Adventures With Mum: A Photographic Journey

And now for something completely different : a photo adventure

For the last few years, on an annual basis, my wonderful mum has whisked me off to a new and exciting location for a few days where we've spent our time adventuring mother-daughter style. Here is a selection of snapshots from our travels starting with Marrakesh, Morocco

poor, skinny donkeys carry people and stuff all over town

                                 

the edge of jamaa el fnaa, the main square

great place to go if you want a basket

no rug shopping for us..hand luggage only

we're not too comfortable with the whole venomous snake thing



Now lets hop back into Europe with a trip to rainy Bruges, Belgium

                                               

yeah, we're those tourists

view of the cathedral

one of the old canals

taken from a boat tour, just before the rain came

the weather gave us a great excuse to take shelter in a bar  and commence drinking 8% belgian beer for the rest of the day with these lovely folks

                                   

off we go for drunken fondue

                                       

next day: a quick stop into france to visit lille 

it looks like a classy blackpool

                  And finally our most recent adventure in Spain. The main event is Palma de Mallorca

 

again with the segways, it's just how we roll

keeping it classy with cocktails at abaco

mum being showered in rose petals. this happens everywhere she goes

these lovely ladies are our new buddies

                                 

Now back to Granada for a final, weird farewell

believe it or not, this was actually part of my husbands birthday present.
what a lucky guy

it gets better. here we are bringing a little lancashire to andalcuia 

Next year it's Budapest or Istanbul. Lets hope they do a segway tour!

Little Pictures

Hola ladies and gents. I hope this blog post finds you well. Here's an update of what I've been doing this week. I've been making lots and lots of little pictures on spare pieces of card I had lying around. They are all done in watercolour and pen 

 Here's a selection to give you an idea. Please excuse the photography, I was blinded by the intense sunlight     on the terrace so this whole photo shoot was done with streaming, squinting eyes.

So then I had this idea. What if, for a limited time, I paired my jewellery with these little works of art so that when you buy something from my shop, you also get a nice little original Grace Galdo watercolour as a bonus. The colours or theme of the painting would be in keeping with the style of the jewellery, making it a kind of creative combo for no extra cost. I really like the idea of people having a little painting along with their necklace/bracelet/earrings/whatever, because it gives them a better sense of  who created their jewellery and I love the thought of my art being owned by many people, even if it does mean giving it away for free!

I started playing around a bit with photos for my shop showing the paintings with their corresponding piece of jewellery to see how it would look. I'm still not 100% sold on these photos and they may never end up on my listings but hopefully this will give you an idea of what it is I'm getting at.

                                                                                                               

         What do you think? Does the idea of getting a little painting with your handmade jewellery entice you, or is it just going to end up gathering dust or being chucked in the bin? I'd love to hear your opinions.

Spring on the Terrace

The rain has finally stopped and right now it's feeling very Spring-y in Granada. 

We've gone from this...

 to this....

I really hope it lasts! 

So to celebrate we enjoyed breakfast in the sunshine on our terrace today. It's still freezing cold in our little igloo of a flat on the ground floor, so going upstairs on the roof is a good way to warm up.

While I was up there I thought I'd take the opportunity to take some photos of new, and some not so new projects.

You might remember these recycled glass pendants I've been working on, using broken drinking glasses and scraps of glass found at the gyspy camp by our house. I've painted the backs white to help the colours stand out and create more of contrast. Now I just need to make them into a necklace..

While finding bits of broken glass to use for my jewellery I took a stop off at this amazing view to have a bit 

of a paint

and this is how it turned out

I've also been working on my Etsy banner and playing around with different ideas. Here's one I've completed in watercolour

If I don't use it as the banner on my online shop, I might use it as a design for an actual real life banner for craft fairs etc. 

And finally, just for fun, here is a photograph I took waaay back of various flowers from my parents garden in Lancashire, sat outside their back door on a lovely sunny day. I had it printed onto a canvas so we could hang it on our wall in Spain. 

I've photographed it alongside some of the plants we have on our terrace here in Granada. I like the contrast between the plants of my rainy homeland and the succulent plants of the comparatively dry region we now live in. 

Cloisonné Bracelet

I've just finished my latest project, this spangly silver Cloisonné bracelet.

I used sparkly silver plated ball beads threaded with Tibetan silver spacer beads to make the charms. I use this method shown by the bostonbeadcompany.com to make a wire loop and attach the charms to the chain. 

Here is a before...

And after....

It'll be available to buy in my shop soon 

Broken Glass

Over the last few months we've managed to break every last one of our pretty yet very flimsy Christmas glasses. They were covered in a paisley type design in a dark maroon colour and I was quite excited to experiment with the broken pieces in the microwave kiln. I layered the paisley pieces with some thicker clear glass taken from a broken beer glass and jazzed it up by adding coloured confetti glass (very thin coloured scraps of glass) and orange and red frit, which has the consistency of grainy sand. 

You may remember the "hole without a drill" technique from an old post which I've used here in the top of the piece so it can hang nicely as a pendant. 

I was surprised to see that after firing, the paisley design that was once dark maroon has now turned a lovely purple/dark blueish colour. So not only can whatever paint or enamel was used to print the paisley withstand the super mega crazy temperatures of the kiln, it can also change colour! I really like the effect. If you look closely you can see some of the paisley still has that hint of maroon in places and it's ended up blending together really nicely. I'm pretty happy with how this experiment turned out. To highlight the designs and the colours as much as possible I've painted the back of the pendant with white exterior paint that I'll glaze after it's fully dried.

broken glass mish-mash

Semana Santa;Holy Monday and Maundy Thursday

Despite several events being cancelled due to the rain I've still managed to witness a couple of Easter processions this week and I have not been disappointed. Monday's rain put a stop to Nuestra Señora de los Dolores' procession but not before we had a chance to see the start of the bizarre march down Carrera del Darro. Wednesday gave us more rain and unfortunately the popular Gypsy procession of Sacramonte was called off.  Luckily Thursday's weather was much nicer and we finally got to see what all the fuss is about in the perfect setting of our own neighbourhood, the Albaicin. So we took to the streets and followed Jesús and Maria around town for the day for the procession of the San Cristobal church. 

Here are some of Mondays photos taken in the rain on Carrera del Darro...

2nd from the front wants me to call him

having a pow-wow

And here are some snaps of yesterday's fun fest in the Albaicin...

the band getting ready for a long day

the lucky people with balcony access 

here comes Jesús

Jesus bumps his head on the telephone wires

a good samaritan comes to the rescue

with the black hats they looks like wizards

here comes Maria

the widows

the brilliant view from our friend's terrace

here they are hauling the virgin up the steepest hill of the albaicin, right outside our front door

So there you have it, the last few fascinating days in Granada in pictures. I've never seen the place so busy and packed with energy. The mix of grandeur, solemnity, and celebration have certainly left an impression on this foreigner.