New addition to the family!

Big news of a new arrival later, but the journal page above is something I did a few weeks ago, but it turned out to be strangely prophetic. The quotation is from Dyans Downloads and the image is, I think from Crowabout (I often spend my evenings watching tv with a pile of download sheets and a pair of scissors, so that I just have to delve in my box of images when the creative mood strikes which makes it easy to create, but not necessarily easy to attribute the images to their source). The quotation refers to a kind of pleasure/pain process I have been through this past few weeks. All my life I have wanted my own horse, because although I have ridden almost my whole life, and never been short of horses to exercise, it's a bit like borrowing someone else's car - convenient and cheap but ultimately not what you really want! Anyway, I have been looking off and on for the past two years, but I never found anything I liked enough to make myself cash and time poor for the forseeable future! Until now. Meet Mary:

Now, whilst Mary is not only beautiful by nature and looks, her owner was a nightmare to deal with! So, whilst the overall outcome was positive, I feel a bit about horse-buying the way some people feel about house-buying.

And this is how a horse looks when it is let out for the first time in at least a month:

Tomorrow we are off to get fitted for some tack, and on Saturday we shall be venturing out on our first ride together! There might be a bit of lull in the creative flow whilst we both get used to each other and get fit!

happy days

This is one of the pages I started last week when we were away. I love orange on the page - it is so vibrant and happy. It's a colour I would never wear, but I can't get enough of it when I am sitting at my desk, it's just one of the paints I reach for first - that and pink.



This is a page I did yesterday. My Mum wants to start journaling too, so we spent yesterday splashing paint about, drinking tea and chatting. Not only was it fun, but while I was out today, she delivered a giant Toblerone as a thank you - not great for the post Christmas, pre-skiing abstinence, but who can resist Toblerone!

Thanks to everyone for the good wishes - I feel like a big fraud, I've only had the flu bug that everyone else has had, but cheers guys, nice to know you care!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! We just got back from five days in the rural idyll that is the cottage in the Lake District. Fully restored to health, I not only managed to reach my feet (no mean feat given the amount of eating and drinking I have done since I gave up running in favour of being ill) for long enough to tie my laces and do two little runs, but I also managed to do four (yes FOUR) journal pages! So here for starters is my January page for Kate's calendar challenge. I always find the letters for the month a bit challenging to come up with, so this time I borrowed Kate's idea as seen in last months Craft Stamper Magazine. The past few years, the weather here has been very cold and snowy in January, so I decided to make my page cool in colour and with a background of snowflakes. The bird images are from Dyans Downloads and they are singing the song that we traditionally make a total hash of on New Year's Eve in the UK.

This is another page in my tiny journal. The background is painted with Dylusions paints and then oversprayed with Dylusions spray inks. The image is from Divas D'este and the caption from Dyan's Downloads again. A conversation this weekend about New Year's resolutions made me think about how we are always looking at our negative points rather than emphasising the positive, so this is to act as a little reminder about self-confidence.

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year and look forward to a creative time ahead!

A cautionary tale..

A belated happy Christmas to everyone. As ever good intentions went out of the window in the pre-Christmas silly season, so all hope I had of blogging, doing Dyan's tag challenge etc, got left by the wayside in a maelstrom of nativity, illness, cooking,illness, family commitments, illness and building work. But I have survived it all, even the illness (almost) and once my body recovers from the inevitable abuse of Christmas and New Year, I'm sure all will be back on track. As my husband disappeared to do some shopping with the children about 12 hours ago and my house guest has absented himself for some local visiting, I find myself alone with nothing special to do. I say nothing - the house could use a hoover, the washing needs doing and I could start packing for our weekend away, but what the heck, it'll wait. So I did this. This is a little journal, a double page measuring about 7" x 5 1/2". I have this notion of having it in my handbag with a few scant supplies so that I can journal on the go, but who am I kidding? I can't go anywhere without a huge bag of paints, pictures, crayons, pastels etc etc. Nice idea though? I think that the quote is rather appropriate for this time of year too, although can't say I have eaten anything truly huge, just lots of little things and some quite big things...

And finally.....

