Jeudi Journal - A Kitchen

It's Journal day and that means time to join in with Elizabeth at Art Journal Journey where the theme she has chosen is "What's Your Style".  Why not pop along and see all the great samples she has put up for us to see.  Along with that I am using a quote "The only reason I have a kitchen is because it came with the house" and I have a story to go with it concerning  Janet and her mother.

"Janet left home a couple of months ago to go it alone as she rented her own flat, moving in on her birthday, much to her mother's surprise.  She had always been quite an intelligent girl, brought up to know right from wrong and shown the basics of running a house by her house proud mother. Imagine mum's surprise when she called around the other day and saw that there was hardly anything in the kitchen.

The shelves were bare, the pantry was almost bare, except for a few tinned goods and the fridge only had frozen ready meals in it.  It was obvious that Janet was not really looking after herself as mother thought she should.  At least Tiddles the cat and Rex the dog looked quite happy and healthy she thought.

"What has happened to all the food I gave you when you called last week?" she asked her daughter, "I gave you enough for you to make some meals in advance and they should be in the fridge now so that you don't have to cook each night when you get home from work."

"Oh mum", said Janet, "I'm my own person now and I will choose the way I live, sorry if it's not the way you and dad live.  I'm an adult and I will learn by my own mistakes.  I am not like you, I don't enjoy cooking and the only reason I have a kitchen is because it came with the house."

Mum was quite upset, she worried about her daughter, wondering if she was getting enough sleep, eating correctly and was she really happy being on her own.  Why only the other day she had said to Derek, her husband, how she was worried about their daughter.  He thought she was being over protective and should leave Janet to learn from her own mistakes.

Eventually mum said she thought Janet should give up her flat and go back home .  The conversation got a little heated and then Janet said that one of her friends, Sally, was talking about leaving home and she might move in with her.  This calmed mum down a little and she decided to go home and leave it, perhaps talk to Derek again, but then maybe, if Janet had a friend living with her they could share the household duties and with a bit of luck Sally might like eating and therefore cooking.  She could only hope."

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I'm back again with some more Polaroids for the Aall & Create Challenge.  You can see them on my Instagram account under the name stamperneet and I would love it if you gave me a like on there.  I decided to do some of Abs' type of backgrounds this time having had a reminder from a friend who had not seen stencils used in this way before.

I might be a little late in visiting today as I am on the second of a two-part workshop with Tracy Scott - learning how to use coloured pencils.  It was really good yesterday morning and terrific Value with Tracy giving us lots of information to begin with and then learning how to do a graduated shade and one with a highlight to make it look dimensional.  She is an excellent teacher, and such a lovely person too.  yesterday was 3.5 hours and if today is too then it's 7 hours tuition for £20.  I call that really good value.

So this was my desk yesterday, last night and this morning:

Close up

Laid out ready for another morning of learning.  Cheapo felt tips, pens, pencils, erasers, paints in the background, more pens, sketch books  Prismacolor pencils, rubber stamps, stencils.

Obviously I cannot tell you about the class but I might show you a sneak peek at some of the things I did next week, hopefully after improving!  If anyone wants to do the class you can contact Tracy and enrol for the class which is saved in video format.  Obviously you can't ask questions like the 'Live' session but I never asked anything because it was all explained.

I hope this is classed as enabling rather than me advertising - Julia, please tell me off if it is the latter, I honestly viewed it as enabling others to experience the workshop.

Right, I had better get off now as I must get some cards made.  Spent simply ages making a card for a friend and guess what?  Mailed it before I took a photo!  Doh!

See you all at Ms Julia's for our WOYWW pow wow after class.

Jeudi Journal - Eyes

 "Tallulah and Lavender were two sisters, Tallulah, Tally to her friends, was married, but Lavender (Lally) was still single.  The sisters had a talent for being dressed up most of the time and you would not see them around town unless they were fashionably dressed. 

Tally and Lally were the types of women who loved to attend dinner parties and to dine out at fabulous places - especially for afternoon tea. Nothing gave them greater pleasure than being seen around town and especially if they had something new to wear.  Funnily enough they had a similar taste in clothes and quite often you would see them dressed almost identically.

It was a lovely sunny afternoon that the two of them had gone into town to a rather swish restaurant for lunch with some of their friends from the golf club.  Tally was hoping that she would be chosen for Lady Captain sometime soon so it was always favourable to dine with members of the club whenever possible.  

