Jeudi Journal - Forget

Almost another month has gone by in a tick.  Time for the end of October and what used to be 'trick or treat' but because of Covid I expect it will vanish.  Will put a lit pumpkin in the window although the house is off the beaten track so i doubt any passers by will see it.  Still time to put in another entry for Chris' "Hold the Line" challenge over on Art Journal Journey.

This week the prompt was "I'll never forget the first time we met but I'll keep trying".  I used Lemon paint first of all which was covering the whole of the page and then I went in with Tangerine over the top and a hard brush which resulted in the page having the appearance of lines for the background.  Just to make sure I fulfilled the criteria for the challenge I added some scratchy lines in Ruby with a credit card.  I must confess the colours were ones I had been using in an online workshop so they were already on my desk.  Finally U went around the whole page with my white pen and did a double scribbly line (which looks as if it has taken on the orange of the paint underneath).

The two figures were chosen because both of them had lots of lines on the clothing they were wearing and I wanted a figure to depict both male and female.  I also wanted to show that she had "an air about her" and so I thought her stance with the arms as they were would be good for this particular quote.

"Mathilda was rather a large young lady, tall and well built but certainly with an enviable hour-glass figure.  She was very popular amongst the young set she hung around with and was never short of friends of either sex.  Boris had always been very fond of Mathilda and had a tendency to follow her around like a little lap dog.  This suited Mathilda down to the ground, she liked all the attention.  That was until the day he declared his love for her.  It was all due to the fact that he caught her at a bad time (with her hair full of rollers instead of cascading onto her shoulders in bouncy curls as she always liked to be seen) that her mood turned a very dark grey, almost black.  So after Boris had told her how he felt and asked her to accompany him to the disco that evening she rather scathingly told him "No".  Quickly followed by "I'll never forget the first time we met, but I'll keep trying".

WOYWW 595

 Well, the colours on the trees are certainly showing us it's autumn at the moment and I made a card for an Autumn  Mingle on a stamping group I am on.  Wanted to think outside the box a bit and so I used the Unity stamp I have had for years and never used.  Coloured the image in autumnal colours (they don't show very well here) and then diecut some leaves and coloured them with Distress Inks and scattered them about on the card underneath the image.

It did look better in real life

I love autumn for its colours and so enjoy going for a ride in the car and seeing all the reds, yellows and oranges contrasting against the browns and greens.  We have a whole row of yellow leaves on some kind of bushes in our garden.  I just wish I had the Japanese Acer somewhere nearer with its dark red leaves.  I feel like going for a walk in woodland right now just to see all the contrasting colours and maybe listen to the rustle of the fallen leaves under my feet.  Nothing nicer than being wrapped up nice and warm with a hat, gloves and scarf and a paid of boots on a crisp autumnal morning is there.

Well, after waxing lyrical about autumn I had better show you my desk because I want to link up with WOYWW which is probably the longest running blog in blogland.    What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday was an idea thought up by the Queen of Deskers, Julia herself.  We usually have an annual crop but we missed out this last summer on account of Covid 19 but to celebrate the 600th edition we are hoping to hold a virtual crop.  How exciting is that!!

So if you fancy coming along why not pop over to Julia's blog, here, right now and join in today, or next week if I am giving you too short a notice and then you can come and play with us in just over a month's time.  

As you can see I have been playing with Janet Klein's figures yet again.  I have so many pages for this book I am making I am beginning to doubt it will hold together with so many pages.  The pages are at an end now, no more figures to make so perhaps in a week or two I will have it finished.  OK so I have been saying this for a month now - will happen this time.  So there is a box at the back with my stamps in and next to it some AALL & Create stencils plus some Cut N'Dry then my pencil case (Shaz & Doug, you would love this - sorry it caught the light, it's one of those 3D pictures) and in the front my Inktense pencils and my little figures.  you can just see one of my pages peeking out.

