WOYWW 699

Next week is another Magic Number - we reach 700 posts - well some do - thanks to Ms Julia the inventor of WOYWW.  I wonder how many regular WOYWW'ers were here at the beginning?  Gosh, they've notched up a lot of paragraphs if they were here from day one.

Well, crafting has taken a back step this week, no reason, but I am going to have to pull out the stops if I am going to get a couple of special cards made this week.  I only made three last week and two of those were the same as cards made in the past so the third one was for my friend's daughter who is horse mad and is another of those Thelwell type images (not him but a similar copy)

This is the last of the three images on the stamp plate so I will have to think of something else for next year - guess it will have to be a horse of some kind.  This time I coloured the images with my watercolour crayons.

A bit more interesting than my desk which is just containing a couple of bags full of crafting goodies.  Now am I coming or going?  That is the question.

Both are full of crafting goodies, but where are they going?  What are they in bags for?  Notice the bags, both Ranger ones and the one with four panels has been signed on each panel by the artist who created it.  Still a treasure and one I will not part with for a long time to come.

Apart from the two bags you can see, in the background, my Oxide inks, now all labeled up and there, in splendid view, my lovely coaster, a beautiful gift from Jo via her talented daughter Maxine (aka Tilly).  Too nice to use, I jut don't want to put a cup on it and hide the beautiful image.

Well, this makes a change from me, short for once.  Hopefully some crafting by next week but don't hold your breath.

Jeudi Journal - Train Wreck

 Today we find ourselves down a back alley with the Alley Cats.  There are two gangs down there, one made up of the Spoddy's  and the other the Chex family  There is great rivalry between them and each have their own patch down town.

One day young Sally Chex went wandering down the Alley and found a great big dustbin full of left over goodies. There was a great big bag full of fishy bits and she knew those would go down a treat with the rest of the family back home.  So without a thought about anything else Sally began grabbing what she could from the bin and piling it up ready to take home.

"Hey, train wreck, this isn't your station?" came a very loud shout.  

Turning her head to one side Sally saw two of the members of the Spoddy family standing just a bit lower down the alley than she was.

"This is our patch" said Butch, the one with the largest head, and mouth to go with it.  "You'd better scarper before we come over there.  And leave that stuff you've put on one side as it belongs to us, not you.  Remember what we threatened to do to your Max when he came on our patch."

Sally well remembered her brother Max coming home after a run in with the Spoddy lot, his fur had been ruffled well and truly that day.

"Hey, train wreck, this isn't your station" shouted Freddie, repeating what his brother had said earlier.  He wasn't known as Freddie the Fearless for nothing and he was scared of no-one, even if his brain didn't always work as well as it should.  "Get off home and tell that lot of yours not to come sniffing around here anymore, or else."

Poor Sally put back the bag of goodies she had been collecting, looked enviously at the fish heads lying on the floor and slowly slinked off.  "One of these days" she thought, "they will get their comeuppance."

The  quote we had to work with today was "Hey train wreck, this isn't your station" and we wanted to tie it in with Elle's lovely theme at Art Journal Journey.  I thought of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, a fairy tale I was told as a child and which has been told countless times everywhere.  So I tried to write my story around that theme and hope you can see the connection.  Why not join in with Elle at AJJ and see what story you can come up with.

WOYWW 698

 Gosh this week seems to have flown by - October is fast disappearing.

My desk is completely empty so:

Last Saturday was our Card Club and the Interim meeting where we were discussing the Christmas Party - ouch!  It will be on us before we know.  Karen was our tutor this month and she had brought some acetate cards for us to have a go at making.  So - ta da .... my first C Cards are ready:

I like the two at the back best of all because the acetate really works and makes them look quite dimensional - must admit that I came home and carried on making, didn't get so many done in the one session following the business meeting.

Since then I have finished two more practise pieces like the one I showed you last week in my black journal.  These have been stuck on the MDF piece bought for this project so it now has a front and back view, exactly the same in a way, so if it goes in the window it still has a picture showing that side.

This, above, was my second attempt at getting the blending right but it was worse than the first (the one now in the black journal) and so I did another, below, but now I do't think the blending is dark enough.  Gave up in the end!

