Jeudi Journal - A Nap

 That is what I have been having each day - a nap, because I am full of a cold and feeling dreadful at the moment.  Not to worry, thank goodness I did this page last week.  Just the story to do.

Tim's words today are "I plan my whole day around the possibility of a nap" and one again I have done a Teesha border around the page to comply with the "collage fodder" and collaged my figure and the cupboard full of food in the bottom right hand corner to fit in with Elizabeth and Bleubeard's theme at Art Journal Journey.

Tia is finding everything a bit tiring these days.  Maybe she needs a few early nights as they do say an hour before midnight is worth two after it.  

She had her new ear pods in and was talking to a friend of hers on the phone and was taking advantage of doing simply nothing.  She closed her eyes and just talked and listened to what her friend Bettina had to say.  Bettina was not one bit like Tia, she was always on the go, plenty of hobbies and lots of friends to go out with.  In fact she had just been telling Tia about her plans for the weekend.

She was going for a massage on Saturday morning and then off on a hill walking adventure with her local youth group in the afternoon.  They would probably end up in a local pub early evening and have something to eat and a good old chat about this and that.

Sunday was all planned out too but Tia switched off at this point as she said to her friend "I plan my whole day around the possibility of a nap" and her eyelids drooped and she almost fell asleep there and then.  "The only thing I have planned to do tomorrow is make dinner for myself and that is going to be something simple like a tin of tuna and some pasta.  I think that is more or less what is in the pantry at the moment and I cannot even be bothered to go and shop."

Bettina sensed her friend did not want to talk but just simply wanted to be left alone to snooze and so she rang off.  She was a bit concerned about her friend Tia, "she should have more energy at her age" she said out loud to herself, resolving to have a word with Tia's mum at some time early next week.

Now to get my head around next week's journal page.

WOYWW 702

It's another week and time for WOYWW hosted by Ms Julia and it is where we all show our desks.  This is my small table in my craft room which I had been working on up to getting this horrid cold.  At the club on Saturday Carol filled in for a member who had come down with Covid and we made these little pockets.  Here on my table today is another one as Carol kindly gave me a spare set of tags to work on:

As you can see they feature Janet Klein's Miss Dee figures.  This is the first set that came out.  I did the background in green because that is Abs favourite colour.  (Abs is the owner of Aall & Create and one of  the  loveliest men you could wish to meet).  They still need something on the bottom sections and I have pondered over them but think I will simply do some more stencilling.  

The two inks used are Oxides, Twisted Citron and Bundled Sage and the upside down ink pad is my Versafine Claire Nocturne.  To the right are my pieces of card and pens awaiting the start of my main Christmas cards.  I ordered the stamps I wanted for them on the 5th November from Crafty Flair, never again.  The promised delivery has now gone way way over - 11 days and I have written but still not received.  This is the second time this has happened, they may give discount but is it worth it when you wait ages for the goods?  They took my money on the 5th November though!!

I think I will be doing some more Miss Dee's but at the club I did some different Janet figures, and now I have the long legged girls I want to use them too but this coming Thursday there are some new characters coming out and I love the look of them.  Can see me putting in another order.  Oh heck!

The one at the club was actually two and I joined them together to make one long one

Here they are split in two so you can see better

Last week I showed you my ink storage and said I would show you something else this week.  This is my peg board which gets all manner of things stuck on it.  I won't go through everything, just leave it to you to spot:

just not sure about my Lavinia brushes being there

C U Next Week xx

ps for those who wanted to see the Aall & Create reveal from last week (ie birthday gifts) the link is (I hope)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PClyu9b_IzE

Latest News:  Just heard my parcel should be with me by the end of the week - obviously not first class then despite my complaints!

