Playing catch up again

I always look forward to seeing everyone's new blog posts, so I feel that I have been a bit lax recently. I think that five weeks is a bit of a no blogging record for me, but I promise that I am still here! Things at home are not really conducive to creating anything but mess, and the only painting that I have done is acres and acres of new plaster with a bucket of emulsion! I have been 'camping', creatively, in the dining room for the past five months, and I have to say, it is not really the best environment, wedged in between large pieces of furniture, my husband's two best bikes, my horse tack, and various other non-arty bits and pieces. But, the end is in sight. Today I went to buy the flooring for my new 'studio', which measures 2.6m x 5.2m. How lucky am I! However, in the absence of space to create at home, I have taken advantage of opportunities to learn some new skills elsewhere.

In my last blog post, I mentioned about my glass fusion course that I did with my friend Nicky. I can't explain the alchemist kind of thrill that you get from putting sharp edged pieces of glass with mysterious looking powders sprinkled on them, and then how amazing the creations look when they emerge, still warm from the kiln. We spent the first day learning how to cut glass and mastering differing techniques, and then we went away overnight to come up with our designs for our final piece.
Here is my final piece before the kiln:
And here it is after:

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I went on a bookbinding course at artison in Masham. Run by Victoria Lucas, who has created some beautiful collections of images in hand bound books, we learned how to make Japanese Stab bound boooks, a concertina book and then a traditional hardbound book. I can't tell you how exciting it was, not only making the books, but thinking of the possibilities for creating my own journals. Needless to say, I was online as soon as I got home, buying supplies to make more books! Here are the three books I made on the day:
As far as normal journaling goes, I have almost finished my May page for the calendar journal challenge, which is good, seeing as May is almost over... It's half term here now, so hopefully, in between the painting and sanding, I might get some journaling done!

Catching up again!

I have to admit I have struggled to find inspiration for my calendar page this month, but a visit to my Mum's garden gave me the push I needed to get something on paper. Her garden is a riot of daffodils, tulips and grape hyacinths, and the combination of colours is so cheerful, I thought I should try and capture it. My attempts to draw and paint the hyacinths however, were pretty rubbish, so they didn't make it onto the page! She and her neighbour have an ongoing joke where they hide a garden gnome around the outside of their houses to make each other laugh, so the little Stampotique character had to sneak in too!

Things here are as hectic as usual - the building work continues with the constant demand for tea,coffee and decision-making - I always thought of myself as a pretty decisive persion, but I am becoming seriously decisioned-out! Hopefully it won't be too much longer until the builders are done, and I will share my new studio with you when it is ready!

Mary-mare has settled in well and is now well and truly part of the family. I still have to pinch myself from time to time to believe that something so beautiful is mine! We have had some great fun together, and I have realised a long held ambition to jump the hunt jumps in the woods near us, much to both of our excitement!

My first art teaching experience went well, in fact so much so, that a second date has been discussed. They were a lovely bunch of people and I have heard from several of them who are now committed journalers!

I have just come back from a weekend away with my friend Nicky. We attended a two day course on glass fusion with a lovely and very talented lady called Genevieve Thompson of Wicked Gen Crafts is her blog, but she also has a website here. It was very exciting and there is more excitement yet to come, as my final pieces have yet to be fired and so I won't find out how they have turned out until next week. I'll tell you more about it next time, with pictures too!

The cat that got the cream

Although I have about a million things I should be doing at the moment, such as finishing my teaching models for my art journaling course at Artison on Friday, I spent last Saturday afternoon at the Great Northern Papercraft Extravaganza in Harrogate, so that means new rubber! Purely in the interest of research, I have obviously had to have a bit of a play! This is one of three stamps I bought at Art from the Heart from Octopode. After some really tricky times last year, this year is definitely going our way, and I do feel like a really rather naughty cat with a really large pot of cream, especially since so many people around the world are having such a horrible time at the moment. A member of our family lives in Lyttleton NZ, and has all shades of carnage surrounding her, and a really good friend of mine in Japan has survived an earthquake and a tsunami, but now faces radiation from the Fukushima leak. It's hard not to feel a bit guilty, but equally, I think some of the events recently just reinforce that you have to live life to the full and seize the moment. And, on a lighter note, who could be downhearted in this beautiful weather!

Catching up at last..

Phew! I am, at last starting to catch up with things. Had an enjoyable couple of hours putting this together yesterday, in between doing the Brownie run and cooking and washing - does the pile ever go away? The stamps are from Claudine Hellmuth, and although I have had them for a couple of months, this is the first time they have been out of the packet. I decided to go with fresh, springlike colours, as the weather here has been be-au-ti-ful, until yesterday, when the fog descended and since then we haven't seen the sky, just grey, grey, grey. I figure if this weather continues, at least looking at this page everyday will cheer me up!
I'm always intrigued with some of the things that people blog, especially the what's on your workspace type thing, as I am always pretty ashamed with the state of my desk when I am in the groove, and certainly wouldn't willingly share unless I had had a bit of a tidy up first! However, yesterday our cat decided that my painting water was more appealing than his bowl of water (probably full of brick dust and cement, like everything else in this house at the moment!), and I couldn't resist taking a picture.

Long time no hear!

I know I said that I might be offline for a bit, but I hadn't anticipated it being quite so long! Lady Mary has settled in well, but in a busy life, a new demand on my time takes a little adjustment. Anyway, I now have her settled in at home and we have been having a fantastic time enjoying the spring sunshine and watching the little lambs over the hedges.
Mr H and I have also been skiing (our annual week of married time, no kids!)where we had a great time, did LOTS of skiing and even got a suntan. In the meantime, the building work at home continues apace, which is exciting, but not always in the right way...This week we have had high winds and driving rain at times, which compared to things happening elsewhere in the world, isn't worth mentioning, but at the moment we have no roof on half of the house, which makes for refreshing temperatures, intermittent electrical supplies and some interesting night time noises! It will all be worth it in the end, but the inside if the house is in turmoil to say the least. Each time I try to create anything, I have to search through boxes of stuff in at least three rooms to find what I am looking for.
As I was so behind with the 365 challenge, I decided to have a make a kind of summary page of February. it's not exactly true to the spirit of the challenge, but I hope that the other participants won't mind.. March is in progress, and I am keeping a note of the events of each day ready to put into my squares once the page is finished. To those regular visitors who have been asking when I was going to start posting again, thanks for waiting!

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!