It has taken a while but here at last is my December page. This snowy weather is beautiful but goodness, doesn't everything take a long time! Living in this winter wonderland is a long cycle of getting dressed and undressed, drying wet clothes, trekking through either deep snow, or tip-toeing over sheet ice. Add children and animals into the mix and add at least another fifteen minutes!

The background is a mixture of Dylusions and Studioline paints, oversprayed with Dylusions mica sprays in the special edition Christmas colours. The tree is a Sizzix die cut out of Crafty Individuals Christmas paper cut up and glitter glued - after all it is Christmas! The stamp is from Stampotique.

Last Friday I had a first: I went snow shoeing! The trusty Beast (my car) ploughed through snow and over ice to reach the moor a mile or two outside our village. We then snow-shoed through snow which was at times above my knees (and I am 5'11). It was great fun and VERY tiring!






And this is what happens to a dog who has at times had to swim through snow it was so deep!

This page has been on my mind for a while, but for ages I couldn't find a picture of an elephant that I liked. I think I will add more journalling to it, but it might be too personal to share, so this is it for now.
Judging by the amount of blogging that has been going on over the past few days ( I came online to blog hours ago, but have had to catch up with everyone's new posts), a lot of people are suffering the effects of the snow and unseasonally cold weather. We had our first snow fall last week, and it has just kept on coming. Perfect timing as we have no loft insulation at the moment, due to a building project - brrr!

Of course some creatures don't mind the snow, as you can see here:

The downside of working within walking distance of work is that you can always get there, and the head of our village school is determined to keep school open, mindful of the trauma that some parents have been going through to get their children to school and then to work. Admirable of course, but my children are NOT happy, as they are desperate to get the sledge out, and by the time we get home, get togged up and are ready to hit the slopes, it's dark. Still, judging by the forecast, we'll still be sledging at the weekend....
I haven't completed my December page for Kate's calender challenge yet, but it is in progress, so pray for a snow day tomorrow and I might get it finished instead of working all day...

Can't sit still!

Can't settle to anything - have so many ideas and can't quite decide where to start. More of this later. Anyway, first things first - Sandra was asking what pages I produced at journaling at Dyan's the other day. I haven't blogged them yet a)because I really don't like this page, and b)because I haven't been in the house for long enough to take a photo. Having said that, the days have been so dull that I had to resort to scanning this is as the light was so bad. I don't know what it is, but I just don't like purple on the page. I wear purple a lot, so it's not that I don't like it as a colour, but I never like anything I create in purple. Dyan challenged us to make a page with random sentences put together, and this is my result.

Whilst hunting through her enormous stack of magazines, I found the phrase on this next page that I felt had to be put to good use. Like most people, I don't have the luxury of being able to turn a blind eye to household chores, work and animals, so all my journaling and artistic endeavours are tinged with a little guilt, because I know there is always something that I should be doing instead...

So, onto the cause of my ants in the pants...

Some time ago, my lovely friend Nicky suggested that I should introduce myself to the lovely team of people who run a local artists studio and skills workshop called ArtisOn as a potential tutor for art journaling. I did what i am sure most people do at first - mutter, shuffled my feet, did a lot of 'oh noooo, I couldn't possibly, I'm not a proper artist - I just splodge paint about' sort of stuff. When I mentioned it to other people (like my husband, my Mum, Sandra)and they all had the same response: 'why not?', I started to wonder myself. Anyway, long story short, I went, introduced myself, showed them my work and they booked me! Me! So, that's the first stage, it doesn't mean anyone will actually come right? Well, yesterday was the open day at the studio and I went along to demonstrate for a couple of hours. Four and a bit hours later, I came home with a great big grin on my face. I met some lovely people who clearly thought that journaling was as great an idea as I do, and lots of ideas were shared and paint was splodged and inks blended and generally fun was had by all. Some people booked on straight away and lots of people said that they were going to - so fingers crossed that they do! I couldn't sleep last night for all the ideas going round in my head, and today I have managed to achieve practically nothing. It was great to be a part of such a vibrant, creative atmosphere, I'm only sad that I didn't really get a chance to look at all the other artists stuff - I couldn't get away from my table! Check out the ArtisOnwebsite for some of the exciting things they are doing, or their facebook page. Right, back in the real world, my hands are nearly frozen solid - the builders are busy here and that means no loft insulation, a big hole in the ceiling and now they are forecasting snow for this week...