Jeudi Journal - Penny

"Collage Fodder, Food and Drink, or Both" is the theme to work to for Art Journal Journey this month, hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard.  I did link in last week, I distinctly remember seeing which number I was - and I followed one of Valerie's links.  Somehow that disappeared so I am hoping that this week this post stays on.  This week I have used collage to make a frame around my page - Teesha Moore style - as taught on a Dylusion workshop with Dyan herself.  That was many many moons ago but I think it, and the basket of food, covers collage and food for me.  Hope so. Really the figures are also collaged I guess as I stamp them, fussy cut and colour them before sticking them down in my journal.

The Tim Holtz snarky comment this week is "a penny for your thoughts seems a little pricey" and so the story goes:

Patsy and her friend, Sally, had bumped into one another in the supermarket and were now walking home through the local park.   Sally, as always, was busy chatting away, talking about Graham, her husband and the two kids and what they had all been up to recently.  Her whole life revolved around her family and she loved to talk about them.

Graham had recently been promoted at work and had a lovely new car as a result.  She was always talking about it and all the little gadgets that come with a top of the range vehicle.  Her son was very bright and it looked as if he might go on to university when he reached sixth form and her daughter really was one of the prettiest girls around.  So, you see, Sally had lots to talk about when it came to family.

She had been talking for about five minutes or so when she noticed her friend, Patsy, was awfully quiet.

"Penny for them?" she said.

Sally looked at her,   "You really don't get it do you?  You are wrapped up in your little world and nothing ever goes wrong. Graham has got that lovely new job with all its perks, Simon is Mr Brains himself and as for Petra!  Nothing goes wrong in Sally's little world whilst the rest of us have problem after problem.  You know darned well that Fred was made redundant last week yet you prattle on and on.  We are struggling  day to day and all you can talk about is your precious family.  What do you expect me to say?"

Patsy was aghast.  Never had her friend spoken to her like this and she had no idea about  Fred having been made redundant.  "I'm so sorry, I honestly did not know" she said, "A penny for your thoughts seems a little pricey."

Sally started to cry, it really had been a struggle this past couple of weeks and  she hadn't meant to snap but some people seemed to have all the luck and she felt they had none.

Patsy put her arm around her friend's shoulder and said "Come on, let's go back to mine and have a cuppa and then we can look at how we can help one another."

And with that the two friends made their way slowly to Patsy's house to put the kettle on."

WOYWW 701

Did I mention last week that Sarah had made some little pockets at the Lavinia weekend?  They are for putting tags in, and on, and the idea is that you add them, via the paperclip, to your journal pages.  Well, I made some just for myself, just for a bit of fun and I so enjoyed doing them.

As you can see the tags on top of the pocket are held on with a safety pin - cute idea or what?  Well I liked them and I have lots of safety pins, all sizes and colours.  Think I will make some more - all you need is some left over bits of card that you have salvaged from other work.

I got a fantastic parcel the other day and should have taken a photograph when it was all on my desk but I didn't - I did a video instead - but then I put everything away and so my desk is empty.  Well, it has my bag on at the moment as I am packing up early for the class on Saturday.  I will be loading my video up on my You Tube channel shortly, never done a parcel 'reveal' before.  My friend Jayne does lots of them but then she is brilliant at making videos, she knows how to edit them and everything.  With me you get what you see, warts and all - and no introduction, Jayne's are fab!.

So, as I have nothing interesting to show you I thought I would give you a glance at my ink storage.  I have put some inks (Brilliance and ColorBox) which are not used often, in a drawer.  The ones you see are the ones I mainly use the whole time and I need another cabinet for my Oxides as my brown ones are stacked up haphazardly in a compartment above Spencer, my little Teddy,

Starting at the top you have left and right my Adirondacks, down a layer and left are my odds (Ancient Page, Colorbox Chalk, Versamagic, Versacolor (minis) and Catherine Pooler) and to the right are some Distress Inks with Puss in Boots on guard (swoon over Antonio Banderas doing the voice over).  Next down with the little green Cricut Bug are my Versafine Claire's and opposite more Distress Inks with a cute little felted Rabbit my American friend made me.  Down again and we have Spencer Bear lounging in his deck chair - the inks are packed up in my bag (some Lavinia ones) and below that are a mixture of Encore Metallics, Castaway, Versamagic (full sized), Opalites, Memento's, Archival, Stazon, The Ton, and Wendy Vechi.  

