Jeudi Journal - Chocolate

 Today the quote from Wendy is "Save the earth, it's the only one planet with chocolate".  It got me wondering, is it really the only planet with chocolate?  That is something I won't know and I doubt any of you readers will either, unless you are saving up to be part of a rocket launch to some other planet in the universe.  Surely we have enough chocolate on Earth not to need us to find some on Jupiter or Saturn - but we do have Mars bars.

For my picture which had to include something from the challenge at Art Journal Journey I chose to use a black background and, although my planets are not the correct size, I made the two smallest planets, Mercury and Venus, smaller than the others.  It helped with fitting them all around the earth which, in reality, should not be the largest planet.  Here I have used artistic licence.  I am sure you will allow me.

I cut myself a circle around a mat and then punched the others with decorative punches, all were coloured in using promarkers.  The earth was coloured to represent a happy face with both land and sea on it and two birds, (to fulfil the challenge 'it must have wings') from the Dylusion collection were attached either side to look as if they were holding a banner which was made up with three popular chocolate bars in the UK.  

No story today, it is just a self explanatory journal page but does fill the criteria of having something with wings as required by the challenge I am hosting at AJJ.

I'd love to see you make a page with wings, check the main page at AJJ for some ideas and I will leave you a comment if you join in with us with your own interpretation of 'it must have wings'.

Art Journal Journey - Musical Interlude

 "The fairies and the pixies decided to hold a musical interlude on the edge of the forest early one evening just as the sun was lowering in the sky.  Trinity was blowing her horn, whilst Night Watch sat on a giant toadstool with her beloved bugle.  Sky, one of the pixies came along with his flute much to the amusement of a tiny sparrow who sat on the edge of it whenever Sky stopped blowing.

Pippin, the tiny hare,  stood in awe, looking up at Night Watch and a dragonfly flew down, his wings dancing to the music as he swooped and swirled around, thoroughly enjoying himself, whilst the two chubby robins sang to one another sitting on little grassy knolls on the ground.  Even the flowers joined in listening to the music and swaying as the sounds floated past them."

I made this journal page whilst I was away from home.  I had taken lots of things with me to craft with but guess what?  I had forgotten to take a black ink pad.  Now for most Lavinia scenes I need a black ink pad - Versafine Clair Nocturne - so what to do?  I decided to try using the darkest brown ink pad I had with me (Pinecone) and to be honest I don't think you can hardly tell on the actual piece.  

So my page today was done with Elements Inks in Della Blue and Lime Punch along with a hill mask to make a hillside effect, and a moon mask for the sky.  Various foliage stamps were used along with VF Shady Lane and Charming Pink ink colours.  I used my Inktense pencils for the wings and foliage at the top.

I do hope you like this page done especially for Elizabeth as she mentioned something about my fairy wings and I realised there weren't that many fairy pages in my journal.  Also I hope that it will inspire you to join in with my theme at Art Journal Journey, "It Must Have Wings".  You don't have to have fairies like I have used here but there are lot of ideas on the home page of AJJ.  Please pop along and join in if you can.

WOYWW 832

 Happy Anniversary to all your WOYWW'ers out there.  Sixteen Years - makes me think what was I doing on that day sixteen years ago?  What was I doing when I was sixteen?  What were you doing?  

Enough with the questions, today we are celebrating sixteen years since Julia started the longest running blog hop that I know of ever, and now Sarah has taken over the reins.  I remember back in the old days the numbers grew and grew and we had people from all corners of the world joining in.  Today we are much smaller in number but still the wowy'ers continue showing their desks, tidy or untidy and even sometimes we join in with nothing to show but the camaraderie that beats at the heart of WOYWW.

Sarah, in her usual caring way, suggeted that with the cost of postage these days we produce an ATC and show it on our desk, that way we can all share in what we have done for our sixteenth anniversary.  So here is mine surrounded by the things I used to produce it.  I decided to use my new Lavinia stamps (well, that is a shock isn't it?) and show what is sometimes on my desk - books!  So here we have two sets of books with an open one balancing on top - opened with stars and woyww 16 jumping out of it.  One of the little mice is lighting the way for all the magic that is woyww coming out of the book.

Happy WOYWW 16 Everyone

Starting top left we have two of my boxes where I keep different categories of my Lavinia stamps (Accessories and Animals/Ocean in this case), polka dot bag holds my gel pens, Posca's and Pastel Pencils.  Baby wipes with Nocturne inkpad on top, blue bag for my Inktense Pencils and just in front a waterpot and brush.  Back to the left are my black markers, Lavinia Index cards that are inside the stamps when you buy them (I have cut some down to ATC size 3.5" x 2.5") which I have used for my ATC's this time, my 'rough' paper that I use as a pad to stamp on, and to the right the various stamps used still on acrylic blocks.  That's my ATC on the 'rough' paper.

Here is my ATC which you can print, if you want to and add to your collection.

Well, that is it for this week, enjoy the day, eat cake and do whatever tickles your fancy.  Hopefully see you all next week.

