Sunday Sketches and 2 challenges

Good morning everybody. Today it's time again for *Sunday Sketches*, hosted by Sophia over at *Blue Chair Diary*. I didn't have time to make another sketch, was busy painting yesterday for the *Summer of Color* on Monday, so I am sharing a picture I made a while back. It has been painted with tempera and water color pencils. It shows a topsy turvy world where land and sea have somehow got mixed up.

The second picture I am sharing is one that was made more than 50 years ago, when I was in the fourth year at Grammar School. It has been drawn with colored pencils. There is a remark on the back from the teacher saying that I pressed too hard. We had a very strict and dour art teacher, but the year after we got a different teacher, and with her it was much more fun!

Yesterday afternoon I had another try with alcohol inks, I don't really like working with them as they always spark my asthma, so this time I had the window wide open. I don't have many colors, so I just had to use what was there. First I made an altered coaster as a little wall hanging, which I am planning to put on the front of my journal and not on the wall. I coated the coaster with pearl silver metallic structure paste, heated and bubbled it, and then dripped the inks on and blew them with a straw. I made 3 holes at the bottom and hung 3 TH word tags on, which I colored to match in red, blue and yellow. I chose the words live, love and hope. I am entering this into the *anything goes* challenge over at *Just for Fun*

Then I made a tag using alcohol inks in yellow, black and gold. This is made using Tim Holtz' tutorial, which can be found here: I found a picture of a *yellow lady* in my stash, mounted her on a scrap of hologram card, and then onto the tag. I gave her a feather, some lace and a necklace, and used an old ear-ring as charm to hang at the top. I am entering this tag into the *Grungy Monday* Challenge at Studio L3

And the last picture is a sneak-peek from my yellow painting tomorrow. Can you guess what it is? It shouldn't be toooooooooooooo hard to guess!!

And now for my surprises which arrived in the post yesterday, a beautifully painted box, filled with goodies form Zoe. The box reminds me of Merlin and magic, just lovely:

And inside the box were lots of surprises. A miniature canvas with easel:

A Stylish dressing up doll, which seems to have about my figure!?

A beautiful hand-made card

An altered spoon in steampunk design, with loads of tiny cogs and gears fixed to it:

2 little albums full of gorgeous images for tags and ATCs etc.

And last but not least, a set of flower fairy die-cuts.

As you can see, I was a very lucky bunny and it cheered me up a lot to find such lovely things in the post. Thanks for your kindness, Zoe!


Well, enough for today. Hope you all have a lovely Sunday. Take care, and thanks a lot for visiting, I do appreciate it very much!