Both of them were wearing a touch of haute couture from Paris and sporting matching hats.  Lally was dressed in a rather delightful shade of Magenta whilst Tally was dressed from top to toe in a beautiful shade of Sea Green.  It was, of course, the rather rich husband of Tally who had flown the two of them to Paris to get 'something to add to their wardrobes' much to the envy of the other ladies at lunch.

He absolutely doted on his wife and to please her he often treated her sister to a new wardrobe as well but, as the girls at the golf club often said "Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes".  They certainly had the measure of Tally and knew entirely what she was married to him for, and it was certainly not his look, dynamics s or his dress sense."

For this journal page I have used my square journal.  The figures are Dylusional ones, slightly different to the ones I normally use, but Dyan's figures nonetheless.  I already had this pale green background in my journal and it had some smoky grey circles on and splashes of a more vivid green decorating it so it was an obvious choice for today.  These figures are smaller than the ones I use week in week out so they would have been quite lost on my normal journal page.  

This month we haved Elizabeth choosing the theme for Art Journal Journey and she chose "In the Style of" and I read that I could do my usual in the style of Dyan Reaveley, so that is why I thought I would change it up a little and still use her stamps but make it slightly different to my usual Jeudi Journal page.  I guess next week will still be a Dyan style page but maybe back to the other type of stamps.

Check out Elizabeth's own page for lots of ideas as to what you can do.

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 Well, I did manage to finish off my Polaroids - done 31 of them now and I am making them into a book in the next few days but also am starting a new set of them because I enjoyed doing the so much.  So if you followed me on Instagram you will see me posting again in the next few days.  In the meantime:

25 - 27 of my Polaroids

28 - 30 of my Polaroids

31 Last one for this set

Julia made me laugh on FB with her comment on this last one.  Brill Julia, good one!

But you came on here to look at my desk - well here it is.  If it looks a bit too tidy it's because I have also been crafting elsewhere for the most part because my back has been a bit 'jittery' and I have needed to sit in my straight backed chair.

As you can see, there is nothing really on my desk.  My glass mat has moved from underneath the window part of my worktop and now has a dirty yellow cloth on it.  Not really dirty dirty, I use it to clean my stamps.  A clear stamp I have just used for my journal tomorrow (everything else put away) a notebook with a clean up of my Distress tools on it (I quite like the look of it so it will get used - a future Polaroid?) some craft mat pieces that I use to protect pages in my journal when painting and my Ebosser.  The Ebosser never gets used because it is not normally in my craft room so I've moved it to see if I use it a bit more or will I want that space it occupies?  If so, it goes back on the trolley.

Here is another trolley, as opposed to the one with my die cutting things on, this time with my craft stuff on that I have been using to colour my images in when my back has been hurting.  Some of my colouring mediums, my beaker with my pill box stuck in it, my Felix box with my small JK stamps and my pill storage things on top of it (waiting to be put away), glue, scissors and my flesh Promarkers.  I would like to change over to Copics but have you seen the price of them?  Wow, I cannot see me buying those, guess I need to learn to use all the different colouring mediums that I have.

Well, that is it for this week, it is Tuesday night now and I must get to bed, too many late mornings recently (yes, I do mean mornings) so it's time to link to WOYWW and then see tomorrow what everyone else has on their desks.

Jeudi Journal - Exercise?

 "The three Amigos, namely Milly, Molly and Mandy, were having a laugh and discussing whether or not they should be going to the gym like so many of their friends.  Milly had been listening to a Podcast about losing weight and how exercise alone was not responsible but that one needed to diet as well.  Molly was in complete agreement and although the girls all had a healthy diet, because their mums were friends who attended the local Slimming World Group, and prepared meals for their families based around the beliefs of the group, she thought they should start going to the gym.

Mandy was a bit unsure.  As she put it "we all lead a healthy lifestyle, we play rounders and Netball each week, we go walks at weekends and surely all the dancing we do on a Saturday night means we do enough in a week."

"Not so sure" said Milly,  "I know some girls who go to the gym three times a week as well as doing lots of the things we do like playing team games."

Molly stood there silently, hands on hips whilst she pondered on what the other two were saying.  She was the eldest of the group and tended to be a bit of a leader.  She was usually the one the others took notice of.  "Well", she said, "I think tossing and turning at night should be considered exercise."  The other two stopped dead in their tracks, did she really say that you did exercise in bed by tossing and turning?

