Bank Holiday day trip...

On the last Bank Holiday in May we decided we would take our first proper day trip as a family.  It was a really sunny day and we contemplated going to Castle Ward but decided in the end to go to the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

We spent most of our time in the transport galleries looking at all the trains, buses and cars.

I was particularly taken by this Land Rover fire engine as it has so much in common with our camper van.  They really are very versatile vehicles!

We thought it would actually make quite a good mobile shop with the openings on the side!

So many of the vehicles had brilliant badges.  They just don't make them like that anymore.

I also really liked all the commercial vehicles, again modern commercial vehicles really don't cut it compared to some of these.

This little blue car was pretty cute.  It's a Peugeot Bébé.

Always love a Morris Traveller.  Maybe some day!

We then went across to the Folk park part of the museum were we had a picnic, with tasty bread and olives from the Poachers' Pantry in Lisbane and then we went for a walk round the rural part, mainly getting ideas for our own house and garden!

One of the last building we looked at was the rural school, it had some lovely vintage posters inside.

We reckoned that the older the kids got they must have moved up to the higher coat hooks.

All in all it was a great day out, I'd definitely recommend it if you're looking for an interesting trip.

Catch up part two....

I’ve been working on lost of different things recently one of which was making myself a new website.  I’ll still have the main longshot press website but I decided I should have a site for my more fine art work as the longshot site is more illustration and design related. So I’ve now got emmamajury.co.uk as well.  Its still very much a work in progress but here are a few peeks at what its like so far…







I’m also going to add a page with images from my sketchbooks but I haven’t quite got round to finishing that bit!

Here are some of my sketchbook pages that I’m going to include….









I made the drawing above into a drypoint print which was exhibited as part of the Arts Society of Ulster annual exhibition which is just over.



The drawing above is part of a series I am currently working on, I’m in the process of creating a book of polyester plate lithographs of ten drawings of timetables from the Ulster Folk and Transport Museums archives.

Here are some shots of my very messy printing session….






inkiest sponge ever!



a half inked up plate.

Finally I leave you with a photo of some very tasty  biscuits I made at the weekend, thanks for reading these two rambling posts, go and have a cup of tea - you definitely deserve it!

inspiration from the ulster folk and transport museum

The other week I took a trip to the Ulster Folk and Transport museum, it must have been about ten years since I have been and I have to say I will be back again! I had forgotten how brilliant it is, so many amazing things to look at.  As you can imagine I was particularly taken by all the old packaging and machinery.  I will definitely be working on some illustrations inspired by my visit!



Being the nostalgic type it made me want to go home and bake soda bread and light the fire - I also couldn’t resist stopping at the shop on the way home to get some peat for the truly authentic smell! Heaven.