Right, it's time to call this a day.  See you next week.

 ps am annoyed again - it will not fully justify after the first paragraph then also after I have put a photograph in it centres writing - so now I have a mis-mash of styles and I do NOT like it.  I am a bit of a fuss pot when it comes to displaying my blog and I like straight edges with photos in the centre.  Grrrr.......

Revisited - still will not fully justify but at least it has done left hand justification

Jeudi Journal - Fun!

Hope you were not looking for a funny page when you saw the title of this blog post.  It is, as usual with me, an extract from a quote of Dyan's and this time it is "I'm a bad influence but damn I'm fun!"  Sounds as if the quote would be easy enough to do but to be honest I began this page with a struggle going on in my head.  

It started with a page full of bits of different colours of paint left over from something else - can't remember now - it was just a wipe the brush type of page.  Decided to go over it in a lime green for the base, with the intention of a grass and sky picture.  The lime green paint had set solid'ish , like a jelly.  You would think, knowing that, that it would give quite a heavy coating but it didn't.  It flatly refused to colour and so I just continued it over the whole page and left it to dry.  "See what happens" type of attitude.  When I went back to it I liked it in a funny kind of way and so I decided to leave it - as was.  So what about a story?

"Katia was a very attractive girl, she had lots of qualities that made her a popular choice with everyone she met but she had the knack of always ending her nights out by getting her and her girl friends in trouble one way or another.  As a child she had always been a bit of a tomboy and had done lots of things getting her and her friends into trouble.  Things like "knock and run" or tying her parents' door handle to a tree in the garden so they couldn't open the door.  She was a real little minx.  As she grew up her sense of humour didn't diminish one little bit and she was still up for having a laugh when out with the girls.

Quite often she would wear a wig when going out, sometimes her hair was blue, another time purple but her favourite was when she wore her white wig which she felt gave her a mysterious look.  Coupled with a pair of dark glasses and a fetching outfit she would pretend she was from another country and talk in gobbledegook which was a mixture of a couple of languages she had learned at school with a bit of imagination thrown in.

Of course when the girls went out on the town they would always end up in a bar somewhere and she was a terrible tease, collecting several glasses, lining them up and pretending to her friends that she had had one too many.  She was a terrible tease but they all felt she was fun. Mainly because she said she was."

Because I want to enter this into Art Journal Journey's challenge by Chris I have left the drawing of the bar as purely lines.  Her challenge is "hold the line" and, whilst I immediately think of a telephone when I see it, Chris has said anything showing lines will be accepted.  Phew!  Hope this will do.  See you over there - just follow the link above.

WOYWW 594

Like LLJ I am with BT and could not link up - not with Chrome - so linked up with Safari but it may not work .

Morning fellow WOYWW'ers hasn't the weather been good to us?  Forecast is rain later though (I am writing this Tuesday as I have developed a bad habit of sleeping until well turned 8 am).  Not good news on the Covid front as we are now going into tier 3.  Not surprised as the figures up north have been terrible.  My own town had a total of 1120 new cases overnight for the past five nights and Manchester had 2123 cases.  I just hope my friends on WOYWW are all keeping safe and well and by checking in we can know how you are.

Well I was getting my desk set up for Saturday as I have another virtual workshop with Tracy Evans at weekend, no doubt it will be about ten minutes both days for me and finish off at leisure during the week but hey ho, I love joining in and chatting (virtually of course).  I might get time to chat with Soojay or Cindy, who knows.  Anyway my desk shows a bit of stuff out in readiness, lots more to put out - and the start of a marathon birthday card making session.  I'd had to rush with a couple of cards so I decided that I would attempt to get in front.  Covers and insides cut for ten and then I was stamping "Happy Birthday" and embossing it in gold on the same paper as is on the inside but it went a different colour.

No, not the embossing, that was fine, gold powder ok, but the paper itself went a different colour when heated.  Have any of you experienced that?  I am not talking 'burnt' just different.  I thought it might return to its original state but it hasn't.  Most peculiar - now I have to start the fronts again or just stamp Happy Birthday in Black!  You can see the different colour below and it has not changed!

