Recycled Mini-Album Pages–Poem, and an Outing to Paignton Sea Front

The first of two posts today.

Making good progress on the recycled mini-album. This page celebrates my Dad’s love for nonsense verse. He committed several Hilaire Belloc verses to memory and loved to recite them at every opportunity!

These are the materials I used to create the background to the page.

Here is the completed page.

As this is such a short post, I am going to add an outing we had to Paignton Sea Front. We had intended to go somewhere else which didn’t work out, and ended up going to have a look at the sea. By this time it was mid-afternoon with the light already beginning to fade, and the weather was quite strange, with sudden brief bursts of sunshine through rather threatening clouds, with occasional brief showers of rain. This made the light (or lack of it!) quite interesting, and I got some lovely photos. I adore the seaside in the winter, when the beaches are deserted apart from a few stalwart dog walkers. The tide was on the ebb, leaving an expanse of wet sand which gave rise to amazing reflections.

I also took photos of some of Paignton’s more unusual and eccentric hotels on the Esplanade. This is the Redcliffe – I just love those turrets! Really OTT Victorian! Somehow you can get away with more OTT at the seaside – perhaps it’s something to do with the free, holiday spirit!

The Marina Villa. I love those Colonial style balconies and the green copper dome over the beautiful round bay window – what great views of the sea!

Finally, the Recliffe Lodge. More Victorian OTT! Love that pinnacle with all the windows, the double gable with the twiddly bits on the roof.

My final photos are looking back along the Esplanade.

Here’s that seagull, with a a bit of photo manipulation to make him stand out.

After this we went to the chocolate-box village of Cockington with its thatched cottages and the complex of art studios and galleries – I didn’t take any photos there because it was getting late and too dark. We didn’t spend long, and we intend going back another day, perhaps when it isn’t quite so cold. I will leave you with details of one artist we visited, Marc Heaton, who knocks my reputation as Recycling Queen into a cocked hat! We had a lovely time in his gallery and were delighted with the eclectic display of his art, which he was only too pleased to show us – he paints, draws, sculpts, upcycles, distresses… you name it! His work is really quirky and fun, and proves that you really can make art out of anything, if you only start looking at the world in a different way. Here’s a link to his website, which covers his work over two decades, and the evolution of his ideas.