We spent the middle week and a bit of August in the UK visiting family and friends as well as some of the sights! On the 11th My Dad got married to Anne, it was a lovely sunny day and a good time was had by all.....(My head confirmed this the next morning)
We visited London on 2 days....Day one saw us hitting the Tower of London for a few hours. We had the funniest Beefeater ever!! My son was not really looking forward to the guided tour, (he's 15, he doesn't look forward to much unless it involves a football) but he loved every moment!! The Yeoman Guard made the history of the Tower so interesting and it almost came alive....he was also absolutely hilarious!!
I was so glad that during a river cruise I was able to take a photo of Tower Bridge with the Olympic Rings....
There still seemed to be a buzz in the air while we were up there, and we saw several people with Olympics Village passes wandering around the Tower....but didn't recognise any medal winners.
Day 2 saw us going for tea with The Queen, sadly someone forgot to remind Her Majesty and she'd gone away on her holidays! We had a good snoop....I mean look around, while we were there, My favourite bit being the 'Diamond' exhibition celebrating the Diamond Jubilee. Cabinets and cabinets of glittering jewels....I was in heaven! The best bit for me was seeing the major Cullinan Diamond stones (I had already seen Cullinan I and II at the Tower). What surprised me was that the uncut stone weighed 3,106 carats....and all indicators on the stone suggested at one point it was even bigger. The total weight though of all the cut stones (9 principal stones, 96 small brilliant cuts and 9 carats of unpolished stones) was 1,055.9 carats. This was a 65.25% loss through the cutting process. Sadly I wasn't allowed to take pics :(.
On Friday we had an appointment at Hogwarts School!! What a day out!! We saw all the props and costumes used in all 8 films. The sets were amazing!! Especially the great hall. I would highly recommend this studio tour to any Harry Potter fan. They even have the rickety bridge from Hogwarts there. Totally brilliant!!
So after a few days of R&R on our return, I set out to start practising with my new tabletop studio from Modahaus. It is a really quick system to set up and folds flat for easy storage. I photographed a couple of new pieces and am pretty happy with them. As I don't have proper studio lights I still have to use PicMonkey to edit, but am happy with this for now. I have also abandoned my Canon DSLR in favour of my little Lumix compact. I think I need lessons on how to use it correctly because I seem to be getting better photos using the Lumix.
There's a new little addition to some of the new pieces, little brand tags from Tiny Treasures take a peek....
I have one week left of the school holidays before going back to work....BUT am not thinking about that just yet....am going to go head over to Handmade Monday at Handmade Harbour so see what I can see.
Thanks for reading!!
Bye for now
S x