totally unspooky post

Sorry, guys, but yesterday wasn't dedicated to crafting.
It was dedicated to a wee girl, because she turned 10 years old on Thursday, which did require some quality family time... in the Modern Family sense of things.

The Man's daughter Abi is now officially in her double figures... time flies. Meh.
And because she is, altogether, not your princessy kinda gal, we took her to the Royal Armouries to look at weapons, warriors and other dangerous stuff.

Want to join us on a little trip?

real live arrows with real pointy edges!

wait for it... WAIT for it...

ka- POW!!! She hit the target multiple times

aaah... japanese tranquility...

dude... TRANQUILITY, get me?

He's wearing authentic armour, no replica for this gentleman!

Chinese warriors look a lot friendlier than their Japanese counterparts.

This guy and his horse ARE replica, but still amazing.

How was this poor creature supposed to see where it was treading?

...daddy?

men at arms... tooth pick, anyone?

Mind you, those are life sized!

this, too, is life sized. The wee dude wearing this would have been about 5 or 6...

... whereas this big dude (original painting!) killed a couple of wives and

ROYALLY cheesed off the pope. So he went ahead and made

his own church. As you do.

yeah, too much education makes me aggro, too. Go kill 'em, kid.

I SAID KID!!! Meh...

See, again, I broadened your horizon. You can thank me later, that's okay.

We really had a great day, lots of laughs and so much food and sweets that it'll take weeks to detox. 

Best of all? Apart from paying 3 quid for 8 arrows on that really cool crossbow shooting range, the whole thing was free!

Yup- many museums in Britain are free. (less and less, mind you, but there is still a lot of cool stuff that won't charge a penny, which is pretty amazing.) So we were okay with spending 30 quid on food and drinks in a nice family pub afterwards, sitting in deep leather chairs, comparing the pictures we took. (one of Abi's gifts was my old- ish digital pocket camera with a new memory card, so she can take photos to use in her pretty sophisticated digital collages she has taken up creating recently)

So... no spooky deeds for now, I'm afraid, but I hope you enjoyed the little tour through our Royal Armouries. We sure did, one of the best days I have had in a long, long time!

Abi learns to use PicMonkey

I shall be back at work tomorrow, so my posts will be a bit less regular, but don't think for a minute the Great Glitzy CraftOff is done- there's a lot up my sleeve I shall have to share with you in the days to come whenever I get the time!

Have a great Sunday!

A quick one (while he's away)

Ten candy corns if you got the reference!

The Mister was away most of the day, so after finishing my bling, I got bored. And since I was still in arachno- bracelet mode, I made a quick and easy little piece for my bff Abigail (who will be 10 years old this weekend- I still remember her starting school!) to get into the creepy- crawly spirit.

This won't need much of an explanation.

Bracelet blank, felt, spiders, invisible thread.

Sew spiders to felt, glue felt to blank.

Glue a little black lace around the edges and take crappy mobile phone pictures glamour shots on mantelpiece.

Look forward to sharing a common bracelet theme with your bff during the weeks leading up to Hallowe'en!

More glitz tomorrow (I hope to all the spirits of Samhain the rain will stop at some point, I desperately need to spray paint an item!!), see you then!

My bf forever!

For this particular piece of bliss all you need is a Hello Kitty pair of plastic sunglasses, a charity shop Fez, a charity shop beggars hat and a particularly gorgeous daughter. If you don't have a daughter on hand, an incredibly gorgeous niece/ goddaughter/ granddaughter/ neighbour/ randomly sourced orphan will do.
Once you have this gorgeous lassie, take a nutcase (it helps if it's male with a serious case of gaga) and let him loose.
Tell the girl it'll be alright, she won't be all over the internet.
Take truckloads of pictures.
Congratulate yourself on the fact that you just took truckloads of immensely gorgeous pictures on a dime.
Blog it.
Kiss her goodnight and remember what she said.
And I quote.

If you steal the stars and stick them to the walls with blue tac, they'll shine for you!

Let me tell you about face paint.

Face paint creates joy. It creates disguises. It creates art. It creates a helluva lot of mess.
But most of all, it creates photo opportunities.

Do you guys happen to know Terry Pratchett? He is my favourite author EVER, and I proudly claim this after spending my teenage years buried under Stephen King books. IT still bloody scares me.
Anyway, Terry Pratchett. Without taking you too far into it, let me just tell you that, amongst a world of other stuff, he wrote about a bunch of pictsies (sic) called the Nac Mac Feegle, otherwise known as the Wee Free Men.

They look like this:

Okay, keep this in mind.
Now... The man has started playing a game on Facebook called CastleAge. Like many games on FB, it is a bit like "the more, the merrier", which means you end up with loads of friends playing it, too.
The man created a "guild" within the game, calling it "Wee Free Men", as I have infected him a little bit with the Pratchett bug.
Do you follow so far, or is it just tumbleweed being blown across my blog?
He promised his guild members that if they achieved a certain goal, he would turn into a Nac Mac Feegle.
If you remember the post title- here's where the face paint comes in.

Feegle:

The Man:

Okay, so this is the first half of my post on face paint.

The second half is dedicated not to The Man, but his beautiful offspring, Abi.
She came 'round this weekend to spend some quality time, terrify the cats, make our ears bleed and get her face painted. Err.

Daddy introduced her to the wonderful world of CastleAge (no, she does NOT spend any time on Facebook yet!) and decided to turn her into one of the games' characters, Lotus Ravenmoore.

This is how it went:

In the last few pictures, Abigail (who is 8 and one of the most gorgeous kids you could imagine, inside and out) wears my furry coat, a charity shop belt and a scythe plus clawy glove her dad made for her.
The whole thing cost about £2.50 for the face paint and zero for the costume.

Heck, guys, this is a normal days' work. Can you imagine the terrors that await this blog at Hallowe'en??
I did not edit out any of the horrors of our living room, just so you know. Yes, there are bare mustard- coloured floor boards and yes, the mantelpiece and shelves could do with decluttering. But I wouldn't want our life any other way, mustard floor boards and all.

So go on, give your little ones a lick of paint. You might enjoy yourself even more than they do, for the price of a fashion magazine that'll be outdated before the next issue comes out.