and welcome to my new look blog.  Do come in and make yourself comfortable and have a look around.

As I was following the recent Push Up Bra approach to Blogging series by the very lovely Julie Kirk I realised that one of the many reasons why I wasnt blogging enough was that I hated the look of my blog.  The blue background and old fashioned header were looking very tired and I was utterly bored with it.  Then my fabulous friend the very talented Dee, who you will.meet as you hop along, said she could give me a much needed makeover, well the blog that is, not me, not that I couldnt do with a makeover you understand, but from her position by the sea in Donegal it might have been too big an ask for that!

I felt that my lovely new blog look needed a bit of a party to celebrate and so the idea of my very own blog hop was born.

There are ten blogs altogther in the hop, everyone involved is a friend of mine in one way or another either through real life or the cyber world.  There are some fab projects along the way and a couple of prizes to boot

I will be offering up a wee prize for one lucky person who comments on all the posts and you may just find a couple more prizes lurking along the way.

Heres my wee project

I saw that my friend Angela of Angel Crafts had these lovely Tando mini house printer trays in stock and instantly I thought beach hut.   I spent a very happy and messy day at the crop yesterday getting to grips with the painting and making a start on this and carried on to the finish on Saturday night

Firstly I cut out a piece of paper to cover the back and sloshed on some paint which I dried and then did some stencilling and stamping to build up the background.

I painted the frame in white and once dry painted over in turquoise,  I sanded it back to give a weathered look and dry brushed a wee bit more white paint on top in areas.

I have been saving up some seaside bits and bobs for a while so raided them to add to some of the sections.  How cute is the seagull pin which I pushed into the cork from a mini glass vial (Ive been saving him for a while from a Quirky Kit)

I scattered some of my tiny bits of sea glass in another section covered with a piece of netting from a bag of limes donated by Donna, I filled a glass vial with sand - all collected from the beach at Beadnell.

I have a glass vase half filled with sand and topped up with my sea glass from the beaches in Northumberland and thats where the blog name came from
I finished it off with a couple of seaside  charms and two teeny pieces of driftwood.

The bunting is made from washi tape and I borrowed this idea from a gorgeous piece on Efemeras blog



I don't quite think it's finished yet as I see little gaps I could potentially fill with more seaside treasuresand I may well tinker on with it for a wee while to come

Hop on over now to Julies fab blog Notes on Paper to see her fabulous art journal page

Winners of the prizes will be announced on Friday 24 May so don't forget to come back and check then,.  Please note though that to be in with a chance of winning any of the prizes along the hop you do need to comment on all of the blog posts.

Edited to add that when you get to Jens blog the correct link to get to Suzies blog is Suzies.blog