I am not showing you the cards I have been batch making but here is one I made for my friend's daughter who has just become a teenager.  I still remember her lying on the floor in front of our Christmas tree at just two months old.  A little bundle in white with a Christmas hat on.  (This is infuriating me - it will not fully justify and I do not like it centred GRRRR)

She is animal crazy and has taken up horse riding, horses being her current favourite animal, apart from her hamster - should imagine they are joint top.  In fact I was a referee for her to get a Saturday job at the stables where she goes riding - she is not that little girl who loved pink any more.  With this Covid it is ages since I last saw her, will probably get a surprise as to how much she has grown when I do see her.

Well, that is it for now.  So glad we are having a lovely autumn weatherwise although they keep telling us it is going to change.  Nothing like a walk through the dry leaves in the woods although I don't think my other half agrees as he is busy out the front sweeping up leaves.  I just looked out the back and it is full of leaves again - was cleared an hour ago - ah well!  I love autumn!

Stay safe and well everyone.  

Jeudi Journal - Not Interested

As far as the background is concerned all I can remember is that I had wiped my brush last week over the page to clean it and get rid of the remaining buff paint.  What on earth I put on top of that when it was dry I have not a clue, I really need to write things down these days, old age does this to you you know.  Looks a bit like Mermaid Lagoon and Broken China DO to me.

Again, in order to fit one of my figures on the page I had to shorten her legs, I don't think you would know unless you got a tape measure out - and knew how long they were on the actual stamp.  Then I took some of the dogs and thought up the bones of a story - which now goes like this:

"Henora's younger sister, Hyacinth, had been training her dogs to do various tricks and one that she was particularly proud of was that four of them could do a balancing act.  She was thinking of entering them into "Britain's Got Talent" when it was next coming on TV.  After all, didn't a young girl, Ashley, once win the show with her dog, Pudsey, doing a dancing act.  Hyacinth was convinced she could do as well with her little quartet.  There were lots of tricks they could do, Rufus could kind of do the splits with his two front legs and Gerald could play the trumpet.  Fifi was a little bit dopey but she could manage to whirl her head about a bit whilst twirling a feather duster in her mouth and Lola could perform the most amazing somersaults - and look at them now - they could build a tower whilst standing on one another's heads.

Hyacinth was so proud of them and of her own skill in having trained them to do all of these things so she decided to get them to do their balancing act.  Once they were all in place she called her older sister, but, Henora being the kind of girl who was only interested in herself and how she looked declared that she was not interested - saying "Sorry if I look interested, I'm not" - much to Hyacinth's dismay."

Sometimes I wonder how I make these stories up, they become sillier and sillier as time goes on but with an imagination like mine you really can expect the unexpected!

Figures, from Dylusions, were coloured in using my Promarkers as usual and because I want to enter into Art Journal Journey's challenge again, which is "Hold the Line" I put a simple broken line around the edges of the page to make a border, with some lines in the top two corners - probably because I got carried away.  Why not join in with the challenge over at AJJ - lots of lovely examples for you to see.  

WOYWW 593

I realised last week I had not shown you the tag I had done for a "Male" swap on the group I used to attend (we are virtual at the moment as we cannot meet up with the pandemic) so I went on the group and copied it - you can see it below.  I did make another one but I forgot to take a scan of that one.

My desk today is a bit different to what I normally show you.  This time I am working on the table, spreading out on the worktop and the bed in the small bedroom.  That's because I am at the caravan again.  My back has been so bad that we decided to come up here, whilst we can (Covid may shut down travel out of the area at home soon) to see if the mattress up here would make a difference.  We actually leave for home later today but it has been a nice few days and the weather has not been too bad at all.

