Art Journal - Buildings theme

I am really enjoying my art journalling still I love playing about with colours and paints and I follow a couple of blogs and The Craft Barn has a challenge with the theme of buildings. As I had a wonderful houses stamp I thought I would give it a go. Some-one asked the other day why do I do so many challenges, it is simple really firstly I enjoy them and secondly I find them excellent mojo starters. Quite often I will start doing something for a challenge and it will give me other idea's or directions to go in :)

This page started off as a disaster, I had this lovely idea of having a coastal painted background but my idea was loftier than my painting skills and I forgot that I am not the best artist. I got all frustrated and painted over everything in white thinking once dry I could re-do it all. Once the white was dry though I loved the effect and kept it as it was. I then used my row of buildings mask I cut on my cricut earlier in the week and misted with Perfect Pearls Heirloom gold, moved the mask down and across and misted again giving me differing darkness of misting and creating the illusion of depth.

I higlighted the buildings and added lit windows and a moon, stuck down my stamped rows of houses (again on the white washed book paper one row in Distress ink Black soot the other vintage photo) and added my little journalling blocks.

Let's play tag!

I spent a while yesterday cutting out masks using my cricut. After making the guitar mask I thought it would be good to make a few more so now I have several different masks and can get more out of my mists :)

Of course once made I had to try one out :) so I used the chicken wire one with some green mist and a Tando creative one with yellow paint for some different texture. I followed a recent October Afternoon sketch and used the Lily Bee prize I won recently for their sketch challenge. I added a bit of Purple Pumkin loveliness a MME banner and some doodling;

Purple Pumpkin cluster;

Little cutesy Hedgehog;

Title bunting;

Thanks for popping by xxx

Inchie doodle art journal page :)

Today's challenge on the fb Ditzy Crafters group was to make an inchie and for it to have a face! I had never made an inchie before and wasn't sire about it but thought I would give it a go using this art nouveau style stamp from Craft Stamper a couple of months back;

as the stamp was 2" square I made a 1 1/2 inchie and a twinchie in the same way and Pyramid stacked them;

I decided I would use this on an art journal page and following the prompts from the Creative Jumpstart 2012 I just doodled on a page with my art journal pen;

I coloured it in with my promarkers which I now know react with my journal pen so won't be using them together again lol;

I added my twinchie stack and some journalling (I even doodled the bubbles to the word bubble lol) and added some extra journalling on top of the colour with my white journalling pen;

It is so very different from my other AJ pages and it has given me an idea for my next one too :)

My only Resolution

Inspired by Max at Truly Madly Crafty with her one word one technique challenge and the Ditzy Crafter's daily challenge to use your favourite stamp my latest art journal page;

Back ground is clover, butterscoth, and raspberry alcohol inks with snowcap mixative to give them a pastel tone on top of a gesso-ed brick pattern. Then Tim Holtz barbed wire masks with PInk cosmic shimmer and pearl Perfect pearls paints misted on them. The ballerina is from MME Lost and Found 2 and stamped in Wild honey, Worn lipstick and Evergreen bough onto book paper which was painted with watered down white acrylic paint so the stamping showed up more;

I added the writing in black and white journalling pens and a little definition to the bricks in the white pen. Also would like to note I got a book from a charity shop that they were going to throw out as it was missing pages so I didn't destroy a usable book (Perish the thought!) so if you like using book paper ask in your local charity shop for any they cannot sell usually I got books, sheet music and a map for my craftyness that way for £1 :D

Thanks for popping by xxx

Crafting goals for 2012

A few days ago I completed an Art Journal page documenting my goals for this year and that very evening I started on them by finally starting Joel's first christmas mini book. I complete the front cover and first 2 pages that evening and then did a double layout today. My only worry is I am not sure how many christmas pictures we have from Dylan, Kari and Alex's first christmas's so it will be photo searching this week lol.

Storytelling Sunday 2

The past couple of months I have read with interest the Storytelling Sunday posts of a couple of my blogging friends thinking hmmm I really should do this but being unsure whether I was allowed to just join in or not I ummmed more than typed lol. As this is the first day of a New Year and a Sunday to boot Sian has started Storytelling Sunday 2 and I am going to join in. You can too by clicking on the link in the words Storytelling Sunday 2 above.

I was sat pondering on what I would share for my first go at this and I kind of went off on a tangent. I started thinking about my nan who would have been 97 tomorrow if she was still with us and how I last saw her in 2004 on her 89th birthday at her home shortly before we lost her but I then remembered the last time I visited her in hospital and although still a fairly sad story it also has some laughter.

It was November 2003 and although bitterly cold it was bright and sunny and a lovely crisp Autumn day, Phil and I had travelled to Swindon with Joel 3 and Dylan not long turned 1 to visit Nan in hospital. Nan had been in and out of hospital many times over the past few years but this was the first time since their move from London to Swindon and I had visited her either alone, with my parents, or with Phil and the boys at every hospital and it was important to me to continue to do so. We went up to see her knowing we couldn't be there too long with small children as it would stress both them and Nan but she was so overjoyed to see them it was worth the long journey for that 10 minute visit with her. She was obviously not very well and we were worried she may not be going back home again at that point but she was still fairly lucid and happy to talk about what the boys were doing and where Phil was going next with the army and of course how I was and the baby I was expecting.

She grumbled and moaned at Gramps until he gave her her purse so that she could give the boys some money for sweets, never mind being in hospital some things are tradition :) After that we could see how tired she was and said our goodbyes, Phil took the boys out first so that I could have a few minutes with her which I didn't know at the time but they would be the last few minutes I had with her where she would recognise me.

We went back to the car but Joel was thirsty so of course Dylan was thirsty and we could only find a fizzy canned drink dispenser so we bought a can of pop and Joel had a rare treat and DYlan his first taste of pop! The boys were not used to canned drinks being anything but beer, the rare occasions that Joel had pop we bought him one of the little panda pop bottles and so the boys were convinced that the innocent can of Lemonade was actually Beer and went around telling everyone that their Daddy gave them Beer at the hospital!

To this day Dylan is still convinced that he had beer how he remembers it is beyond me although I suspect it is more that he and Joel went on about it so much he remembers the story rather than the event lol. I guess though if you are going to give a 3 yr old and a 1 yr old beer a hospital is the place to do it!

I hope that if you enjoyed reading my story you will go and have a look at Sian's blog and join in I would love to read your story's too x

Rock & Roll Music

Let's go back in time to Christmas 2006. We were spending that Christmas at the in-laws and Uncle Gez and Auntie Abi bought the kids a microphone, a guitar and (Noooooooooooooooooo) a drum set! The kids loved the presents and spent several hours "entertaining" us all by forming a rock band. Well they did enjoy themselves although I can't say that Uncle Gez and Auntie Abi were too popular with the other adults that day lol.

All of the kids' albums are full and indeed overflowing except for Dylan's so I have been trying to remedy that by concentrating on LO's of Dylan. He asked if he could chose a photo for his next LO and I said yes so he chose this photo from that Christmas when he was taking his turn as the singer;

I made this LO for the Sarah's Cards Ltd challenge this month and started by making my own guitar mask by tracing a pp from the DCWV Rockstar collection. I sprayed the blue card with copper Perfect Pearls mist;

I then used papers from DCWV Rockstar, Crate paper Toybox, and We R Memory Keepers Teen Angst, chipboard from Scenic Route (painted, inked and stamped) and letters from Lily Bee Memorandum. I hope you like it but more importantly Dylan loves it and thinks the misting is "Awesome!" lol.

Happy New Year to you all xxx