Art Journal Journey - Acrylic Butterflies

 This page was painted in various shades of green acrylic paint and then a cobblestone stencil was used randomly in places on top which was dabbed with either grey or white paint.  Next I drew three butterflies, keeping to the same colour palette of green and grey, on spare cartridge paper and cut out and stuck them down.  You will notice they do not have antennae!  Oops?  No, It just didn't work when I drew some on so I decided, early enough, to omit them.  I love using bottle tops, when painting in my journal, to make circles and so I used a pill bottle top and dabbed it in some white paint and put in two groups of three and one single one.

A fine paintbrush went over the lines with some black paint and white was introduced in the circles left by the trail and then I flicked some white paint across with a quick kind of throw of the brush to give some white dotted lines running across the page.  Some cobbles were outlined in white and others with a 4B pencil as were the butterflies.  Finally I used a stamp with some gold paint to add sparkle and interest.

I hope you like my latest page for my theme "It Must Have Wings" at Art Journal Journey and would love you to join in with some of your work.

Art Journal Journey - Chas Owl

 My other half loves owls and so I decided to make a page and dedicate it to him.  I chose to use Gus as my main owl and Ginger to sit alongside him.  Gus needed something fairly strong to hold him and so I chose to use the garden sign but rather than use the words I blocked them off and wrote my dh's name.  Some time later my friend laminated my picture onto a tumbler for my other half as a surprise.

Background was made using Elements ink with hill masks used on the ground and a circle mask for the moon.  Various flowers were stamped with Versafine Clair inks and all colouring was done with Inktense pencils.  I decided to add a bee in the sky and a few branches framing the top.

I do hope that you join in with my challenge at Art Journal Journey this month, "It Must Have Wings", and find something with wings to illustrate your page in your journal.  There are lots of ideas on AJJ's page that I did at the beginning of the month which I hope will inspire you along with all the wonderful entries that people have done already.

Art Journal Journey

Today I wanted something different from birds and fairies and so, perhaps because the sun was shining,  my mind went to holidays far away in different lands.  And so it went to 'travel' and how to get there.  But what has wings?  Obviously it had to be an aeroplane.

I decided to show how you can make a journal page without many images, especially if you are into stamping.  I found a large square old map in my collage drawer which fascinated me and along with a couple of images/stamps I have and the one stamp for a biplane I set to in my square journal, adding a bit of colour with my Pan Pastels, tearing the map in half and sticking it down and then arranging the three stamped images.  The gap in the middle still looked a bit sparse and so I stamped 'Explore' and 'Memories' down the gap from an Aall & Create set.

Here is my offering of something else that has wings for my challenge over at Art Journal Journey which is "It Must Have Wings".   I do hope you can join me at AJJ with, maybe lots of planes, or something else that has wings.

Jeudi Journal - Lightening

"My mind works like lightening, one brilliant flash and it's gone" is the quote supplied by my blog partner Wendy for our Dylusion figures to represent.  As it has also to fit in with the Art Journal Journey challenge, set by me, which is "It Must Have Wings" I had to use something with wings and so I made up a story to explain why two characters on my page have wings.

"It was a lovely spring day when Janine had been lounging in the sunshine and fallen asleep.  Luckily she had a pair of sunglasses and a sunhat on her head to help give her some protection for we all know that we should not sit in the sun for too long and should always wear protection.

Janine had been dreaming that a fairy came down and touched her with some sparkly fairy dust that gave her an instant tan all over her body and that she was on a tropical island far away from the worries of work and home.  Suddenly she felt a spot of rain land on her nose and on opening her eyes she realised that she was still in her own back yard and the weather was changing.

But hold on, who was that stood there in front of her?  It was her best friend Glenda, but Glenda seemed to be sporting a pair of wings.

"What on earth are you doing here, and why are you wearing wings?"  she asked.  "Am I still dreaming or has something happened?"

"No" replied her friend Glenda, laughingly "I've just been to my nieces birthday party, she's only three and she wanted a fairy party this year so I obliged, as her favourite aunt, and went along with these wings on.  See, they do come off.  I just thought I would make you laugh.  Have you ever seen a fairy dressed in a coat and with a beret on her head?  Come on, we had better go indoors, it is going to rain hard before too long."

Janine got up from the lawn, rubbed her eyes to make sure she was really awake and still not dreaming of fairy dust and linked arms with her friend as they made their way into the house.

"You know something, my mind works like lightening, one brilliant flash and it's gone, I just thought of something as I woke up but now I haven't a clue what it was.  My mother used to say I had a head like a sieve but I think it's more like a colander - bigger holes."

And with that the two girls walked in through the patio doors to avoid the rain."

As I had used various shades of pink and purple Distress Inks (smooched) for my background I thought it looked rather messy so I chose not to colour my figures in but leave them black and white so that they stood out more against that background.  The only colour I used was a flesh colour on their faces and arms and some grey on Janine's sunglasses.