Jeudi Journal - Things!

I am sure we have all had days when we just did not want to do anything.  I know I have.  Mainly the mundane, everyday housework type jobs, especially when the sun is shining and you want to spend some time out of doors.

Today we have the quote "I don't want to do things - things suck" from Dyan (Dylusions) and so I decided to use a pre-painted age which was a Deep Blue colour and lighten it up with some white to represent clouds in the sky.  I just used a crumpled up piece of paper towel and dabbed it in some white paint and then dabbed it all over the top of the page.

It still needed something else to break up the expanse of blue and so I chose to use a stencil of some leaves and used them up both sides and slightly across the top where the figure was going to sit, edging them in white to make them more noticeable.  A couple of butterflies, from my stash, in the sky and we were ready for the figure... and the story ...

"Janice was feeling particularly out of sorts.  It was the holidays, six glorious weeks of no school, no uniform and … nothing exciting on the horizon.  She had stayed in bed that morning until her mum shouted at 10 am for her to get up and "stir herself".  Arriving at the bottom of the stairs with her hair a tousled mess, curls awry, she looked the picture of happiness - not!  Mum took one look and tried to persuade Janice to go out and do something.  She came up with several suggestions roller skating, swimming, going to the gym but everything she said seemed to fall on deaf ears.  In the end she gave up, afterall she had things to do herself and there was young Billy to look after - she couldn't trust Janice with him for too long, and certainly not to take him outside to play.  In the end she just told her to get out of the house and from under her feet.

So Janice took herself out of the house and went for a walk wearing her new headphones and listening to some of her favourite music.  It was a nice morning, the sun was shining, birds were singing and so she walked past the village post office and around the corner and up the hill.  Finally as she sat there on top of the hill and looked out over the village below she found herself shouting out aloud to the butterflies "I don't want to do things - things just suck".

Suddenly there was a clap of thunder, the sky darkened and it began to rain heavily.  To her surprise a man came striding towards her, he was only about two foot three in height and he had the most peculiar bandy green legs - oh, no, sorry, those were his stockings.  On his head was a jaunty little cap with two gold bells jingling away and in his hand he carried the most enormous umbrella Janice had ever seen.  "Quick, girl", he shouted in a squeaky little voice, "get under this umbrella, it is big enough for the two of us'.  Janice ran to where he was standing, he was not frightening in any way, after all she was much bigger than he was and he had a lovely crooked smile which matched his crooked eyebrows and made him look rather comical.  She crouched underneath the umbrella with him and before she could say "Thanks" the handle had grown so that it was large enough for her to stand underneath as well as the little man.

He looked at her and gave her his comical smile and took out a piece of grass from behind his ear which he immediately started tickling her with.  "How on earth",Janice thought, "did he manage to tickle behind my ear when he was so very tiny and only comes up to my knees".  She didn't know what to do or say, afterall he was sheltering her from all the rain but what was he doing hovering in mid air and why on earth was he tickling her ear with a piece of grass.

All of a sudden she heard a loud laughing sound and there in front of her stood her friends Samira and Tanya, Samira clutching a piece of Timothy grass.  "You were talking to yourself" said Samira.  "You said something about my green tights and an umbrella.  Why on earth would I have an umbrella on such a sunny day?"  Janice shook her head, where had the little green man gone, why was the grass not wet, why was she not wet?  Then she realised, it had all been a dream and so she laughed, stood up and took herself off arm in arm with Samira and Tanya.  Things didn't suck any more, when you have friends there are lots of things you can do.

So I am entering this into Elle's challenge over on Art Journal Journey where she has asked us to use "Language" somewhere in our journal page.  I think Janice's story generated quite a bit of talking, ie language, within the story, so I am entering this for this week.

WOYWW 622

 Here we are another Wednesday, another Wet Day, gosh, we've had some funny old weather up in the north.  Yesterday it was hail stoning again.  Back to my cardigan as well which reminded me that mum used to say "Ne'er cast a clout, 'til May's gone out".  Sometimes I wonder why we bother to buy summer clothing.  Still it has meant I have got on with some crafting and I have been making journal page after journal page.  If you look back through my posts of the past two weeks you will see I have been very prolific in my crafting.  Not so in my card making and yesterday saw me having to hurriedly make two cards - one birthday card and one New Home card for a young friend who is branching out on his own.  Here's my desk as proof (taken last night)

I tried to print some words on the bottom of the card, worked it out perfectly as my first print on a piece of scrap paper showed.  Then it took three attempts to get it right on a piece of cardstock.  It came everywhere but where it was meant to be because of the card being that bit thicker than the paper.

