WOYWW 568

Here we are again, another WOYWW posting.  Gosh these are coming around thick and fast these days, shows we are not getting bored with staying in isolation, in fact, I don't have enough time in a day to do what I want, hence the state of my desk(s).  Nothing to show AGAIN but I have some new stamps on order so maybe next week?  I hope they come before then as they sent a note to say they are a two man band so orders will be slower at coming out and the posties are busy with the mail deliveries so they are taking a bit longer.  Not to worry, everyone is doing the best they can.  Hope our poorly WOYWW friends are feeling better than they were, sending love to you.

I did receive a lovely card though, this week, from someone who is extra thoughtful and can make cards in the way that I want to but never can.  I sit with all those pretty papers and do not know where to start.  Maybe I should study this in detail and learn Remember - Watch and Learn):

My main desk doesn't show much change week to week, still trying to finish off some birthday cards but I have been getting a class ready so apologies for everything being turned over.  You can see the word "hello" which is what I put on one card.  I was really stuck for what to put on the cards as the main thing was I was trying to show a background I did years ago with my lovely American friend, Mary (safely in God's hands now) which I have not seen anyone do.  They probably have, afterall where did she see it?  There's my bits and pieces envelope from Sam, some glue from Honey Doo, my bee beaker, dies in an ArtBin and some rubber gloves and a dirty piece of paper (used for polishing off Pastels).

Desk 2

My bits and pieces ready Gessoed waiting for paint - been waiting for a week or maybe more to be painted.  Don't think they will be done by next week, not even one.  I've seen a You Tube video of a project I really fancy - messy, painty with lots of texture and stuff - just up my street!

Hadn't been walking around the back garden for a few days so was pleasantly surprised to see the lovely bank of forget me nots as I walked up the steps to my secret garden (nowhere near as nice as yours Cindy, it is just secret - in it is hidden).

It's one of about five banks of them - you can just see that there are more of them there in the next photograph which is actually the compost heap.  There are more further along but I can't keep showing the compost heap which stretches two thirds way across the back of the garden and now has pretty flowers growing all over it.  There are a lot of bluebells in the top corner - maybe I will get a photo for next week.

Swinging around you see the section separating the secret bit from the main garden area (below) and you can just about see the patio and the decking area.  Wish I could get down to garden or that Chas would enjoy it.  It is the last thing he wants to do!

The lawn is looking a bit in need of TLC, it's always been a mossy type of lawn but is even worse now.  I need some spiky shoes to get aerating it and a good day so I can go for a dance all over it.  Can you imagine?  Me dancing!!  My dad would have loved this garden, he was very green fingered, shame it did not rub off.  Dad could turn a pencil into a flower!

Well, I will leave it there, have ended up with a large post again.  Stay safe and well everyone.

Jeudi Journal - Happily Drunk

No, not me, the quote for this week was "For the first time in her life she was truly happy.  Then she remembered she was drunk".

I began with a background of Pan Pastels again, simply because at the moment they are the easiest way for me to get colour on the entire page of my Journal.  My back is really suffering with not having its usual treatment from the chiropractor because of this Covid-19 and places like that having to close for the present time.  In fact that is why I am late posting today, it is a particular bad morning for me.  Luckily I had the page almost completed with the background done, the figures ready, it just wanted sticking down and the post writing up.

I used pinks, blues and lilacs, all pastel colours for my main background then I went over with a shocking luminous pink paint on my brayer, and Cheddar which is a favourite of mine from the Dina Wakeley range, in small patches.  I wanted to link in to Artful Journal Journey so I had to find some geometric shapes to link in with their theme for this month so I knew I had something other than triangles, diamonds, circles etc and sure enough I had pentagons on a stencil (I had thought they were octagons util I got it out of the folder).  So they were stencilled through with some Worn Lipstick DI around the top and sides.

Because my trio are on the way home from a party and my poor girl who has had 'one too many' has tripped I thought of my stencil for a brick wall and used a bit of Tea Dye DI along the bottom.  Oops!  She has lost her party hat but she is still holding on to the balloons.

So that is the story behind my Journal page today.

WOYWW 567

Another week of isolation for so many of us - I just hope you are all safe and well and listening to Boris and his band and staying at a safe distance, washing your hands, and doing basically as you are told, to keep you and your loved ones safe and well.

It's at times like this we miss our family and friends but realise we are not alone because out there in the big world there are lots of others going through what we are going through, some going through a lot more, but we are always there for one another in whatever way we can.  That's what happens when you are in  the WOYWW family - there's always somebody to talk to when you need them.  (Thanks Jan for the messages yesterday).  So, if you are reading this and you are not a WOYWW'er then I say "join in" just show us your desk and chat on your blog, you'll find a great welcome and make lots of new friends.

