Using up old craft supplies

 Years ago I used to do a lot of craftwork and even sold some for a time to help pay for school fees, etc. when the children were growing up. Over the years I have given away most of the supplies I had collected but did keep some decoupage and jewellery items as I thought they would come in handy. At one of the annual craft shows I attended in Brisbane I bought some gold foil which I don't think I actually used back then and wondered if it would still be usable after twenty or so years. The glue in the kit hadn't dried up after all that time so I thought I would give it a try on some indoor plant pots. 

So I opened an old bottle of Plaid's Royal Coat Decoupage Glue similar to the one in the link I guess and after twenty years it still worked well. I had also kept some beautiful decoupage sheets so cut them up and glued them on and gave the pot a few coats of the glue. 

Then I added gold foil to the rim of the pot and it stuck on really well. 

On another pot I experimented with using paper napkins but the thicker paper was much better to use as it is designed for decoupage. I was very pleased that my paint, glue and gold foil are still going strong after all these years. 

It is cactus orchid season and now all the flowers have opened up. Some bloom before others. 

This was one of the first. It is a red colour with touches of purple. 

An orange one. 

My husband calls this pink but to me it is more of an apricot colour...

...and he calls this one 'cherise' whereas I would call it purple. LOL!

My hollyhocks are starting to flower and so far only the single reddish/pink ones are flowering but I did plant some double ones during winter and they have some buds on them so I am anxiously waiting for them to open so that I can tell what colour they are as I want a variety of colours. The problem is we have been having storms (which they survived thankfully) and now we are in for days of hot weather in the high twenties and I don't think they really like the heat. I asked the gardeners at our council nursery when they plant the hollyhocks so that they are ready for the Carnival of Flowers and they said they plant the seed out in March so that is what I will do next year all being well. 

We have been having a challenge over on the Homemakers Forum to bake something different from the norm using up our sourdough starter so I made an olive and tomato rye sourdough loaf using the recipe in Emmanual Hadjiandreou's 'How to Make Sourdough' which one of my lovely friends gave me a while back. It is only a small loaf hence the small slices but it tastes very yummy. 

We were treated to a double rainbow on Wednesday. As mentioned Queensland has had a few stormy days this week and a lot of damage was done to crops and some houses that had trees fall on them but we were spared here thankfully. It was so sad to see on the news that some of our local farmers, who were ready to harvest after such a dry season, had to watch the huge hail devastate their crops and vegetables resulting once again in a huge loss to them. So very sad but they are such a resilient lot and most of them will bounce back and hopefully the forecasted wetter season will be of benefit to them for their next crop.

Our state election is on tomorrow so it will be interesting to see which way people will vote. Our border is opening up to NSW apart from Greater Sydney but is still closed to Victoria which has just come out of lockdown after a few months and I believe there is a lot of celebrating going on down there. Australia has now had 907 people pass away from COVID-19 and tragically 819 people died in Victoria resulting in the lockdown. I am sure people around the world are looking forward to resuming 'normal life' sometime in the not too distant future. 

Have a wonderful weekend and don't forget to vote if you are in Queensland. I voted a week ago so that's done and dusted!