I brought my Janet Klein figures up so I could get more done on the book - not sure if all the pages will make it into one book now as there are 20 pages and it might be too many.  We will see.  So that is what I have been working on and I was using the roll of Washi Tape I won in a random draw from Abs at AALL&Create via one of Tracy's workshops - or was it a Live?  Well here is my desk (I won't show you the kitchen top or the small bedroom - you will get the idea from this.)

Sorry it is a bit confusing because I have put some vinyl on the table to protect it whilst I work on my card.  You can see an old set of pastels on the left (I had four of these, all different colours but gave three of them away - silly woman) and just peeking out is the pile of my Janet Klein's pages with one I am working on in the foreground.  That is a white Brilliance pad, a brush that I bought several of and never used, my small scissors, the washi tape and a crumpled paper towel.

When we first arrived up here I noticed something stark white on the grass and thought the owners had put something down to stop people driving onto the grass and spoiling it.  On closer inspection there were three mushrooms/toadstools (What is the difference - even the internet does not tell me?). Have we any fungi's out there (get it?  Fun Guys - Sorry).  Well, here is a photo of the two larger ones.

I thought they were really rather pretty.  Two days later I was surprised to find that all that was left were the stalks!  The 'shrooms' had disappeared!  Had something eaten them or is this what happens?  The stalks were there still stood upright with a kind of dark coloured disc on them but the actual 'umbrella' tops were gone.  Do any of you know anything about them?  If they had been eaten or stood on then why were the stalks still there upright?

In my search for information and identification of these 'shrooms' I saw lots of pretty ones, lovely colours and some very delicate and lace like cascades down them.  It really is a fascinating topic when you start to look at them.

Guess I had better call it a day and get this baby put to bed by linking up to Julia and her long standing blog hop - gosh 593 weeks of blogging what is on your workdesk is really going some.  So if you want to join in or just have a nosey at what others have on their desks pop along here and see.

Jeudi Journal - Sparkle

First of all may I welcome Avril and Sheila my new followers, hope you enjoy my blog.

Wondering how to incorporate "Lines" for Chris's challenge over on Art Journal Journey I remembered I had a super stencil by Tim Holtz which was composed of nothing but lines.   Eventually I found it, it now resides with my other favourite most used stencils, and got out the texture paste and had a lovely time putting it at the top - well just over half, of the page.  Whilst trying to work out a seamless continuation down the remainder of the page I realised I would not be able to do the writing if I carried on with the lines so I abandoned it and left the bottom bit empty.  That solved a problem!

Next was the painting and I decided to use just a Buff shade of paint which went on next.  Background finished, now to the characters, and so the story begins:

"Henora and Hermione, two very close friends, were off to a party and Hermione had made herself a new dress of which she was very proud.  Big sister Henora was not that taken with it and felt that her younger sister looked a bit "over the top" and rather like a Christmas Tree and so she told her how she was feeling.  Hermione was not at all put off because, as she said, "when going to a party you should NEVER FORGET YOUR SPARKLE".

That made Henora think and so she went and put on her new sparkly blue shoes which she was actually saving for a big date later in the year.  And so the two girls set off for the party, both wondering how the night would go.  Hermione thinking about her 'grand entrance' and how everyone would admire the new dress she had made and Henora just wondering what on earth her friends would think of younger sisters idea of a party outfit."

The outfit Hermione is wearing was made up from one of Dyan's Christmas Tree images and was something I tried out ages ago - at last I got to use the figure.  All the red berries (lights) have sparkle on them as do both pairs of shoes the girls are wearing.  Thank goodness for 'Wink of Stella'.

And so the page was finished and ready for scanning.  Oh dear, the lines did not really show and that was the whole point of entering into the challenge at AJJ.  Thinking cap on I decided to go with a bit of wax rubbing over the lines.  They look fine and are quite prominent when you see it in real life but on a scan?

A bit of pink and a bit of purple wax - back to the scanner - does it look any different - no, not really.  Ah well, I am sure the ladies will take my word for it.  Off to join in AJJ now.

