Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

I have had such a great birthday that I want to share such a happy day with you. I am giving away from this blog one of my handfelted brooches/pins. One just like those pictured here or in my etsy shop ( http://empresswu.etsy.com/ ) in your own choice of colours. The ones in these photographs have unfortunately all been sold, but I have more in progress. All you have to do to win one of these fabulous felt brooches/pins is leave a comment and name your favourite colour combinations. A person's name will be chosen at random next Sunday morning 2 August and that person will be the winner. Here are some of my great birthday gifts. Having mentioned to my friend that I had nothing pink in my life, I received from her a pink pig eraser, a pink clock/timer and a computer mouse pad, depicting a gorgeous Chinese girl in pink. And everyone knows how much I love babushkas and matryoshkas so this bag from my family seems made especially for me. Lots of flowers, perfume, a massage voucher...

Featuring Transient Tracy -Tracy has gone fishing up in the Northern Territory, but before she left she gave a great demonstration of her polymer clay sculpting techniques. Tracy loves to create "interesting" characters and as you can see works exaggerated facial features to create lovable and comical characters. Besides sculpting, Tracy does fabulous work with textiles - dyeing, embellishing and surface alteration see more of Tracy's work on her blog http://tracymcoz.blogspot.com/ It was also a fun day with great company and lots of good food for lunch and a Christmas in July gift swap. I got out a couple of my "old" heads, and started another one with Tracy's guidance. Now to finish their bodies - amongst all of the other works in progress! And a very happy birthday to my beautiful daughter-in-law Kellie - enjoying birthday cake at our Friday night family dinner with her two little boys.

Ever wonder what to say when someone asks what is your national food? Is it a meat pie? pavlova? BBQ? Vegemite? We settled for a lamington , so as not to assault the taste buds too much too soon ... This week, the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar from Japan arrived . Mayuko is a really delightful, confident and engaging young woman who will be studying for her Master's degree in Teaching English as a Second Language at the University of Newcastle. Have you heard of this program ? It is the world's largest privately funded international scholarship program which has sponsored, since 1947, nearly 38,000 men and women from 100+nations to study abroad, generally completing post graduate degrees. The purpose of Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships is to further international understanding and friendships among people of different countries and geographical areas. While abroad,the scholars serve as goodwill ambassadors to the host country, and upon returning home, the scholars share the exp...

Not sure where the last week went? I seem have less and less time .... so the blog has suffered this week. Here are a few button and felt brooches I've made this week. Perhaps I'm just feeling old this week ... our son, Adrian was 37 last Sunday.- but not too old to have his Mum's homemade birthday cake with chocolate frosting and M &Ms. Brandon, his son and Dylan, his bnephew, didn't seem to mind it either. Have a great week - I will try to get back to my blogging routine this weekend.