I am pleased to say though that the room is still looking as good as it was when it was tidied (and dusted) two weeks ago and all the mess on my desk (above) will take only a couple of minutes to go back into its original place.

Then it is out with the cardstock for a Masterboard or two and a cutting up session whilst making some atc's for the party.  Better declare today solely for that job or else it will never get done - until the last minute.  Are you ready?

See you over at Julias for the usual snoop.  Toodle pip!

Parisienne Poster Language

Posters use language to convey a message to us giving us information about an event or place and, quite often, to sell us something.  This can be in pictorial form with or without the addition of lettering or words.  The use of art and lettering is often very decorative and we sometimes buy copies of posters for aesthetic purposes around our homes and workplace.  

So I thought I would do a journal page with two Art Posters that I have rubber stamps of.  Both are in French and I sorted some more of my Paris related stamps out and did a medley all over the page.  Once again I used Versamark to stamp the images but this time I used a much stronger colour of Pan Pastel over the top in blues, mauves and yellow.  

You may notice that there is a ticket which has the letters 'VE' showing - yes, it is Venice and the one above it is the ticket for Paris - the romantic journey on the Orient Express between the two romantic cities.  There is also an advert for 'chocolat,' 'crepes', fromage and other goodies associated with this city, the Arc de Triomphe, Tour d'Eiffel as well as some postcards and several stamps with the capital's name on.

I will leave you with my journal page

which I am entering into the "We will always have Paris" challenge at Country View Crafts (my first entry I realised afterwards you could not see the background stamp very clearly - these are much clearer) and also Art Journal Journey where we have the topic of Language from Elle.  For the latter you can either look at the language that is French or, as intended, the language of Poster Art.  I hope you enjoy.

Paris - The City of Love

Paris is known as one of the most romantic cities in the world, known for its cafe culture, art, fashion, and gastronomy.  People call it 'the city of Love' because of its romantic atmosphere and you cannot disagree with that description when you visit it.  

So for today's art journal page I turned to some older rubber stamps I have from the early days of my stamping life - Non Sequitur.  They used to be my favourite stamping company back in the early days and I think these were from a Paris inspired set with a stamp I got from somewhere else making the background.  The background was stamped in Versamark and then I rubbed Pan Pastels over the top and the images were stamped and clear embossed.  The vase was embossed with gold and the ferns used two different colours of Versafine Claire stamp pads.  To add more interest to the page I cut four corner pieces from gold mirri card using Spellbinders Parisian Elements.

I am entering this into Art Journal Journey, where the theme is "Language" as set by Elle who goes on to say that this can be interpreted many ways.  I thought that I would set my page in Paris and show the love between a dog and his mistress, as opposed to a man and woman.  They say man's best friend is his dog but I think there can be great affection shown by a dog to his female owner and I do think this pair of stamps depicts that.  So my page is depicting the "Language of Love".

I notice that Jo has done a Parisian page for her journal also and it is used as inspiration by Country View Crafts for their monthly challenge so I am entering this page into that also.  I just hope the words "Paris sera toujours Paris" (Paris will always be Paris)" show up enough for this challenge.

Jeudi Journal - Some Day

I think this will probably be the last of my entries for Art Journal Journey this month.  I so enjoyed Eileen's theme of "inspired by ..." which has attracted over 140 entries.  Sadly Eileen passed before her theme was published but the team decided to go ahead with it in her memory and Erika and Chris have co-hosted throughout the month.  Thank you ladies, I have so enjoyed what I have been doing.

Today the Challenge I do with Wendy uses the quote "Some day you'll go far, and I hope you stay there" - not very nice is it?  I decided to do something quite different to what I usually do and use up some of the Dylusion figures that are difficult to match up with bodies and to use some collage papers as well.  These are from one of the Dina Wakley books that a friend once bought me and which I have not used before.  I divided my page up into three vertical strips and put some paint on the centre one and made a quick border with some scribble to decorate it.  The two sides were split up and I filled them with curved pieces using Dyan's acrylic block which has a lovely curve to it.  Then I used some Whipped Spackle through the 'Diamonds in the Rough' stencil, and the stars and the arrows ones - all Dylusions - drawing around them with a black pen.  As you can no doubt guess this page was definitely inspired by Dylusions products.

The story goes "Jane was a bit of a dreamer, a lovely girl who worked hard to better herself at every opportunity.  She had not had the best start in life but she was determined that she was going to go somewhere with her life and become someone her old school teachers would be proud of.  She had taken herself off to evening classes, after leaving school with very little in the way of qualifications, and had studied hard resulting in getting good grades in all the examinations she took.