In my new ink stands are my Oxides and this is what I need for my brown ones that you can see on top of Spencer's box.  My other Lavinia ones are in a drawer as are my not much used ones mentioned above - a total of two drawers - do you think I have too many inks?

If I still have an empty desk next week i will show you somewhere else and how I store other things.  C U!

Jeudi Journal - Understand

'It was a lovely Autumnal day when Sheila went walking in the woods and met up with her friend Brenda.  Brenda was wearing the most peculiar clothes and looked as if she was about to take a train ride somewhere as she had lots of suitcases with her.  But the most peculiar thing was that she had a can of cider in her hand.  

Now that might not seem strange to you but Brenda was known to be totally tee-total.  She never let a drop of alcohol pass her lips.  She had been known to refuse communion at church if she found it actually gave wine out, preferring the "more decent drink of Blackcurrant".  To Brenda anything alcoholic was "the drink of the devil himself".

So you can imagine Sheila's face when she saw her with the cider.

"What on earth are you doing?", she asked, "surely you are not going to drink that, that cider?"

"Of course I am" replied Brenda, "I am dreadfully upset and have done it at last, I have turned to drink."

Sheila smiled and told her friend that one can of cider did not make her a drinker, in fact the particular cider she was drinking was not even of a very low alcohol content, it was alcohol free and it was basically only like drinking a soda.  But she added "But why?"

"If you met my family you would understand" said Brenda, "you have no idea what they are like and what they are doing."

"Oh dear," said Sheila, "Come on, let's sit down on that log over there and you can tell me all about it.  Maybe we can even share that can of cider," and the two of them walked over to the log and sat down.'

The words for this week from Tim's snarky comments are "If you met my family you would understand" and the theme at Art Journal Journey, chosen by the lovely Elizabeth and the handsome Bleubeard, is "Collage Fodder, Food and Drink".  

So my page began life with my using several yellow shades of Distress Oxide Inks and then a couple of the orange ones and more yellow on top.  My new favourite stencil was used with a couple of the shades of orange as I do like tone on tone.  To finish off I put some ivy across the bottom of the page through a stencil and then drew a squiggly border on the other three sides.

I do hope this is acceptable to AJJ (and particularly Bleubeard whom I admire so much) and so this is my page for this week.  I included some Collage in the form of the two cut out figures and the can of Toffee Apple Cider, alcohol free of course.  That is using something from both Elizabeth and Bleubeard's choice of items for the theme.

I do hope you can join in with this theme during November, there are lots of things you can do with that title.  But, as Elizabeth points out, it must be a blog page - I suggest you read the rules carefully and enjoy creating.

WOYWW 700

Well, what do you know it's the 700th Edition of of WOYWW.  What a milestone!  Well done Julia for giving birth to what must be the longest running blog in existence (well, I imagine it is - apologies if this is not so).  700 weeks of blogging! Well done.

On Monday it was Halloween and the witches were out and about but none came knocking on our door.  I guess most parents are just too worried these days to let children out for a bit of Trick or Treating and the tradition has not been going that long here in the UK.  

I have noticed, however, that there are more and more houses with a bit of decoration, or a lot, and I passed a yard where something exciting was obviously going on on Saturday.  I would have loved to have stopped and nosied around.  

This is as far as we got - my Halloween display has grown and grown and now, this year, has the pretty picture I did with Jo Rice in a workshop as centre stage.

Here is our window sill in all its scary glory

I am hoping you can enlarge it - it is so dark and small but it is a big display and not easy to photograph.