"Are you serious?" asked Milly, slightly bemused.  "Do you really believe that we burn up calories whilst sleeping because we toss and turn in bed?  And anyway, who is to say we toss and turn when we are sleeping?"

Molly grinned "Honestly you two, you would believe anything I said at times, no of course not.  I just thought I would throw that one in."

The girls all laughed and carried on chatting about what they should and shouldn't be doing ..... until the conversation turned to chit chat about boys!

I decided to try out a different background and used my Distress Oxides on an acrylic block, the top in Scattered Straw and the bottom in Crackling Campfire.  Then I put some Gesso through a broken diamonds stencil (Diamonds in the Rough) and used a border stamp by Dylusions around the edge of the page.  As always figures are by Dylusions and coloured in with Promarkers

Because Erika has chosen Faces as her theme for Art Journal Journey's challenge this month I have put three figures on today.  You still have a few days to join in with the challenge, why not pop over and read the rules (not many at all) and join in.

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I would like to thank those of you who have given me a 'like' on Facebook or the heart on Instagram.  Some people are getting lots of hearts on Instagram, I've seen one at 135.  She must have a lot of friends.  Here is my catch up for those of you who have not seen them:

16 - 18 of my Polaroids

19 - 21 of my Polaroids

22 - 24 of my Polaroids

I had a busy day yesterday.  One of my craft group friends is not well so I had to make making her a Get Well Card a priority and I wanted to get a start on my Polaroid Book that I intended making when I first did them, then there were my ATC's for my swap with my bestie.  Of course there was the Thursday Journal page to be done so I closeted myself in my craft room for part of the day.  It gets lovely and warm in there so it's lovely to be creating.  Oh - and first thing I made a date and walnut cake.  This was an old recipe from before I went into teaching when I worked as secretary to the District Education Officer and was one that I scaled down from a recipe made by the School Meals Service.

Got all my jobs done except the Journal page so that is on the cards for today.  I need some more figures stamping for my Dylusion pages so that means a lot of stamping and fussy cutting is on the horizon for the rest of the week.  The card and the ATC's are going in the post as soon as I get myself organised and print out Royal Mail labels - gosh postage is expensive these days.

Right will leave it there and hopefully catch up with friends on WOYWW during the morning.  See you there?

Jeudi Journal - Wine

The words for today are "Of course size matters.  no-one wants a small glass of wine".  And it looks like our girl is using a tumbler!!  Oh my!  Must admit I struggled a bit with the story this week, but I think my head just isn't in the zone at the moment.  I've got a spot on my pupil and I need to see someone so I think it might be a visit to the optician today and possibly the hospital to have it removed.  I hate anything to do with my eyes so I am petrified.  How do you keep your eyes open whilst they prod at it?

Anyway to begin with I painted my page a pale turquoise and then used a stencil with some white paint to put chrysanthemum shapes randomly over it.  Then I chose the medium sized figures from Dyan Reaveley's collection and swapped heads and legs about on the two on the right to create new figures.  (For those who don't know Wendy and I have set a challenge between ourselves to make a page each week using Dylusion figures but as we have not had any new stamps for quite a while we are struggling to make new figures from what we have.). 

We also decided to enter our pages into the challenges at Art Journal Journey wherever we can and so, as the lovely Erika has chosen "faces" for the challenge this month we are managing quite easily to have a face on our page.  This is my entry this week.  So ...

"Pat had just got ready to go out with her friends Lynne and Gill, off to the local disco in town.  The two friends had just arrived and were rather surprised to find Pat with a large tumbler of wine on the table.  As they had a taxi waiting for them outside, which the two girls had arrived in, they were in rather a hurry to get off so that the driver would not be charging them too much 'idling time'.

"Come on" said Lynne, "we can't keep the taxi waiting whilst you finish off that wine.  And anyway, why on earth are you drinking wine from a tumbler?  You'll be putting weight on drinking like that, especially since all the Christmas Fayre you have eaten over the holiday period."

"Don't be silly" replied Pat, "Of course I have wine glasses, you bought me a set for Christmas and I didn't put them out at the party in case they got broken.  There's very little chance I will put any weight on, you know me, petite and slim at all times I can afford to put a bit of weight on."

"Too many a true word" butted in Gill, "Don't you think being so small size doesn't matter?"

"Of course size matters" said Pat laughingly as she drained the glass, "No-one wants a small wine."

"Uh ho, I can see we are in for a fun night with this one" shrugged Gill as she made her way to the door.  "Come on you two before she pours herself another."