WOYWW 592

Well, it took me all week to finish my canvas started in a workshop with Tracy Evans because my back went just as the workshop started on the Saturday and again after about 15 minutes on the Sunday, but here it is finally done:

Because I used my new hexagon stencil in the background I chose to add a bee and some subtle diecut hexagons to represent honeycomb.

We used clay for the 'wellybobs' and the plant pot - and the piece at the back where the flowers are.  I used chain for the top of the plant pot and to represent the stalk of the lotus flower.  Did you notice Brian the snail at the bottom of the plant pot?  He is harmless and will not damage my flowers.

It now sits with my other canvasses on the walls of my craftroom.  I have a wall with my Tracy Evans work on, one with my Andy Skinner work on and most of my Finnabair work is in the hallway.  I'll have to take a photo of the walls one day to show you.  In the meantime here is my desk as it was left Tuesday evening.

My drawer which has my Distress Oxides in - I have not got many, decided that as I don't use ALL of my District Inks I would not go down the road of buying the complete sets.  In some ways now I wish I had as it is an expensive way of buying them in ones and twos.  You can see I do not have many by the chart on the top.  At the back of my desk you can see some Graphic 45 images cut out from some paper I had for a tag I was doing - which I didn't use in the end.  Another idea that went down the pan!  Below them are some TH ephemera images that i used for my plaque, well they are the ones I didn't use and to the right, on the pink cutting mat, is a picture of the plaque Tracy did which I used for reference.

Turning to the right you can see my desk at the side of me which has my trusty Vagabond on it.  I love my Vagabond.  When I was cutting some honeycomb I wanted to do some patterned bits so I have left it out until I can get around to cutting the pieces out I want - I just cannot find the right paper.

So that is it for this week.  I am working on my knee at the moment doing DO backgrounds but it is not very successful so I won't be doing them much longer.  I just want to get on with the Janet Klein book I was making a couple of weeks ago - unfortunately my back is playing up and I can't craft in my room.  I have another weekend workshop booked too - maybe once again it will be a 'sit and watch one'.

Off now to see what others have been up to in the WOYWW Gang.  I just love my Wednesday nose's about - and I can do that from the comfort of my chair.  See you over at Julias!

Jeudi Journal - List

Welcome to my latest follower, Sheila, if you let me know what your blog is I will return the favour.  Nice to see you here. 

"To Do List ... Not That" is the quote for today from Dyan.  So I chose two sitting figures for this one as I wanted to use the larger females for a change and by seating them I could just about manage, with a little chopping here and there, to fit them on my page landscape style.

The Story: - "Here we have two friends Sam and Adele enjoying an afternoon doing absolutely nothing but chattering about going out dancing, make up, clothes, boys and all things that girls of their ages discuss.  Sam has a "To Do" list in her hand.  Mum has had enough of her hanging around at home, not putting her clothes away, leaving glasses etc in her bedroom and generally being bone idle (Mum's words exactly).  So mum has given her a list of things she has to do starting with making lunch for herself and her friend Adele.

Sam, being the lazy girl she is, got Adele to wash her undies so she could tick that off the list whilst she made them a sandwich for lunch but now she comes to the third item and sees mum has said she has to get a weekend job.  She has no intention of working she wants an easy life where she can meet up with her friends and do girlie chatter.  She has added 'a new dress' and to 'ring Stacey' to the list herself and is perfectly happy to do both of those but find a job - oh no that is not on the agenda for her.  She soon put a red line through that one."

In order to link this with Art Journal Journey where Chris had chosen the theme of "hold the line" I began by swiping my Distress Ink Pad in Milled Lavender from top to bottom, dried it, and then added Shaded Lilac in the same way to give the appearance of lines on the page.  I then added some washi tape in a glorious metallic pink colour, actually three different shades of pink leaning towards the purple - figuring this would make the background a bit more girly.

I hope this complies with the rules for Art Journal Journey and Chris's theme of "Hold that Line".