busy, busy, busy

Cor, but life is a bit hectic at the moment. It's at times like this that I am glad to have prepped a few journal pages in advance so that I can have a little fun without being distracted from the work I should be doing! Another three weeks and life should go much calmer, or at least I hope so! Until then, I have pupil assessments to finish, college work to get done, a million one school events and activities to keep up with with my own children, and all this with only one car and that doesn't work very well...I did think that having a husband at home all the time would lighten the load, but as you will be able to tell from these journal pages, it is not always the case....Right need to go and finish the dinner before I head off to a meeting this evening. No rest for the wicked!

June done, July ready!

Seems odd to think that I have been doing this for six months now - it doesn't really feel like it, and I am still really enjoying it. I decided to document my mood or the weather on each day as well this month - just as well we have had good weather recently, ha ha!


So, I am ready for July now. This page has layers of dressmaking pattern, distress inks, gesso, acrylic paint, spray paints and stencils and then stamped over the top. I then cut the petals out of white paper and layered them up into the flower design - all this beautiful weather means that even my miserable gardening skills are resulting in flowers all over the place, so why not in my journal...? I am off to see how everyone else is doing now - I wonder if people will keep going next year too....?

Hot stuff!

Yesterday I went to a workshop with Kate on beeswax. I have done some beeswax before, but with varying degees of success. Unsuprisingly, Kate's method worked a dream, and I am particularly taken with the idea that I have to keep buffing up this little fella's behind to maintain the sheen! All the elements are adhered with beeswax, and the background is coloured with distress inks.
This atc is just sealed with beeswax, all the elements are adhered and sealed with gel medium. It was a quickie, so the background isn't as layered as I would like, but I wanted to try the strong colours with the wax, rather than the usual muted, grungy tones. The background is ranger dabbers and the Stampotique figure is coloured with neocolours.
Right, off to provide broom wagon services to my angel of a husband who is hustling three Brownies on a sponsored bike ride - 15 hilly miles in this heat!

I'm back (almost)

 

Seems like ages since I last blogged, and, well it is. But the reason is not that I didn't want to , but that I have been bogged down with work stuff. In fact, last weekend I took myself to a little rural hideaway and worked solidly from Friday lunchtime until Monday lunchtime. I did take art supplies with me, but can you believe that I hardly even unpacked them - I'm such a good girl! In between furiously typing away at my college work though, I did manage to slap a few coats of paint on for some backgrounds, and then I was lusting after some new stamps to use on them. I am so in luurve with the Stampotique stamps, but when you are hours away from the nearest craft shop, what's a girl to do? I decided that I would try and draw some characters myself, which would illustrate the kind of pages I have in my head, and will actually get into my journal when I get a chance. This first page (above) is one I did over half term, and Marcy is who get me started on Stampotique. She first came into my life when the fabulous and inspirational Kate made me a notepad with her on. The next two characters are my creation, the taller 'you did what?' character kind of reminds me a bit of a girl I went to school with and a bit of Dyan at Art from the Heart. It wasn't intentional, she just came out that way - it was the attitude I was looking to achieve.

 

 

Hopefully I will be getting a big chunk of my college course signed off tomorrow so that will mean I am really really nearly finished - and then I can put these two gals into my journal...

May down, June ready

I was all ready to post this yesterday, but I got bitten by the ironing bug and once it has hold, I can't afford to ignore it, else my entire house will be submerged in screwed up clothes.
The background for June is done in the Dina Wakeley style, and I decided to make the blotches of colour into trees and added tree trunks in various animal print styles with marker pen. The character is from Stampotique, the other stamping around the edges of the pages are all Tim Holtz.



Ooh, almost forgot. Kate has very kindly forwarded me an award for a trendy blog.
How cool is that? Now I have to nominate ten people whose blogs I like. I always find that tricky...

On a roll...

This photo frame was a nasty orange wooden frame from a pound shop that I bought years ago, thinking that one of these days I would do something with it. Strangely, once I got down to it, it really didn't take long, the ideas came thick and fast and it took minutes to put together. The stamps are all from Sir Tim, and the frame itself is painted in a mixture of Claudine Hellmuth and Ranger acrylics (mainly traditional tan and juniper).

This is a page from my little Moleskine journal, with the background done in a Dina Wakely style, with sprayed ink and water circles. I actually used ecoline inks in mini mister bottles, as I prefer the brighter colours, but Dina uses the Adirondack colour washes. You can see how she does it
here.
The stamp is my latest Stampotique purchase - now that Dyan is stocking them, rather than having to send for them from the States, it would be rude not to indulge these urges wouldn't it...
Amazingly, I have actually prepped two more pages in my little journal, one of which has really surprised me, so I have posted it below. I am not a fan of purple in my art, when it comes to clothes, I wear a lot of purple, but I never really like it on paper. But, I have to say, I am quite taken with this:

Tomorrow I really have to get on with some real world stuff, but not before I have been for a ride on my horse, had coffee with a friend, picked my daughter up from Brownie camp and of course blogged my completed May journal page....

Watch the birdie!

How else to spend a wet Saturday afternoon, but in your craft room? I bought these little gems about a year ago, and always intended to do something with them, and the miserable wet afternoon we had today seemed like an ideal opportunity! So, I dragged out the Claudine Hellmuth sticky backed canvas, paints and the sewing machine, and hey presto, my little birdie friend! On reflection, he probably should have been a bit smaller, or maybe I just need to find a bigger bird cage?