Prior to Halloween, I went to the Hellaganza at Lavinia's in Ruthin.  Imagine my surprise when I was walking across the car park and I heard my name being called.  I turned and wondered who on earth was shouting - then I spotted someone getting out of a car and it was Angela (Crafting with Jack).  Angela had never been before and so she discovered her only vocabulary for the first few minutes was "Wow".

If you have never been you don''t know what you are missing as far as a shop's interior is concerned.  It is beautifully decorated, every room is a real pleasure, it really is like a journey through an enchanted forest.  And it even smells lovely.  I'll leave Angela to tell you about it.

There were lots of demonstrations going on and I managed to sit in on one of Jo's and she passed me one of her demo tags - so it is in my journal now and I just need to do some decoration around it.  I also went to see Sarah and she was doing the cutest little folders using lots of papers she was making with a stencil and some spray.  I'll make one and show you.

In the meantime - here is my desk - and all the goodies I bought on Saturday.  Rather a big spend on stamps but oh those hares!  (LLJ watch out)

Spent all morning (it's Tuesday here) sorting and cleaning one tiny bit of my craft room.  Well, it was a bit more than just morning.  Intended throwing lots of things out, filled a bin up but only with junk papers etc.

See you next week.

Jeudi Journal - Adulthood

My story this week is based on Peter Pan, the little boy who lived in Neverland and did not want to grow up.   That is because today's quote Wendy and I had to use  is "Where's the unsubscribe button on adulthood?" and we are trying to link our journal page (with the help of a story) to Art Journal Journey.  The lovely Elle has chosen 'Fairytales, Folklore and Fables' as her theme which is why, along with the quote, I thought of Peter Pan and Wendy - and not forgetting Tinkerbell.

I straight away thought of the Christmas Elf that Dyan brought out a couple of years ago and then when I went to it, you must remember it hasn't seen light of day for a year or so, I found out he only has a head and legs.  So I quickly gave him some kind of body, cut off the bell on his hat and replaced it with a feather.  My story deals with the part where ...

'Wendy was getting annoyed with Peter and all the silly things he kept getting up to to stop her and the boys leaving the island.  Even Tinkerbell was losing her patience with him and shaking fairy dust all over the place.  They had had adventures with Mermaids, Native Americans and Pirates - the most frightening being with Captain Hook and a crocodile and a clock!

But in order to stay a child Peter must forget about the adventures after they have happened along with what he learns about the outside world when he pays it a visit periodically.  He is able to fly and when he visits the 'darling family in the beginning of the story he teaches the children to fly by getting them to think "lovely wonderful things" plus some fairy dust.

It had been a lovely warm day and as the sun set it cast a lovely pink glow over the land which should have made them all happy but Wendy was missing home and thought it about time the boys returned to their real mother.

"I'm sorry Peter," she said, as they walked through the enchanted forest with all the beautiful magic toadstools around, "I really think it is time we went home to mother."

"But you're the mother" said Peter.  "I made you the mother of all the children in Neverland.  You can't leave, not yet."

"Oh Peter" said Wendy, "you always say something to try to make me stay but this time I have to go.  Our real mother in London will be wondering where we are and getting ever so worried and the boys need to go to a proper school."

Tinkerbell, who was resting on the tallest toadstool in the field shook her head, she agreed with Wendy, she wanted them all to go and leave her and Peter alone again with the Lost Boys.

"For goodness sake, grow up will you" Wendy shouted.

Peter looked crestfallen and he looked down on the ground.  "Where's the unsubscribe button on adulthood?" he said rather loudly, his feather standing straight up in his hat.

Poor Tinkerbell took off in a flurry of fairy dust and Wendy adjusted her spectacles and carried on down the pathway.  Wendy knew it was the end of the road for her and the boys and they must return home.  Perhaps Peter would go with them?

Do you know whether he did or not?'

This is my last journal page for Elle's lovely theme and I would like to thank her for making me think outside the box this month.  I have thoroughly enjoyed trying to marry a Tim Holtz Snarky Sticker to her theme at Art Journal Journey.