This is my desk today - well one of them.  I have commandeered another table in another room and have a trolley in the dining room plus a large footstool where I put things.  In short I spread all over the house.

As you can see I have been using my Pan Pastels because it is the easiest way I know of colouring the background to my Journal pages for tomorrow. I decided to get all my sponges out and wash them - they looked so dirty.  After about five changes of water and constant squeezing them in and out of the water I could see no difference so I bunged them in the washer and gave them a wash.  What do you think of them now?

Yes, this is after the washer treatment and a good dry out in the sunshine - not much difference is there?  Still they probably won't contaminate with colour by now - good job I have some I have never used.  Think I must have gone overboard buying sponges back in the old days!

I did have a couple of cards to show you but they went in the post without scanning so that's normal for me - one of these days I will make one and you will get to see it on here.

Stay safe and well, keep posting so we know you are ok and join in with my #Cheers on Facebook if you would like to join some of us posting each day something to brighten FB up.  Just put #Cheers so I see it and then I will comment, as will some of the others.  Your lovely work deserves to be seen and shared (and that includes cooking, gardening, sewing, knitting, crochet, or just something to brighten the page up).

God Bless you all and keep you safe.

Health Update;

Back's just as bad, I haven't bothered to mention it of late because there's a lot more going on in the world than me having this pain.  Really bad pain last night but hey ho, it's another day today so a brand new start again.

Jeudi Journal - Safe Distancing Please

No, Dyan has not done a quote saying 'Safe Distancing Please' but this week we had "A Group of People is called No Thanks" as our quote - this was chosen by Wendy a few months ago so no idea about the coronavirus then.  However I decided that this quote was apt in the current climate and so I used it to illustrate 'safe distancing'.

To begin with I coloured my page with various shades of yellow and some green from my Pan Pastels.  Not used in a long time but they came out for something else and I decided to use them here.  They provide such a quick cover for journal pages I can see them being used over and over.  As I wanted to join in with the theme of 'Geometric' on Art Journal Journey I took out several stencils with those shapes on and then I found one that I had bought recently that had circles, rectangles and triangles on the one stencil - so I used that instead of several others (less cleaning) with Forest Moss DI very lightly applied on top.

Then I searched through my tiny figures and found a whole bunch of them that would do, standing together making a crowd with one of them relaxing on the ground.  I have seen photos and video recordings of people not listening to the safety rule of standing 2 metres apart and a friend told me she was a nervous wreck when she had been shopping.  It was the stupid behaviour of others that had got to her with people handling goods and putting them back, holding up others from proceeding down the aisle and then to top it all one went the wrong way up the final aisle pushing past all those shoppers queuing to pay the cashier!  (Actually it was one woman who did all three things - handling goods, holding others up and going the wrong way past the cashier aisle)

So I decided I would have a group, probably at the park or somewhere like that, with someone else not wanting to join them.  I hope her stance portrays her attitude!  She was too tall to go on the page so I had to chop a bit off her legs to shorten her.  It took me longer fiddling with that than it did to do the background!

Next I found a picture of the virus and printed it out in different sizes to add impact to the message and perhaps be a bit more in the way of an explanation of what I was trying to do.  My final task was to do some lettering - I wish I could do really good lettering like Dyan Reaveley, Miranda Van den Bosch, Sandra Botham etc but I can't so I just wrote it in a bit of a higgledy piggeldy sort of way.  So that is it - my journal page for this week.

(Just as I was finishing this write up an alert came through from the MEN telling us that a 31 year old woman had been fined in a neighbouring town for throwing a party on Saturday night.  No idea what the fine was but I think now is the time to 'name and shame'.  My opinion and I am not changing)

WOYWW 566

I think most of you will have seen by now as I posted on Facebook that an angel visited me last week with some flour.  It wasn't just flour though - she brought me some treats as well.  I had whinged to so many about my flour having pscoids in (the flour people told me what they are - they are also known as Booklice) that a very good friend's daughter went out and got me some.  Then she made the errand of mercy to bring it to me.  I am just glad she did not get caught by the police.  This was what I made with the flour (Chas is becoming a baker as well as a chef now - he gets things for me, I weigh and supervise whilst he mixes - ran out of syrup [now found a recipe to make some] so the biscuits didn't get syrup in them, instead I used brown sugar, they turned out different but still tasty).  Help yourself if you want.

Two of Granny Lee's Health Breads and some Quaker Oat biscuits - being devoured right now by my other half.

Had some happy mail which I thought I would share on here

Cindy's lovely Easter Card, and tiny book

isn't that fabulous!