I am now trying to sort my room out as it has got into a bit of a mess recently with one thing and another and I really need to get it tidy before I do any more crafting - hence no desk picture.  The cards were on my desk last Saturday.  Now it's off to WOYWW to see what other crafters have been doing.

Jeudi Journal - Mouth

 You have all heard of the tale of Pinocchio - well this is about Peter, a little boy who was very similar to Pinocchio in that he was brilliant at telling lies.  The story has to fit in with Elle's brilliant theme at Art Journal Journey, which is centred around fairytales and with the snarky comment from Tim Holtz that was chosen for this week - "I've got a good heart, but this mouth ..." and so I thought of Pinocchio the little wooden puppet who eventually became a real little boy.  Pinocchio was a Walt Disney film based on an Italian novel of 1883 which did not do well when it first came out in the cinema but that was mainly due to the outbreak of WWII.  When it was relaunched in 1945 it was hugely successful and became one of the best animated films ever made.  I always loved the Walt Disney film.  So ...

'Peter always wanted to be the most popular boy at school and especially with the girls in the playground, and so he 'romanced' a little about his life before he came to live in the little village in Sconbury.

"One night, when I lived in Italy with my grandfather, I fell asleep and when I woke up I found I had been kidnapped and was now living in a  travelling circus" he told his friends. "I was a lion tamer, but not just an ordinary lion tamer, no, I did it with my lions on a tightrope.  We were thirty feet in the air and I did lots of different tricks with them.  One time I even had them swinging from a trapeze high above the ground in the Big Top."

The girls were suitably impressed and followed Peter around fluttering their eyelashes at him in wonder.  "But, how come you ended up living here?" enquired Camilla.

"Ah well, you see" said Peter.  "I missed my grandpa so much that I decided I wanted to go back to live with him, he would be fretting and wondering where I was.  And so I decided to run away, but the ringmaster caught me and locked me up in a cage like one of my lions."

"What happened next?" asked Camilla.

"Oh I got one of my lions to chew through the bars and I broke through and ran away to an island just along the coast.  But it was a terrible island, full of bad men ... and it was cursed!  They actually turned me into a donkey at one time."

"Oh no, what did you do?" asked Meghan.

At that point the bell rang and the children all had to return to the classroom.  Peter's story remained untold, a secret as to how he got back home and eventually to the little village of Sconbury.

Later that night Peter's mother got a telephone call from Camilla's mother who was most perturbed.  It seemed Camilla had gone home and refused to go to bed on her own.  She kept muttering something about lions and a cursed island.  It was all something Peter had said to her in the playground and she was frightened she might be kidnapped and taken away.

Peter's mother was unable to say anything, he had never been to Italy in his life and she could not believe he had told these stories to the other children,  So angrily she stormed up to Peter's room and woke him.

"What have you been saying at school?" she demanded of him.  "It sounds just like the story of Pinocchio and you know what happened to him - his nose just grew and grew and there is no such thing as fairies so nobody is going to come and save you from having a nose that grows and grows with your silly stories.  You are a naughty boy and I want an explanation before your father comes home.  Right now!"

"I'm sorry mummy," he said, "I just wanted to impress the others.  I've got a good heart, but this mouth ...  I really am sorry and I promise I won't tell any more porkies, honestly."  And with that a little tear fell from his eyes and he snuggled down to sleep to dream of .......'

WOYWW 697

 We are creeping nearer and nearer to that 700th edition of WOYWW.  We may have shrunk a little in numbers but it is one of the best ways I know of making friends who really do care about one another.  Why don't you join us and show us your desk - no need to be embarrassed if it is a mess, the messier the better.

My little table today shows what I have been up to.  A workshop with Jo Rice and Lavinia stamps was enjoyed by me and others via the internet on Sunday.  I was not 100% happy with my finished product and so I am in the throes of doing another one.  It will be an MDF piece which will stand on a radiator shelf when completed.  At the moment it is in my new Black Journal (which I have had for years and not used - this is now my first page).

