I’ve recently started using an Iphone/Ipod Touch app called Instagram.  It’s like Facebook for photos and I’ve got in the habit of posting one or two a day.  I found a WordPress plugin which will post them here on my blog so I thought I’d make a post from my photos once a week or so.  A bit like Wordless Wednesdays….  If you click on a photo it takes you to the original picture.

I don’t have an Iphone but I have my photos on my Ipod Touch and Instagram is great because you just choose a photo and can apply various filters to it and when you find one you like, you upload it to Instagram.  I think the reason the app has taken off is because it is so simple.  I came across it by accident.  We went to London for a few days during half term week and on the Sunday I visited the Bethnal Green and Spitalfields area.  In Brick Lane there was an exhibition called My World Shared by the Instagram London group in a little gallery.  So I googled Instagram and liked what I saw!

The theme this time was ‘Through the Window’ and as you will see from my blog post, my piece turned out differently from what I was originally planning!

I struggled to find enthusiasm for making it but got into it more and more each day. I definitely need deadlines to get me working!

Most of the points are common sense, but it is a useful summary of what to keep in mind if you have a blog.

First is Lost in Lace, an exhibition at Birmingham Museum which promises good things.  There is a fabulous set of photos on Flickr here.

And there is the Staffordshire Hoard, the huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard found by a Staffordshire metal detector enthusiast in a field near Burntwood.   Part of it is on show in the Birmingham Museum too.

Then I want to go to Birmingham City Archives, who hold an indenture made between my 4x great grandfather Ephraim Docksey and various other people about an inn called The Cock in Norton on the Moors, Staffordshire and the will of my 5x great grandfather Joshua Dale.  No idea what they are doing in Birmingham Archives but I assume it is because the estate papers of the land they leased ended up there.  Very conveniently, it looks as if the archives and the museum are just across the road from each other.

Then I might have a walk along the canals where I took this photo a few years ago:

and made it into a gocco screen to print on  cards and Moleskine journals:

If I do all that, I might just need several days – time to get the diary out!

The first theme was Light and Shade and this is the piece I made for it, which I entitled Murder Mystery. 

If you visit the blog page you can read about how I came to call it that!

The next theme challenge is Through The Window and there have already been several interesting posts about how we are thinking of interpreting it.

I’m hoping I will get back to blogging (and actually creating!|) soon – it’s been a challenging and stressful few months family wise (though I’m not sure this year is going to be any less stressful with one son doing GSCEs and another his A levels!).

But next week, my five Reeds wallhangings are going to be hanging in the Riverfront arts centre here in Newport as part of an exhibition by the Diverse Manners arts group of which I’m a member.   If you happen to be in the area next Friday, you are warmly invited to the Preview Evening which starts at 7pm.

Reeds 1 is on the background of the flyer!  The exhibition is on until the end of September.