My desk is so uninteresting after those pictures but hey ho I have been making some backgrounds for another fairy book.  Now I need to get stamping and putting it together, think I might do yet another if I get some more pages cut.  This time I used my Pan Pastels, not used in a long time but spurred on by a card I received a couple of weeks ago - then I used them quite differently (doh).

The backgrounds can hardly be seen, they are far right, but the Pan Pastels I used are the paler ones on my trolley in the lounge.  I think I might be having another desk next week as I have a table in the spare room which I can use - just clutter somewhere else up.

I did cut two pages from the new paper but I will be blowed if I can find them.  I cannot find the pack of paper either but my back has not been good so that might be stemming the search for stuff.  Maybe I will show you those next week.

Hope you are all bearing up with this isolation and staying safe and well.  If you have a garden it is nice to sit and walk around it, otherwise if you do go out walking I hope you are managing to distance yourselves from others, some photos on social media can be rather alarming.  Why do people not listen and learn?  If we keep this isolation going we cut down the length of time it will take to rid us of the virus but here I am speaking to those who know and take notice.

See you next week God willing, here on WOYWW!

Jeudi Journal - Animals

This week the quote is "Life is a zoo never feed the Monkeys".   Now we know that this, kind of refers to a video voyageur simulator, where you watch strangers through surveillance cameras invading their private lives without any interaction with them.  What would happen if you fed the monkeys?  (actually I didn't but I looked it up and this is what it said)

But, no chiropractor at the moment means my back is bad so what I do craftwise is of a minimum and my page this week was painted first of all in Titanium Buff and then when it had dried I used a fairly dry brush to push some colour across, Yellow Ochre, and again when that was dry added some Burnt Sienna in the same way. I quite liked the effect of the broken lines but it needed something else so I used a stencil and put some green leaves up one side and a little across the top to give the effect of it being out of doors.  Then it got left until yesterday - when the back was bad.

Still it needed something so I used Scattered Straw DI to add some circles all over the remainder of the page but it didn't show up at all - can you see them?  So then I added some diamonds in Fossilized Amber DI just randomly across the page.  Still very faint but they are ... subtle???

Two figures came next, one a young girl in a pretty spring dress and the other a rather fierce looking Monkey in a suit with a sign over the top of his head.  And so it was finished - just added the quote and all was done.

Oops, just seen Art Journal Journey have Geometric Shapes as the theme for the new month.  Pity the circles don't show but I think Diamonds are still Geometric Shapes, aren't they?  Will try to join in Valerie's challenge with this page.

woyww 565

Another week of isolation, another Wednesday, another new month, another week of WOYWW, the longest blog hop in blogland I think.  More can be found out about it here.  

Well that is two and a half weeks of self isolation for the two of us.  Tempers almost got frayed on Monday when I came to bake.  My temper that is.  I opened a new tin of flour and it had those little bugs running around in it.  Checked on the net, after it went in the bin, and it said it was safe to use as you killed them with cooking but the thought of it - oh no, it stayed in the bin!  Would you have carried on and baked?  Now I have no flour and none on the internet shopping (empty shelves I think) so no baking and I have run out of those delicious quaker oat biscuits and my tea loaf is near the end.  Hurrah for crafting - soothed my soul when I went in the craft room.

I had three lots of purchasing drop through my door this last week.  My brushes finally arrived from China so went straight into a bowl of soapy water and now they are dry and on my desk along with the pad of Stamperia paper I have bought to do an album with.  I can't wait to get started but it will be in bits and bobs because of my back - not something I can do in my chair on my knee.  Also got some Lavinia stamps.  Just a bit for backgrounds in my next little fairy book - spent £40 though!  It soon mounts up.

You can see the brushes and the paper on my desk.

My box of cottons is still there, too high for me to stretch to put it away - Chas will have to do it for me.  You can see my journal page is started, going to have to get going on it today as it needs to be published tomorrow.  Not really sure what to do as yet, having a bit of a problem with the quote.  On my glass mat to the right are my templates from Tando and behin is the paper I sent for .  One pound per sheet but oh, it is gorgeous.  I just hope I have enough with the one pack.  I think I will paint the covers myself rather than use this gorgeous paper.  You might just get to see it in a few months time.

Well, that is it for this week.  Just hope you are all safe and well.  I read that someone I know had lost her mother but because she is in the 'compromised' list she cannot go to the funeral.  Just imagine how hard that will be.  My heart goes out to her.

If ever we had a reason to come on here and join in with Julia and her WOYWW its important at this time in our lives, it is one way of keeping check and knowing that our friends are safe and well.  Stay in whenever you can, don't take any risks, let's beat the bug-ga together!  Oh, and share your art with us on #Cheers if possible.