Her friend Edwina was not ambitious like Jane and could not understand why Jane was not always ready to go out clubbing or simply hanging around with the gang.  She wasn't anything like Jane, in fact she could be quite spiteful at times.  Often their friendship suffered as Edwina could turn quite nasty if things did not go her way or if she felt that she was not number one as far as Jane was concerned.

Matters came to a head the night that they had gone out celebrating Jane having got three "A" levels, all with very good grades.  The other girls were making quite a fuss of her and everyone was laughing and joking about Jane going on to university and how she might become the Prime Minister one day.  Edwina did not like it, she wanted to be the centre of attraction not Jane.  Her eyes darkened, as they often did when she was in one of her moods and she surprised the others when she suddenly turned on Jane and shouted "Some day you'll go far and I hope you stay there".

Aghast the others turned to look at her, poor Jane put her hands up to her face and looked so sad, she had not thought her friend could ever be so mean to her, but Edwina just tilted her head on one side, put on the stare that only she could perfect and looked long and hard at them all."

Art Journal Journey - Squeezing a Circle In

We went away again for a couple of days hoping to catch some nice weather before it turned cold.  We had to come home today as we were expecting a delivery and when it turned wet on Tuesday I spent the afternoon colouring in some circles I had stamped using another of Tracy Scott's stamps for Paper Artsy.

My coloured pencils have helped me so much as when I can't do much because of this back pain I can sit on my chair with the heat pad on my back and just gently colour in.  I have so many Janet Klein and Dylusion figures already done that it has been a joy to colour something else for a change.   Art Journal Journey has made that so easy with Eileen's theme of "Inspired by ...", co-hosted by Erika and Chris because Eileen had passed before the Team had chance to put it forward but they decided to honour her memory by continuing with it in her name.

Just of late I got a little carried away with my colouring and I have definitely been inspired to fill my journal with pages where I used coloured pencils as my medium of choice.  One person who certainly inspires me to use my pencils is Miranda whom I have mentioned previously as she does the most beautiful artwork using Derwent products.  I would love to be able to use them as skilfully as she does but even so I get so much enjoyment just playing around with colour.

On Monday we went for a walk in the park and explored a part of it in more detail than we have done in the past.  We came across this tree.  I was fascinated by it's structure.  How had this trunk happened to grow like this?  My first thought was that it had been struck by lightening and divided into two but on looking around I noticed that the other trees also had divided trunks although none lying on the ground as this one was.  I have not found out what it is as yet but the cone type structures on the end of the branches might be a clue to someone - Erika?

WOYWW 621

 I thought I had done this in advance - obviously not as it is  Tuesday night and I am flicking the keys like crazy.  We have been away for a few days and I was certain I had done a rough draft of my blog for Wednesday and "What's on Your Workdesk".

I've just taken this photo as I am making a couple of cards in a hurry.  I've just taken a break for a welcome cuppa so thought I would get my blog done ready as in the morning I will be on a Zoom call fairly early and there will be no time for anything else but breakfast.  I made the one stood up at the back like the one I made last week but this time in shades of purple, it's fast becoming a favourite stamp of mine.

As you can see, apart from what I am working on (and with) I am managing to keep my desk fairly tidy since the mammoth cleaning up a few weeks ago).  Last week I showed you my inks which are on this photo and are all to hand when I a working on anything.  The only ones not displayed there are my Oxides as they are in a drawer directly behind me - no room on this wall for them.

The black card you can see on the left of my desk is the packet of "bits" that I save for those smaller mounting jobs, then underneath the kitchen roll is my silver mat which is simply an old table mat covered in aluminium foil which I use for heat embossing - saves the fingers getting burnt and reflects the heat so the job is done a bit quicker.

Next to my inks you can see this

My peg board.  This houses my glue (at the top in a tray), with my Gesso's and Texture Paste (the ones I am using at the moment) with my WOYWW badge, then some distress tools, scissors (how many?) and some white square pots (Ikea) which hold, pens, more glue, white charcoal pencil, Krylon pens, gas heat gun and those foam brush things for paste/Gesso etc.  Above on the elastic you can see a purple kite which was something I bought at a festival in Germany, a plaque with the Eiffel Tower on it that I once made with Ranger for a Make & Take at CHA, a cd book made with Kate Crane, a tag made in Holland and a plaque from Anne (Copper Beech Crafts).

Tomorrow I had better make a start on my atc's for the upcoming anniversary.  Anyone can join in if they just show their desks so if you aren't in the lovely group of friends on WOYWW why not pop over to Julias and find out all about it - quick!  See you there!

Below on the deck so to speak are a multitude of pots containing all sort of things plus my white carousel which I won at CHA once, and stood at the back are my Scoring Boards.  There, that's another side done in my craft room, or at least it's the end of that tidy side.