This is my desk

and my counter behind me

This last photo shows how I work when I am doing a workshop.  I have all the things I need (or think I need) set out on the counter behind me and a clear(ish) table to work on in front of me.  Here you can see the MDF board, bottom left, that the card is going to be stuck on when completed.  I just hope my next one is good enough to go on the board - I will show you another time.

It shows how much I enjoyed this workshop as I want to do it again but at my own pace.  Not that Jo went too fast or anything but I can spend more time practising the little things that I want, like getting the blending right.  I am fairly new to Lavinia type stamping and love to see what others can do and I want to do "everything" so with a teacher like Jo it is possible.  I just cannot get enough of the Lavinia workshops at the moment and I watch them on You Tube whenever possible.

We were at the caravan last week and it was a complete wash out.  Talk about rain - and one night the winds were a bit scary, especially as we are surrounded on two sides by woodland.  So I got my calendar finished that was a class at Vicky Stampers with Jo Rice - but more of that another week, there's 12 pages.  In the meantime here are a couple of photos from Sizergh Castle the time before when we were there - see it can be sunny.

\

Jeudi Journal - Subscription

 The quote chosen this week from Tim Holtz and his Snarky Quotes - "Please cancel my subscription to your issues".  So, working with that and Elle's lovely theme at Art Journal Journey "Fairytales, Folklore and Fables" I wondered what to do.  Elle gave some fantastic prompts as well as explaining her title excellently so if you pop along to Art Journal Journey I am sure you will want to join in.

This is my page today and my story will follow:

"Christine is a singer in a local amateur operatic society, always the understudy for the main role and never the principal character, that is until one day ...  when she is kidnapped by a masked man called Erik.  He has heard her singing and is enthralled by her beautiful voice and cannot understand why she is never given the main role in the various productions.

Erik keeps Christine locked up for himself and in an attempt to escape she tears off his mask and discovers he has the head of a skeleton.  Horrified but trying not to show it Christine agrees that if he let her go she will wear his ring as a sign she is faithful to him and him alone.

Going back home she meets her childhood friend, Raoul, and tells him all about Erik.  They decide to run away together to somewhere that Erik will never find her.  Unknown to them Erik has overheard their conversation and once again, he abducts Christine.  

This time he forces her to marry him but just before she does she lifts her veil and kisses him.  This is the first time Erik has ever been kissed and he begins to cry, Christine is reduced to tears herself and he decides to let her go from his life.  As she leaves she turns and says "Please cancel my subscription to your issues" and escapes through the door of the cellar where he had her locked away."

Alright, this is not sticking to the true story of the Phantom of the Opera but it is my version for Elle at Art Journal Journey - maybe it will become a West End hit in its time if they change the names of the characters.  I hope the final sentence of the story made you smile.

WOYWW 696

 Gosh next month WOYWW'ers will reach 700 posts - well some will, I joined in the early days but not the first posting.  Last Saturday we met up, not all of us but some, and it was lovely to see one another after so long (Pandemic stopped us) but it seemed as if it was yesterday we had been with the sisters and Julia who did the organising.  It was a lovely day and we had a toast to past members, in particular to our Shaz who had touched everyone's lives in so many ways.  Must mention that we did miss Lunch Lady Jan who was busy in Edinburgh celebrating with her husband, Gordon, their Ruby Wedding Anniversary. 

I sat with Cindy who I was meeting in person for the first time, and I got on with my Wonky Book.  I had it cut out ready so just had to decorate it, and chose to do so with some of my Janet Klein figures.  The background was done simply with some of Abs' stencils and I still have to put some stamping on, despite having already stuck the figures on.  I decorated the cover when I got home as I had not done the cut outs previously - here it is and one of the pages:

Monday we went out for the day as we wanted to pick something up from the Lakeland Store and decided to go for a little walk along the edge of the lake.  We came across two tree stumps that people had been putting coins into and it led us to a lovely little 'beach' area.

We both agreed we would come back here in the summer and maybe bring a little picnic with us.  What's the betting there are lots of others with the same thoughts.  So glad we didn't leave it until yesterday as it was so wet and windy - the perfect day for staying in.  Showery again this morning.

As it is so wet and cool I think it is a perfect day to carry on with some crafting.  So I weill leave it there and get on, perhaps a bit of Lavinia and some fairies.